File:AstronautAssignmentsChart.PNG

From Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Original file(1,574 × 2,035 pixels, file size: 560 KB, MIME type: image/png)

Captions

Captions

Add a one-line explanation of what this file represents
This graph image could be re-created using vector graphics as an SVG file. This has several advantages; see Commons:Media for cleanup for more information. If an SVG form of this image is available, please upload it and afterwards replace this template with {{vector version available|new image name}}.


It is recommended to name the SVG file “AstronautAssignmentsChart.svg”—then the template Vector version available (or Vva) does not need the new image name parameter.

Summary[edit]

Description
English: This chart graphically depicts all NASA astronaut spaceflight assignments in a timeline that spans the beginning of the program through to the end of the Apollo era. The names are listed by selection group in the order of their assignment to fly. Codes as explained in the legend illustrate each person's skills and accomplishments. The graph at the top of the chart is a simplified version of the graph 'File:Space Race 1957-1975 .jpg', as added to the Wikipedia article on the Space Race.

There was a significant difference in selection criteria for the first group versus the subsequent groups. The Mercury Seven were picked for a program that had the goal of orbiting an astronaut in a capsule, with no expectation of the much more complex tasks that were to be added to the human spaceflight program under the Kennedy administration - orbital rendezvous of Project Gemini and piloting the lunar module in Project Apollo. A noted distinction is that two of the seven in the first group had not completed a bachelor's degree, while roughly two-thirds of the subsequent groups had advanced degrees, many with PhD's. Another important difference is how the requirement for being a test pilot school graduate changed. The second group had two selectees (both civilian) who had not been to Test Pilot School (TPS). Subsequent classes had members who had not even flown in the flight test field.

A common misconception is that all astronauts were military test pilots who had been fighter pilots before being selected by NASA. (One example of how this myth is perpetuated is through Hollywood such as in this quote by Wally Schirra, portrayed by Mark Harmon, from episode 3 of the 1998 From The Earth To The Moon {at ~24min}, "We're all test pilots." He makes this statement while sitting next to his crewmate Walt Cunningham who had no flight test background.) This chart clearly shows that this is not the case, with exceptions being identified where non-test pilots are listed with the caveat "No Test[-Pilot Background]". This applied to two entire groups, 4 and 6, with only two of those 17 people having experience as fighter pilots (see Grp4/Grp5 paragraph below). For those who had been test pilots but did not go through the formal test pilot training program (Test Pilot School, indicated in the paragraph above), they are listed with the caveat "No TPS". Other non-fighter pilots are listed as coming from a background of having flown large "Heavy" aircraft (including Carpenter, Mitchell and Mattingly).

Three military services were well represented since the beginning of the program, with members selected from the Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps. An issue that gets totally ignored by the vast majority of sources on the topic is that astronauts were hired to accomplish a vertical landing on the Moon and that the experts in vertical flight were Army helicopter test pilot, yet the NASA astronaut corps had absolutely no one from a helicopter background, be it Army or the other services. But there was at least one Army helicopter test pilot, Jack Kluever, who was brought in to be an instructor in the Lunar Lander Training Vehicle (LLTV) to teach the astronauts vertical flight. The Army would not get its first astronaut, Bob Stewart, until 1978 when the first class of shuttle astronauts was picked. This was long after the Lunar Module was done flying. (But ironically, the Army was well represented in fiction, with the popular tv show I Dream of Jeannie portraying one of the two astronaut leads, Roger Healey, being an Army officer.)

The entire Group 4 is listed after Group 5 because Slayton treated Group 5 as having de facto seniority, as evidenced by support and backup assignments. Slayton's rationale for this was that members of the Group 4 scientists had their NASA training delayed with one year of Air Force Undergraduate Pilot Training. All members of Group 5 were already military rated pilots, therefore did not have such a delay in astronaut training. However two members of Group 4, Michel and Kerwin, were military pilots at the time of selection. The assignment chart shows their two names left-shifted in reflection of this fact. After Haise and Mitchell had been given backup assignments, Michel resigned.

The original requirement for the Command Module Pilot was to be a veteran with rendezvous experience. This was relaxed with the assignment of Eisele as backup to Apollo 10, followed by Anders as backup to Apollo 11. Worden and Mattingly were subsequently given backup CMP assignments as rookies. The first CMP to fly with intended solo duties but having no rendezvous experience was rookie Jack Swigert on Apollo 13, having been substituted from the backup crew a few days prior to launch.

Three crews who flew Gemini together later flew together as Apollo crewmates. (Previous backup assignments that were shared by flown crews are also indicated.

The X-15 program is compressed into one single row, with the grey line spanning first free-flight to last flight. Suborbital missions above 50 miles met the USAF definition for astronaut, and all thirteen of these flights are indicated with a parabolic trajectory symbol with the initials for the pilots' last name (with Engle's duplicated with his qualifications in the Group 3 section). Fatalities for the three pilots selected to the program are listed in line, with Kincheloe dying before ever getting an X-15 flight, and with Walker dying after having flown the only two X-15 missions that exceeded the 100km international definition for astronaut. Because of that distinction, Walker's name appears in bold black letters as with the orbital astronauts who all exceeded 100km. All 14 of the X-15 pilots are listed in a table at the bottom, with only 12 getting to fly the vehicle. This table lists all free-flights (abbreviated as "fflights") as well as flights exceeding 50 miles. Captive-carry flights and abortive drops are not indicated. Walker's name is listed with two '+' symbols, representing his two flights exceeding 100km. Armstrong and Engle both have a '+' after their rows because they are the two that went on to orbital missions with NASA. In 2014, Engle became the only surviving X-15 pilot. McKay is listed with the year of death as '75 and an 'X' is included because the injuries he had sustained from his X-15 landing mishap were a major factor in his early death at age 52. See "The X-15 Rocket Plane: Flying the First Wings Into Space" by Michelle L. Evans, reporting how McKay had sustained "brain damage, lung damage, a lot of spinal cord damage" (p159) and "the autopsy, it showed quite a bit of brain damage" (p163). So the 'X' indicates that his death happened as a result of an incident that happened during the timeframe of the program.

December 8th 2016, marked the first time that an entire astronaut class became deceased, with the death of John Glenn at age 95.[1] As of March 18, 2024, Jim Lovell is the only surviving member of NASA Group 2. Lovell is also the only surviving person to have flown to the Moon twice.

This chart was first constructed in 1997, with public distribution offered in 2001, via Usenet.
Date (originally constructed in 1997)
Source Own work by uploader, created with Powerpoint (with edits in GIMP) 8.5x11 aspect ratio
Author Tdadamemd
Other versions
Mercury 7 astronauts

Licensing[edit]

I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the following licenses:
w:en:Creative Commons
attribution share alike
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
You are free:
  • to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work
  • to remix – to adapt the work
Under the following conditions:
  • attribution – You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
  • share alike – If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same or compatible license as the original.
GNU head Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled GNU Free Documentation License.
You may select the license of your choice.
  1. Coincidentally, also the 75th anniversary of the United States making a formal declaration of war against Japan to enter World War II, with WWII being the last time that the US has made a formal declaration of war (see Declaration of war by the United States).

File history

Click on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time.

(newest | oldest) View (newer 10 | ) (10 | 20 | 50 | 100 | 250 | 500)
Date/TimeThumbnailDimensionsUserComment
current10:19, 16 April 2024Thumbnail for version as of 10:19, 16 April 20241,574 × 2,035 (560 KB)Tdadamemd (talk | contribs)Tom Stafford, first to pilot a Lunar Module around the Moon, died last month at age 93. Also, the month prior to that, Dick Truly, the first of 3 astronauts* to become NASA Administrator, died at age 86. * - 4 when counting Acting Administrator Fred Gregory. Truly flew two Shuttle orbital missions, as well as Enterprise ALT Approach & Landing Tests. Stafford flew 2 Gemini rendezvous missions, taking over for See & Bassett as prime on that docking flight. His final spaceflight was on Apol...
06:29, 27 November 2023Thumbnail for version as of 06:29, 27 November 20231,574 × 2,035 (560 KB)Tdadamemd (talk | contribs)Within this past month, 2 more lunar astronauts have died, including the first commander, Frank Borman, age 95, and TK Mattingly, age 87, of Apollo 13 fame, eventually reaching the Moon 2 years later. TK along with John Young were the only lunar astronauts to have flown the Shuttle into space (Haise & Engle both coming very close to that as well). 8 of 24 lunar astronauts are still alive. 2/3rds are no longer with us.
00:38, 27 September 2023Thumbnail for version as of 00:38, 27 September 20231,574 × 2,035 (559 KB)Tdadamemd19 (talk | contribs)Karol Bobko, 1st USAF Academy graduate in space, died last month at age 85. CORRECTION to his birth month. Other minor tweaks.
02:30, 4 January 2023Thumbnail for version as of 02:30, 4 January 20231,574 × 2,035 (559 KB)Tdadamemd19 (talk | contribs)Adding year of death for Walt Cunningham, who died today.
12:57, 18 October 2022Thumbnail for version as of 12:57, 18 October 20221,574 × 2,035 (559 KB)Tdadamemd19 (talk | contribs)Don Lind died on August 30th, 2022. And Jim McDivitt died on October 13th, 2022. Age 92 & 93, respectively.
06:12, 4 October 2021Thumbnail for version as of 06:12, 4 October 20211,574 × 2,035 (559 KB)Tdadamemd19 (talk | contribs)Philip Chapman had died at age 86. A change which should have been made prior to Michael Collins back in April. Steven Weinberg, who also died this year, was his PhD thesis advisor.
00:30, 29 April 2021Thumbnail for version as of 00:30, 29 April 20211,574 × 2,035 (559 KB)Tdadamemd19 (talk | contribs)Michael Collins died age 90. First to fly solo around the Moon while not in formation (no other vehicle orbiting). Born in Rome, died in Naples.
12:20, 24 January 2021Thumbnail for version as of 12:20, 24 January 20211,574 × 2,035 (559 KB)Tdadamemd19 (talk | contribs)Updates from past year: Jerry Carr, age 88 in Albany, NY. Bill Thornton, age 91 in Faison, NC.
23:20, 18 March 2020Thumbnail for version as of 23:20, 18 March 20201,574 × 2,035 (559 KB)Tdadamemd19 (talk | contribs)Al Worden, died age 88, first person to do a deep space EVA.
20:25, 16 April 2019Thumbnail for version as of 20:25, 16 April 20191,574 × 2,035 (559 KB)Tdadamemd (talk | contribs)Added Conrad's T-38 crash, Armstong's house fire & masters, with Garriott's death.
(newest | oldest) View (newer 10 | ) (10 | 20 | 50 | 100 | 250 | 500)

File usage on other wikis

Metadata