Astronaut John Young to retire (longest serving astronaut in history)

Associated Press via Houston Chronicle ^ | Dec. 7, 2004, 2:10PM | nobyline

[stevie_d_64]

I'm sorry you met Story...hehehe

[Mamzelle]

re: I remember very well when he and Robert Crippen piloted the first Space Shuttle. I decided on that day that there were no braver men alive!)))

I see this sort of thing quite a bit, and it generally perplexes. When multi-millionaires and rock stars line up to buy a $20M ticket into orbit and space...when tourism now seems to be the only viable economic return on all this exploration...when thousands of poorer folks would line up for the privilege, but couldn't afford it...Wither "courage"--how is it so very brave?

It's a sad thing to watch the greying and stooping astronauts shambling anxiously behind Rutan, who practically bursts out of his flight jacket with sheer self-adoration...the old guys just want a whiff of that old Mission Perfume. Then Rutan gets up behind a podium and brags about how he's going to make "Sex in Space" tourism possible. Tom Wolfe should write a follow-up--Chuck Yeager becomes Sherman McCoy.

Makes me wonder what it was all about, Alfie.

[MarineBrat]

>>...Wither "courage"--how is it so very brave?

They were the first humans to fly in a rocket that had never been test launched. All of the previous times that humans had ridden a rocket to space, that rocket had been flown without humans onboard in test launches. The Shuttle was completely unconventional, and in my mind it took a brave man to go on that first launch. It had not been proven in launch nor reentry. And in fact when I saw the on-orbit photographs of tiles missing from the OHMS pods I thought there was a good chance that Young and Crippen were dead men upon reentry.

[Mamzelle]

It might surprise many to have seen that it was the time after the Mission that required more courage from the astronaut than the Mission itself.

[MarineBrat]

Can you elaborate?

[MikeD]

Not only was the shuttle first flown with men aboard, it was the first time solid rockets had been man-rated. Solid rockets are much more dangerous than liquid rockets because you can't turn them off once they light.

I never thought about Young being the only astronaut to pilot four spacecraft (Gemini, Apollo CM, LEM, Shuttle).

A co-worker of mine was an Astronaut semi-finalist (or was it finalist? -- as far as you get without being an astronaut). Anyway, John Young was one of his interviewers. My co-worker said it was all he could do to talk coherently and not babble "You walked on the Moon, man," and things like that. From all accounts a great guy.