I Can't Stop Shaking... I Finally Got Neil's Autograph!!!

RIP I miss you Ed……

(Credit to the owners) The white family

*Tom Stafford in here*

And finally my love, smiley John Watts Young

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JOHN WATTS YOUNG (24 September 1930)

Space’s OG badass didn’t have the most auspicious beginnings, losing his mother to schizophrenia and the infamous Chattahoochee mental institution at only 5 and his father to constant working travel thereafter, but his persistent toughness put him on the moon in 1972 and into space five other times in his 42-year career with NASA.

A Georgia Tech aeronautical engineering graduate and Navy ROTC captain, Young participated in the Korean War from 1952-3, before being selected for the naval aviation program at Pensacola, Florida. After receiving his wings in December 1954, he went on to test pilot school in Patuxent River, Maryland in January of 1959. There, he set 2 time-to-climb records in the F-4, which led to his selection in September 1962 to become one of the New Nine, the second batch of astronauts-to-be in the United States.

The rest is history…but here are some highlights.

March 23, 1965 - As one of the Gemini 3 “Space Twins,” Young and Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom were the first two-man team in history to be put into orbit. John celebrated this first by smuggling a corned beef sandwich into space inside his spacesuit, producing it in orbit and noshing on it with Grissom until the crumbs floating around the cabin became a safety hazard. Actual mission transcript quote: “I brought it with me…smells, doesn’t it?” (Young would later remark, “I didn’t count on the smell being so pungent in the small cabin.”) This incident solidified Young’s reputation as something of a troublemaker, and he wasn’t slated for another Gemini mission until the tenth. Also on this mission, NASA learns that they must calculate for the rotation of the earth on re-entry, as the Space Twins land some 30 miles off their intended splashdown site because the world was spinning underneath them…and NASA forgot.

July 19, 1966 - Young commands Gemini X with Michael Collins. This is the first orbital rendezvous with another module. Young does not bring a snack this time.

May 18, 1969 - As command module pilot of Apollo X, Young is the first man to orbit the moon solo, while his crewmates Gene Cernan and Tom Stafford test out the new lunar landing module in a dry run for the Apollo XI moon landing. During this mission, trajectory due to seasonal distance variations brings them 254,110 miles away from home, giving them the unique distinction of being the farthest-traveled humans in history.

April 16, 1972 - Apollo XVI. After a very hairy few hours in which the CM and LM experienced issues and nobody was certain they would get to land, mission commander John Young becomes the ninth man to walk on the moon with his crewmember (and first-time spaceman) Charlie Duke. As CM pilot T. Ken Mattingly orbits the moon, Young and Duke spend three days roaming the Descartes Highlands, collecting rocks, bombing around at high speed in the lunar rover, conducting science experiments and remarking on the beauty around them. Young accidentally destroys a heat-flow experiment when a wire gets tangled around his foot, Duke spends the better part of the first day falling down, and everyone in Houston learns about John Young’s displeasure with the space program’s mandatory potassium-rich orange drink when he engages, over an open microphone with Mission Control, in a profanity-laden monologue to Duke regarding his having “the farts.” NASA is once again none too happy with Young, and critical articles are written calling Duke and Young “two bumbling Southern wahoo pilots” (unfairly, as Young spent months teaching himself geology in order to most fully complete the scientific portion of the trip). Also during this mission, Young becomes the iconic image of the US space program when he jumps off the lunar surface to salute the flag in a legendary photo for Duke.

April 12, 1981 - As commander of STS-1, Young becomes the first astronaut to fly the space shuttle Columbia, the world’s first such shuttle, alongside pilot Bob Crippen. This makes him, at age 50, the most seasoned astronaut NASA has, and the man who had flown the most diverse range of space vehicles to date. 

November 28, 1983 - Young joins the crew as commander of STS-9 (commonly referred to as Spacelab) for his (and Columbia’s) sixth venture into space. At that time, nobody on earth had flown more space missions than John Young. Though it would be his final time slipping earth’s gravitational pull (he was reassigned from his position as head of the Astronaut Office following the Challenger disaster in 1986, after his scathing and very public criticism of NASA procedure and safety guidelines), Young would go on as NASA’s elder statesman for another eleven years of service. 

Far from retiring when he formally stepped down from NASA in 2004, Young continued to attend the Monday Morning Meeting at Johnson Space Center for many years, and has made a second career as a prophet of humanity’s future if we do not re-invest in our space programs and get off the earth again. He lectures about the very real threat of meteor impacts and super-volcanoes, and stresses how the techniques and information we can learn in space will potentially save us as a species here on earth. “Single-planet species just don’t make it in the long run,” he warns us, asking loudly why we do not yet have a permanent base on the moon. We would do well to listen to John Young, for who knows better than he?

There’s plenty more to learn and to love about John Young, and i encourage you to do so. His autobiography Forever Young was released in paperback this month, probably the last memoir to be published by one of the only 12 men to ever have set foot on the moon.

Happy 83rd birthday to a real hero of mankind, and the guy who made me proud to be an American citizen.

1963 US Space Flight commemorative glass

(credit to the owners)

“Astronaut Edward White studies moments of inertia on a reference model at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, Texas.”

Neil Armstrong at the Purdue University Gala Week Banquet May 1966

Art by me

The right stuff. President JFK with the Original Mercury 7, Oct 1963. These Group 1 astronauts were chosen by NASA in 1959. In the front we have Gus Grissom & Gordon Cooper while in the back there is Wally Schirra, Scott Carpenter, John Glenn (the first American to orbit Earth), Deke Slayton & the first American in space, Alan Shepard. There were 6 crewed flights in Project Mercury; Slayton went on to fly on the Apollo-Soyuz mission in 1975. Shepard became the lone member of the group to walk on the moon during Apollo 14 in 1971. Space pioneers.