Their giant steps became symbols of American achievement

By John Dunn

GEORGIA TECH ·Fall 1998

No government agency has produced as many brilliant scientists and engineers, able administrators, and celebrated technicians as the U.S. space program.

But since the beginning, the heroes of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration have been the astronauts-men and women who rigorously study, train and prepare to climb in the saddle and shoot for the stars.

John Young, whose "jump" as he saluted the American flag on the moon (right) thrilled millions, was among the first. Georgia Tech has helped produce 12 astronauts-including three women. They have been among the best, each advancing the conquest of space.

Heroes in Space

Georgia Tech graduates have been among NASA's top flyers

By John Dunn

Richard Truly

The New York Times called Truly a "no-nonsense engineer well regarded on Capitol Hill" who is credited with "reviving the space shuttle program and making the craft flight-worthy."

Richard Truly was the man the National Aeronautics and Space Administration called to snatch the space shuttle program from disaster during its darkest hour. Three short years later, his country called him to do much the same for all of NASA.

Truly, AE '59, a former Navy test pilot and space shuttle astronaut, was head of the Navy Space Command on Jan. 28, 1986, the day the shuttle Challenger exploded, killing six astronauts and schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe.

Two weeks later, Truly was named NASA's associate administrator for space flight and was back at NASA headquarters in Washington. He was charged with reconstructing the space shuttle program , leading the Challenger recovery team and directing efforts to redesign shuttle boosters and overhaul safety procedures.

"The whole program was in disarray," Truly says solemnly. "Congress was up in arms; the media was up in arms. Nevertheless, there were people throughout NASAand many Georgia Tech people incidentallywho were determined to rebuild the program. It was very, very difficult, but we had to run a professional accident investigation, which we did, find out what was wrong, and go argue for the dollars to rebuild the program."

The painstaking rebuilding of the space shuttle program, he says, was the hardest thing he has ever done.

"There were days when I honestly didn't think it was possible-not technically, but politically," Truly says. "There were days after the accident when I thought this couldn't be done. But we just were not willing to give up."

NASA's celebrated return to space came Sept. 29, 1988, when Discovery lifted off from Kennedy Space Center. Truly also won approval to replace Challenger with the shuttle Endeavour, a spacecraft that incorporated technical lessons learned from more than five years of shuttle flights as well as advanced onboard computer and avionics technology.

President George Bush named Truly as the first astronaut to head the space agency, and the first to move from the military to the new post. Truly concluded a 30-year military career by retiring as an admiral one day before becoming NASA's eighth administrator in July 1989.

"This marks the first time in its distinguished history that NASA will be led by a hero of its own making, an astronaut who has been to space," Bush said.

At the same time, James R. Thompson Jr., AE '58, director of the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., was named deputy director of NASA.

Howard E. McCurdy, a professor at American University and an authority on the space agency, told the Times the dual appointments represented "a NASA revitalization team, designed to put the stuffing back into the agency" that was knocked out by the Challenger disaster .

"Truly did that with the shuttle program, and Thompson put Marshall back together. Now their job is to do that for the rest of the agency."

Truly the Leader

Truly's leadership restored the nation's confidence in the space agency, and credibility to the space shuttle program. He solidified plans for Space Station Freedom and began a new space science and aeronautics research program. He initiated major reforms in NASA acquisition practices and streamlined the organization.

Truly left NASA in 1992 to become director of the Georgia Tech Research Institute. "I spent two tours of duty at Georgia Tech. They were very different, but I loved both of them," Truly remembers. "In the 1950s, when I was a student, I thought I'd never get out. I did, and I was proud of it. My friends from those days are people I love to keep up with. The second time was as director of GTRI, where I spent about four-and-a-half years that went by in a big hurry. It was a great experience."

Truly now directs the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo. "We're in the business of turning sunshine and wind into electrical power and developing clean energy for future," he says.

A Naval ROTC student at Tech, after graduating in 1959, Truly became a Naval aviator.

"I enjoyed flying so much that one of my commanding officers in the squadron talked me into putting in an application for test-pilot school," Truly says.

Truly was a student and later instructor at the Air Force Aerospace Research Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base. Its commandant was world-renowned test pilot Chuck Yeager, the first man to break the sound barrier.

Truly and Yeager became friends and have maintained contact over the years. "He was really the person who got me into the space program."

In 1965, Truly became one of the first military astronauts for the Air Force's Manned Orbiting Laboratory. In 1969, he became a NASA astronaut, and was capsule communicator for all Skylab missions in 1973, the Apollo-Soyuz docking in 1975, and was pilot of the prototype space shuttle Enterprise in 1977.

Truly's first spaceflight was Nov. 12-14, 1981, as pilot of the shuttle Columbia, the first shuttle to be reflown in space. He commanded the Challenger on the first night launch and landing mission, Aug. 30-Sept. 5, 1983. He retired as an astronaut that year and was named first commander of the Naval Space Command.

Orbiting Earth in the space shuttle was thoroughly enjoyable, Truly says. "The most fun I had was flyinglooking out the window at the Earth and floating around like a kid. There was hardly a day in the space part that I didn't enjoy the job. Right up to the very end it's a great experience to have."

As a former astronaut and administrator of the space agency, he has a unique perspective. Significant changes have occurred since 1965.

"Over the years the politics and the technology changed immensely," Truly says. "In the 1960s, it was a national priority to beat the Russians to the moon, and at that time, there was a huge amount of money poured into the pro gram. NASA's budget at the peak of Apollo was about four times as large in real dollars as it was when I was later administrator.

"But there were a lot of other differences, too. The federal acquisition regulations that are in place today put a lot more discipline in the procurement business that was not in place in the 1960s. When there was a major engine failure or some setback, NASA could just move right out and start a new engine program. Today it takes years to get approval to start a new program through the Congress. National priorities changed. Still, it is a great national program and has given many benefits to the nation."

Truly lists three: NASA is one of the few programs that conducts exploration; it has fostered an immense spin-off technology in overcoming the challenges of space exploration, producing applications that permeate American society; and it has been inspirational to society and to young people who are spurred to pursue the study of science and engineering.

A New Era for Astronauts

The characteristics of astronauts have broad- ened greatly over the past 40 years, Truly says. "Back in the 1960s, there was a lot more emphasis on physical ability and conditioning," Truly says. "That was natural because it was new, and nobody knew what the rigors of space would be. You tended to see people who not only were physically fit, but had proven themselves, particularly in the test-pilot business.

"As the years have gone by, and particularly as the spacecraft have changedthe space shuttle can carry eight or 10 peopleyou still need experienced pilots, but there is plenty of room for scientists in different fields. Today you have a mixture of military-experienced test-pilots and people who have dreamed of becoming an astronaut and actually gone to school and gotten advanced degrees in order to be competitive. In the '60s, that never was the case, because when all the people who were selected in the '60s were young, there wasn't any program. They might have read Buck Rogers, but there wasn't any real program to aspire to."

The space program changed as a result of the Challenger disaster, Truly says. And the rebuilt program has been extremely successful.

"What we did during that down period was not only fix the solid rocket motor and some of the other technical problems, but we also put the discipline back in the program," Truly says. "We made sure that everybody knew that safety was first. But it is very risky business. The only way to be really safe in the flying business is to stay in the hangar.

"No one wanted to do that."

GT

"In the six years since I arrived to join the NASA leadership just after the Challenger tragedy, I have watched the talented men and women of this elite agency turn heartbreak and disarray into the impressive achievements and superb organization of today. With 20 safe and successful shuttle flights in the last 40 months, scientific discoveries pouring in, space station Freedom on track, and our wind tunnels testing the airframes and spacecraft of tomorrow, they deserve to be very, very proud. With your support,their opportunities to inspire America's people and drive our country's competitiveness are boundless."

From Richard Truly's Feb. 10, 1992, resignation letter to President Bush

John Young

"You had to learn a lot of stuff. You probably only needed to know 1 percent of all the stuff you had to learn, but you didn't know which 1 percent it was."

John W. Young is one of only a dozen men to set foot on the moon. He is the first person to liftoff in space six times from Earthseven liftoffs counting his 1972 Apollo 16 flight from the lunar surface. He was in command of the first shuttle when it soared into space.

Young, AE '52, is associate director (technical) at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. At 68, he counts windsurfing as one of his leisure activities and remains on active astronaut status.

The "technical" part of his title is in parentheses, he explains in an interview sprinkled with dry humor.

"There are about 20,000 people around here, and if anything goes wrong technically, it's my fault," Young deadpans. "Something is always going wrong.

"I counted up a couple of months ago, and I was working on 103 technical things. There are plenty of technical things to worry about in the space bizthings that we ought to be doing better."

Young rapidly recites the National Aeronautics and Space Administration mission "to expand human knowledge of phenomena, of atmosphere and space, and of the Earth, and our No. 2 requirement is to improve the use, performance, speed, safety and efficiency of aeronautic and space vehicles.

"There is always some improvement you can make that will really revolutionize the way you operate," he adds.

One improvement is the global positioning system, which is being tested now and soon will be placed in space shuttles, Young volunteers. The device will enable astronauts to "know" their position in space and eliminate the need for a cadre of technicians constantly following a shuttle via a huge tracking network.

A former Navy fighter pilot and test pilot, Young was selected as an astronaut in 1962 an era when astronauts underwent survival training in the event their space capsules landed in a jungle instead of the sea.

During his early career as an astronaut, Young says "the guys in the trenches" were completely absorbed in training as astronauts for the opportunity to fly in space.

"We were living on a different planet," he says figuratively, "working night and dayjust like they train you to work at Georgia Tech. It helped me to get that training because I knew I could hang in there when we were working nights and days and weekends.

Astronauts today have many characteristics in common with the test pilots and fighter pilots selected when he started 36 years ago, Young says.

"The men and women who fly in space today are pretty darn tough," he adds. "They're really talented. They've gone through the school of hard knocks. They're self-starters, get-up-and-goers, and they hang in there and do the job.

"We have 2,500 people who put in to be astronauts. They won't all be astronauts, but their records show that they'll all do great things for the United States. A lot of them went to Tech."

About 40 percent of today's astronauts are mission specialists who haven't had previous flight experience, but are trained in such scientific and technical disciplines as engineering, medicine, biology and astrophysics.

Young says he derives pleasure out of simply doing his job.

"The most important part of the work that anybody does around here in flying space missions is before the mission," he says. "If you've done all your work, you can just enjoy the mission. If you haven't, and you run into problems, you can be in a world of hurt. You've got to be prepared."

In 1973, Young was made chief of the space shuttle branch of the Astronaut Office, providing operational and engineering support for the design and development of the space shuttle. The next year he was named chief of the Astronaut Office, with responsibility for the coordination, scheduling and control of astronaut activities, a post he held until May 1987. During his tenure ,astronaut flight crews participated in the joint American-Russian docking mission Apollo-Soyuz, the Space Shuttle Orbiter Approach and Landing Test Program, and 25 space shuttle missions.

From 1987 through February 1996, Young was special assistant to the director of Johnson Space Center for Engineering, Operations and Safety.

Young has twice been to the moon, orbiting it as command module pilot of Apollo 10 in 1969, and cavorting on its surface on the Apollo 16 lunar exploration mission in 1972. The spacecraft gave him a spectacular view of Earth.

"You could see it when you were flying around the moonEarth-rise. It's kind of a funny thing, Earth-rise. It's really beautiful. But you could hold your thumb up in front of you and just cover the whole Earth up5 billion or 6 billion people living there, and they are all covered up with your thumb.

"Everyone wants to take care of threatened and endangered species. I think that planetary exploration has shown us that the threatened and endangered species is that same guy we look at in the mirror when we shave in the morning. I do believe that.

"We need to worry about looking after ourselves a little. I'm not so sure, knowing what we know about space exploration, that human beings aren't pretty darn unique critters."

The next century will mark the colonization of the moon and Mars, Young says.

"I think the greatest achievement of the human race will occur in the next century when we go back to the moon and on to Mars, and learn how to live and work on other places in the solar system," Young says. "We'll surely do that in the next century. We're going to get smarter, faster and learn better ways to do things."

That will happen, Young says, when space exploration becomes a national goal, and young people are challenged and inspired to fulfill a vision. GT

Six Times in Space

Young's three decades with NASA span America's love affair with space

John Young, the world's most experienced astronaut, commanded the space shuttle Columbia on its historic first flight in 1981, beginning modern-day space travel.

In all, Young has lifted off from Earth into space six times and once from the moon.

Young made his first space flight with Gus Grissom aboard Gemini 3 in 1965 on the first manned Gemini missiona complete end-to-end test of the spacecraft. Young operated the first computer on a manned space flight on the mission, which also established that orbital maneuvers were possible. Young made his second flight as commander of Gemini 10 in 1966.

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.

Young's turn to experience the lunar surface came three years later, April 16-27, 1972, as commander of Apollo 16. While Ken Mattingly orbited the moon, Young and Charlie Duke set up scientific equipment and explored the lunar highlands at Descartes. They collected almost 200 pounds of rocks and drove the lunar rover over 16 miles on three separate geology excursions . Young even speed-tested the lunar hot rod.

On April 12-14, 1981, Young was commander and Bob Crippen was pilot of the Columbia, the first flight of the space shuttle. The flight validated the shuttle as "a true aerospace vehicle" that "takes off like a rocket, maneuvers in Earth orbit like a spacecraft and lands like an airplane."

Young's sixth flight was as spacecraft commander of the space shuttle Columbia on its first Spacelab mission, Nov. 28-Dec. 8, 1983. For 10 days, the six-member crew worked 12-hour shifts around-the-clock, performing more than 70 experiments in the fields of atmospheric physics, Earth observations, space-plasma physics, astronomy and solar physics, materials processing, and life sciences.

As an active astronaut, Young remains eligible to command future shuttle crews.

Rich Clifford

Michael Richard "Rich" Clifford, MS AE '83, made three space shuttle flights and a spacewalk before leaving NASA in 1997 to become Space Station Flight Operations Manager for Boeing Defense and Space Group.

Clifford, who earned his undergraduate degree from the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, became an astronaut in 1990. He first flew on the shuttle Discovery, Dec. 2-9, 1992, on a Defense Department mission. He flew aboard Endeavour, April 9-20, 1994, on a Space Radar Laboratory mission.

Clifford's last mission was aboard Atlantis, March 22-31, 1996, the third docking mission to the Russian space station Mir. Clifford performed a six-hour spacewalk, the first while docked to an orbiting space station.

Jan Davis

Astronaut N. Jan Davis, Biol '75, the first female Tech alumnus to become an astronaut, is a veteran of three space shuttle flights.

She and her husband, astronaut Mark Lee, made headlines on her first shuttle flight in 1992 aboard the shuttle Endeavourand received an out-of-this-world wedding gift from NASA. They were allowed to become the first couple to fly together in space. Although NASA policy forbids husbands and wives from flying on the same shuttle flight, an exception was made because Davis and Lee had been assigned to the flight 18 months before they were married.

Her first flight aboard the shuttle Endeavour, Sept. 12-20, 1992, was NASA's 50th shuttle mission: Spacelab-J, a cooperative venture between the United States and Japan. Davis was responsible for operating Spacelab and its subsystems and performing a variety of experiments.

Davis' second flight was aboard the shuttle Discovery, Feb. 3-11, 1994. It was also the second flight of Spacehab (Space Habitation Module) and the first shuttle flight on which a Russian cosmonaut was a crew member.

Davis was the payload commander for her third mission, aboard Discovery, Aug. 7-19, 1997.

Davis is on assignment from the Astronaut Office to NASA Headquarters where she is the director of Human Exploration and Development of Space.

John H. Casper

Astronaut John H. Casper remembered Georgia Tech when he fulfilled a childhood dream and flew into space for the first time as pilot of the shuttle Atlantis. On board the shuttle was a secret military cargoand a not-so-secret Georgia Tech flag.

Casper attended Tech for a year on academic scholarship in 1961-62 before accepting an appointment to the Air Force Academy. He became an astronaut in 1985 and is a veteran of four space flights, his first as pilot of the Atlantis in 1990.

Casper was commander of the shuttle Endeavour, which de ployed a $200 million NASA Tracking and Data Relay Satellite to establish a national communications network supporting the shuttle and low-Earth-orbit scientific satellites in 1993. The next year, he commanded a 14-day mission aboard the shuttle Columbia, and in 1996 commanded Endeavour on a 10-day mission.

ISyE's Astronaut

Michael J. Massimino was an assistant professor in the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering when he was selected for the astronaut program in 1996. Having completed two years of training and evaluation, he is qualified for flight assignment as a mission specialist. Currently, Massimino is assigned technical duties in the Astronaut Office Robotics Branch.

Blaine Hammond

L. Blaine Hammond Jr., MS ESM '74, an astronaut since 1985, has been the pilot of two space shuttle missions.

An Air Force colonel, Hammond flew as pilot of the shuttle Discovery, April 28-May 6, 1991, on the first unclassified Defense Department mission. He also was the pilot on a 10-day Discovery mission in 1994 that included the first use of lasers for environmental research and the first untethered spacewalk in 10 years to test a self-rescue jetpack.

Astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee die in a flash fire while performing a routine check of their spacecraft, later named Apollo 1.

Alan Poindexter

Alan Poindexter, AE '86, a Navy test pilot, has been selected by NASA as an astronaut candidate. Lt. Cmdr. Poindexter began a year-long astronaut training and evaluation program in August at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

"I want to command a space shuttle mission, and I'd like to fly on the space station," Poindexter says. Formerly assigned at Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach, Va., he and his wife, Lisa, and their two sons, Zachary and Samuel, have moved to Houston. Poindexter received his master's degree from the Naval post-graduate school in Monterey, Calif. A Navy fighter pilot, he served in the Gulf War.

Scott Horowitz

Scott J. "Doc" Horowitz, MS AE '79, an astronaut since 1993, is a veteran of two space shuttle flights. Horowitz was pilot of shuttle missions in both 1996 and 1997. The second mission aboard the shuttle Discovery was for maintenance of the Hubble Space Telescope. During the nine-day mission, the crew retrieved and secured the telescope in the payload bay, and in five spacewalks, two teams installed two new spectrometers and eight replacement instruments.

Susan Still

Susan Leigh Still, MS AE '85, is only the second woman to pilot a space shuttleand she made back-to-back flights in 1997. Her April shuttle flight was cut short because of problems with one of the shuttle's three fuel-cell power generation units, so she was allowed to pilot the Columbia again on July 1.

The abbreviated first mission lasted only four days, but the second flight, which spanned 16 days and focused on materials and combustion science research in microgravity, was near flawless.

An astronaut since 1996, Still received her under-graduate degree from Embry-Riddle University.

A native of Augusta, Ga., she enjoys triathlons, martial arts and playing the piano.

Susan Still was pilot on back-to-back space shuttle missions as part of the first NASA crew (above) to fly together twice.

William McArthur

William S. "Bill" McArthur Jr., MS AE '83, a veteran of two space flights, is assigned as a member of the space shuttle Atlantis crew on the 1999 mission to continue assembly of the International Space Station.

An astronaut since 1991 and a member of MENSA, he is a 1973 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, West Point. In 1993, McArthur served as a mission specialist on the seven-person life- science research mission aboard the shuttle Columbia. In 1995, McArthur served as a mission specialist aboard the Atlantis on NASA's second shuttle mission to rendezvous and dock with the Russian Space Station Mir.

Sandra Magnus

Sandra "Sandy" Magnus, Ph.D. MSE, completed two years of astronaut training and evaluation in spring 1998 and is qualified for flight assignment as a mission specialist. She is the third Georgia Tech female to become an astronaut.

Magnus went from Georgia Tech to NASA in 1996 to begin two years of astronaut training for the space station. As a teaching assistant at Tech while working on her doctorate, she received Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant Awards in both 1994 and 1996. GT

Jud Ready

A boyhood dream

Becoming an astronaut has been alumnus Jud Ready's boyhood dream. The space program has fascinated him since first grade, when he discovered a book on space in the library. "It was way too advanced for me," Ready says. "I learned how to use the dictionary, and I kept renewing the book week after week until the whole front and back of the card had nothing but my name on it."

Ready, MSE '94, MS MetE '97, is working on his doctorate and earning a pilot's license in preparation for applying to NASA for acceptance as an astronaut candidate. He was a student of astronaut Sandy Magnus, Ph.D. MSE, when she was a teaching assistant.

"The minimum requirement calls for three years of job-related experience," Ready says. "A master's degree counts as one and a Ph.D. counts as three years." He intends to apply as soon as he earns his doctorate. GT