Accessing the night sky

Mike Christiansen has fallen head first into rabbit holes for as long as he can remember.

“You can never, ever figure it all out,” the Coeur d’Alene man said. “My engineering brain wants to peel everything down to the core and figure out how it works.”

A subject will snag his interest, and he’ll be pulled by that idea as it branches out to become more complex, stronger and brighter.

That passion and curiosity led him early in life to astronomy and his role as the aerospace execution officer for Civil Air Patrol in Coeur d’Alene.

“The more you learn about the universe, the more you realize this is not an accident,” Christiansen said. “This is so much bigger. I just feel this connection with the size and complexity and the meaning of it all.”

Christiansen is working to start a Northern Idaho Astronomy Club in Coeur d’Alene to share his passion for astronomy and the success he’s seen in his life from that.

He remembers watching "Star Trek" with his dad, "Star Wars" over and over, and Carl Sagan's 1980 TV series "Cosmos: a Personal Voyage."

After being awestruck by those stories, Christiansen began to check out every astronomy book he could get his hands on at the library.

“For all of high school I was interested in astronomy, until I realized that it didn’t pay much and you had to be up all night,” he said.

It was “2010: Odyssey Two,” a 1982 science fiction novel by Arthur C. Clarke, that made him want to explore engineering.

“It combined astronomy, and the love of the exploration of planets, with the design of ships to get there, and everything in between,” Christiansen said.

Each story fed a sense of possibility and built a fantasy for Christiansen of life in space.

“I had it in my high school brain that I wanted to build spaceships, and maybe get to go to space someday,” he said.

So naturally, Christiansen decided to become a mechanical engineer, not realizing that typically engineers don’t fly to space.

From his college graduation, Christiansen went straight to his dream job at Boeing, working for Rocketdyne in 1996.

“We built real rocket engines,” Christiansen said. “Our engines put Rovers on Mars.”

While Christiansen loved the idea of building rocket engines that went to space, there was also a disillusionment with his work at Rocketdyne.

Much of the engineering he was doing at that time was strictly reworking designs to minimize costs, and he didn’t feel inspired.

“I might’ve felt differently if I had worked at SpaceX,” Christiansen said. “They’ve taken spacecraft to a 100-year leap.”

SpaceX was founded in 2002 to design and build rockets. Among other things, they’re currently working on designs for rockets to enter space and then re-land on earth, much like an airplane can take off and later land on a runway.

That wasn’t the case at Rocketdyne.

“There was no design, no science, no Elon Musk space kinda stuff,” Christiansen said.

He did get to watch rocket tests from the launch pad, from a quarter-mile away, and he recalls feeling it made the span of his work at Boeing completely worth it.

“The stuff we made was neat but it was a factory job,” Christiansen said. “And after three years I felt my creativity and my ambition dying.”

Disappointed that true innovation or creativity was not happening at Boeing anymore, he took a job with a friend working as a financial adviser in Seattle.

He eventually took a job with a financial services firm in Loveland, Colo., where he eventually started his own wealth management company.

In Loveland, he almost immediately found the Little Thompson Observatory and began volunteering there. Christiansen’s son loved the observatory, where he was the second youngest volunteer to join and operate the telescope.

“Of all the things I’m going to miss, I’m going to miss the observatory,” Christiansen’s son said as they were leaving Colorado in 2020 to move to Coeur d’Alene.

So giving up access to a telescope was concerning for Christiansen.

“We need different tools to see the heavens,” he said. “Great equipment makes astronomy fun.”

When he saw the need for a telescope in the Coeur d’Alene area, Christiansen decided to buy one to share with the community.

“You have kids for a reason and you should participate in their activities,” Christiansen said. “I taught my sons’ soccer team because they needed a coach. I did the den leader in cub scouts because they needed a dad to lead the group. And it was the same with the Civil Air Patrol.”

Civil Air Patrol is a U.S. Air Force Auxiliary that trains students to prepare for their future, and the Aerospace Education Youth program seeks to get students engaged in aerospace.

Jacob Pelissero, cadet aerospace education officer for Civil Air Patrol, has worked with Christiansen in the Aerospace Education Youth program.

Some of his favorite experiences with the aerospace program are looking through the telescope, Pelissero said.

“Christiansen is a visionary for the program, to make sure that cadets can actually take something out of the program to use it in their lives,” Pelissero said.

Pelissero, who is 17 and wants to be a pilot, watched his father see the rings of Saturn for the first time.

“He always thought the pictures of Saturn were fake, but then when he saw them for himself he was alarmed and very happy,” Pelissero said.

Christiansen decided to start a Northern Idaho Astronomy Club when he saw his sons, and the community, needed an opportunity for space exploration.

“My spirit is energized when I do things with other people,” Christiansen said. “I like bringing cool stuff to the world and my community.”

Christiansen sees a hole in local access to the night sky, and he wants to share his passion with anyone who’s curious.

“I don’t want to create an observatory, I just want to create public events,” he said. “Those are the things that spark kids to professions and hobbies.”

Christiansen feels fulfilled by witnessing the awestruck sense of wonder when someone sees something for the first time through his telescope.

“Every single kid is like, ‘Whoa, that is so cool,’ over, and over, and over again,” Christiansen said. And that’s just so special, he said.

“It’s a very shocking feeling because it reminds us how small we are on this earth,” Pelissero said. “Without actually seeing it, it’s hard for us to comprehend how we are in the universe.”

Seeing through the telescope allows Pelissero to comprehend the mystery of it all.

“Without a telescope in this area for people to use, people will grow up never really looking at the sky,” Christiansen said.

And that scares him.

“Just by having a telescope in the community for kids and adults to look at can inspire a lot of things,” Christiansen said. “Looking at the craters of the moon makes you want to walk on it. Looking at Mars makes you think we can go there.”

Christiansen will begin to host viewings for anyone willing to see in the beginning of 2023, weather permitting.

The cloudy weather can make planning to see the sky difficult, and the logistics are a constant struggle.

But Christiansen is developing strategies for viewing opportunities on Sherman Avenue, to show people incredible and fleeting stellar events as they unfold.