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 B
Authors: David Hitt, Heather R. Smith
Tags: History
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said.
I still think perhaps they didn’t mean to, and one day they’ll come and tap me on the shoulder and say, “Excuse me. You’ve got this guy’s desk, coincidentally named Steve Hawley, and he’s the one we meant.” I’ve told kids this, too, that the reason I applied, as much as anything, was because I knew that if I applied and didn’t get picked, and then I watched shuttles launch with people on them and building space stations and putting up telescopes in space, I could live with that, if NASA said, “Well, thanks, but you’re not what we’re looking for.” But to not apply, to not try, and then wonder your whole life, could you have done it if you had tried, I didn’t think I could take that. So it was okay if they said no, but I didn’t want to go through the rest of my life wondering, had I only tried, would I be able to do it?
Before 1978 NASA had selected five groups of pilots and two groups of scientist-astronauts. The eighth group would be the first mixed class, including both pilots and a new designation, mission specialists.
The new designation was of particular interest to Mike Mullane, who at the time was a flight-test weapon system operator for the air force. “ NASA announced they were selecting mission specialist astronauts, and this was the new thing, because now you didn’t have to be a pilot to apply to be an astronaut. So this dream of perhaps being an astronaut was now back open to me. In fact, I remember that night that they announced it. This was big news at Edwards, because virtually everybody at Edwards Air Force Base wanted to apply to be an astronaut.”
The new class would be the largest group of astronauts yet. More than eight thousand applications were received. In 1978 NASA announced the first class of shuttle astronauts, dubbed TFNG , an acronym given multiple meanings, most politely, “thirty-five new guys.”
Among the new class were, of course, test pilots from the navy and the air force, many of whom knew each other and had trained and served together. Rick Hauck was on his second cruise as a navy pilot on the USS Enterprise when the announcement came out. “There was a flyer from NASA saying they were looking for applicants for the astronaut program to fly the shuttle and, in fact, four of us on the Enterprise wound up in my astronaut class: myself, Hoot Gibson, Dale Gardner, and John Creighton. Three of the fifteen pilots were from that air wing. Dale Gardner was a mission specialist. Which is really kind of interesting, three of fifteen. What’s that? Twenty percent came from that ship.”
Hauck didn’t grow up with an interest in space, and as a child there had been no space program for him to aspire to. “The word Apollo didn’t even exist in terms of spaceflight when I was thinking about becoming a naval aviator,” said Hauck, who was a junior in college when Alan Shepard made his first spaceflight in 1961. “Even before I became an aviator, while I was at [The U.S. Naval Test Pilot School in] Monterey, I had read that NASA was recruiting scientists to become astronauts, and I wrote a letter to NASA saying, ‘I’m in graduate school. You could tailor my education however you saw fit to optimize my benefit to the program, and I’d be very interested in becoming an astronaut.’ I got a letter back saying, ‘Thank you very much for your interest. Don’t call us. We’ll call you.’ That was in early ’65, I think, so it was twelve years later that I was accepted into the astronaut program.”
Sally Ride, the United States’ first female astronaut to fly in space, saw the ad for a new class of astronauts in the Stanford University newspaper, placed there by the Center for Research on Women at Stanford. “The ad made it clear that NASA was looking for scientists and engineers, and it also made it clear that they were going to accept women into the astronaut corps. They wanted applications from women, which is presumably the reason the Center
I still think perhaps they didn’t mean to, and one day they’ll come and tap me on the shoulder and say, “Excuse me. You’ve got this guy’s desk, coincidentally named Steve Hawley, and he’s the one we meant.” I’ve told kids this, too, that the reason I applied, as much as anything, was because I knew that if I applied and didn’t get picked, and then I watched shuttles launch with people on them and building space stations and putting up telescopes in space, I could live with that, if NASA said, “Well, thanks, but you’re not what we’re looking for.” But to not apply, to not try, and then wonder your whole life, could you have done it if you had tried, I didn’t think I could take that. So it was okay if they said no, but I didn’t want to go through the rest of my life wondering, had I only tried, would I be able to do it?
Before 1978 NASA had selected five groups of pilots and two groups of scientist-astronauts. The eighth group would be the first mixed class, including both pilots and a new designation, mission specialists.
The new designation was of particular interest to Mike Mullane, who at the time was a flight-test weapon system operator for the air force. “ NASA announced they were selecting mission specialist astronauts, and this was the new thing, because now you didn’t have to be a pilot to apply to be an astronaut. So this dream of perhaps being an astronaut was now back open to me. In fact, I remember that night that they announced it. This was big news at Edwards, because virtually everybody at Edwards Air Force Base wanted to apply to be an astronaut.”
The new class would be the largest group of astronauts yet. More than eight thousand applications were received. In 1978 NASA announced the first class of shuttle astronauts, dubbed TFNG , an acronym given multiple meanings, most politely, “thirty-five new guys.”
Among the new class were, of course, test pilots from the navy and the air force, many of whom knew each other and had trained and served together. Rick Hauck was on his second cruise as a navy pilot on the USS Enterprise when the announcement came out. “There was a flyer from NASA saying they were looking for applicants for the astronaut program to fly the shuttle and, in fact, four of us on the Enterprise wound up in my astronaut class: myself, Hoot Gibson, Dale Gardner, and John Creighton. Three of the fifteen pilots were from that air wing. Dale Gardner was a mission specialist. Which is really kind of interesting, three of fifteen. What’s that? Twenty percent came from that ship.”
Hauck didn’t grow up with an interest in space, and as a child there had been no space program for him to aspire to. “The word Apollo didn’t even exist in terms of spaceflight when I was thinking about becoming a naval aviator,” said Hauck, who was a junior in college when Alan Shepard made his first spaceflight in 1961. “Even before I became an aviator, while I was at [The U.S. Naval Test Pilot School in] Monterey, I had read that NASA was recruiting scientists to become astronauts, and I wrote a letter to NASA saying, ‘I’m in graduate school. You could tailor my education however you saw fit to optimize my benefit to the program, and I’d be very interested in becoming an astronaut.’ I got a letter back saying, ‘Thank you very much for your interest. Don’t call us. We’ll call you.’ That was in early ’65, I think, so it was twelve years later that I was accepted into the astronaut program.”
Sally Ride, the United States’ first female astronaut to fly in space, saw the ad for a new class of astronauts in the Stanford University newspaper, placed there by the Center for Research on Women at Stanford. “The ad made it clear that NASA was looking for scientists and engineers, and it also made it clear that they were going to accept women into the astronaut corps. They wanted applications from women, which is presumably the reason the Center
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