Robert Laurel Crippen

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  • Donald Kent Slayton

    (born March 1, 1924, Sparta, Wis., U.S.—died June 13, 1993, League City, Texas) American astronaut who was one of the original seven Project Mercury astronauts in 1959 but did not make a space flight until 1975.

  • Alfred Worden

    (born Feb. 7, 1932, Jackson, Mich., U.S.) U.S. astronaut, pilot of the command module Endeavour on the Apollo 15 mission (July 26–Aug. 7, 1971).

  • John W. Young

    (born Sept. 24, 1930, San Francisco) U.S. astronaut who participated in the Gemini, Apollo, and space shuttle projects. He served as Virgil I.

  • Frank Borman

    (born March 14, 1928, Gary, Ind., U.S.) American astronaut who, with James A. Lovell and William A. Anders, made the first manned flight, in Apollo 8, around the Moon in December 1968.

(Born Sept. 11, 1937, Beaumont, Texas, U.S.) U.S. astronaut who served as pilot on the first U.S. space shuttle orbital flight.

Crippen graduated from the University of Texas, Austin, with a degree in aerospace engineering in 1960. He entered the U.S. Air Force Manned Orbiting Laboratory program in 1966 and transferred to the astronaut corps in 1969. He was named commander of the Skylab Medical Experiments Altitude Test several years later and was a member of the support crews for Skylab 2, 3, and 4 and the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project.

Manned by Crippen and John W. Young, the shuttle Columbia, the world's first reusable spacecraft, was launched on April 12, 1981. The two astronauts landed the airplanelike craft on April 14, after having orbited Earth 36 times. Crippen later commanded the second flight of the space shuttle Challenger. This flight (June 18–24, 1983) saw the first American woman in space, Sally Ride, and made Crippen the first to fly in two shuttle missions.

In 1984 he commanded two more shuttle flights. STS-41-C ( Challenger, April 6–13, 1984) was the first mission in which a satellite, the malfunctioning Solar Maximum Mission, was repaired in Earth orbit. He then commanded STS-41-G ( Challenger, Oct. 5–13, 1984), which was the first spaceflight with a seven-person crew and during which astronaut Kathryn Sullivan became the first American woman to walk in space.

From 1990 to 1992 he was director of the space shuttle program, and from 1992 to 1996 he was director of the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

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