‘NASA has sent some really incredible artifacts our way’

Shawn Cruzen has been a champion for the earth and space science program at Columbus State University since moving to Columbus in 1997.

He heads the Coca-Cola Space Science Center, which has served as an educational community resource for 20 years.

Cruzen sat down with reporter Alva James-Johnson and talked about his background, love for space, and work at the center.

Here are excerpts from the interview, with the content and order of the questions edited slightly for length and clarity.

Q: Tell us a little bit about where you are from and what growing up was like for you?

A: I grew up in a small town in southeastern Colorado. I absolutely loved the mountains; I still love the mountains to this day. I’m kind of a nature boy at heart. I love to get outdoors and camp and go see the sky and do lots of hiking and biking and all of those kinds of things. That’s a product of my childhood, growing up in a semi-rural place in southeastern Colorado.

... In the place where I grew up, seeing a night sky that was awe-inspiring was just part of growing up. I had always had an interest in outer space, science fiction, NASA programs, astronomy — all of those kinds of things had been an interest. But my first real track in life, coming through high school and then into college, was in the media. I actually was a mass communications major at the University of Southern Colorado for two years.

Q: How did you develop that interest?

A: My father owned a local newspaper, and so I kind of grew up working in dark rooms and doing a lot of different jobs around the newspaper. ... Growing up that way I really thought I wanted to be in the media somehow. When I went off to college the first time, I went for a mass communications degree. I worked at the college radio station and TV station and did some of those things, but really had a side interest that whole time in music. ... I got into bands. I formed a recording studio with a partner of mine. At night, I was playing in clubs and ski areas, and by day I was running a recording studio. I actually spent a period of time working at a theme park.

I’m saying all of this to say I dropped out of college... for five years. This is the message I like to tell parents, which is this: “It’s OK if your kids may drop out that first time, because maybe they just don’t have their fingers on the pulse of what really is their passion in life, and they need to find that.”

Q: What happened from there?

A: During that time I got reintroduced to the hobby of amateur astronomy. Through that reintroduction ... I got involved with a public observatory, which is kind of like the observatory here at Space Science Center. We are open to the public and allow people to come in and view the nighttime sky through telescopes. I began volunteering at this public observatory called the Black Forest Observatory in Colorado. Through my work there, I realized that I just wanted to know more. I wanted to know more about the science behind astronomy.

I decided to start taking some physics courses at the University of Southern Colorado, my local access university, very much the way Columbus State University is for the city of Columbus. Through that I began to really pursue a possible career in physics. That’s what ultimately led me to go on to graduate school, and then go into the field professionally.

Q: So, you’ve had a wide variety of interests.

A: It’s fun, because a lot of the things that I learned in all of those other activities, whether it was working in a theme park or playing music onstage, or working at the college radio station, I find myself incorporating aspects of all of those past experiences into what I do here now today at space science center. Yes, I certainly use my formal training in physics and astronomy, but I can also bring in elements from the entertainment industry and from the media training I have, and bring those things to bear.

Q: Give me an example of how you apply some of those experiences to what you do here?

A: A lot of what we do here, we are making presentations to groups of one type or another — mostly students, mostly school groups or college students, but also to people in the community. Things like the way you present and the way that you speak, and what music you use, and what lighting you use. All of those things can be tied into that overall experience that helps inspire people to be more curious about astronomy and about the world around them

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Q: Tell me how you got to Columbus.

A: I was at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and I was reaching the end of my doctoral program, and the internet had just really gotten going then. That was a cool thing. You could look for jobs online. Whoever knew that would be a thing? I guess I was among the first generation of graduate students to really use the internet to look nationwide for jobs. Columbus State University, among other institutions, had put out some job announcements that sounded pretty interesting to me.

... I actually had three job offers. Two of those were with traditional institutions doing traditional faculty positions and teaching. I absolutely love to teach, so that was a top priority for me anyway. But this job also incorporated getting to work in this interesting place called the Coca-Cola Space Science Center. I thought to myself, “What is the Coca-Cola Space Science Center? I did some investigations from my office in Las Vegas. ... I realized they had a planetarium, which I absolutely loved planetariums as a kid growing up, and that was part of what inspired me to want to know more about astronomy. They have an observatory, which that was tailor-made for me. Then everything else around — the Challenger Center and all of the exhibit gallery displays — were all themed around the concept of space exploration.

Q: You’ve seen Columbus change since 1997, I’m sure.

A: Oh my goodness, have changes taken place ... particularly in the Uptown area. ... It’s kind of interesting because we were the first outpost of Columbus State University in the Uptown area. We were the first unit or division from the university to be located in what’s now called the River Park Campus.

If anybody can remember back to what things were like in the Uptown area back in 1997, it has really grown and matured. It’s been fun to watch the university play a role in that all happening with bringing the arts and bringing more students downtown, with bringing in restaurants and entertainment and all of the things that have now made an unbelievably awesome Uptown area. It was not at all like that back in 1997, let me just put it that way. It had some growing to do. The River Center wasn’t even constructed yet.

... A lot has evolved since we’ve been here, and I’m very proud to say that again we were a cornerstone in the ground of that whole Uptown improvement way back in 1996 when our Space Science Center opened. We’re celebrating our 20-year anniversary this year, by the way, so that’s an interesting milestone for us.

Q: Well, that makes this timely.

A: That’s right, it’s perfect timing, and actually we really appreciate you doing that because it’s part of what’s really allowing us to get the message out to the community that we’ve been a foundation in this community in the Uptown for 20 years, which we feel like that’s a major milestone.

Q: Tell me a little bit about the history of the center. How did it get started?

A: I wasn’t here from the beginning, so this is kind of lore passed down to me. In 1996, the Olympic games were going to be partially held in Columbus. Columbus was the venue for the Olympic softball. The city of Columbus and the founding fathers, the leaders of the city at that time, really wanted to do something to improve the city. They wanted to do several things. They were looking around for projects to do to move the city forward and to improve it so they could show it off to the world during the Olympics.

There was a professor at Columbus State University by the name of Francis Gardner. Francis was a biology professor, but he got very interested in space biology. ... He would make trips out to California to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory... and then bring that information back and teach about what the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and NASA were doing in terms of exploring the solar system. On one of these flights back from California, Francis Gardner sat next to a representative from what’s called the Challenger Learning Center for Space Science Education. ... This was a foundation that was set up by the families of the Challenger astronauts.

... Challenger Learning Centers are fundamentally two rooms. One is made to look like mission control, another room is made to look like the inside of a space station or a spacecraft. It’s where groups of students or adults can come in and fly a simulated space mission. ... When he heard about this Challenger Learning Center, he brought that concept back and he said, “As we are thinking about things that could be done, this would be a fantastic thing to implement for the community, and also to improve the state of science education within our school systems.

Q: What was Coca-Cola’s involvement?

A: Coca-Cola was one of the major donors. In fact, they were the major donor to the facility. Again, I wasn’t here. I’m not exactly sure how all those connections were made. Obviously, there were some folks in town that have very good connections with the Coca-Cola corporation and I’m sure that they were involved in those early stages.

Q: How many employees do you have here?

A: We have nine full-time employees and we have two teachers on loan from the Muscogee County School District. That is part of a very unique relationship that we have with our local school district, where all of the sixth graders come down during the school year and have an experience here at Space Science Center. They fly a mission in that Challenger Learning Center. They see a show at our state-of-the art planetarium. They do some activities in our classrooms, and they get to enjoy this exhibit gallery that we have out here.

In exchange for all of those school students coming down, the school district places two teachers on loan here at our facility for the entire school year. It’s a trade-off program, and that was initiated from the very beginning. This was a partnership between Columbus State University and the Muscogee County School District, which has now lasted 20 years. It’s a fantastic success story, because now we’ve had generations of students who have been exposed to very fun aspects of learning science and particularly learning space science in this facility that they wouldn’t have otherwise.

Q: How much does it cost to run a facility like this?

A: The budget is complicated. ... In terms of just staffing and operations, it’s roughly around the order of half a million dollars per year, a little bit more than that. ... That does not include the upkeep of the building, lights and power and things like that, that also have to be managed.

Q: What would you say is the biggest challenge in your position?

A: The biggest challenge is simply finances. It’s dealing with the continued operation of our facility. We are required to make our own operating budget. We have to bring in enough income to cover all of the cost of daily operation of the facility — anything that breaks, or anything that we need to maintain, or any new equipment that we need to purchase, or just paper and supplies and all of those kinds of things that a business needs to run.

In addition to that, because of diminishing state budgets, we have been more and more required to cover our staff salaries. Our allocation for our staff members has been reduced dramatically as Columbus State University has gone through budget cuts. Fortunately, that has kind of happened at a time where the science center itself is becoming more successful.

Q: Tell me a little bit more about the upgrades.

A: ... We are sitting in Odyssey right now. ... If a person were to come in here and look around the room, what they would see is some very nice seating inside, what looks like the cargo bay of a space shuttle.

What we’ve developed is kind of a science fiction concept. This is a future space shuttle. It has a module that holds 27 astronauts that sits in what would be the cargo bay of the space shuttle. The interesting thing is NASA really actually had that concept. That was a concept that was really being worked on for transporting large numbers of astronauts back and forth from the earth to the space station during the shuttle era. They never followed through on it, they didn’t ever build it, but in our world of imagination we have now followed through on it and built this.

Q: Are people surprised when they come to a city like Columbus and they see such a sophisticated space center?

A: I think they are, yeah. But before I get too far afield of the Odyssey, I want to say one last thing. All of this was made possible with our partners at West Rock, which was Mead Paper Company, then MeadWestvaco. Their current name is West Rock. They are the sole sponsors for the renovation of this particular gallery. I would be remiss in my duty if I didn’t mention their contribution to making this happen. We were really happy to partner with them on this project.

People come into Columbus and once they come into the science center and they see the NASA artifacts and they hear us talk about our observatory, and students doing research on near-earth asteroids in our observatory, and they see all of the other things that they have here, they say, “Why Columbus?”

In some sense, why not Columbus? This is as good a place as any. But it really ties back to the original story that I told you with this professor that had the seed of an idea. Another thing is I think that people kind of forget that Columbus and Georgia itself, and the whole Southeast region in fact, are intimately tied with the history of space exploration.

Q: How so?

A: We are almost directly in between Huntsville and the Kennedy Space Center. If you were to draw a line on a map from the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, you would almost go right through the city of Columbus. We are right in this region where all of that is happening.

Here is something interesting. We have a space shuttle main engine nozzle sitting in our exhibit gallery. Parts of the engine that that was a portion of were forged at Georgia Forgers at the Pratt & Whitney plant here in Columbus. That’s another tie to America’s space program that people forget about. There are various other industries in town that made contributions to America’s space program.

Q: You have artifacts from the Challenger?

A: Not from Challenger itself. We have it from the space shuttle program. The main piece that’s in our gallery right now is a space shuttle main engine nozzle. That is a very interesting component, and I’ll tell you why. ... America had five space shuttles that ever flew to space. That nozzle flew on four of them.

The reason it did is because every time they flew they would pull the engines out and re-service the engines. They would take them, clean them up, and they would put a different engine in that space shuttle, that orbiter, and fly it again. That means that this engine moved around. The only reason it didn’t fly on all five is because that nozzle came into service brand new with the space shuttle Endeavor, which was a replacement for Challenger. It was part of Challenger’s story in the sense that it was the first engine on board the replacement space shuttle for Challenger, which was Endeavor.

Q: Do you remember where you were and what you were doing when the Challenger accident occurred?

A: Absolutely I do. That was during a period of time where I was working for my father at his newspaper. I was actually in the dark room. I was processing photographs for the newspaper. ... My dad’s associate editor had knocked on the door and he said, “Hey Shawn, I think you might want to come see this. This is pretty interesting.”

... I wasn’t one of the people that was watching the program when it exploded — I was working. The first thing I remember seeing is they kept showing shots of the ocean and helicopters flying over the ocean and these boats circling around. Of course, this was a search and recovery effort. They were trying to find any evidence that possibly some of these astronauts might have survived. That was the first thing I remember coming into view on that little TV screen.

Q: It seems Americans have lost our interest in science and space exploration over the years. Why do you think that is?

A: I honestly don’t think that Americans have lost their interest in science. I think that they’ve shifted their interest in science more toward the technology side of things. Absolutely everybody these days seems to be carrying a smart phone. What is a smart phone? Smart phones reek of science! There is science all throughout the smart phone. Are they doing science with their smart phones? Well, not all of them. Obviously most people are not. But people are so in tune with technology these days that I think they forget that any sort of technology they are using is an application of basic scientific principles. ... I can tell you this, I heard a very interesting story just driving back from campus back down here to the science center to do this interview. Elon Musk, who is running a commercial space company called SpaceX, made an announcement that he wants to put one of his Dragon space capsules on the surface of Mars by 2018. That’s in two years, and he wants to do this as a first step toward colonizing Mars. Let me just tell you that I believe that when leaders in the commercial space industry begin to have these kind of successes, people’s interest are going to immediately rekindle on space exploration again.

Q: So you really think that there will be a time when people will be taking vacations in space?

A: Absolutely. It’s not just me, by the way. I’m no trendsetter, I’m no visionary. There are companies that are working very hard to make that happen right now. ...

Q: What was your reaction to the shuttle program shutting down?

A: Oh wow, I had mixed feelings. In some sense, it’s always good to have the next best thing ready to go. We knew that at some point the shuttle program would have to be replaced. The Apollo program was replaced, Saturn 5 rockets were replaced by the space shuttle, the space shuttle would then be replaced by the next system. I just wish NASA had the next system ready to go before they shut the shuttle program down. Can you permit me to take a half a step backwards? I forgot to tell you about our other major artifact that’s coming? I told you all about Odyssey.

Q: OK, sure.

A: The best artifact that we have of all at the Space Science Center is in town but it’s too big for us to put it in our current facility, and we are having to do some fundraising to be able to bring it here. It’s the quarter-scale engineering prototype of the space shuttle. It’s not a mockup or a replica of the space shuttle, it’s a prototype, which means the space shuttle was a replica of this thing.

It was one-fourth the size of the actual space shuttle, and it was used to do ground vibration testing and some very important dynamic testing to make sure that the space shuttle would hold itself together on liftoff. ... It’s not just the orbiter, it’s also the external tank and the solid rocket boosters — what space geeks would call the full stack.

... All of this testing was incredibly important, and that really key artifact that led to the successful future shuttle launches is now in possession with Columbus State University, and it’s going to come on display at Coca-Cola Space Science Center, and it is going to be an iconic national artifact to put on display right here in Front Avenue in Uptown Columbus.

Q: Where is it currently located?

A: It’s currently being held at an airport hangar out at the Columbus Airport.

Q: How were we able to get that here?

A:... We applied, and apparently we did a pretty good job in our applications, because NASA has really sent some incredible artifacts our way. The quarter scale, we didn’t even really understand that it existed, or that it was still out there and available as any kind of intact artifact until February of 2014. ... NASA put out an announcement and said, “Hey, this incredible big artifact is going to be available. If you want to apply for it, you have to have a plan to move it, a plan to store it, and a plan to ultimately put it on display. You have to put that plan in in two weeks.”

Q: There is a solar eclipse that is scheduled to occur in August of 2017, and people are already booking hotel rooms across the country so that they can get a good view. Tell me a little bit about that.

A: ... This will be the first total eclipse to be visible over the continental United States in almost 50 years. This is not a common event. To have an eclipse that’s going to stretch basically from one side of the U.S. to the other during a time where we happen to be doing these global webcasts, there is no way that we’re going to miss that event.

... We’re going to have people stationed at several locations along the path of totality in different states across the U.S., all of us sending back our imaging to our main servers here at the Space Science Center, and then we’ll be webcasting that out to planet Earth. Anybody who wants to watch who’s not in the path of totality will be able to see our images. That’s part of the effort that we’re mounting here.

Q: Will people be able to view it from Columbus?

A: ... Even though Columbus won’t be in the path of totality, it will be more than 90 percent eclipsed here. Almost all of the sun, a very noticeable near total eclipse, will be visible from Columbus. As we approach that, not only will we be webcasting it, we’re imaging it also directly from our site here in Columbus. But we’ll also be helping people learn how to view that safely, because even at 90 percent eclipsed, there is enough sunlight coming that you can actually damage your eyes.

This story was originally published May 14, 2016 at 10:17 PM with the headline "‘NASA has sent some really incredible artifacts our way’."