Young people often have to wait until after college graduation before they know whether or not the career they have been pursuing will be the right choice.
Frankfort resident Alexia Kubas, 15, is one of the lucky few who has already had some hands-on experiences she feels validate her decision to pursue a career that may well take her to “deep space.”
“I’m not intimidated by it at all. Just the vastness of everything — I think it’s kind of comforting,” Kubas said.
The Lincoln-Way East honor student recently returned from a week at Space Camp in Huntsville, Ala., an experience that she said definitely reaffirmed her desire to be an astronaut.
“I was kind of nervous about it because (I thought), ‘What if I don’t like it; what if I don’t enjoy it because I’d already been visiting colleges (looking) for programs that would fit,'” Kubas said.
Kubas said she hated to think she had been wasting her time.
Fortunately, her out-of-this-world passion, one she’s had ever since kindergarten, is turning out to be the right path.
“When I was younger, like kindergarten, first grade, I had a bunch of planet books…about the different planets when Pluto was still a planet,” Kubas said.
So, it was only natural when the “100-day project” came due for the students in her kindergarten class at St. Mary’s School in Mokena, for Kubas to choose a space project which included a sky with 100 stars and various planets to showcase her passion.
Kubas admits she had a brief third-grade flirtation with the idea of becoming president someday, but that quickly ended. And after her seventh-grade class visited Adler Planetarium in Chicago, Kubas said hearing about “dark matter and dark energy” reinvigorated her passion for space.
“That just kind of sparked my interest again, so when I came home I ordered a bunch of books from the library about the universe,” Kubas said.
With a goal in mind, Kubas and her mother, Jeannine Skarbek-Kubas, began researching areas where Kubas could get involved in space study, and they discovered Space Camp would be a perfect fit.
The week’s activities included three days of intense study following a campus tour day which involved seeing “a bunch of rockets on display, actual spaceships and a museum with a bunch of things from NASA missions,” Kubas said. Friday was graduation day with family and friends.
Challenges included team-building a working rocket, creating a heat shield for an “eggstranaut,” a ride in the “one-sixth gravity chair” and a stint on a multi-axis trainer device, among others.
“I volunteered to go first,” Kubas said, despite the warning that becoming nauseous was a real possibility for those who didn’t follow directions as the MAT whirled the participant every which way.
“It’s about 45 seconds, but when you’re in the chair, it feels like minutes,” Kubas said.
Kubas aced it.
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Ironically, Kubas said her favorite challenge was actually a personal challenge as well. The scuba diving challenge required students to work on the floor of a pool 30 feet deep, using scuba gear to breathe in an atmosphere that mimicked the “same micro-gravity as space,” she said. Kubas said it was a new experience for her and despite a bit of apprehension about whether or not she would do it well, she completed it and learned something about the outer space experience.
Kubas said a highlight of the week was meeting Jerry Ross, a recently-retired astronaut who has the distinction of holding the NASA record for the most hours in space over seven different space missions, many of which included space walks.
Kubas said Ross’s speech at graduation about his initial failure years before to be accepted at Purdue University — Kubas’s college of choice at the moment — and his perseverance until he was accepted there “was very inspiring to hear.”
Kubas may well be an inspiration to others, too. She said living her dream for just one week cost big money, about $1,000. But, rather than let the daunting price and the fact that she was too young to be hired for many jobs stop her, she put her talent as a singer and actress to work.
Even though Kubas dreamed of being an astronaut rather than a princess, she built a business beginning in the summer of 2014 playing Elsa from the Disney movie “Frozen” to raise money for camp and her club and private volleyball activities.
Kubas said at events she reads to children, takes photos with them and sings “Let it Go,” a popular song from the movie. Kubas has also accrued community service hours for school by volunteering her time “being Elsa” at hospitals and schools.
“It’s all been word-of-mouth so far,” Kubas said. “It’s been pretty successful.”
Her “Elsa business” paid for her Space Camp experience, one that went beyond activities, Kubas said, teaching the participants about the history of the NASA space program and giving information about the future of space travel under private organizations.
Most importantly, Kubas said she began building relationships at camp and plans to keep in touch with the young people she met.
“It was cool to go somewhere like this with lots of kids my age (who) have similar interests.” Kubas said. “It was just cool to be in the environment.”