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Volume 42, Number 1 Spring 2025 NASA History Office @NASAhistory 6:00 PM · Mar 12, 2025
"It’s up to you. You go do it."
Those were the instructions to Jack Kinzler who was put in charge of creating celebratory symbols for the Apollo 11 lunar landing.
In our new edition of NASA History News & Notes, read about his work creating the U.S. flag and the plaque that
https://nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/newsnotes-42-1.pdf
Other topics in the spring issue include:
• NASA's 1967 Class of Astronauts
• Historic Experiments in Airborne Astronomy
• NASA's Aircraft Consolidation Efforts in the 1990s
• Lightning Observations from Space: 1965–1982
• The Founding of the NACA
• The DC-8 Airborne Science Laboratory
https://x.com/NASAhistory/status/1899867992919347680The XS-11 and the Transition Away from Mandatory Jet Pilot Training for NASA Astronauts
By Jennifer Ross-Nazzal, NASA Historian
LYING IN SPACE has been associated with pilots ever since 1959, when NASA announced its first class of astronauts, known as the Mercury 7. Part of being a professional astronaut meant you were a certified jet pilot. Even the scientist-astronauts, so named to differentiate them from the astronauts assigned to the Mercury and Gemini missions, selected in 1965 and in 1967, received pilot training. Until NASA better understood the impact of weightlessness on the human body, Robert R. Gilruth, head of the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC) in Houston, believed all astronauts should meet this qualification.1 But when five scientist-astronauts from the 1967 class had a rocky transition, leading them to resign—due to their disinterest in flying at the cost of their scientific training and no spaceflight opportunities—it eventually led NASA to rethink their idea of having all astronauts become jet pilots. To avoid the dissatisfaction voiced by the scientist-astronauts, the agency made clear to the incoming class of 1978 astronauts, the first to be selected in more than a decade, that they would be generalists committed to the Space Shuttle Program.2
Most everyone in the 1967 group came from academia. Three of them came from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), including one from the Experimental Astronomy Lab, another from Geophysics, and a third from the Electrical Engineering Department. Some were faculty members, while others held graduate fellowships. Another, Donald L. Holmquest, was completing his medical internship at Houston Methodist Hospital and doctorate at the Baylor College of Medicine. William E. Thornton had recently completed a two-year tour of duty with the United States Air Force Medical Division at Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio, where he participated in flight surgeon training.3
Not everyone agreed that NASA needed more spaceflight crews. The consensus in the astronaut corps was that there
were not enough flights to go around and too many spacefar ers already. Adding this group of 11 was too many.
When the class arrived in Houston, the scientists and their families became part of the community united in the goal to send a man to the Moon and return him safely by the end of the decade. When asked about their reception, scientist-astronaut Joseph P. Allen recalled, “I would say that our welcome within the NASA community was warm on an individual level.”4 Robert A. R. Parker, another from the group, did not recall “any overt personal antagonism” from the others in the office.5
Their transition from academia into a scientific and technological agency was more complicated. Requirements and budgets had changed since their selection. Given space limitations, the new scientist-astronauts and their secretary sat in a cramped, windowless office they called Boy’s Town.6 Everyone from that group remembered how the Chief of Flight Crew Operations, Donald “Deke” K. Slayton, told them that there was no guarantee they would ever fly in space. “Gents,” Joe Allen remembered Deke saying, “I’ve got some bad news for you, and that is, we have been told by the government to take you, but we don’t have a job for you, not any one of you. And we’ve had to make this announcement, but if any of you or many feel that you have more important work to do elsewhere, you will make no enemies by resigning.”7 None chose to, at least not immediately.
Given their tenuous situation, they named their class the XS (pronounced “excess”)-11, a play on the situation they
found themselves in. NASA did not need them, yet there they were.
In the spring of 1968, every scientistastronaut from the 1967 class except Holmquest, who was completing his residency, left Houston to begin 53 weeks of Air Force flight training. The new astronauts logged 240 hours in three aircraft: the T-41A, T-37, and T-38—the aircraft astronauts used to maintain their flight proficiency at the MSC.8
Several of the scientistastronauts found that they exceeded all expectations at flight school. At the end of the program, leadership at each base recognized the top flyers. Allen received top marks at Oklahoma’s Vance Air Force Base, earning first place in each category: academics, acrobatics, contact (general flying), formation flying, and instrument flying. The Chief of the Astronaut Office, Alan B. Shepard, congratulated Allen for his outstanding skills: “You have made all of us at NASA very proud.”9 WilliamB. Lenoir, who went to Laughlin Air Force Base, “wondered how I ever lived without this. I took easily to it.” He ended up earning three of four awards, including the Commander’s Cup.10
Two of the XS-11, however, found that their interests fell outside of the cockpit. Transitioning from academic research to flying a jet was not their strength. In April 1968, Brian T. O’Leary dropped out of the program after only 15 hours
of flying time at Williams Air Force Base. “Somewhat to my surprise,” he wrote, “I found I just don’t care for it.” An astronomer by training, he left to pursue a career in planetary research.11 In his memoir he offered two additional reasons for his departure: “the test pilot dominance of astronaut life and the isolation of the Houston operation from the mainstream of scientific (and personal) activity.”12 John A. Llewellyn found flying difficult and also chose to leave the astronaut corps.13
The eight who returned to Houston found new and unique opportunities working on Apollo and Skylab, then known as the Apollo Applications Program. Joe Allen, Philip K. Chapman, Anthony W. England, and Bob Parker all served as mission scientists for the flights that landed on the Moon. Others served as support crew members and worked in Mission Control as CAPCOMs for these historic flights. Story Musgrave became the backup science-pilot for Skylab 2 and served as a CAPCOM. For the final two Skylab flights, Musgrave’s colleague, Bill Lenoir, served as backup science -pilot. Thornton participated in the successful Skylab Medical Experiments Altitude Test, a 56-day simulation of a Skylab mission, and later served as a member of the support crew for all three Skylab flights. Karl G. Henize served as a principal investigator for an experiment on board the workshop.
After the first two lunar landings, Chapman expressed concern about the precarious position the space agency found itself in. Public interest in human spaceflight had waned, budgets were in decline, and there was no sign of change on the horizon. Having worked for NASA for three years, Philip Chapman urged the remaining scientist-astronauts in the office, including those selected in 1965, to find an answer to the “crisis facing manned spaceflight.”14 Hearing no overwhelming response to his call, Chapman eventually resigned. When asked why, he said, “It appears that we have to make a choice between losing our competency as pilots or losing our competency as scientists.”15 Five years after his selection, he accepted a position with AVCO Everett Research Laboratories in Massachusetts and planned to return to MIT as a senior research associate.
For those who resigned from the corps and returned to their chosen field, the transition to NASA had not been easy. Some found it hard to reconcile their position as a scientist-astronaut with the flying requirements and other priorities in the office, which did not reflect their interests. Furthermore, the five who left were frustrated by their stalled astronaut career trajectories and feared that their scientific careers would be limited if they stayed in a position where they were afforded few opportunities to do research.
The feelings expressed by some of the scientist-astronauts about flight training stayed on the minds of NASA leadership in the coming years. When NASA announced its first class of Space Shuttle astronauts in January 1978, the question of flight training for the mission specialists came up. Johnson Space Center (JSC) Director Christopher C. Kraft told reporters, “I would prefer to punt” on training mission specialists to become pilots, “because until we get some experience with these people, we see what they want to do, they see what the situation really is in flying this vehicle and what they will be required to do and how they will experience the space flight, that it is premature to judge that.”16 Plus, taking astronauts and sending them to flight school was disruptive to their training program, and there was no guarantee the mission specialists, like some of the scientist-astronauts before them, wanted to learn to fly jets. Besides, NASA had a better sense of the impact of weightlessness on the human body with the experiments performed on the Skylab space station and the research gathered on previous missions. In the end, NASA did not ask the mission specialists if they wanted to attend flight school, and none were sent.
Still, to avoid another rash of resignations from the Astronaut Office, NASA made their expectations clear. The agency wanted applicants “willing to devote most of their careers in the program. They had to be very good in what they were doing. And yet they had to be willing to give it up to do more general things,” including flying in the T-38.17
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