Astronaut Candidate Closes In on Goal

It was an inspirational note from his sixth-grade teacher 23 years ago that planted the idea of going into outer space in test pilot Scott Horowitz’s mind.

“To one of the finest students in the sixth grade,” the teacher, Wendell Smith of Acacia School in Thousand Oaks, wrote in a scrapbook. “With your will and determination, you may be one of the astronauts of tomorrow.”

Horowitz, now 35, was selected recently by NASA as one of 19 astronaut candidates, and he said the suggestion from Smith “started me on my way.” He said he had always loved science, airplanes and rockets, and setting his sights on the stars “seemed like the perfect thing to do.”

A U. S. Air Force captain stationed at Edwards Air Force Base, Horowitz grew up and attended school in Thousand Oaks. Of the newest group selected, Horowitz is one of four pilots and is to report to Johnson Space Center in Houston in mid-August. He said he expects to be eligible for a space flight after three years of training.

It was only a few years after the teacher’s suggestion that Horowitz called the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to find out how to become an astronaut.

The brochure he received listed desirable qualifications, and he decided then that he would pursue a doctorate in engineering and become a test pilot. His goal was to earn the degree by age 25. He was 24 when he achieved it.

The challenge wasn’t the course work; it was completing it as quickly as he did.

“The problem was time,” Horowitz said. “I did a lot of summer school and night school.”

But then, Horowitz has always been ahead of his peers. He graduated from Newbury Park High School in 1974, having completed grades nine through 12 in three years. After taking a year off, he enrolled at Cal State Northridge and was awarded a bachelor of science degree in engineering in three years. A master’s degree in aerospace engineering from Georgia Tech, where he met wife Lisa, took one year, and the doctorate came three years later.

Just after Horowitz started college, he and a friend drove to Edwards to glimpse what he hoped would be his future: “I walked into NASA and said, ‘I want to see the space shuttle.’ They took me to the hangar and there it was.”

A potential snag arose when there were no openings to become an Air Force test pilot after he finished his doctorate, and he went to work as an engineer at Lockheed. But then he got a break.

“A recruiter called on Tuesday and asked if I could be in San Antonio on Thursday. Someone had dropped.”

He made it to Texas by the deadline.

Eugene Olsen, a 35-year-old software engineer who lives in Hesperia, has been close to Horowitz since sixth grade, and he said he is not surprised that his friend is going to be an astronaut.

“It’s been his walk and talk for 23 years,” Olsen said. “When you’re in school, you say things like you want to be President and other ambitious goals like that. By the time you get to your junior or senior year of high school, those high ambitions go to the wayside. They never did for Scott.

“I remember he used to, from a very early age, build . . . model airplanes. By seventh grade, he was bypassing the kits and designing his own. He was doing college-level stuff in the eighth grade.”

Horowitz said that while in Houston to launch his career, he and his wife hope to pursue the more down-to-earth goal of beginning a family.

And, as with everything else he’s done, he doesn’t plan to approach that challenge lightly.

“Being a parent is tougher than anything,” Horowitz said. “To do it well takes a tremendous amount of time. Kids can’t be raised by handing them off to other people.”