Robert Franklyn Overmyer (1936-1996)

[Orionid]

Robert Franklyn Overmyer (14.07.1936-22.03.1996)

Robert Franklyn Overmyer został wyselekcjonowany w ramach USAF MOL grupa 2 (1966) oraz NASA grupa 7 (1969).

112. człowiek w kosmosie.

Odbył 2 loty kosmiczne w programie STS, które trwały łącznie 12d 02h 23m 11s:
11.11.1982-16.11.1982 STS-5 Columbia/F-5 005:02:14:25
29.04.1985-06.05.1985 STS-51B Challenger/F-7 007:00:08:46

Pilot pierwszej 4-sobowej załogi wahadłowca.

1958 ukończył Baldwin Wallace College w Berea w stanie Ohio, uzyskując tytuł licencjata w dziedzinie fizyki.

1964 uzyskał tytuł magistra aeronautyki ze specjalizacją w inżynierii lotniczej w Szkole Podyplomowej Marynarki Wojennej Stanów Zjednoczonych.

1966 ukończył Aerospace Research Pilot School Sił Powietrznych Stanów Zjednoczonych w Edwards AFB w Kalifornii.

Pozostał w programie MOL do czasu jego zakończenia w 06.1969.

Do 11.1971 Overmyer uczestniczył w rozwoju inżynieryjnym stacji orbitalnej Skylab.
 
11.1971-12.1972 był członkiem załogi pomocniczej Apollo 16.
Podczas Apollo 16 i Apollo 17 pełnił funkcję operatora łączności załogi (CapCom) w Houston Control Center.

01.1973-07.1975 Robert Overmyer był członkiem załogi pomocniczej Apollo w projekcie Apollo-Sojuz.
Podczas lotu pracował jako operator łączności dla NASA w Centrum Kontroli Misji w Moskwie.
 
Po rozpoczęciu pracy nad programem promu kosmicznego został przeszkolony na pilota wahadłowca.

1976 brał udział w próbie podejścia i lądowania promu kosmicznego OV-101 Enterprise jako główny pilot eskortujący T-38 podczas pierwszego i trzeciego lotu swobodnego oraz jako członek załogi pomocniczej.

1979 został mianowany zastępcą kierownika projektu ds. rozwoju wahadłowca OV-102 Columbia odpowiedzialny za dokończenie produkcji i układanie płytek Columbii w KSC.

05.1986 zrezygnował z pracy w  NASA i opuścił korpus astronautów.
 
05.1986 założył firmę konsultingową Mach Twenty Five International, Inc.

03.1988-04.1995 stał na czele zespołu projektowego stacji kosmicznej w McDonnell Douglas Aerospace.

Całkowity jego nalot wyniósł 7500 godzin, z czego około 6000 na samolotach odrzutowych.

Autor artykułów w brytyjskim magazynie Space Flight News i amerykańskim AOPA Pilot Magazine.

22.02.1996 pułkownik piechoty morskiej w stanie spoczynku Robert Franklyn Overmyer zginął podczas katastrofy prototypowego samolotu VK-30 firmy Cirrus Design Corp w pobliżu miasta Duluth w Minnesocie.

Został pochowany na Cmentarzu Narodowym w Arlington w Wirginii.

https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/overmyer_robert.pdf

http://www.spacefacts.de/bios/astronauts/english/overmyer_robert.htm
http://www.astronautix.com/o/overmyer.html
https://www.worldspaceflight.com/bios/o/overmyer-r.php

https://mek.kosmo.cz/bio/usa/00112.htm
https://www.kozmo-data.sk/kozmonauti/overmyer-robert-franklin.html
https://www.astronaut.ru/crossroad/112.htm
https://www.april12.eu/usaastron/overmyer112ru.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Overmyer
https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Overmyer

https://twitter.com/ASE_Astronauts/status/1812502616980521072
https://twitter.com/nasahistory/status/885876547885961216

[Orionid]

All the MOL pilots were invited by NASA to come down to Houston to interview for the astronaut corps, but an unwritten rule quickly became apparent: Those over 35 years old need not apply.  Seven of the 14 surviving MOL astronauts—Truly, Crippen, Overmyer, Bobko, Fullerton, Hartsfield, and Peterson—made the cut.  “It was heartbreak for seven of us,” says Crews, “but it opened a larger door for the other seven when they got to go to NASA.”

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/a-sudden-loss-of-altitude-14456179/

Ex-Astronaut Is Killed
AP March 23, 1996

The pilot who commanded one the last successful flights of the space shuttle Challenger died Friday when the small test plane he was flying crashed.

Col. Robert Overmyer, was flying alone in the small-engine plane when it went down near Duluth International Airport at 12:30 P.M.

Colonel Overmyer, 59, was conducting tests on the VK30 prototype plane for manufacturer, Cirrus Design Corporation, which has a base in Duluth.
https://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/23/us/ex-astronaut-is-killed.html

Col. R.F. Overmyer, Commander Of Shuttle Missions, Dies at 59
AP March 24, 1996

Col. Robert F. Overmyer, 59, who commanded one of the last successful flights of the space shuttle Challenger, died on Friday when a small plane he was testing went into a spin and crashed.

Colonel Overmyer was wearing a parachute, but could not free himself, said Carolyn Overmyer, one of his daughters.

"Being a test pilot, he knows the risks," she said. "But that was the love of his life."

Colonel Overmyer was testing the small-engine VK30 prototype plane for the manufacturer, the Cirrus Design Corporation, when it went down near Duluth International Airport. Cirrus hired him as a test pilot last year.

Colonel Overmyer, of the Marine Corps, was born in Lorain, Ohio, and considered the Cleveland suburb of Westlake home. He once said that growing up to the sounds of low-flying aircraft from the Cleveland airport instilled in him an obsession for flying.

In the 1960's he was headed for participation in the Air Force's Manned Orbiting Laboratory Program, and in 1969, after that program had been canceled, he joined the astronaut corps of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. His first assignment was to aid in the engineering development of Skylab, the space laboratory that was launched in 1973.

He was a member of the support crew for Apollo 17, the last lunar mission. It was Colonel Overmyer's voice, as "capsule communicator," that reassured those aboard the spacecraft as it soared into orbit. From 1973 to 1975 he was a support crew member for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project.

In 1976, Colonel Overmyer began working with the space shuttle program. He was the pilot of the first fully operational flight of the shuttle Columbia, which was launched on Nov. 11, 1982. There had been four previous test flights.

Colonel Overmyer also commanded the Challenger mission that flew from April 29 to May 6, 1985. The mission carried various animals, including two squirrel monkeys. The monkeys were not Colonel Overmyer's favorite passengers; he expressed considerable annoyance when waste leaked from their cages into the shuttle laboratory and the cockpit.

The Challenger flew two more times before it exploded Jan. 28, 1986. Colonel Overmyer also served on the commission that investigated that explosion.

After leaving NASA, Colonel Overmyer was director of operations at McDonnell Douglas. He left the company last year.

In addition to his daughter Carolyn, of Clear Lake, Tex., Colonel Overmyer is survived by his wife, Katherine; another daughter, Patricia Armstrong of Woodland, Tex., and a son, Robert, of Manhattan Beach, Calif.
https://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/24/us/col-rf-overmyer-commander-of-shuttle-missions-dies-at-59.html

SKETCHES OF THE ASTRONAUTS ORBITING EARTH TODAY ABOARD THE SPACE SHUTTLE
Nov. 12, 1982

Vance D. Brand

In the final moments of his last trip into space, Vance Devoe Brand, commander of the current flight of Columbia, was made unconscious for almost a minute by noxious nitrogen tetroxide fumes that were sucked into the cabin. The incident occurred on the descent from an otherwise flawless nine-day mission in 1975 in which an Apollo spacecraft made a successful rendezvous with a Soviet Soyuz. Mr. Brand and the other two Apollo astronauts, Maj. Gen. Thomas P. Stafford of the Air Force and Donald K. Slayton, were hospitalized for three days.

The descent was unusually noisy with much radio static and excessive sound from the jet thrusters and the rush of air around the capsule.

At 30,000 feet, in the midst of all this, Mr. Brand failed to hit two switches. One would have turned off the thrusters that controlled the spacecraft's attitude in space, which were unnecessary in the atmosphere. It was gas from the thrusters that entered the cabin. The other switch was to activate the automatic system that deployed the spacecraft's parachutes.

''I was surprised when they didn't come out, and I quickly punched the manual button,'' Mr. Brand said. The Apollo then floated down to a perfect landing in the Pacific.

A veteran of nearly 7,000 hours flying time in military aircraft, Mr. Brand, blond, gray-eyed, 5 feet 11 inches tall and now 51 years old, is described by a colleague as ''brilliant, with a reservoir of calm, unflappable confidence'' and a boyish grin.

He lists running, hiking, skiing and canoeing as recreational interests, but admits that training for a space flight leaves little time for such things and not even as much time as he would like for his family. He is married to Beverly Ann Whitnel and has five children, four by a previous marriage.

Mr. Brand was born in Longmont, Colo., attended high school there and majored in business administration at the University of Colorado, graduating in 1953. He was also commissioned in the Marine Corps and soon entered flying training. After several assignments, including a tour as a fighter pilot in Japan, he returned to civilian life as a flight test engineer and experimental test pilot for Lockheed.

In 1960 he earned a bachelor of science degree in aeronautical engineering at the University of Colorado and, in 1964, a master's degree in business administration at University of California at Los Angeles.

He joined the space program in 1966. He was a support crewman for the Apollo 8 and 13 missions; backup command module pilot for Apollo 15 and backup commander for Skylab 3 and 4. He believes the Apollo-Soyuz mission was a remarkable demonstration of international technical cooperation.

''We demonstrated that the two sides could coordinate scientific minds and very complicated systems and make it all come off very well,'' Mr. Brand said. He does not expect anything like it to happen again soon.

Robert F. Overmyer

Early in his career Col. Robert Franklyn Overmyer of the Marine Corps, co-pilot of the Columbia in its fifth orbital mission, seemed destined to fly a space station. In the 1960's he was headed for participation in the Air Force's Manned Orbiting Laboratory Program, and after that program was canceled he joined the space agency's astronaut corps in 1969.

Had the Overmyer home not been in the path of planes at the Cleveland airport, he might have chosen another career. The lowflying air traffic instilled an obsession with flying in him.

''I went into the Marine Corps and became a jet pilot,'' he said recently. ''I became an aeronautical engineer. I decided I wanted to be a test pilot.''

His first assignment with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration was to aid in the engineering development of Skylab, the space laboratory that was launched in 1973 and dropped out of orbit in 1979 after being used by three astronaut crews. He then came tantalizingly close to going to the moon, serving on the support crew for Apollo 17, the last lunar mission. It was Colonel Overmyer's voice, as ''capsule communicator,'' that reassured those aboard the spacecraft as it soared into orbit.

He played a similar role for the Apollo-Soyuz project that led to the docking of Soviet and American spacecraft in 1979. He acted as the American capsule communicator at the space center near Moscow. While there, he said recently, he heard a strange ripping sound as he tilted his chair back. Underneath he found torn wires that he assumed had served an eavesdropping device to the floor. Cleveland Suburb Is Home

Robert F. Overmyer, now 180 pounds and almost six feet tall, was born July 14, 1936, in Lorain, Ohio, on the shore of Lake Erie. He considers his home Westlake, on the outskirts of Cleveland.

In 1954 he was graduated from Westlake High School and went to Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, Ohio, where he was awarded a bachelor's degree in physics in 1958. He then joined the Marine Corps, took flight training and studied aeronautical engineering at the Naval Postgraduate School, where he received a master of science degree in 1964. The next year he attended the Air Force Test Pilots' School and was selected as an astronaut for the Air Force's abortive Manned Orbiting Laboratory.

He is married to the former Katherine E. Jones of Pittsburgh, and they have three children, Carolyn Marie, 16, Patricia Ann, 14, and Robert Rolandus, 12. Colonel Overmyer, his wife and oldest daughter are fliers, and he expects the same of his other children.

In astronaut training, Colonel Overmyer was introduced to a new diversion. To prepare himself for the weightlessness of space, he was required to work underwater, wearing scuba equipment. Plunging into the sea off California's Catalina Island has now become a favorite pastime.

''Diving down and swimming through the kelp there is like being in a cathedral,'' he said in a recent interview, adding that the kelp ''stretches from the ocean floor out over the top, about 90 feet high.''

The colonel also enjoys acrobatic flying in open-cockpit biplanes.

Joseph P. Allen 4th

While his colleagues roamed the valleys of the moon a decade ago, Joe Allen sat in the space center in Houston with headset and microphone, talking to them on the radio.

He was ''Capcom,'' the link between America's early space explorers and their earthbound supporters. He vicariously shared their joys, miseries and adventures while envying them their experience. But now, after 15 years of wishing to travel in space, the wish has become father to the deed.

Joseph Percival Allen 4th, a 45-year-old physicist who obtained his doctorate at Yale University in 1965, is one of the group of several scientist-astronauts that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration selected over the last two decades. And he is one of the two mission specialists who are accompanying the flight commander and pilot aboard the space shuttle Columbia on its latest mission.

The designers of the shuttle had to modify the seating arrangement aboard the space shuttle this time to accomodate four people instead of two, which gave Dr. Allen's colleagues the opportunity to remind him, as often as possible, that there would be no trouble in finding suitable places to stow his 5-foot 6-inch, 125-pound frame. The space agency's records show that, of all the male astronauts, Dr. Allen is the smallest. 'Nifty Experiments' in Space

In 1967, while working as a research associate at the University of Washington's nuclear physics laboratory, he was recruited by NASA to join the space program.

Dr. Allen saw the opportunity to be a part of the new scientific frontier in space. Referring to experiments in space, he said in a recent interview: ''Anybody that has an interest in that sort of thing would be naturally attracted. Any number of nifty experiments can be done in that frontier, so I was professionally intrigued.''

Before becoming an astronaut, Dr. Allen was a staff physicist at the Nuclear Structure Laboratory at Yale and was a guest research associate at Brookhaven National Laboratory. 2,700 Hours of Flying Time

As part of his early astronaut training, he completed a 53-week course in flying at Vance Air Force Base in Oklahoma. So far, he has logged more than 2,700 hours of flying time.

The astronaut-physicist was born in Crawfordsville, Ind., and is married to the former Bonnie Jo Darling. They have a 14-year-old son, David, and a 10-year-old daughter, Elizabeth.

In pursuing a life that is as physically active as time will permit, Dr. Allen enjoys handball, squash racquets, skiing and wind surfing.

He describes wind surfing as something like learning to ride a bicycle. ''You get pretty discouraged at first because you keep falling off,'' he said. ''But then something clicks and you start moving in one direction pretty well. The next thing you know, you're moving all over the lake.''

William B. Lenoir

William B. Lenoir, mission specialist on the Columbia's fifth flight, began his career as an astronaut by mailing a coupon, clipped from the journal Science, to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The space agency was advertising for scientistastronauts; Dr. Lenoir, then an engineering professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says he thought it was ''time to get a little breath of air.''

''I had decided to take at least a couple of years away from M.I.T.,'' Dr. Lenoir said. Since his research had been in the remote sensing of earth from satellites, he decided to give space a try.

After filling out ''three reams of paper'' the space agency sent in reply to his coupon, Dr. Lenoir joined NASA in 1967. As an astronaut, he learned to fly jet aircraft and now has more than 2,900 flight hours in them. But the liftoff yesterday marked his first trip into space, Was in Skylab Program

He served as backup astronaut in 1973 for the second and third manned missions in the Skylab program, Skylab 3 and Skylab 4, In 1974-76 he was leader of the NASA Satellite Power Team, concerned with investigating the potential of large satellite power systems to generate power for consumption on earth. His duties on the Columbia includes overseeing the launching of the two commercial satellites the shuttle took aloft.

Dr. Lenoir acknowledges an occasional career conflict with his wife Elizabeth, who is now serving her second term as Mayor of the Texas town of El Lago (population slightly more than 3,000). Explaining that El Lago politics are nonpartisan, he says he shares his reactions to political issues with Mrs. Lenoir, but takes a back seat in campaigns, when he works ''on the grunt level, you know, hammering in signs and passing out handbills.'' Until he became the object of publicity for the fifth shuttle flight, he says, he was known to some of his wife's associates not as an astronaut but only as the Mayor's husband. The Lenoirs have two children, William Jr., who is 17, and Samantha, 14. Educated at M.I.T.

William Lenoir was born March 14, 1939, in Miami, where his father, Samuel S. Lenoir, still lives. He attended primary and secondary school in Coral Gables, Fla., and then went to M.I.T., where he received his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1961, his master's degree in 1962, and his doctorate in 1968. He was an instructor there at M.I.T. in 1964-65, and in 1965 was appointed assistant professor of electrical engineering.

Dr. Lenoir is a registered professional engineer in Texas. Asked if he was excited about his Columbia assignment, he said ''It's unprofessional to be excited.''

''Interested and very much agog in anticipation,'' Dr. Lenoir added, were the more appropriate expressions for his state of mind.
https://www.nytimes.com/1982/11/12/us/sketches-of-the-astronauts-orbiting-earth-today-aboard-the-space-shuttle.html

[mss]

ASE @ 35th Planetary Congress in the Netherlands @ASE_Astronauts
Today, we remember ASE member C. Gordon Fullerton on his #birthday. Fullerton flew to space twice between 1982 and 1985 (STS-3 and STS-51-F). ✨

[Orionid]

22 March 1996. Death aged 59 of Robert Franklyn Overmyer, Colonel, United States Marine Corps, American test pilot and NASA astronaut. Died testing light aircraft Cirrus VK-30 wing for full-flap stall recovery characteristics at aft centre of gravity limits.

https://x.com/ron_eisele/status/1903206537251745994

[mss]

Dziś mija 89 rocznica narodzin tego byłego astronauty NASA - Roberta Franklyna Overmyera.
Odbył on dwie misję wahadłowcami:

• STS-5 Columbia/F-5 w dniach 11. - 17.11.1982
• STS-51B Challenger/F-7 w dniach 29.04. - 06.05.1985.

Całkowity nalot wynosi 12d02h23min11s;

Zginął  22.03.1996 r. w Duluth (stan Minnesota) w wieku 59 lat w katastrofie samolotu Cirrus VK-30.

[mss]

Association of Space Explorers @ASE_Astronauts

Today, we remember ASE member Robert Overmyer on his #birthday. Overmyer flew to space twice in 1982 and 1985 (STS-5 and STS-51-B). ✨

https://twitter.com/ASE_Astronauts/status/1944811749749752291

[Orionid]

14. lipca przypadła 90. rocznica urodzin.

Association of Space Explorers @ASE_Astronauts 5:01 AM · Jul 15, 2026
#ASEspotlight: Robert Overmyer 🌠
In November 1982, ASE member Overmyer reviewed the long printout of instructions and messages sent from Mission Control to Space Shuttle Columbia during STS-5.
Fun fact: He enjoyed water skiing!
Today, we remember Bob on his 90th birthday. ✨

https://twitter.com/ASE_Astronauts/status/2077227106015043635