MURFREESBORO — Rutherford County native Rhea Seddon, a former astronaut and veteran of three shuttle missions, is not happy about the future of the U.S. space program.
"What is going to happen is that the space shuttles are going to all go into museums, never to be flown again," the 63-year-old Murfreesboro resident said. "I think that is very unfortunate, because this shuttle had a lot of capabilities that will be difficult to match."
The shuttle can take about 60,000 pounds of payload into space, she explained.
"It carried a space lab which was a powered laboratory that could be flown," she said. "Very sophisticated science could be done in that laboratory."
The Hubbell Telescope was taken to space aboard the shuttle and was repaired and refurbished when shuttle crews recaptured it.
"We won't have that capability anymore," she said.
Space Shuttle Endeavor departed Kennedy Space Center May 16, marking the next-to-last shuttle launch. Endeavor is scheduled to land at Kennedy Space Center during the early morning hours Wednesday.
Only one more shuttle launch is scheduled, on July 8, before the program is mothballed.
Seddon, 63, and her husband, Robert "Hoot" Gibson, met when they entered the space program in 1978.
"He flew before I did," Seddon said. "His first flight was in 1984, mine was in 1985."
Seddon's interest in space was in the life sciences, which included studying how humans adapt to weightlessness.
"Just to see the difference in how living things changed when they went away from gravity ...," Seddon said. "Two of my three flights were on life sciences space labs."
The space shuttles have been flying since 1981. According to the Associated Press, President George W. Bush made the decision in 2004 to stop flying shuttles. He wanted to go back to the moon and eventually to Mars. For NASA to afford to reach those goals, it had to stop spending about $4 billion a year on the shuttle program.
But President Barack Obama dropped the moon mission. His plan has NASA building a giant rocket to send astronauts to an asteroid and, eventually, to Mars while turning over to private companies the job of carrying cargo and astronauts to the space station.
NASA space shuttle Endeavour lifts off at the Kennedy Space Center on May 16 in Cape Canaveral, Fla. After 20 years, 25 missions and more than 115 million miles in space, Endeavour is on its final flight to the International Space Station before being retired and donated to the California Science Center in Los Angeles. / Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images
Dr. Rhea Seddon, front left, and the crew of the shuttle Discovery leave the Operations and Checkout Building Oct. 14, 1993, on the way to the launch pad. With her are Pilot Richard Searfross and Commander John Blaha, second row, Martin Fettman and Shannon Lucid, and, back row, William McArthur and David Wolf. / TONY RANZE/AFP/Getty Images
RHEA SEDDON BIO
Resident of: Murfreesboro
Age: 63
Hometown: Murfreesboro
Education:Graduated from Central High School in Murfreesboro (1965); received a bachelor of arts degree in physiology from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1970, and a doctorate of medicine from the University of Tennessee College of Medicine in 1973.
Career:Currently partner in LifeWings Partners, which teaches teamwork and health care. Teaches classes about leadership and how to standardize processes in health care. Previously, Assistant Chief Medical Officer of Vanderbilt Medical Group (left in 2007). Selected to NASA space program in January, 1978 and went to work in July 1978. Her work at NASA has been in a variety of areas, including Orbiter and payload software, Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory, Flight Data File, Shuttle medical kit and checklist, launch and landing rescue helicopter physician, support crew member for STS-6, crew equipment, membership on NASA's Aerospace Medical Advisory Committee, Technical Assistant to the Director of Flight Crew Operations, and crew communicator (CAPCOM) in the Mission Control Center. She was Assistant to the Director of Flight Crew Operations for Shuttle/Mir Payloads. A three-flight veteran with more than 722 hours in space, Seddon was a mission specialist on shuttles, designated Space Transportation System ( STS) STS-51D (1985) and STS-40 (1991), and was the payload commander on STS-58 (1993). She spent 30 days in space on the three shuttle missions. An American flag and mission patch from the April 1985 mission are on display in an exhibit on the first floor of Middle Tennessee Medical Center, near the cafeteria. As an in-space photograph shows, she was the only female in a seven-member flight crew. In September 1996, Seddon was detailed by NASA to Vanderbilt University Medical School in Nashville, Tennessee. She assisted in the preparation of cardiovascular experiments which flew aboard Space Shuttle Columbia on the Neurolab Spacelab flight in April 1998. Seddon retired from NASA in November 1997, according to the NASA biography. Seddon has also performed clinical research into the effects of radiation therapy on nutrition in cancer patients. Between the period of her internship and residency, she served as an Emergency Department physician at a number of hospitals in Mississippi and Tennessee, and served in this capacity in the Houston area in her spare time. After medical school, Seddon completed a surgical internship and three years of a general surgery residency in Memphis with a particular interest in nutrition in surgery patients.
Career:Currently partner in LifeWings Partners, which teaches teamwork and health care. Teaches classes about leadership and how to standardize processes in health care. Previously, Assistant Chief Medical Officer of Vanderbilt Medical Group (left in 2007). Selected to NASA space program in January, 1978 and went to work in July 1978. Her work at NASA has been in a variety of areas, including Orbiter and payload software, Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory, Flight Data File, Shuttle medical kit and checklist, launch and landing rescue helicopter physician, support crew member for STS-6, crew equipment, membership on NASA's Aerospace Medical Advisory Committee, Technical Assistant to the Director of Flight Crew Operations, and crew communicator (CAPCOM) in the Mission Control Center. She was Assistant to the Director of Flight Crew Operations for Shuttle/Mir Payloads. A three-flight veteran with more than 722 hours in space, Seddon was a mission specialist on shuttles, designated Space Transportation System ( STS) STS-51D (1985) and STS-40 (1991), and was the payload commander on STS-58 (1993). She spent 30 days in space on the three shuttle missions. An American flag and mission patch from the April 1985 mission are on display in an exhibit on the first floor of Middle Tennessee Medical Center, near the cafeteria. As an in-space photograph shows, she was the only female in a seven-member flight crew. In September 1996, Seddon was detailed by NASA to Vanderbilt University Medical School in Nashville, Tennessee. She assisted in the preparation of cardiovascular experiments which flew aboard Space Shuttle Columbia on the Neurolab Spacelab flight in April 1998. Seddon retired from NASA in November 1997, according to the NASA biography. Seddon has also performed clinical research into the effects of radiation therapy on nutrition in cancer patients. Between the period of her internship and residency, she served as an Emergency Department physician at a number of hospitals in Mississippi and Tennessee, and served in this capacity in the Houston area in her spare time. After medical school, Seddon completed a surgical internship and three years of a general surgery residency in Memphis with a particular interest in nutrition in surgery patients.
Family: Married for 30 years to former astronaut Robert L. "Hoot" Gibson (64). Children: Paul, 28, Dann, 22, and Emilee, 15.
Resident of: Murfreesboro
Age: 63
Hometown: Murfreesboro
Education:Graduated from Central High School in Murfreesboro (1965); received a bachelor of arts degree in physiology from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1970, and a doctorate of medicine from the University of Tennessee College of Medicine in 1973.
Career:Currently partner in LifeWings Partners, which teaches teamwork and health care. Teaches classes about leadership and how to standardize processes in health care. Previously, Assistant Chief Medical Officer of Vanderbilt Medical Group (left in 2007). Selected to NASA space program in January, 1978 and went to work in July 1978. Her work at NASA has been in a variety of areas, including Orbiter and payload software, Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory, Flight Data File, Shuttle medical kit and checklist, launch and landing rescue helicopter physician, support crew member for STS-6, crew equipment, membership on NASA's Aerospace Medical Advisory Committee, Technical Assistant to the Director of Flight Crew Operations, and crew communicator (CAPCOM) in the Mission Control Center. She was Assistant to the Director of Flight Crew Operations for Shuttle/Mir Payloads. A three-flight veteran with more than 722 hours in space, Seddon was a mission specialist on shuttles, designated Space Transportation System ( STS) STS-51D (1985) and STS-40 (1991), and was the payload commander on STS-58 (1993). She spent 30 days in space on the three shuttle missions. An American flag and mission patch from the April 1985 mission are on display in an exhibit on the first floor of Middle Tennessee Medical Center, near the cafeteria. As an in-space photograph shows, she was the only female in a seven-member flight crew. In September 1996, Seddon was detailed by NASA to Vanderbilt University Medical School in Nashville, Tennessee. She assisted in the preparation of cardiovascular experiments which flew aboard Space Shuttle Columbia on the Neurolab Spacelab flight in April 1998. Seddon retired from NASA in November 1997, according to the NASA biography. Seddon has also performed clinical research into the effects of radiation therapy on nutrition in cancer patients. Between the period of her internship and residency, she served as an Emergency Department physician at a number of hospitals in Mississippi and Tennessee, and served in this capacity in the Houston area in her spare time. After medical school, Seddon completed a surgical internship and three years of a general surgery residency in Memphis with a particular interest in nutrition in surgery patients.
Career:Currently partner in LifeWings Partners, which teaches teamwork and health care. Teaches classes about leadership and how to standardize processes in health care. Previously, Assistant Chief Medical Officer of Vanderbilt Medical Group (left in 2007). Selected to NASA space program in January, 1978 and went to work in July 1978. Her work at NASA has been in a variety of areas, including Orbiter and payload software, Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory, Flight Data File, Shuttle medical kit and checklist, launch and landing rescue helicopter physician, support crew member for STS-6, crew equipment, membership on NASA's Aerospace Medical Advisory Committee, Technical Assistant to the Director of Flight Crew Operations, and crew communicator (CAPCOM) in the Mission Control Center. She was Assistant to the Director of Flight Crew Operations for Shuttle/Mir Payloads. A three-flight veteran with more than 722 hours in space, Seddon was a mission specialist on shuttles, designated Space Transportation System ( STS) STS-51D (1985) and STS-40 (1991), and was the payload commander on STS-58 (1993). She spent 30 days in space on the three shuttle missions. An American flag and mission patch from the April 1985 mission are on display in an exhibit on the first floor of Middle Tennessee Medical Center, near the cafeteria. As an in-space photograph shows, she was the only female in a seven-member flight crew. In September 1996, Seddon was detailed by NASA to Vanderbilt University Medical School in Nashville, Tennessee. She assisted in the preparation of cardiovascular experiments which flew aboard Space Shuttle Columbia on the Neurolab Spacelab flight in April 1998. Seddon retired from NASA in November 1997, according to the NASA biography. Seddon has also performed clinical research into the effects of radiation therapy on nutrition in cancer patients. Between the period of her internship and residency, she served as an Emergency Department physician at a number of hospitals in Mississippi and Tennessee, and served in this capacity in the Houston area in her spare time. After medical school, Seddon completed a surgical internship and three years of a general surgery residency in Memphis with a particular interest in nutrition in surgery patients.
Family: Married for 30 years to former astronaut Robert L. "Hoot" Gibson (64). Children: Paul, 28, Dann, 22, and Emilee, 15.
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