CITY FOCUS:

The man in a space suit embarrassed himself on video, shrugging helplessly as he seemed to have locked himself out of his own lunar lander. Next in the slide show, a woman in the space shuttle smiled as locks of her hair stood out two feet in every direction.

“Astronauts are people too,” Lt. Col. Randall Bresnik told a packed auditorium of laughing middle schoolers. “Talk about bad hair days.”

That was part of the message Bresnik brought to Mesa View Middle School last week, as he encouraged youths to study math and science and consider working for the space program.

As he entertained listeners with stories of training on the “vomit comet” weightlessness simulator, or the way astronauts strap food to themselves using Velcro, he reiterated his message: Anyone might become an astronaut if they put in the work.

“You don’t have to be one particular thing to be an astronaut,” he said.

Getting an astronaut on campus was a real coup for the school, Mesa View Principal Leona Olson said.

“We were the lucky straw,” she said. “We’re just absolutely thrilled.”

Bresnik came courtesy of the Spaceflight Awareness Program, a public relations effort for the space program administrated at Boeing locally by Sheree Rannow. He was in town to give awards to Boeing employees, but Rannow, a former Mesa View parent, found time to have him speak. It was the third time she had managed to do so.

Bresnik told students that today’s young people will have a major role in NASA’s future space exploration plans, which aim to bring astronauts back to the moon and then to Mars. With landings in store for the next few decades, their skills will be central to the effort, he added.

“Do the math,” he said. “Twenty to 30 years from now, you’re all going to be prime age for going to Mars.”

Bresnik himself has yet to reach space, but the former Marine Corps test pilot said he is in line to pilot a shuttle before 2010.

Reaching out to students is one way astronauts promote the space program, Rannow said.

“As part of the educational outreach, this is where the school comes into play,” she said. “It motivates the kids and gets them to go, ‘Wow!’”

A handful of students waited around to meet Bresnik after his talk before he rushed to his next engagement at Boeing.

“It was fun,” student Jasmine Le said. “I liked the crazy hair.”