Pre-Frosh Puts Project in Space

While Harvard prepares to entertain newly admitted members of the Class of '90, prospective freshman Rachel Safman won't be able to join the group of newspaper editors, valedictorians and debate champions.

It seems the Maryland native will have to stay home making up for time lost during trips to Florida earlier this winter.

But Safman's were no ordinary beach vacations, and the extracurricular activity that took her south was hardly the standard admissions application fare.

Safman, a 17-year-old resident of a Washington, D.C., suburb, spent two weeks in Cape Canaveral waiting for an experiment she designed to go up with space shuttle Columbia.

Safman, accepted to the College in December, developed the experiment when she was a 14-year-old junior high school student. The project, which took off with the shuttle after a record seven aborted take-offs, involved injecting air bubbles into metal to make it structurally lighter in space.

The experiment was one of 10 winners in the 1982 national Space Shuttle Individual Project contest, sponsored annually by NASA and a nationwide association of science teachers. Safman was the only freshman among the winners.

"I thought it was a fantastic experiment," said Greg Ledderman, Safman's teacher in the ninth-grade research course for which she developed the project. The course is part of a program for gifted students in Montgomery County, Maryland, public schools.

Ledderman said the process of producing lower-density metals would have significant applications in the aerospace industry.

Safman said the bubble-blowing process would also have applications for materials other than metals. She said creating hollows in structures in the microgravity of space could enhance man's understanding of many scientific phenomena, including sound barriers and convection currents.

"I didn't realize the implications. The whole project has grown beyond me," Safman said of her experiment.

"It's certainly something to be very much admired," said Harvard Associate Dean of Admissions Marcia H. Connolly.

"It would not be the only reason we would admit anyone, but the initiative involved is certainly something that would not go unnoticed by the admissions committee," said Connolly, who presents candidates from the Washington, D.C., area during Byerly Hall deliberations.

Safman founded her school's Political Action Club and will serve as a page in the Maryland state legislature this spring. She also plays varsity soccer.

"We are aware she has other interests, and she has good potential to do a number of different things," Connolly said.

Safman said she expects to give Harvard the thumbs-up in May and would like to concentrate in Biomedical Engineering or East Asian Studies.

The senior last June was flown to the Johnson Space Center in Houston to help the shuttle astronauts operate the hardware on her experiment.

Columbia mission pilot Charles Bolden successfully performed the experiment January 13, the second day of the last successful space shuttle mission before the explosion of Columbia's sister ship Challenger.

Safman said that during her trip to Houston last summer, she had met New Hampshire schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe and several others who died in the January 28 explosion. "They were fantastic human beings," Safman said.