08:43 AM CDT on Monday, May 1, 2006

By Rick Cousins / Galveston County Daily News correspondent

“Honey, could you please pass the squeeze bulb of coffee?”

It’s a long shot, but someday a married couple could be breakfasting on a space craft or space station. Dr. Shannon Walker, a graduate of Houston’s Westbury High and Rice University, married fellow astronaut Andy Thomas one year ago.

Astronaut training at the Johnson Space Center involves an intensive schedule that generally leaves little time for the candidates’ personal lives. But love finds a way.

Andy is a mechanical engineer, Shannon a space physicist. Both are training for a billet as mission specialists, probably on the International Space Station.

These days, astronauts hail from all across the United States, as well as from Israel, Japan and Russia. But Walker, 40, is homegrown.

She was born and raised in Houston and finds herself offering local advice to her fellow astronauts, serving informally as a native guide to local eateries and attractions.

“I really love Mexican food and the Houston-Galveston area is a great place for restaurants,” she said.

However, with all the nationalities involved in the ISS program, diplomacy is a required skill, so she politely declined to name a favorite Mexican bistro.

She did express enthusiasm for astronaut rock band Max-Q, which performs locally on an irregular basis. It is named for the term “Max-Q,” astronaut lingo for the most violent period of the shuttle’s ascent, when the crew is briefly shaken and rattled by the rocket’s turbulent passage through the atmosphere.

“It’s hectic with the heavy training schedule,” said Walker, who completed her astronaut candidate training this year.

She recalled first wanting to be an astronaut when she was 4, the year of the first moon landing.

“My mom and I have a Piper Warrior [light plane],” but now I get to fly in the T-38 [jet fighter trainer],” she said.

Although rated to fly the high-performance trainer only with a pilot-supervisor, she also trains on the computer-driven shuttle simulators.

Even the mission specialists get flight experience at JSC.

“The shuttle flies a lot like a brick with wings,” said Walker.

Will it be hard as an experienced pilot to let someone else fly her to the International Space Station? No, she said, because she believes that she will have work that is just as exciting to do when she arrives at the station.

“I don’t know if I’ll go up on the shuttle or on a Russian rocket,” she said (she has been studying the Russian language for two years).

Walker has served as a flight controller for seven shuttle missions but has no idea when she will fly.

In the meantime, she trains and supports other astronauts who are going to the ISS and encourages local school children to consider a NASA career.

“Even if you don’t think you’d want to be an astronaut, there are lots of other careers here that are fulfilling,” she said.