I remember him. He and Gus Grissom were on Gemimi 3 and orbited the earth. Recall that the Gemini spacecraft were the successors to the Mercury modules.
RIP
[a corned beef sandwich]
I hope he had some Thousand Island packets or at least mustard packets.
Truly some great days in the U.S.A.
(I keep forgetting ‘American Exceptionalism’ is a myth per his highness BHO.)
R.I.P. Only 5 lunar walkers left out of the 12.
I guess it’s inevitable that the space pioneers of the 60s and 70s are leaving us. Sad to see, nonetheless.
Gemini 3 with Gus Grissom - March 1965
Gemini 10 with Michael Collins - July 1966
Apollo 10 with Thomas Stafford & Eugene Cernan - May 1969
Apollo 16 with Charles Duke & Ken Mattingly - April 1972
Space Shuttle STS-1 with Robert Crippen - April 1981
Space Shuttle STS-9 with Brewster Shaw Jr, Owen Garriot, Robert Parker, Ulf Merbold (ESA) & Byron Lichtenberg - Nov-Dec 1983
42 years at NASA, retiring in 2004!
Gemini 3, 1965
Apollo 10, May, 1969
Apollo 16, April, 1972, 9th person to step foot on the moon.
Commander of STS-1, maiden flight of Columbia
Slated to fly in 1986, cancelled after Challenger explosion.
Young never flew again.
Ad Astra, John Young
Pretty sure they got corned beef in Heaven.
God’s speed!
Had the privilege of meeting him and Robert Crippen in 1980 while working at Edwards. Nice guy.
RIP
Rip master astronaut
OK, but that means he had to smuggle it back out of orbit too.
John Young grew up in my former home town, Orlando, FL, so he was a hero there. I remember when the local science museum & planetarium were named after him.
RIP, space pioneer.
He is travelling far beyond the moon.
He later said, when he took out the sandwich, he knew he had made a big mistake - a thousand tiny breadcrumbs, that were shaken off during the launch, floated all over the cabin, getting stuck in everything.
RIP.
I was a graduate student at The University of Wisconsin in April 1981 when the Shuttle first went up. I left a class and went to the student union just before the landing to watch the television coverage. The TV room - with an early projection screen TV - was packed to overflowing, I couldn’t even get in the door. I ran about 3 blocks to the Sigma Alpha Epsilon house, and went to the TV room in the basement - standing room only, as well, but I could see the set. You could hear a pin drop in that crowd, not normally respectful. With all we learned in subsequent missions, STS-1 was no sure bet, there was significant courage involved. I recall the sense of awe in the crowd watching the event with me. I walked out of there ten feet tall, proud of yet another American accomplishment that no other country on earth cold touch.
RIP John Young!
Godspeed, John Young.
John Young and Bob Crippen were two brave men.
Think about this....they flew the first space transportation system (STS) mission. The whole integrated system was never “launched” or tested unmanned prior to STS-1. Every other manned rocket was first tested unmanned.
The STS consisted of an orbiter, an external tank and two solid rocket boosters. They were tested individually and in some limited integrated tests,but there was no test flight prior to STS-1.
The orbiter (Enterprise) underwent many tests including drop tests out in California to test how it would perform during unpowered(no propulsion) landings.
The boosters were test fired in Utah.
One of the few integrated tests that they could do was a main engine firing that tested the external tank and the orbiter’s (Columbia’s) main engines. The tank was fueled and the main engines fired for several seconds while on the launch pad.
The number of processes/events (pyrotechnics for separation of the tank and boosters, software timing, etc) that weren’t or couldn’t be tested as part of an integrated flight is astonishing.
Can you imagine getting into a rocket system that had never had the entire system rung out prior to your first mission?
And to think that he knew all that and much more and yet still wanted to fly that mission....amazing man!
What would be going through your mind as you sat in the orbiter, a few hours prior to launch? What kind of pucker factor would that rate?
Well done, John Young! Thank you for your service!
Godspeed, John Young.