John W. Young
Born: Sept. 24, 1930, San Francisco Died: Jan. 5, 2018, Houston
NASA experience: In September 1962, Young was selected as an astronaut. He is the first person to fly in space six times from Earth, and seven times counting his lunar liftoff. The first flight was with Gus Grissom in Gemini 3, the first manned Gemini mission, March 23, 1965. On Gemini 10, July 18-21, 1966, Young, as commander, and Mike Collins, as pilot, completed a dual rendezvous with two separate Agena target vehicles. On his third flight, May 18-26, 1969, Young was command module pilot of Apollo 10, which orbited the moon, completed a lunar rendezvous and tracked proposed lunar landing sites. His fourth space flight, Apollo 16, April 16-27, 1972, was a lunar exploration mission. Young’s fifth flight was as spacecraft commander of STS-1, the first flight of the space shuttle, April 12-14, 1981. The 54 1/2 hour, 36-orbit mission verified shuttle systems’ performance during launch, on orbit and on entry. Young’s sixth flight was as spacecraft commander of STS-9, the first Spacelab mission, Nov. 28-Dec. 8, 1983. Young was also on five backup space flight crews: Gemini 6, the second Apollo mission (before the Apollo Program fire) and Apollo 7, 13 and 17. In preparation for prime and backup crew positions on 11 space flights, Young put more than 15,000 hours into training, mostly in simulators and simulations. He logged more than 15,275 hours’ flying time in props, jets, helicopters and rocket jets, more than 9,200 hours in T-38s, and six space flights of 835 hours.
Military experience: Upon graduation from Georgia Tech, Young entered the United States Navy. After serving on the West Coast destroyer USS Laws (DD-558) in the Korean War, he was sent to flight training. He was then assigned to Fighter Squadron 103 for four years, flying Cougars and Crusaders. After test pilot training at the U.S. Navy Test Pilot School in 1959, he was assigned to the Naval Air Test Center for three years. His test projects included evaluations of the Crusader and Phantom fighter weapons systems. In 1962, he set world time-to-climb records to 3,000-meter and 25,000meter altitudes in the Phantom. Before reporting to NASA, he was maintenance officer of Phantom Fighter Squadron 143.