Legendary U.S. astronaut dies
John Young was the ninth man on the moon and commander of the first space shuttle.
Legendary astronaut John Young, who walked on the moon and later commanded the first space shuttle flight, has died, NASA said Saturday. He was 87. The agency said Young died Friday at home in Houston after complications from pneumonia.
NASA called Young one of its pioneers — the only astronaut to go into space as part of the Gemini, Apollo and shuttle programs, and the first to fly into space six times. He was the ninth man to walk on the moon.
“Astronaut John Young’s storied career spanned three generations of spaceflight,” acting NASA administrator Robert Lightfoot said. “John was one of that group of early space pioneers whose bravery and commitment sparked our nation’s first great achievements in space.”
Young became the first person to rocket away from Earth six times. Counting his takeoff from the moon in 1972 as commander of Apollo 16, his blastoff tally stood at seven, for decades a world record.
Former President George H. W. Bush said he and Barbara Bush “join our fellow Americans and many friends in the space community in mourning the loss.” Retired astronaut Scott Kelly said he was saddened by the loss and called Young in a tweet “the astronauts’ astronaut, a true legend. Fair winds and following seas, Captain.”
Young flew twice during the two-man Gemini missions of the 1960s, twice to the moon during NASA’s Apollo program, and twice aboard the new shuttle Columbia in the 1980s.
His NASA career lasted 42 years, longer than any other astronaut’s, and he was revered among his peers for his dedication to keeping crews safe — and his outspokenness in challenging the status quo.
Chastened by the 1967 Apollo launch pad fire that killed three astronauts, Young spoke up after the 1986 shuttle Challenger launch accident that killed seven. His hard scrutiny continued well past shuttle Columbia’s disintegration during re-entry in 2003, which also killed seven.
“Whenever and wherever I found a potential safety issue, I always did my utmost to make some noise about it,” he wrote in his 2012 memoir, “Forever Young: A Life of Adventure in Air and Space.”
Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins, who orbited the moon in 1969 as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked its surface, considered Young “the memo-writing champion of the astronaut office.”
Young kept working at Johnson Space Center in Houston “long after his compatriots had been put out to pasture or discovered other green fields,” Collins wrote in the foreword of “Forever Young.” He remained an active astronaut into his 70s and held onto his role as NASA’s conscience until he retired in 2004. “You don’t want to be politically correct,” he said in a 2000 interview with The Associated Press. “You want to be right.”
Young was in NASA’s second astronaut class, chosen in 1962, along with the likes of Armstrong, Pete Conrad and James Lovell. Young was the first of his group to fly in space: He and Mercury astronaut Gus Grissom made the first manned Gemini mission in 1965.
Two years later, with Gemini over and Apollo looming, Young asked Grissom why he didn’t say something about the bad wiring in the new Apollo 1 spacecraft. Grissom feared doing so would get him fired, Young said. A few weeks later, on Jan. 27, 1967, those wires contributed to the fire that killed Grissom, Edward White II and Roger Chaffee in a countdown practice. It was the safety measures put in place after the fire that got 12 men safely to the moon and back.
Young orbited the moon in May 1969 in preparation for the Apollo 11 moon landing that was to follow in two months. He commanded Apollo 16 three years later, the next-to-last manned lunar voyage, and walked on the moon.