[MUSIC] Ad Astra per Aspera.

When the founders of Kansas chose to emblazon this phrase, "To the stars through difficulty" on the Great Seal, did they ever imagine that citizens of their new state would one day be working and living in outer space?

[MUSIC] People have been studying stars in Kansas from prehistoric days.

We don't know how far back, but we do have evidence of Native Americans, in fact, specifically the Pawnee that had star charts and had a calendar.

They recognized the same constellations that Asians and Europeans did.

They just had different names for them, of course.

Waldo Wetel from the Smithsonian was a native Kansan.

He had done a lot of excavating in the study of what were ancestral Wichita Indians, which were related to the Pawnee.

And so he was seeing these alignments on the land and comparing those to some of the star alignments.

He called them council circles at the time, because they were mounds that had kind of depressions around these mounds.

And the mounds showed that there had been big fires on top of the mounds.

With the State Historical Society and Kansas Anthropological Association, we had the chance for Waldo Wetal and his wife, Mildred Mott Wetal, come out and help set up these lights miles apart.

And on various mounds that were known, and they did line up with the winter solstice and the equinoxes.

So we do not know how far back that went, but quite a ways.

And the stars were very important.

And then it gets into trail driving days.

And they always said that with the trail driving, you always pointed your chuck wagon when you unhitched the horses at night and parked at the tongue to the north star.

Because this plains was vast, there were no landmarks anywhere.

And people weren't familiar with them on the cattle trails.

So if you're hitched your wagon tongue, as they used to call it, to the north star, you always had a path to go by.

Astronomy has always been important to people, religiously and scientifically.

In the 1920s, there was a man by the name of Clyde Tombaugh, was a native of Kansas, and he was born in Illinois and came out here.

And he was a farmer, or son of a farmer, but he couldn't afford to go to school anywhere.

So he kind of was a self educated astronomer and even made his own telescopes by grinding lenses by hand and stuff.

He is usually noted as discovering Pluto.

But also we've had several astronauts from Kansas, Highway 24, Highway 23 through Hoxie.

There are signs, the Brown and White informational sign that say, Nick Heg.

I'm Nick Hague.

I'm a NASA astronaut, Brigadier General in the United States Space Force.

Currently just finished a six month mission to the International Space Station as part of Expedition 72.

And I've been back on the ground about six months now.

It's fun to be back here in Wichita.

So the Kansas Aviation Museum is a phenomenal place.

They've helped me engage with the local community and schools, both before, after missions, also while I was on the International Space Station.

So it's a really, really special place here, trying to help the city connect with its heritage and the birth of aviation, but then also connect it to the future and what's possible.

I grew up in Peabody, which is not too far away, and then moved out to Hoxie, opposite end of the state, basically.

And went to high school there and graduated from Hoxie.

So I am a product of Rural America, small town living, which is, in my estimation, pretty spectacular place to come from.

The sense of adventure, the sense of curiosity, exploring.

I think growing up, you know, living on a farm kind of cultivated that a little bit.

And that's something that I've carried with me going forward.

When you grow up in small towns, I think a lot of times you might focus on what you don't have.

But the reality is you have so much opportunity.

In high school, I got to do everything because you play every sport because you need to, because you want to field a team.

And so you get to play football and basketball and baseball and run track.

And you also get to do debate and forensics and all this other stuff.

You've got those opportunities.

And so I think being able to get exposed to all of that laid a really good foundation for making me, you know, A, figure out what I really liked and B, make me more adaptable, flexible.

My experience base was a little wider because of an aspect of that foundation.

You know, you do all these things, you find out what you really like and you continue to focus on that.

But you also find out things that maybe aren't your strength.

And so I'm a math science guy.

I love solving equations that are, you know, have black and white answers.

English, public speaking, all of that was not something that I was comfortable doing.

You know, trying to use words to express feelings and thoughts is not a strength.

And I realize that young.

But, you know, thankfully, you know, you've got teachers, you've got mentors, you've got people that can bring you along.

And so, you know, a great example of that is Betty James was my high school English teacher.

And she really helped me figure out, you know, how to express myself, how to get comfortable doing the things that I was uncomfortable doing.

And, you know, that has helped me more than I could ever, you know, express.

And so it's fun to be able to go back to visit the school and just say thanks.

Because without influence like that in my life, none of this is possible.

You know, the biggest Kansan connections that I've discovered have been in the people.

And there's a contingent of people.

And what's awesome is fellow Kansans will come up and let me know, hey, I'm a Kansan.

And so we've got people working down in Houston at Johnson Space Center.

One of the guys that taught me how to do spacewalks was a graduate from WSU.

And he's just an amazing human being.

And he was down there.

There are so many small town connections.

I think the biggest product that the state produces is its people and their ability to go out and impact the world.

I am on my first mission to the space station, getting ready to do a spacewalk.

Everybody focuses on a spacewalk as the two people that are outside of the space station doing the spacewalk.

There's really this gigantic team on the ground.

And there's this whole infrastructure that connects us to that team on the ground.

And so it was this small town, full circle moment to have a high school classmate of mine, Ronnie Shipley, works in telecommunications.

And he answers the call to help restore communication lines that had gone down on the ground.

That if we didn't have, we're going to cancel our spacewalk.

And so a high school classmate saved the day and allowed us to go out and install a docking adapter that opened up the ability for us to do commercial vehicles, U.S.

commercial vehicles, to the space station.

So the impact that you can have, and you don't have to be in a blue suit to have that kind of impact, on the world effectively.

So we're connected.

The world is much smaller than you think.

It's a not well kept secret amongst the astronaut office.

The best air and space museum in the country is in Hutchison.

I try to get back to the Cosmosphere as much as I can.

It's a spectacular facility and its impact on shaping young minds and really just letting them know, hey, if you're excited about space, there's room for you.

My name is Jim Remar.

We're here at the Cosmosphere in Hutchison, Kansas.

We started out in December of 1962 as a small planetarium located in the Poultry Building on the state fairgrounds of all places and have grown over the years.

Today, we're one of the leading informal science education centers and space museums in the world.

Many people don't realize that we have the largest collection of U.S.

space artifacts outside of the Smithsonian and the largest collection of Soviet artifacts outside of Moscow.

And so we're literally the only museum in the entire world that tells the definitive story of the space race.

And today we try to go beyond that.

We're a place about inspiration, curiosity.

We talk about the space race, but we also talk about the present and future of exploration.

And more importantly, we hope to ignite the spark inside of the visitor, regardless of age.

We have a very broad offering of education programs.

We have a division called Spaceworks, which a lot of people, most people don't realize.

Spaceworks does restoration, exhibit fabrication, replication for groups literally all over the world.

If you've seen the movie Apollo 13, 80 percent of the props, the hardware, the set were built here in Hutchison by Spaceworks.

We're supporting a touring exhibition that's in Europe and two in Brazil.

So literally you can crisscross this country, if not the globe, and see some example of Cosmosphere and or Spaceworks.

So the Cosmosphere is an affiliate of the Smithsonian.

We were one of the first affiliates to hold that title.

Our relationship with the Smithsonian dates back into the late 70s, early 80s, long before there was anything known as an affiliate program.

We had developed a relationship with the National Air and Space Museum, and it was a collaborative relationship or partnership.

It wasn't necessarily the Cosmosphere wanting to borrow objects for the museum.

It was how can we, the Cosmosphere, help you achieve your goals and objectives and vice versa.

And so that relationship predates any formalized piece of paper that says we're an affiliate.

Now today I would say that the relationship with Air and Space continues, but then with our affiliate status, it provides opportunities to have access to exhibits or artifacts from other institutions, work with colleague affiliate institutions, and in general allows us to use the Smithsonian logo on our colateral material.

And so it's a very important relationship both for the obvious and maybe not so obvious.

We have over 15,000 square foot of space dedicated specifically to STEM or STEAM education, and our education is applied, so it's hands-on, immersive, engaging.

Our programs start really with the traditional field trips where students and educators come and we'll go through our museum, perhaps do an activity with one of our educators.

We do outreach programs, so we take the show on the road.

We have virtual activities that students and educators can utilize.

We do STEM or STEAM nights for schools and corporations.

And then we have camp programs, both summer camp and off-season camp.

And that's where our students come here and we have day camps for younger kids in grade school and then in residence camps for junior high and high schoolers.

And they're here and immersed in activities, experiences, simulations that hopefully teach them about whatever they've been learning in school, but more importantly provides opportunities and exposure that otherwise they might not get.

In this room behind me, this is one of our primary classroom or teaching spaces.

We bring students in and educate them about space, space exploration, how to live in space, operate in space.

Sitting behind me are two replicas of modules or nodes of the International Space Station might look like.

And even these we incorporate into our programs.

And so you're not just sitting in a classroom with a dry erase board or a screen.

You're immersed in reality and engaged in activities that otherwise most students wouldn't have exposure to.

One of the enjoyable aspects of the Cosmosphere is the fact that even though we're located in central Kansas, we have a national and international reach.

And astronauts both retired and still in the program know of the Cosmosphere, know of us very well.

And so over the years, dating back to our time in the 60s and early 70s, we were able to develop, cultivate those relationships that exist today.

And so whether it's a Jim Lovell, a Gene Cernan, a Buzz Aldrin, or a Nick Hague or a Victor Glover, we're excited to be able to share our facility with those that have lived that dream.

And it just so happens that it's reachable.

We have to train in T-38s.

And so we can fly up here, drive over and see the Cosmosphere and come back.

So I've had lots of my colleagues in the astronaut office visit, and they're just always impressed by the collection there.

Kansas has a very proud and rich history of astronauts and aeronautics.

Dating back to the early Gemini and Apollo era, Joe Engel, a Kansan astronaut.

Joe unfortunately just passed a little over a year ago, but was truly the epitome of the right stuff.

And Joe not only was an astronaut, but he was also an X-15 pilot.

When I first got to the Space Center down in Houston, he was still coming in and working part-time, supporting some of the activities down there.

And so getting to meet him, astronauts in general, we do a reunion every two years where everybody gets together.

And so that's been a lot of fun to be able to meet some of the icons that I read about in books.

Ron Evans, a Kansan astronaut.

Ron Evans was command module pilot on Apollo 17.

Did a trans-lunar EVA coming back to Earth.

And then Steve Hawley, also from Kansas, multiple-time shuttle astronaut.

Also was heavily involved in the Hubble telescope.

We as Kansans should be very proud of our rich history of astronauts and aerospace technicians.

It's a really exciting time.

There's so much in development as we go back to the moon with an eye toward going to Mars.

We're developing new vehicles.

We've got new space suits that we're developing, new landers, rovers, all the things you need to do that are all coming together.

And so that next big step is for my friends getting on top of Artemis 2, strapping into that rocket and doing a 10-day loop around the moon to make sure that it's ready to go.

It's a test mission.

And then we'll keep making progress until we've got permanent sustained presence on the moon so that we can figure out how do we live and work on another planet's surface.

And then with that knowledge, we'll be ready to head to Mars.

If at some point in time in the future, we truly go to Mars, that in itself is going to take a whole different mentality and a whole different vehicle because it takes about nine months approximately to get to Mars.

You take nine months to get there, you're not going to turn around and come right back.

So you're going to stay for an extended period of time, create some form of habitat.

That means then you're going to need different types of trades, whether it's plumbers, carpenters, crafts people, people who understand agriculture, things of that nature.

And then it'll take another nine months to get back.

So nine months there, nine months back, period of time there, you're also going to need dentists and physicians.

There's so many different pathways that will be needed to support that type of mission.

Even if we, at the point, we go back to the moon and there's talk of putting habitats and ultimately colonies on the moon, that's going to require a skill set that wasn't necessarily a part of the space program 10, 15, 30 years ago.

I think it's important because there's so much evolving and there's so many more opportunities to get involved.

If you look at just the space program in general, there's a lot of opportunity.

If I narrow that down and look at like who's going into space, I don't think that you can look back at who were the first people and the first classes of NASA astronauts and use that as a, hey, these are the types of people that are always going to be going to space.

So as we start to expand our aperture on the skills we need to take to space, there's going to be so many more opportunities.

You don't have to be a test pilot to be an astronaut.

We're going to need geologists, we're going to need engineers, we're going to need doctors and all the things that you think about.

If we want to make it to Mars and start to have a continuous sustained presence somewhere other than Earth, you're going to need all those things that we use every day here.

And so I'm excited because there's more opportunity for people to get involved.

And ultimately, I think the more people that see Earth from space, the more minds will be changed for the better and the better the world will be.

Dream.

Dream big.

Nick Hague, growing up in Hoxie, had a dream and he worked hard to make that dream a reality.

As Kansans, we are very proud but don't often toot our own horn.

I would say to those who are watching or listening to not only dream big, not only be proud of who you are and where you're from, but to let people know that you're from Kansas.

Because Kansans have led the way many phases of exploration of this incredible country, but also have led the way as far as aviation and aerospace as well.

And so there's tremendous opportunity in this state, and there's an enormous amount of pride regarding being from Kansas.

I mean, why not you?

If you're interested in doing this, then study hard, work hard, but those are things you're going to do anyway because that's what Kansans do.

So you're armed with all the tools you need.

You're in classrooms surrounded by friends that will support you and you can support them to all be better together.

Your teachers are there to empower you, to give you the knowledge you're going to need.

So go do it.

It's possible.

[music]