Asian Woman Seeking Water and Wit (Feature) First Indian American, APA Woman Astronaut Mourned Globally (in National News) Taking a Stand (in Bay Area News) Going Out with Style (in Sports) Capturing the Stuff of Dreams (in A&E) Emil Amok: Space Immigrant (in Opinion)

Space Immigrant

The crew of the Space Shuttle Columbia: Rick Husband, William McCool, Ilan Ramon (the first Israeli astronaut), David Brown, Michael Anderson, Laurel Clark and Kalpana Chawla.

I have never been what you’d call a “space-kind-of-guy.” I’ve always been a “here and now” terrestrial. A glance at the sky is nice, but the thought of deep space usually gives me a neck ache.

Or eye-strain.

Besides, is traveling on top of a rocket really all it’s cracked up to be? Is it worth the frequent flyer miles? Wouldn’t you rather the government spend all those millions of tax dollars on more weighty matters on Earth — like eradicating poverty, improving health care, bolstering education?

I am old enough to remember all the chimps they sent into space before it was considered “safe.” And, of course, I remember John Glenn. But as a young kid from the Mission district, I often wondered, what was it all for? I never saw kids like me from the Mission on “The Jetsons.”

So frankly, I’m surprised that I have become so obsessed with this story, to the point that I am explaining the “zipper effect” to my six-year-old while playing with Scrabble tiles.

Is it just the mystery of it all? The tragedy? The science?

Or is it merely Kalpana Chawla?

The 41-year-old Chawla was one of the seven Columbia astronauts, one of the most diverse shuttle crews ever assembled. That rocket ship was no white male boys club. There was one African American, two women. And one APA, the South Asian Chawla.

To see her face brought us all into that so-called “space family” that NASA officials kept talking about immediately after the tragedy. In a way, this was a death in our family too. Our APA family.

THE IMMIGRANT’S IMMIGRANT

If you’re an immigrant or a son or daughter of an immigrant, how could you not relate to Chawla and the dreams that propelled her life?

I’ve often thought that my dad, who comes from the furthest reaches of the Philippines, must have thought America was like Uranus when he arrived in the ’20s.

Chawla was a fairly typical immigrant — only extraordinarily so.

Like thousands before her, technical prowess was her ticket. But something about Chawla was even more special.

From the town of Karnal, 80 miles north of Delhi, she pursued her love for flying. First, a bachelor’s degree in aeronautical engineering from Punjab Engineering College. Then to the United States, where she earned a masters from the University of Texas, and a doctorate in aerospace engineering from the University of Colorado.

Chawla naturalized, and after working in the Bay Area at NASA’s Ames Research Center, the great beyond was next. The immigrant became an astronaut in 1994.

It’s not easy being selected for the space program. There is no affirmative action. You either have “the right stuff,” or you don’t.

IN HER OWN WORDS

At the memorial service in Houston this past week, you could see the Asian faces and feel their grief. On CNN, a camera caught two of them in dark glasses, tearfully mourning, locked in sympathetic embrace. When the bells tolled seven times, one for each fallen astronaut, it was easy to wonder if it’s all worth the risk.

But I know what Chawla would say. She implied it from the Columbia during a NASA press conference last Wednesday, just three days before her death. In their weightless state, the crew was anchored together in a team-like pose, two rows abreast. They gleefully answered questions in a grainy image from space.

More than the others, Chawla seemed not to speak like a scientist or engineer, but like an innocent child.

“The coolest thing for me is the experience of floating and not feeling my weight,” Chawla said. “And hanging by a window just after sunset and watching the stars in the big black dome of the sky as the earth moves underneath.”

“I somehow try to find 10 to 15 minutes every day to do that. I keep most mornings, or try to keep postponing my meals to do that. And it’s kind of fun because I have to watch where the food is going because my eyes are glued to the outside.”

“It’s just an absolutely amazing, magical, wonderful feeling to do that.”

Someone asked them to share their favorite “oh,wow” moments.

“In some sense it is truthful that every moment is ‘oh wow!’ ” Chawla said. “But I’d be lying if I said looking out of the window is not the best. It really is.”

She described with a sense of awe looking at the moon, and how it reflected off the Columbia. And how the Milky Way looked like a glowing silver dust cloud.

Then Chawla described a vision she had from the flight deck, looking from the overhead windows. “It was starting to get dim outside, so you got to see your own reflection. And there is the Earth,” said Chawla.

“And you can still see the Earth’s surface and the dark sky overhead. And I could then see my reflection in the window and in the retina of my eye the whole earth and the sky could be seen reflected. So I called all the crew members one by one and they saw it, and they said, ‘oh wow.’ ”

Now while others debate whether America has lost that sense of awe for space, we mourn her and the others’ accidental deaths. But there’s only so much time to grieve. Iraq is next. How will we handle it when death and destruction is no accident?

Reach Emil Guillermo at emil@amok.com.