Why We Fly

Pilot certificate a ticket to the cosmos

Ever notice how the stars seem so close, so crisp when you're flying on a clear, moonless night? It's easy to imagine that, just for a moment, the atmosphere parts to let you enter the starry expanse of outer space. Those tiny bustling lights of the city seem miles away instead of 5,000 feet below.

Freshly minted private pilot Ryan Sageser basks in the nearly 360-degree panoramic view of the night sky and Wichita city lights that he gets from a Cessna 172, perhaps because it is a taste of his ultimate dream to become an astronaut.

The 17-year-old has had his sights set on outer space since he was 11, when he worked odd jobs around the house and mowed lawns for a year to earn the $600 required to attend space camp. It was then his love for space sparked an interest in aviation.

Name: Ryan Sageser Age: 17 Occupation: Student Certificates and Ratings: Private pilot Flight time: 58 hours Aircraft flown: Cessna 172 Home airport: Wichita Mid-Continent (KICT)

"After attending, my life has never been the same. My eyes have been turned skyward in the pursuit of flight," Sageser wrote as part of an essay that earned him a full flight scholarship for his private pilot certificate. Cessna Aircraft Company and Yingling Aviation, Inc. in Wichita sponsored the flight scholarship to involve high school students in aviation.

Never having taken the controls of an aircraft, Sageser's only flying experience was through trips on commercial airliners, a ride in a Cessna 172 with the Civil Air Patrol, and watching his grandfather, a former Air Force pilot, fly into a rural strip for family visits. Naturally, the flying bug bit when he started flight training: "It's really kind of strange how [flying] gets in your blood--it's kind of like an addiction."

But his excitement bubbled over in anticipation of his first night flight, "so much so he brought an entourage of buddies to go with him," recalls his flight instructor Kirby Ortega, chief pilot for Cessna's piston-engine flight operations.

Sageser even loved what is considered many students' most-dreaded maneuver: "Toward the conclusion of his training and prep work, I introduced spin awareness to Ryan. The reaction was a total 180 from what I have experienced in the past with other students. He loved them! He wanted to do lots of them, wasn't just happy with a few. I told him that the full-turn spin was not a training requirement, but that didn't matter to him."

And if Sageser pursues the astronaut pilot track, he'll get a lot more practice at spins as he pursues higher certificates and ratings while working toward that 1,000-hour minimum jet aircraft pilot-in-command time that NASA requires of its pilot applicants. Right now, he hopes to attend the U.S. Air Force Academy and train to either be an aerospace engineer or follow in his grandfather's footsteps as a pilot. Both are disciplines that could potentially lead him into the astronaut candidate training program.

"Ryan is very focused," Ortega says, "as he has his future well planned out."

Motivation hasn't been a problem for Sageser--how many 11-year-olds work for an entire year to pay for space camp?--but he says learning to fly has served to further motivate him and increase his morale. "Flying has given me a boost--opened up more opportunities."

But the motivation that earned him his private pilot certificate in September runs deeper than his desire to become an astronaut. In his scholarship application essay, he reveals that becoming a pilot is something that was born in him:

"When I fly, I feel a peace...a peace deep within me. I cannot describe this feeling of immense euphoria, yet when I fly, it is there. It is almost as if flying is the food that feeds my soul, my ambitions, my future."

Alyssa J. Miller is an assistant editor for AOPA's electronic publications. A private pilot, she is training for her instrument rating.