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Portraits Paula Bock

Bonnie Dunbar / From the ranch to outer space, she soars

At 56, Bonnie Dunbar, president and CEO of the Museum of Flight, has flown five missions in space and would welcome another chance to orbit.

Q: How has space travel changed your perspective on Earth?

A: I've orbited Earth 50 days altogether. Once around takes 90 minutes, and each time . . . you see a different little bit . . . It gives you the feeling, OK, we're a very finite planet . . . . You realize as a species we have to be a lot smarter about preserving ourselves against: 1) each other 2) natural disasters. We've had life extinguished on this planet due to impacts with meteors. Every time there is the Leonid showers, it's not just a light show for our entertainment, it's a reminder we're in this big universe.

Q: So we should worry about crashing into a meteor?

A: Not to alarm people, but it's one of the reasons we need to look outside the earth. We need to look for intersecting traffic patterns.

Q: You come from ranching roots, the first in your family to go to college. How does a kid from Outlook, Yakima County, get to space?

A: Homesteading out in the Rattlesnake Hills, there were cold winters . . . and my parents told me how to survive. I was the oldest of four, expected to take on responsibility, be self-sufficient. I came out of that environment thinking I could do just as well as anyone else.

When I was a young girl, Sputnik was launched. The country started to go to the moon. I was the only one, boy or girl, among my friends who wanted to be an astronaut.

I liked math and physics. I wanted to figure out how things worked. Living on a ranch, you get a lot of opportunity to do that. When the electric fence shorted out, I wanted to know why. Those things gave me joy (along with) knowing if I studied hard enough, I might be able to fly in space. I had the GPA to come to UW on a nearly fully-sponsored loan and grant.

In my astronaut class, we discovered many of us were from rural backgrounds. There was nothing to lose, and the whole world was out there to earn.

Today if you're a smart girl and good at math, somehow you're nerdy. That wasn't true when I was growing up. We've got to turn that around — for girls and boys — or we're not going to have engineers and scientists. Who's going to work on the food supply and environment, power and energy?

Q: Outsourcing?

A: That makes us very vulnerable, doesn't it!

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