New Haven Independent

Well, they’re only fifth and seventh graders. And one of them, Dan Brigham, is holding a kind of doll of a friendly spaceman stuffed in his space suit, but don’t be fooled. These charming and brilliant students from Sheridan Communications and Technology Magnet School are on their way to patent a 27-pound space suit they designed, which won rave reviews from NASA.

Working with their applied technology teacher, Sue Brown (pictured), the kids spent two months on their entry into a space suit design contest sponsored by the Hamilton-Sunstrand company, which, since 1981 has been designing NASA’s space suits. Hamilton-Sunstrand, which employs 4,000 people in Connecticut, has also supported Sheridan with resources, making the magnet school the state’s only NASA Explorer School, designed to encourage math, engineering, and science learning.

Well, it has worked with these kids, and many more.

Having won the school contest, the kids journeyed to the Johnson Space Center in Houston for three days last week. They went behind the scenes where few tourists are allowed to tread, and the science spectacles they saw, such as the Apollo 18 rocket, fueled Mahir’s dream of becoming a mechanical engineer. Khashab was thrown into conflict as to whether to become a neurosurgeon or, now, a spacesuit designer.

They’ve got a leg up on space suit fashions already. As described by the boys, the suit they’ve invented utilizes all kinds of new materials, much of which they researched on the Internet and elsewhere, made into a power point, and presented to Hamilton-Sunstrand and NASA scientists. No wonder their teacher said, “It is a privilege to work with kids like these who are both so talented and passionate.”

Starting with the hard outer layer, Mahir said that was made of C-Cucumber Plastic. Then the fourth layer out from the body is Kevlar.

To protect space travelers from stray bullets? Asked a science-challenged reporter. “No,” responded the ever patient Mahir, “from micrometeorites.”

“Makes sense. What’s the third layer?”

“That’s something called Demron, which takes care of radiation.” After that comes a layer of good old Spandex, and then, presumably, good old fashioned NASA skivvies.

Was the creation of the suit, which is called an LCVTG, or Liquid Cooling Ventilation Thermal Garment, difficult? Khashab said that once they familiarized themselves with the materials and solved the oxygen problem, it went pretty smoothly.

Hamilton-Sunstrand, said teacher Sue Brown, has a bid in to renew their designing of the space suit for NASA. “That’s one of the reasons they challenged our kids to try their hand at design. The company’s supposed to hear in June if they got it,” she said.

Any chance that they might hire these talented boys right out of Sheridan, like top athletes are drafted? Although it was a silly question, Brown graciously paused to think about it as she arranged her remarkable students in a line to receive formal certificates and the proud praise of the Board of Education members.

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