intergalatic, planetary

Sweet. And he lived to tell the tale, too.

The moon shudders with relief

/stupid, I know

NASA complained because another symbol on his jacket was bigger than theirs? What in the hell were they worried about? NASA's going to get tons of recognition, whenever they do anything, no matter if the dude has some other shiat on his jacket.

You'd think that they would have even less of an objection to a large american flag being there, seeing as if it weren't for the government that flag represents, there wouldn't be much of a NASA right now.

/Personally could not care less about flags
//Or NASA symbols
///I do know that if I was flying out into space, I'd do it in whatever I felt like wearing.

The lonely astronaut ?
The one that stayed on Moon as he filmed the others blasting off in Apollo 17 lunar module?

Planetary, intergalactic

"with the cunning use of flags."
and
"no flag no country! those are the rules!"

the one he'll never get to fly...

the one he'll never get to fly...

sorry for the double post...

OOPS!

Missing from the Official announcement was the fact that on his first flight on Gemini 4 with Gus Grissom, he got in trouble with NASA for smuggling aboard a Corned Beef sandwich for Grissom.

Uncool tagline for an Ultracool Astronaut. This man is amazing (he's been with NASA longer than I've been alive!) and I hope to be able to shake his hand someday... just not in Florida...
or around any open air markets...

/ponders Florida tag

He has had a great life. Kids, let this be a lesson to you that if you work to achieve you can achieve great things.

/now I go back to my fruit loops and coffee.

John Young is The Man.

John Young = Space Cowboy, Hero

Why can't a guy like this be a role model for children instead of rappers/celebrities/athletes/dirtbags

I'll be taking John Young Parkway to work today. (Orlando)

Hyernel:

In Chicago (as I consider northwest Indiana as part of Chicago), we have the Frank Borman Expressway. Of course, it's always under construction and traffic is horrendous.

Mia Hamm gets a hero tag, but this guy doesn't?

WTF???

And in Lake Forest, we have Lovells of Lake Forest.

A much more pleasant place to spend your time than the Borman.

I agree with brush_between_meals

If you give hero tags to those who play games for a living, you have to give one to this guy.

bad fark bad.

Yeah, but can he play the guitar?

Seriously - if anyone deserves a hero tag recently, he's the one.

/gotta keep perspective

John Young, a Georgia Tech grad if I'm correct...

Hell of an engineer....NO, REALLY...

whyme63:

"we have"? You one of those snooty Lake Forest brats?

John Young is the shiznit.

NASA EXPERIENCE: In September 1962, Young was selected as an astronaut. He is the first person to fly in space six times from earth, and seven times counting his lunar liftoff. The first flight was with Gus Grissom in Gemini 3, the first manned Gemini mission, on March 23, 1965. This was a complete end-to-end test of the Gemini spacecraft, during which Gus accomplished the first manual change of orbit altitude and plane and the first lifting reentry, and Young operated the first computer on a manned spacecraft. On Gemini 10, July 18-21, 1966, Young, as Commander, and Mike Collins, as Pilot, completed a dual rendezvous with two separate Agena target vehicles. While Young flew close formation on the second Agena, Mike Collins did an extravehicular transfer to retrieve a micro meteorite detector from that Agena. On his third flight, May 18-26, 1969, Young was Command Module Pilot of Apollo 10. Tom Stafford and Gene Cernan were also on this mission which orbited the Moon, completed a lunar rendezvous, and tracked proposed lunar landing sites. His fourth space flight, Apollo 16, April 16-27, 1972, was a lunar exploration mission, with Young as Spacecraft Commander, and Ken Mattingly and Charlie Duke. Young and Duke set up scientific equipment and explored the lunar highlands at Descartes. They collected 200 pounds of rocks and drove over 16 miles in the lunar rover on three separate geology traverses.

Youngs fifth flight was as Spacecraft Commander of STS-1, the first flight of the Space Shuttle, April 12-14, 1981, with Bob Crippen as Pilot. The 54-1/2 hour, 36-orbit mission verified Space Shuttle systems performance during launch, on orbit, and entry. Tests of the Orbiter Columbia included evaluation of mechanical systems including the payload bay doors, the attitude and maneuvering rocket thrusters, guidance and navigation systems, and Orbiter/crew compatibility. One hundred and thirty three of the missions flight test objectives were accomplished. The Orbiter Columbia was the first manned spaceship tested during ascent, on orbit, and entry without benefit of previous unmanned missions. Columbia was also the first winged reentry vehicle to return from space to a runway landing. It weighed about 98 tons as Young landed it on the dry lakebed at Edwards Air Force Base, California.

Youngs sixth flight was as Spacecraft Commander of STS-9, the first Spacelab mission, November 28-December 8, 1983, with Pilot Brewster Shaw, Mission Specialists Bob Parker and Owen Garriott, and Payload Specialists Byron Lichtenberg of the USA and Ulf Merbold of West Germany. The mission successfully completed all 94 of its flight test objectives. For ten days the 6-man 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. The mission returned more scientific and technical data than all the previous Apollo and Skylab missions put together. The Spacelab was brought back for re-use, so that Columbia weighed over 110 tons as Young landed the spaceship at Edwards Air Force Base, California.

Young was also on five backup space flight crews: backup pilot in Gemini 6, backup command module pilot for the second Apollo mission (before the Apollo Program fire) and Apollo 7, and backup spacecraft commander for Apollo 13 and 17. In preparation for prime and backup crew positions on eleven space flights, Young has put more than 15,000 hours into training so far, mostly in simulators and simulations.

He has also logged 835 hours in six space flights.

After seeing folks ask John Young the same questions over and over (i.e., what's the moon like? what's it like to be an astronaut?), I asked him 2 questions:

1) How much trouble did you really get into over the corned beef sandwich? His answer...that made that a bigger deal then it was, but I sure miss Gus.

2) What's it like to have that highway in Orlando named after you? His answer...my dad got 'em to do that.

I have a picture with us shaking hands after one of the shuttle support missions. It's a nice momento.