Who among us hasn't stared up at the night sky, dreaming about space travel?

In the mid-1980s, then-President Reagan directed NASA to search for America's finest to be "citizen passengers" on the space shuttle. America's finest were said to be school teachers. Most of us remember the crushing heartbreak when the Challenger exploded, killing all seven astronauts and teacher Christa McAuliffe shortly after liftoff.

NASA dropped the teacher-as-passenger program due to safety reasons (though they have trained former teachers to become astronauts), but the concept was revived by the Space Frontier Foundation as Teachers in Space.

Seven teachers have been selected from the thousands who applied:

• Maureen Louis Adams, a 54-year-old elementary school teacher and principal from Texas, who has taught at U.S. Space Camp

• James Kuhl, a 53-year-old earth science teacher from New York, who applied for the original Teacher in Space program in 1985

• Lanette Oliver, a 43-year-old elementary science specialist from Texas

• Stephen Heck, a 56-year-old eighth-grade science teacher from Ohio and a U.S. Air Force veteran

• Rachael Manzer, a district science coach in Connecticut and former NASA distance learning educator

• Chantelle Rose, a 36-year-old high-school science teacher from Ohio

• Robert "Mike" Schmidt, a 31-year-old high-school math teacher from Arizona

Rachael Manzer remembers watching early space shuttle launches with multiple classes crowded around a small television. "I was hooked from then on," she recalls. Mike Schmidt is developing an experiment to study the surface tension and viscosity of liquid to find out more about how fluid reacts in space. And Maureen Adams shares, "I like to model what I teach and teach what I model. I'd like to be an inspiration."

There's no doubt in my mind that this select group of educators will inspire us all to reach a little further than we thought possible.