The astronaut who resurrected the space shuttle

Richard Truly 1937–2024

After the space shuttle Challenger exploded on live television in 1986, killing all seven crew members, the nation was scarred. Some wondered whether a shuttle would ever fly again. To restore faith in the safety of the craft, NASA turned to astronaut Richard Truly, one of the first shuttle pilots, to take over the space shuttle program and eventually become NASA chief. Over his four-decade career, Truly was awarded the Presidential Citizen’s Medal and two NASA Distinguished Service Medals. But his proudest moment came in 1988, when NASA returned the shuttle Discovery to the sky. “The nation is going to have the shuttle as the backbone of its space program well into the next century,” he promised.

Born in small-town Mississippi, Truly discovered flying after he joined Navy ROTC at Georgia Tech, where he studied aeronautical engineering. As a Navy fighter pilot, he made more than 300 carrier landings before being selected by NASA in 1965, said The Washington Post. There he worked on Skylab and shuttle missions for nearly 20 years, becoming the first U.S. grandfather in space at age 44. He then returned to the Navy, but NASA summoned him back after Challenger, “tasked with reviving the space shuttle program along with the spirits of the people who worked on it.” He did both.

Yet in a “sad story,” Truly ended up getting fired shortly after taking over NASA, said The Hill. Told to implement President George H.W. Bush’s vision of a lunar base and a Mars mission, Truly drew up a 35-year plan costing some $500 billion, and the administration blanched at the cost. Truly thought the pennypinching was shortsighted. “We had a program that was to go back to the moon and then on to Mars, and we canceled it. That blows my mind,” he said in 2012. “We should be exploring.”