BY KAREN BOSSICK

The students in Hemingway STEAM School’s technology class are settling into the new school year. But their teacher Scott Slonim still hasn’t come down from Cloud 9.

Slonim can’t contain his enthusiasm for a summer in which he got to spend a week at LiftOff Summer Institute at NASA Space Center in Houston, Texas. He was selected alongside 51 other educators from 38 states—nearly all of them a Teacher of the Year” or even “National Teacher of the Year.”

The space camp for teachers offered hands-on training and behind-the-scenes access to space exploration facilities.

Astronauts train underwater for eight hours at a time.

Slonim watched as they put moon soil in a 3D printer to make what they need while on the moon.

“If something breaks or they need a specific tool, they can 3D print it and use it to fix what they need to fix,” he said.

Ushered into a huge Nasa complex made up of many different buildings, Slonim got to walk alongside an Apollo rocket that was longer than a football field.

“The area where the astronaut is makes up just 2 percent of it—a tiny space in something that’s bigger than a football field,” he observed.

Scott Slonim, in the center, said he is encouraging his students to use an App that tells them when the International Space Station is flying over Sun Valley.

He also saw a swimming pool the size of a football field with a space station underneath the water. There, astronauts put on space suits and spend eight hours in the pool practicing how to use tools underwater where there’s no gravity.

“There are three divers around them at all times. If anything happens, they’re out of there,” he said. “They have to wear diapers when they’re underwater or in a rocket because they can’t go to the bathroom for hours.

One of the astronauts--Cady Coleman--said she had to wear a suit that was too big for her because they didn’t have one that fit her due to budget cuts.

“It beat her up, but that was her only option,” Slonim said. “Otherwise, she would have gotten pulled from the program. She said, ‘No way. I’m going to make it work.’ ”

The NASA campus is massive, Scott Slonim said.

Similarly, the NASA buildings are “ancient” with bathroom faucets from the 1950s and walls painted a 1960s government-colored pink, he said. Phones do not work inside buildings for security purposes.

Slonim got to pose questions to three astronauts, including Fred Haise, an Apollo 13 astronauts who told about meeting Tom Hanks and Bill Paxton, who portrayed him in the movie about the aborted flight to the moon.

“The fact that they showed just one flight commander at Mission Control bothered him because there were so many people involved behind the scenes,” Slonim said.

Cady Coleman told teachers how she can sit in a place called the Cupola that’s all windows and see where she is over the earth so she can tell her husband and son when to look up to watch her pass over. Sometimes, at night she’d go in when she was supposed to be asleep and play her flute, never realizing that Mission Control could watch.

Scott Slonim got to sit in a space capsule.

Never shy about asking questions, Slonim asked her what it was like sleeping in space.

“She said it was like Ambien. She that for a week she needed to use tit and then she was fine. She said she’d close her eyes and wake up and her alarm was going off--best sleep ever.”

Coleman said that most astronauts get in their sleeping bags and strap themselves down so they don’t float around.

“She would strap herself down and she’d wake up somewhere in her little room. They’re like cubbies—they have their own personal space bag, a laptop, a few personal pieces.”

Slonim said the astronauts told him that they feel three G’s pressing against them when they take off on a rocket. But, as soon as they enter space, everything stops.

“You’re slammed forward for a second, then suddenly you’re floating. If you’re holding a pencil, you let go and it floats. They also said that you gain a half-inch in space. And they carry you out of the capsule when you return because you’re not used to the gravity here and you have to learn to walk again.”

Slonim and his fellow educators got to sit in a viewing area behind Mission Control.

“Each person has an eight-hour shift, and that includes one lap-over area with the next worker. The only time they get a break when they lose communication which happens for 45 seconds to a minute. They all run out and go to the bathroom then. Cady said, when she was breastfeeding, she got to be good friends with the custodian because she used the custodial closet to pump her milk.”

When one group makes a mistake, they receive a troll, which they keep until another group makes a mistake, Slonim added.

Astronauts usually stay between six and eight months at the Space Station.

“If someone has an emergency, they can get that astronaut home in a couple hours. It was media hype when the two astronauts had to stay up on the Space Station for eight months. They knew it was a test flight and that they might need to stay up there, so they were never stuck up there.”

Astronauts work eight-hour days, and two of those hour are spent exercising.

“They told me that if they’re on a bike for 1.5 hours, they will have biked around the world,” Slonim said.

Groups aren’t put together based on personality but, rather, skill set and what they know, Slonim said.

“So, they really have to know how to get along and work with others—some of whom are from other countries.”

Each has his own country’s food but astronauts do trade food with one another.

“They grow fruits and vegetables using hydroponics. They’ll get one strawberry and it will  be the best thing ever. They treat it as a special meal—they even dress up for it.”

Slonim learned that it takes three days to get to the moon and six months to get to Mars.

“The company line is, ‘We’re trying to get to Mars.’ But the real line is, ‘We need to get back to the moon first.’ ”

Astronaut candidates—and lay people—can take part in tests on earth to see what it’s like to be in space. It can range from two weeks inside a lunar module with 11 other people to spending six months in a place that looks like Mars with no contact with others for six months.

“They put you on a mountain in Hawaii. And, if you go outside, you have to wear a spacesuit. Otherwise, you’re inside working on simulators. They use an AI -generated therapist thing to tell them what someone’s having issues with.”

The teachers took part in one exercise where they pretended to be on a different planet. They’d ask a question of Mission Control and, 20 minutes later, they’d get the answer. They had to contend with no volume on a barely legible screen and work puzzles with oven mitts on.

“They gave us white plastic suits so it was like we were on the moon and we had to code a robot with gloves on,” Slonim said.

Slonim said he came back with a multitude of scenarios for his own students.

“I also want to let the girls know this is something for everyone—the Mission Control director is a woman. And Cady Coleman said she always wore her hair super long because she wanted to show girls and women that anyone can be an astronaut. And I want my students to realize that knowing both English and Spanish can give them a step up. Many in NASA worked their way up—you don’t need a degree from MIT to work there.”