No astronaut had a career as long and prolific as John Young. Selected by NASA in 1962, he retired in 2004, after going to the Moon twice.
In total he was on six space flights, more than any other in history. And she became the only person to command four different types of spaceships: the Gemini, Apollo, Skylab and the Space Shuttle, being the first in command of the latter.
All one legend.
John Young’s Race to the Moon
Born in San Francisco, California, in 1930, John Watts Young graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1952 and became a fighter pilot in the United States Navy. By 1962 he was selected as a NASA astronaut.
He made his first spaceflight in 1965, as a pilot for the Gemini 3 mission. There he starred in the Sandwich Incident, after sneaking one on the flight, being later reprimanded by NASA. “I just wanted to break the monotony of the food,” he would later say.
In 1966, he was commander of the Gemini 10 mission.
By 1969, he piloted the lunar module on the Apollo 10 mission to the Moon. reaching its orbit months before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on the satellite.
And in 1972 he served as commander of the Apollo 16 mission, which was the fifth mission to the Moon. and in which Young was able to walk on the surface, becoming the ninth person to do so.
“The only sounds you hear on the Moon are from the appliances, with the fans running,” he said in an interview. “And if you don’t hear them, You know you’re in trouble.”
a space pioneer
On Apollo 15, astronauts David Scott and Jim Irwin suffered health problems while on the Moon, due to a lack of potassium in their diets. So, on the next mission, Young and his partner Charlie Duke they had to drink orange juice every day.
At one point Young told Duke: “I haven’t had that much citrus in 20 years, but he told you something, after these fucking 12 days, I won’t drink anymore.”
Young also made two flights to the Skylab space laboratory, in 1973 and 1974. And in 1981, he was commander of the STS-1 mission, the first flight of the Space Shuttle.
He retired from NASA in 2004, dying in 2018, at the age of 87 years.
Much of what NASA is doing today with the Artemis Mission to return to the Moon John Young foresaw it at the time.
“If we’re ever going to really explore our Solar System, the Moon is where we have to start,” he said. “Make all the mistakes there. You have to learn to work in inhospitable places where there are extreme temperatures. Do it by going back to the Moon and working there.”