Even a small-town guy from Jamestown, N.D., can become an astronaut. Richard Hieb is proof.

“I never thought I’d be in the space business, let alone be an astronaut,” Hieb told Kansas University aerospace engineering students and other visitors during a lecture Friday.

Hieb worked at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in the early 1980s as an aerospace engineer. He said he realized becoming an astronaut might be possible while sitting in a space shuttle simulator watching astronauts Richard Truly and Joe Engle practice a procedure Hieb had written for them for dumping the shuttle’s space arm.

“I could do those things,” Hieb recalled thinking, as he observed the astronauts trying to remember which buttons to push.

Hieb became an astronaut in 1986 and went on to make three space shuttle flights in the early 1990s.

During one of those flights, Hieb was part of a three-man team sent out to capture by hand a troublesome satellite when it was discovered one astronaut couldn’t do it by himself. It was the first space walk by three astronauts at the same time.

Hieb’s third shuttle flight in 1994 was a 15-day record-setting marathon during which the crew conducted more than 80 experiments in the International Microgravity Laboratory.

The best thing about being in space is zero gravity and the joys of floating, Hieb said.

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“Everything in your hands becomes a toy,” he said. “You play with your food.”

A close second is just looking at Earth, he said.

But getting used to gravity back on earth is difficult, he said.

“Your brain thinks you are going to do something but your body is slow getting the message,” he said. “The first time you stand up it literally feels like you have somebody sitting on you.”

Fun aside, space is dangerous, Hieb said.

“Flying in space is kind of like being in an environment where somebody’s shooting at you,” he said. “A lot of bad things can happen.”

Hieb is now a retired astronaut. The department of aerospace engineering arranged his KU appearance.

One of the visitors to his lecture was 10-year-old Max Iverson, Lawrence, accompanied by his mother, Sue Iverson. Max also wants to become an astronaut, and one of his hobbies is launching model rockets.

“I liked listening to him and I like fixing things,” Max said.