Page 14 - Aerotech News and Review, Jan. 19 2018

NASA mourns passing of astronaut John Young
Space Shuttle Columbia’s first landing was at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center, now NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center, at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.
Astronaut John Young, who walked on the Moon during Apollo 16 and commanded the first space shuttle mission, died Jan. 5, 2018, at the age of 87 from complications of pneumonia.
said Young, who stood on the Moon, drove 16 miles in a lunar rover and spent three nights on the lunar sur- face. He is the only person to go into space as part of the Gemini, Apollo and space shuttle programs and was the first to fly into space six times — or seven times, when counting his lift- off from the Moon during Apollo 16.
Y oung was born in San Francisco, Calif. His family moved to Georgia and then Florida, where he lived for most of his childhood along with his younger brother.
As a boy, Young’s favorite pas- times were building model airplanes — the first hint of his passion for aeronautics — and reading.
“My grandpa taught me how to read,” said Young. “I read the ency- clopedia when I was five.”
His father, a civil engineer, was Young’s role model. Young gradu- ated from Orlando High School and then earned a degree in aeronauti- cal engineering from Georgia Tech, where he graduated with highest hon- ors in 1952.
Following graduation, he joined the Navy and, after a year’s service aboard a destroyer, was sent to flight training.
He flew fighter planes for four years, then completed test pilot train-
mission in July 1966. He and pilot Mike Collins rendezvoused with two Agena target vehicles, and Collins did a spacewalk to retrieve a micromete- orite detector from one of them.
In May 1969, he served as com- mand module pilot on Apollo 10 and flew all the way to the Moon with crewmates Tom Stafford and Gene Cernan. The crew scouted landing sites from lunar orbit and rendez- voused the lunar module and com- mand module in a full dress rehearsal for the Apollo 11 landing two months later.
Young made a return trip to the Moon as commander of Apollo 16 in April 1972. With Ken Mattingly orbiting above in the command mod- ule, Young and lunar module pilot Charlie Duke landed in the Descartes highlands. “The moon is a very nice place,” Young said. “When we land- ed, we were 20 minutes behind. Be- cause time on the Moon was so pre- cious, what I remember most is trying to catch up.”
Young and Duke set up scientific equipment and explored lunar high- lands in the rover. The mission re- turned more than 200 pounds of Moon rocks gathered from three geological
See YOUNG, Page 15
Y oung began
reer at NASA in 1962, when he was selected from among hundreds of young pilots to join NASA’s second astronaut class, known as the “New Nine.”
“Today, NASA and the world have lost a pioneer,” acting NASA Ad- ministrator Robert Lightfoot said in a statement. “Astronaut John Young’s storied career spanned three genera- tions of spaceflight; we will stand on his shoulders as we look toward the next human frontier.
“John was one of that group of ear- ly space pioneers whose bravery and commitment sparked our nation’s first great achievements in space. But, not content with that, his hands-on contri- butions continued long after the last of his six spaceflights — a world re- cord at the time of his retirement from the cockpit.”
“It would be hard to overstate the impact that John Young had on hu- man space flight,” said Johnson Space Center Director Ellen Ochoa, a for- mer astronaut herself. “Beyond his
his impressive ca-
NASA photograph
John Young’s official astronaut portrait.
well-known and groundbreaking six missions through three programs, he worked tirelessly for decades to un- derstand and mitigate the risks that NASA astronauts face. He had our backs.”
After hearing President Kennedy’s bold proposal in 1961 to land a man on the Moon and return him safely to Earth, Young said knew what he had to do.
“I thought returning safely to Earth sounded like a good idea,”
NASA photograph John Young in the Gemini 3.
ing and served three years at the Na- vy’s Air Test Center, where he heeded the president’s call to go to the Moon.
In March 1965, Y oung made his first flight as an astronaut, joining Gus Grissom on Gemini 3, the first manned flight of that program. As Y oung prepared, a sense of obliga- tion overruled excitement or any other emotion.
“We were just thinking about doing the job right,” Y oung said.
Y oung commanded the Gemini 10
Air Force photograph
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Aerotech News and Review
January 19, 2018
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