Twins share space dreams

When Dave Tanner visits his hometown of Danville, Ill., the IU employee and Bloomington North swim coach is greeted as a celebrity.\nChildren pose with him for photos, and locals ask him for autographs.\nBut it's all a mistake, Tanner tells them.\nHe just resembles a famous person -- a shuttle astronaut and hometown hero. His twin brother, Joe.\nThe dream began on July 20, 1969.\nIn Tanner's apartment across the street from Memorial Stadium, on his tiny black-and-white television, he and his brother watched Neil Armstrong walk on the moon.\nNeither of them said a word. But at that moment, each of them saw that ordinary people can do extraordinary things.\nSince the moon walk, the seemingly ordinary 53-year-old brothers still strive for that ideal.\nNow the School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation coordinator of athletic assessment, Dave has climbed Mt. McKinley, ran the Boston Marathon and set a world record for swimming among 50-year-olds.\nBut he'll never reach what he calls "the top of the pyramid" as an astronaut, the dream he and his brother shared.\n"I'm far from it," said Dave, surrounded by his brother's mission photos and shuttle models in his HPER office. "He's there."\nDave has biked from Los Angeles to New York in 10 days. The space shuttle travels the same distance in 10 minutes.\nJoe Tanner has flown three space shuttle missions since 1994, including missions to install parts of the International Space Station and to repair the Hubble telescope.\nAs a NASA staff pilot, Joe applied to be an astronaut five times. He was finally accepted in 1992.\nDave was automatically disqualified from the space program, he said, pointing to his glasses. Still, he found a way to be involved, conducting experiments on his brother's flights.\nDuring his brother's first liftoff in 1994, Dave said he felt 100 percent each of fear, pride and love.\nThe fear subsided for the second and third flights.\nJoe was scheduled to fly again in late May, but that mission is now in doubt since the Columbia shuttle broke apart over Texas.\nDave said he has felt his brother's pain ever since.\nAfter the Challenger disaster in 1986, Joe flew the astronauts' families from Florida to Mission Control in Houston. Whenever an astronaut is lost, the whole NASA family hurts. As Joe's brother, Dave is part of that family.\nDave will talk for hours about his brother's accomplishments, but he's modest about his own.\n"In many respects I think his credentials are equal to anything his brother has done," said HPER professor Philip Hanson, who invites Dave to speak to his classes each semester.\nThat won't secure him a spot in his hometown's celebrity hall of fame or an invitation to speak to grade school students, but it has secured the admiration of his brother.\nDave and Joe Tanner have shared a lot in their lives.\nThey're both 6-foot, 2-inches and both had a web between their second and third fingers on their left hand.\nThey shared their mother's womb, and eventually, Dave wants to share retirement in Colorado with his hero.\nAnd of course, back in 1969, they shared a dream.\nOnly one of the Tanner twins made it to space.\nThe other was there in spirit.