Art education major’s animation may send her to space

Samantha Foster
Assistant Spectrum Editor

She eats Fruity Pebbles for breakfast, her bathroom houses a lucky toilet, and last year, she entered a contest to win a telescope. Now, she has a 5 percent chance of going to space.

Painting and printmaking graduate and current art education major Meredith “KC” Cosier entered the sweepstakes Space Race 2012 in fall of last year with the intention of winning a telescope, although she never actually won the telescope.

More than 50,000 people entered the contest, operated by the Seattle Space Needle in collaboration with the company Space Adventures, and one grand prize winner will receive a ticket to space.  Space Adventures is a pioneer company in commercial space exploration, offering the once-inaccessible adventure of space flight to private citizens.

The winner of the contest will fly to 62 miles above the earth, which is just below orbit. They will experience several minutes of weightlessness and earn the status of bona fide astronaut.

Although the aircraft system has yet to be built, Space Adventures says that it will be ready in three to five years.

“I’m still not 100 percent convinced that Space Adventures is going to build this thing, when all they have is a simulation video.  It’s a very nice simulation video, but there is no landing in the simulation video,” Cosier said.

When Cosier entered the contest in September, she never thought she would win the ticket to space, she said. For September, the monthly sweepstakes prize was a telescope, which was Cosier’s main goal.

“I didn’t necessarily think I was going to space. … It’s space. You can see it. You can look at videos, but there’s no way in hell you’re going to touch it,” Cosier said.

In December, Cosier learned that she was in the top 1,000 randomly selected semi-finalists. These semi-finalists were given the chance to create a two-minute video describing why they deserve to go to space.

“When I got the video chance, I didn’t want to turn in anything half-assed,” Cosier said. “Nine hundred ninety-nine other people also have this opportunity. Now, maybe not all of them are art students or have 17 hours of time to spend on a stop motion.”

On Feb. 15, Cosier received an email stating that she was one of 20 people left in the competition to go to space. Every email Cosier recieved from Space Race 2012, she opened while sitting on the toilet, she said. This, and the persistently positive nature of the news, led her boyfriend to proclaim the toilet lucky.

“It’s one thing to say, ‘I’m one out of 1,000 people.’ It’s another thing to say ‘I’m one out of 20 people.’ I have a 5 percent chance of going to space,” Cosier said.

The 20 finalists’ videos were put onto the Space Needle Space Race 2012 Facebook page, where voters can view the 20 videos and vote for their favorite. Videos can be up-voted once every day through March 18.

The finalists will be announced mid-April, and will then travel to Seattle to compete in another, as yet unknown, contest to choose the one person who will go to space.

Cosier’s video is a stop motion of the Seattle skyline, rendered in tissue paper. In her video, Cosier describes the history of the Seattle Space Needle and how, as a future art teacher, she could use this experience to inspire her students.

“I’m going to be an art teacher. This is something I can tell my kids about. A wild dream that I had and the reason you shouldn’t give up your dreams because of the chance,” Cosier said.

While Cosier admits to dreaming of being an astronaut as a child, she also confessed that if she is given the opportunity to go to space, she “will probably s— (herself).”

“I didn’t sign up for space,” she said. “I signed up for a telescope, but through this process, what I really got was a reminder that impossibility is a matter of belief.”

For more information on the Seattle Space Needle and Space Adventures’ Space Race 2012, visit their Facebook contest page at http://apps.facebook.com/spaceracecompetition.

Cosier’s video entry can be accessed directly at http://apps.facebook.com/spaceracecompetition/entries/141.