Bold They Rise: The Space Shuttle Early Years, 1972-1986 (Outward Odyssey: A People's History of S) by David Hitt, Heather R. Smith Page A
Authors: David Hitt, Heather R. Smith
Tags: History
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accidents. “The orbiter itself is flawless, since we’ve been flying. Absolutely flawless.” Rather than retiring the shuttle, Kraft argued, NASA should have continued to make it better and continued to fly it, adding that many ideas for improving the orbiter were never implemented. “That’s what we should still be doing. We still ought to be improving. We could improve the hell out of it. We could improve the hell out of the thermal protection system, we could improve the control systems, get rid of the APU s [auxiliary power units]. All of that has been designed and is ready to be built. You don’t have to stop and redesign it, it’s done.”
3.
TFNG
By 1976 NASA ’s astronaut corps had seen a large number of departures. Many of the early astronauts who had joined the agency as pioneers of spaceflight or as part of the race for the moon felt like they had accomplished what they had come to do. The last Saturn to fly launched in 1975, the next opportunity to fly was still years away, and some in the corps decided they had no desire to wait.
Only one of the Original Seven astronauts, Deke Slayton, remained in the agency, as did only one member of the second group, John Young. Two members each remained of the third and fourth groups (although only one of those four astronauts would get the opportunity to fly on the shuttle). The fifth group was better represented—eight of the Original Nineteen were still at NASA —and the majority of the sixth group and all of the seventh were still at the agency, having arrived in the corps too late to be assigned Apollo flights.
With the number of astronauts dwindling, the ambitious plans for the shuttle program required new blood. So in 1976 NASA announced for the first time in a decade that it would be accepting applications for a new class of astronauts, to support the Space Shuttle program.
Astronaut Fred Gregory saw the ad for Space Shuttle astronauts on television. “I was a Star Trek freak, and the communications officer, Lieutenant Uhura, Nichelle Nichols, showed up on TV in a blue flight suit,” Gregory said. “As I recall, there was a 747 in NASA colors behind her; you could hear it. But she pointed at me and she said, ‘I want you to join the astronaut program.’ So, shoot, if Lieutenant Uhura looks at me and tells me that, that got me thinking about it.”
Steven Hawley saw the NASA announcement on a job openings bulletin board while in graduate school at the University of California.
I remember there was this letterhead that said NASA on it, and I thought, “Wow, that’d be interesting.” I looked at it, and it said they were looking for astronauts.I had no idea how they’d go about hiring astronauts, and here’s an announcement saying, hey, you want to be an astronaut, here are the qualifications. You have to be between five foot and six foot four, and you have to have good eyesight, and you have to have a college degree, and graduate school counts as experience. You need three years of experience, and I’m thinking, “Well, I’m qualified.” I’ve also told kids that so were twenty million other guys.
Hawley recalled that this was the first time he thought that becoming an astronaut might really be possible for him, because of changes in the selection criteria. “I probably dropped everything I was doing at that moment and set about filling out this application to become an astronaut. I didn’t realize till years later that it’s actually the same application you fill out to be any government employee, SF -171. You fill it out and send it in. I even remember sending it by, I think, return receipt request so that I could make sure that this thing got into the hands of the proper people at NASA .”
Realistically, Hawley said, he didn’t think he would be selected. He realized the pool contained many well-qualified applicants. But even with what he believed were slim odds, he applied anyway. “Why in the world would they pick me?” he
3.
TFNG
By 1976 NASA ’s astronaut corps had seen a large number of departures. Many of the early astronauts who had joined the agency as pioneers of spaceflight or as part of the race for the moon felt like they had accomplished what they had come to do. The last Saturn to fly launched in 1975, the next opportunity to fly was still years away, and some in the corps decided they had no desire to wait.
Only one of the Original Seven astronauts, Deke Slayton, remained in the agency, as did only one member of the second group, John Young. Two members each remained of the third and fourth groups (although only one of those four astronauts would get the opportunity to fly on the shuttle). The fifth group was better represented—eight of the Original Nineteen were still at NASA —and the majority of the sixth group and all of the seventh were still at the agency, having arrived in the corps too late to be assigned Apollo flights.
With the number of astronauts dwindling, the ambitious plans for the shuttle program required new blood. So in 1976 NASA announced for the first time in a decade that it would be accepting applications for a new class of astronauts, to support the Space Shuttle program.
Astronaut Fred Gregory saw the ad for Space Shuttle astronauts on television. “I was a Star Trek freak, and the communications officer, Lieutenant Uhura, Nichelle Nichols, showed up on TV in a blue flight suit,” Gregory said. “As I recall, there was a 747 in NASA colors behind her; you could hear it. But she pointed at me and she said, ‘I want you to join the astronaut program.’ So, shoot, if Lieutenant Uhura looks at me and tells me that, that got me thinking about it.”
Steven Hawley saw the NASA announcement on a job openings bulletin board while in graduate school at the University of California.
I remember there was this letterhead that said NASA on it, and I thought, “Wow, that’d be interesting.” I looked at it, and it said they were looking for astronauts.I had no idea how they’d go about hiring astronauts, and here’s an announcement saying, hey, you want to be an astronaut, here are the qualifications. You have to be between five foot and six foot four, and you have to have good eyesight, and you have to have a college degree, and graduate school counts as experience. You need three years of experience, and I’m thinking, “Well, I’m qualified.” I’ve also told kids that so were twenty million other guys.
Hawley recalled that this was the first time he thought that becoming an astronaut might really be possible for him, because of changes in the selection criteria. “I probably dropped everything I was doing at that moment and set about filling out this application to become an astronaut. I didn’t realize till years later that it’s actually the same application you fill out to be any government employee, SF -171. You fill it out and send it in. I even remember sending it by, I think, return receipt request so that I could make sure that this thing got into the hands of the proper people at NASA .”
Realistically, Hawley said, he didn’t think he would be selected. He realized the pool contained many well-qualified applicants. But even with what he believed were slim odds, he applied anyway. “Why in the world would they pick me?” he
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