The Scientist Astronauts

Each of the three Skylab crews also included one of the members of NASA’s first group of scientist astronauts, selected in June 1965. Six men had been selected in the group of scientists: Owen Garriott, Ed Gibson, Duane Grav­eline, Joe Kerwin, Curtis Michel, and Harrison Schmitt.

By 1962 the recommendation had been made to NASA that it should add scientists to the crews it would be sending to the moon. It was argued they would be able to more effectively conduct research there than the pilots that then made up the corps. The idea that scientists should be included in the first lunar landing crew was soundly rejected by management who argued that spaceflight to another world was a challenging prospect, requiring the skills of expert pilots. Including a scientist on the crew to conduct research on the lunar surface would be of no use if they were unable to reach the sur­face safely to begin with.

However, the agency conceded that there would be benefits to recruiting scientists into the astronaut corps for future missions and in 1964 partnered with the National Academy of Sciences to open its first scientist astronaut application process.

To be eligible to apply, candidates had to have been born no earlier than 1 August 1930 and be no more than six feet tall. Applicants had to be U. S. citi­zens and most importantly for this round had to hold a doctor of philosophy

5- Members of the second Skylab crew: (from left) Owen Garriott, Jack Lousma, and Alan Bean.

degree (PhD) or equivalent in natural sciences, medicine, or engineering. While no flight experience was required, it would count in an applicant’s favor.

Within two and a half months of announcing the selection process, NASA had received 1,351 applications. The agency screened those applications and submitted 400 of them to the Academy of Sciences for review. Hoping to bring roughly ten to twenty new candidates into astronaut training at the end of the process (to ensure enough made it through the training), NASA asked the academy to select fifty finalists from which it could pick its candidates.

After its review though, the National Academy of Sciences only felt that sixteen of the applicants were sufficiently qualified to recommend to NASA. The agency then put those finalists through its selection process of medical and psychological testing and interviews and ended up with only six men it found worthy of bringing in as astronauts. “For nine months NASA and the National Academy of Sciences screened over thirteen hundred appli­cants and, as I joked at the time, in all of the U. S., NASA could find only six healthy scientists,” recalled Ed Gibson.

One of the six, Duane Graveline, left the corps very shortly after reporting for duty because of concerns over publicity concerning his wife’s decision to

file for divorce. Kerwin and Michel were already jet qualified, but the other three began their astronaut careers by going through flight training at Wil­liams Air Force Base in Arizona. “Two of our group had pilot wings from the military,” Gibson said. “nasa sent the remaining four of us off to flight school to get Air Force wings. We all did reasonably well. I was second in my class of forty-two; I would have been first but I screwed up an aerody­namics exam. It was very embarrassing for a guy with a PhD that includ­ed a lot of theoretical aerodynamics. Since then I acquired 2,200 hours of flight time in the T-38 and additional hours in other aircraft including heli­copters. I felt that in a flash my lab stool had been ripped out from under me and replaced by a T-38 ejection seat.”

Much had been made of the role of the scientist astronauts within the astronaut corps. Certainly the members of Group 4 were treated different­ly by management than their pilot counterparts, but with reason: they were different. Some of the scientist astronauts, particularly in the next group selected, chafed at a treatment they saw as relegating them to second-class – citizen status within the corps. Others believed that it made sense that the two types of astronauts would perform different functions and did not mind the role they’d been assigned. Yet others fell somewhere in the middle.

Joe Kerwin recalled: “There was a pilots’ meeting in the office confer­ence room every Monday morning at eight o’clock. At my first one I sat in the back of the room while Al Shepard told the group that we were here. Then he said, ‘Headquarters has agreed that we can select another group to report next year.’ Dick Gordon asked, ‘Are they gonna be pilots?’ Al said, ‘I certainly hope so.’

“A couple of weeks later Shepard said, ‘We’ll be putting together crews for the last three Gemini flights soon. Any volunteers? (a pause) Put your hand down, Kerwin.’ We both smiled. It was clear that these were not the flights they had in mind for us. Nor was I ready for a flight.”

Whatever their relationship to the powers that be, the scientist astronauts’ personal relationships with their fellow astronauts was generally positive. “In my case, one of the latest [Group 5 astronauts], Joe Engle, was my neighbor on the right, while another, Al Worden, was my neighbor to the left at our homes in Nassau Bay,” Garriott said. “My relationship with them and oth­ers in the office has always been excellent.”

Kerwin explained that while their classmates were in flight training, he and Michel were in a sort of limbo status while awaiting the return of the others and the selection of Group 5 so their official training could begin. “I was given a nice, big office and shared a secretary with about three other astronauts,” he said. “It was explained that training for the two of us would have to wait until the arrival of the next group to be selected, the ‘Original Nineteen’ as they would call themselves, in the spring of 1966. So I was left pretty free to roam the center, learning what I could on my own. The oth­er astronauts were always friendly, but they didn’t pay much attention to us (and Curt spent a lot of time back at Rice University). Only two, Charlie Bassett and Neil Armstrong, made it a point to drop by my office, welcome me aboard, and offer to answer any questions I had. But two was enough. That was a great morale booster.

“I thought about spending some time in the clinic, keeping my medical skills fresh, and asked Captain Shepard for his concurrence,” Kerwin said. “Al thought about it for a minute then said, ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea. We’ll have a lot of other things for you to do.’ I accepted that as a dual mes­sage. One, my first priority had to be to learn, contribute, and prove myself as astronaut material. Two, maybe it wasn’t a great idea to spend too much time with the doctors. And there was some sense to that; I might put myself into a conflict of interest situation treating fellow astronauts or their dependents.

“It wasn’t long before Jim Lovell, who’d been in my squadron at Cecil Field, Florida, before he came to Houston, dropped by and asked me to help design him a primitive exercise program. He was training to fly with Frank Borman on the longest spaceflight planned to date—Gemini 7, which would orbit the Earth for fourteen days. The cockpit was about the size of the front seat of a Volkswagen Beetle, so Frank and Jim would get pretty well acquainted during the flight, and they had very little room for exercise gear. They’d selected an Exergenie—a compact device consisting of ropes passed through a core where the pull friction could be set. You looped two ropes over your feet and pulled on wooden handles at the other ends with your hands against the resistance. I sat down with Rita Rapp, a NASA physi­ologist and a wonderful worker, and together we designed a routine for Frank and Jim to use to stretch those unused back and leg muscles.

“At that time and for a long time thereafter, the astronauts considered exer­cise in flight to be their prerogative—an operational activity, not a medical one. So supplying their own hardware and protocol was business as usual to them. But Dr. Chuck Berry, the chief flight surgeon at msc, thought other­wise. He considered the fourteen-day Gemini flight to be NASA’s one oppor­tunity to certify humans for the upcoming flights to the moon and wanted control of and data from exercise. I was called to Chuck’s office on the eighth floor of the main building at msc (it was Building 2 then), and he told me that meddling in medical business without his concurrence could adverse­ly affect my career. I said ‘Yes, sir,’ and walked down to the other end of the hall where Deke Slayton, Al Shepard’s boss, was located. Deke listened to my story thoughtfully and responded with five words: ‘Keep doing what you’re doing.’ I did. And from then on, I got a lot of assignments to go to meetings and participate in teams where medicine and operations met and sometimes clashed. It was a lot of fun, and most of the time we all got along famously. I was accepted as a loyal member of the astronaut corps, and I had an opportunity to learn a lot about life-support systems, spacesuits, bends, and exercise that was valuable later on.”

Alan Bean recalled that he and the others already in the corps were uncer­tain what to make of the new arrivals when they were brought in. “I guess it would have to be said that we were kind of wait and see,” he said. “You tend to not want any other people to come in because you want to take all the flights. So any time some new group of anybody shows up, even though you know you have to have younger people, you still haven’t had your fill.

“And of course, scientists. We’re all test pilots; we’re saying I don’t know if those guys can cut it. But they don’t show up; they go off to flight train­ing. By the time they come, we’re aware that they’ve gone through military flight training. We also know their grades and stuff, sort of. So we’re then changing our attitude a little. They got through flight training, and some of those guys were better than we were, and that’s good. And, of course, then we started to fly with them, and our attitude began to change even more.” The use of the term “scientist astronaut” surely affected the corps’ ini­tial perception of its newest members. “I still think the word scientist wasn’t a good word,” Bean said, explaining that it likely prompted a “knee-jerk reaction” among the pilot astronauts. “Over time, though, that distinction lessened as their flying proficiency was recognized and some even quali­fied as ‘instructor-pilots’ in a T-38 jet. Then too their contributions to their assigned crews in geology, medical, or solar science training became very positive points in their relationships to other pilots. Although members of Group 4 may have come in as ‘scientists’ rather than ‘pilots,’ well before flight their complementary talents earned them both acceptance and respect from their peers.

“And so by the time we worked together, and they were assigned, I thought of Owen as a scientist when we did science, but as far as flying airplanes, we thought of him as just as good as we were. So it was more like, there was nev­er any flying thing that I would have said ‘I’d better do that, or Jack should do it, but not Owen.’”

By the time of Skylab, there remained only three unflown members of Group 4 as it rather nicely worked out, one for each of the three missions. Michel, realizing that an assignment on one of the Apollo flights was unlikely and unsure when another mission would be available, had decided about two months after the Apollo 11 mission to leave the corps and return to teaching and research.

Schmitt, considered the best fit of Group 4 for a lunar mission by merit of his background as a geologist, was assigned to Apollo 17 as Lunar Module pilot and walked on the moon in December 1972. That left Garriott, Gibson, and Kerwin to fill the role of science pilot for the three Skylab crews.

Owen Garriott said, “Occasionally I’m asked if I was disappointed in not having a chance to go to the moon—only into orbit around the Earth (even though [the flight was] many times longer than a lunar flight). In fact, the answer is ‘no,’ and if given the choice of only one or the other, I would pick two months on Skylab. Why?

“There are several reasons. First, that is where my background training (electrical engineering, physical science research on the Earth’s ionosphere) can be of most use. In fact, all scientist astronauts have found that regard­less of their backgrounds, what the scientist astronaut job most requires is the skills of a scientist-generalist, someone who thinks like a researcher and has broad enough knowledge and experience to interpret what he sees. I would like to think that I fit the role of the generalist placed in a position to work with world authorities in several disciplines in the conduct of their research.

“Secondly, all of us in the astronaut office had a marvelous opportuni­ty to travel the globe with world-class geologists studying (principally) vol­canic regions thought to resemble conditions on the moon. We all greatly enjoyed these ‘geology field trips.’ I also soon realized that the pilot astro­nauts with whom we traveled were excellent observers and keenly interested in the research objectives of our instructors. For the three nongeologist sci­entist astronauts, I believe we would have been hard pressed to do any bet­ter job than the pilots while on the moon’s surface, whereas we might have had (arguably, I must admit) a modest advantage in Earth orbit with many disciplines to represent.

“And finally, there is the issue of personal satisfaction. World-record dura­tions, working in several fascinating disciplines more suited to my back­ground, more time for reflection, and camaraderie all make a Skylab mis­sion the first choice for me.”

Owen Garriott’s path to the astronaut corps began at the dawn of the space age. Garriott was born in Enid, Oklahoma, in 1930 and received a bachelor of science (bs) degree in electrical engineering from the Universi­ty of Oklahoma in 1953. He had earned the degree on a Naval rotc schol­arship, and so he served from 1953 until 1956 as an electronics officer in the U. S. Navy. After completing his obligation, Garriott continued his educa­tion, earning a master of science (ms) degree and a PhD from Stanford Uni­versity in electrical engineering in 1957 and i960, respectively.

After completing his master’s degree in 1957, Garriott was working on choosing a research topic for his PhD. Inspiration came in the form of the “beep-beep” heard ’round the world. After Sputnik was launched on 4 Octo­ber, almost all of the graduate students and professors in the Radio Propa­gation Laboratory went out to the equipment set up at the field site and lis­tened to the signal sent back by the Soviet satellite as it orbited the Earth. Garriott selected his topic: propagation of signals from orbiting satellites through the planet’s ionosphere.

After earning his PhD, Garriott stayed on at Stanford, teaching and con­ducting research, eventually becoming an associate professor. He continued to follow the space program, and his interest grew when, after Alan Shepard became the first American in space, he realized that there might be a need for astronauts with research backgrounds in the future. Looking ahead to what might make a candidate more appealing if that were to come about, Garriott acted on a long-held ambition to earn a pilot’s license.

When NASA decided to seek applications for scientist astronauts, Gar­riott was ready and waiting. “In May of 1965, I was waiting hopefully for a decision from NASA as to whether my life (and my family’s) might under­go a major reorientation,” Garriott recalls. “I was teaching a class at Stan­ford University and coming up on the end of the quarter when a call arrived from NASA wanting to verify that I would be available for a telephone call later that day. ‘Yes, of course!’

“But I also had a lecture scheduled later in the afternoon. So I asked the secretary to whom the call should come to be alert for a call from NASA and to be sure and let me know about it. But if I was giving a lecture, just to come to the door and signal hand to ear that a call had arrived. Naturally, the call came in the middle of the lecture, Sally signaled as planned, and I decided to complete all (or most) of the lecture and call them back. Not knowing who for sure was calling and not knowing what the decision might be was more than the usual distraction!

“But I returned the call in fifteen minutes or so and apologized profuse­ly for being unable to come to the phone immediately. Al Shepard did not seem concerned and provided the hoped-for question—‘Would you like to come to work for NASA as a scientist astronaut?’ Again ‘Yes, of course,’ start­ed the brief exchange. A quick telephone call home alerted the wife, and we waited for an official announcement because I never felt certain of selection until nasa had made some public commitment.”

“I started out being president of my first grade class two years in a row,” joked Ed Gibson, in a NASA oral history interview, of his inauspicious aca­demic beginnings. Self-described as “not a good student” in elementary school, Gibson said the only subjects that really captured his interest were science and astronomy. He recalls, as a young child, drawing pictures of the solar system. Though Gibson, born in 1936 in Buffalo, New York, improved his academic performance in high school, the interest in science remained. After high school he earned his bachelor’s degree in engineering at the Uni­versity of Rochester. The choice was inspired by his father, who wanted his son to work at his marking-devices company and thought engineering skills would be a valuable addition to the business.

A desire to fly for the Air Force was shot down by a bone condition that was then a disqualification for being a pilot. Unable to fly planes, he decid­ed to pursue building them. Rather than joining his father’s business after earning his bachelor’s degree, Gibson went on to earn a master’s and then a doctorate in engineering from the California Institute of Technology.

His childhood interest in astronomy and space never went away, and while in graduate school, he followed the Mercury and Gemini programs with great fascination, “never thinking [he’d] have a chance to be involved in them.” After completing graduate school, he took a job as a senior research scientist with the Applied Research Laboratories of Philco Corporation at Newport Beach, California. It was while he was working there that his wife, Julie, read him an article at breakfast one morning saying that NASA was looking for scientists who wanted to fly in space. “I thought long and hard about it, and 8 o’clock that morning, applied,” Gibson joked. “I had no qualms, whatsoever.”

Of the four scientists astronauts who ended up flying, Joe Kerwin’s path had the most in common with that of the first groups selected—it involved many hours in the cockpit of a military jet.

Born in 1932, Kerwin is a native of Oak Park, Illinois. After earning a bach­elor’s degree in philosophy from Holy Cross, followed by his doctor of med­icine degree from Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago in 1957, Kerwin completed an internship at the District of Columbia General Hospital. At that point, under the Berry Plan, which allowed medical stu­dents to be exempted from the draft while completing their school or intern­ships, Kerwin was called up for service. Among the options he was offered was the last seat in flight surgeon training at the U. S. Navy School of Avia­tion Medicine in Pensacola, Florida. Though it would mean an additional six months of service, Kerwin was intrigued by the prospect of getting some flying time and signed up. After flight surgeon training, he was assigned to the Marine Corps Air Station at Cherry Point, North Carolina.

During his tour, the Marines with whom he was assigned would allow him to start their fighters and taxi them around. “The bug really bit me,” Kerwin said, and he applied for a Navy program in which a select number of flight surgeons were trained to become naval aviators with the idea that it would provide them a better background for performing their duties. He was accepted to the program and transferred from the naval reserve to the regular Navy. While assigned to an air wing at Cecil Field, Florida, a cou­ple of friends he had made among the aviators asked him for a favor—help filling out the medical portion of their applications to become astronauts. Those two pilots were Alan Bean and Jim Lovell.

When the scientist astronaut program was announced in 1964, his wife asked him whether he wanted to try for it. He was skeptical of his chances but finally submitted his application, and the combination of a physician with two thousand hours of jet flight time proved too good to pass up. Garriott recalled, “At our first meeting for the ten-day physical examinations at the School for Aerospace Medicine leading up to scientist astronaut selection, I had a ‘funny’ in one electroencephalogram test. The physicians required that I stay up all night—as an extra stressor—for a repeat test the next morning. New acquaintance and probable competitor Joe Kerwin graciously offered to stay awake about half the night with me just to help me avoid falling asleep. He ended up staying until 5:30 in the morning. It worked, and we were both selected. But those gestures are never forgotten!”