Millie Hughes-Fulford, while growing up in small-town Texas in the 1950s, used to set her alarm to catch early-morning broadcasts of Hollywood's futuristic visions. Movie serials such as "Buck Rogers," "Flash Gordon" and "Rocky Jones, Space Ranger" sparked the imagination of the future NASA astronaut.

One particular Buck Rogers character, Wilma Deering, made a lasting impression.

"She was wearing pants to work; she was flying rockets, and she was a lieutenant in the military," said Hughes-Fulford, one of two women astronauts in Salt Lake City this week for the Association of Space Explorers meeting. "What else do you want?"

While reveling in these shows, she never realized women in the 1950s weren't military officers, nor were they flying warplanes.

"It was not until I was 16 that I realized that all astronauts were men," said Hughes-Fulford, who would ride the space shuttle in 1991.

Math and science classes captivated her in school. She earned a degree in biology and chemistry from Texas' Tarleton State University in 1968, and a doctorate in chemistry from Texas Woman's University in 1972.

"Once I realized I couldn't be an astronaut, I decided to be a scientist," Hughes-Fulford said.

Fellow space shuttle veteran Rhea Seddon also felt drawn to space while growing up as she heard stories from early astronauts. But she encountered the same barriers.

"You thought that was the great adventure and maybe someday you'd be able to do it," said Seddon, who is among the 60-plus astronauts and cosmonauts in Salt Lake City for the 2005 Planetary Congress. "It wasn't very realistic. They weren't taking women, and they weren't taking anything but pilots."

Seddon turned her energies toward a medical degree, which she accomplished in 1973 at the University of Tennessee College of Medicine.

In the late 1970s, NASA put out the call for scientist astronauts - and permitted women to apply.

"I found out when I was finishing my residency that they were going to take scientists on the space shuttle and it was something that had been at the back of my mind," Seddon said.

NASA tapped Seddon as a candidate in January 1978 and named her as an astronaut in August 1979.

Hughes-Fulford also jumped at the chance to chase her dreams of seeing Earth from space. At the time, she was working at the VA Medical Center at the University of California, San Francisco. The space agency selected her as a payload specialist in 1983, and she spent nine years training.

Among the early female astronauts, there was a concern they might simply represent token efforts at diversity at NASA.

"All of us were a little afraid that they had taken women but didn't really want women," said Seddon, who flew three space shuttle missions. "But that was not the way it was at all. They were very committed to taking women."

Seddon and Hughes-Fulford were crewmates on the space shuttle's STS-40 mission, from June 5-14, 1991. They worked on a variety of experiments that included animal and human health research.

Among other tasks, Hughes-Fulford looked after one experiment's lab rats.

"Every day I'd look at the rats, and the first three days they were clinging to the bottom of the cage," she said. By the fourth day, the rats floated and slept in their microgravity environment.

In the years since the women last rode into orbit, both have kept space as part of their careers.

Seddon, at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, served on an advisory committee examining data on the medical affects of sending humans into space for long periods.

Hughes-Fulford is working on a project looking at immune response changes in humans who have spent time in orbit. This month, she was an author on a T-cell study in the FASEB Journal and has a related experiment going into space on a Russian Soyuz capsule next year.

Seddon and Hughes-Fulford hope they are among pioneering women who may inspire the next generation of female space explorers, so today's girls won't need to scour early-morning sci-fi reruns for role models.

glavine@sltrib.com

Public events

The Association of Space Explorers' 19th Planetary Congress is in Salt Lake City through Saturday. More than 60 astronauts and cosmonauts from 11 nations are in attendance. Events open to the public include:

Today

Astronaut Vance Brand, autographs and presentation, 7 to 9 p.m., Clark Planetarium, 110 S. 400 West. Free tickets are available with the planetarium visit.

Thursday

Tour, 2 p.m. to 5 p.m., Space Dynamics Laboratory, North Logan.

Maps and more information for all public events are available on the Internet at http://www.getignited2005.com.

Women on the space shuttle

Rhea Seddon

Mission STS-51D,

Discovery, April 12-19, 1985. Mission

specialist.

Mission STS-40,

Columbia, June 5-14, 1991. Mission

specialist.

Mission STS-58, Columbia, Oct. 18-Nov. 1, 1993. Payload

commander.

Millie Hughes-Fulford

Mission STS-40, Columbia, June 5-14, 1991. Payload specialist.