Alumna brushes off space dust

Casey Templeton / contributing photographer Elizabeth Gauldin ('50), a former NASA scientist with the Apollo Space Program, said 113 space flights have been carried out in the past 23 years; two crews have been lost. Gauldin worked for NASA from 1967 to 1996.

More than 90 percent of movies about NASA, such as "Apollo 13," are accurate, according to a former NASA scientist and JMU alumna.

Elizabeth Gauldin (’50) discussed her work building and designing materials for NASA.

Gauldin said when she was younger, "I would sit out on my porch and look up at the moon and wonder if anybody would go up there."

However, Gauldin found a job working with NASA because her husband was transferred to Houston. NASA was working to develop non-flammable materials for inside spaceships, after a fire started in a capsule in 1963.

"I got a job with them because they were looking for people with a science background," Gauldin said. She helped make everything from toothpaste tubes to leisure suits for astronauts. The Apollo Crew Provisions Fabrication Shop made non-flammable items and materials — everything but the spacesuits worn outside the shuttle.

Despite her 30 years working directly with astronauts, Gauldin said, "I look up at the moon and think, ‘Did we really do that? Did we really put a man up there?’"

James Barnes, an Integrated Science and Technology professor, first met Gauldin five years ago when she came to speak with ISAT students. "The contributions she made while working for NASA are phenomenal," he said.

Gauldin also said that she helped take lunar dust off the space suits. She recently heard that a tablespoon’s worth of lunar dust sold for a large amount of money.

"We just assumed that people would be going to the moon forever," she said. "I didn’t know that one day dirt would be so exciting."