Garn touches down at planetarium

Former Sen. Jake Garn, wearing civilian clothes, came face to face Tuesday with astronaut Jake Garn in his flight suit — not a time warp, but the dedication of a display about his flight on space shuttle Discovery.

The setting was the lobby of Clark Planetarium, where the display is on permanent loan from the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum. It had been in the Utah Capitol, but since the Capitol will be closed for renovation for the next four years, it was moved.

The space-ready mannequin in the glass case looks eerily like the living Garn. As Garn explained, its visage was created by making a wax casting of his face, during which he breathed through straws. The astronaut figure isn't smiling because it's hard to smile under those conditions.

Besides the figure with its flight suit and helmet, the display shows photographs taken during Garn's 1985 flight aboard the space shuttle Discovery, as well as an example of the food, toys and other material taken into orbit. The toys were for demonstrations carried out in weightless conditions.

When Salt Lake County Mayor Nancy Workman entered the planetarium, she took in the display and exclaimed, "Oh, wow, look at that!"

She said the planetarium lobby just seems to be "where it belongs."

Garn noted that originally the mannequin was part of an exhibit at the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum. He was featured as the first elected official to go into space, while other mannequins showed the first woman and the first black astronaut to go into orbit.

During one conversation in Washington, D.C., a woman told Garn he looked familiar. He thought she was referring to his work in the Senate until she remembered where she had seen him: "You're that dummy down at the Air and Space Museum."

Planetarium director Seth Jarvis said a representative of the Smithsonian came to the planetarium and checked its suitability for the display before the national museum would allow it to be stationed there.

Garn said that since his flight, astronauts have been ordered to wear full pressure suits, not the flight suits and pressurized helmet he wore.

"Hopefully, someday space flight will become commonplace, just like flying in an airplane today," he said.

Besides the beauty of the view from orbit, Garn added, flights above the atmosphere have another value: teaching those who go into space that this is one world.

"We're children of God traveling on Spacecraft Earth together," astronauts realize. He added that it doesn't make any sense to treat each other in the brutal manner that humans so often do.

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E-mail: bau@desnews.com