Don L. Lind
I was excited to see the mailman pull up to the mailbox with a large white envelope - that means one of my sendouts has come back.
I used to have Don L. Lind's autograph on a flyer, not sure if I had his book at one time. I picked up this litho of him in his Skylab suit, then sent it off, getting it back within a week.
Lind hold the unenviable record of longest time between astronaut selection, in 1966, and making a spaceflight, in 1985 after 19 years. (Former Canadian astronaut Bjarni V. Tryggvason comes close, having been selected in 1983 but not flying until 1997.)
Lind served as backup science-pilot for Skylab 3 and Skylab 4 (the second and third manned Skylab missions) and as a member of the rescue crew for the Skylab missions.
Sources say he would have been the lunar module pilot for Apollo 20, had that mission not been canceled. And Lind came close to flying in July 1973 on the Skylab Rescue flight (along with Vance Brand.)
Previously, the Skylab 3 (Expedition 2) Apollo Command and Service Module separated from the second stage of its Saturn IB launch vehicle and began maneuvers to catch up with Skylab. During final approach to the Workshop, one of the steering thruster quads on the CSM began to leak nitrogen tetroxide oxidizer. The crew dutifully shut off the quad and used the three quads remaining to complete docking without further incident.
Later, a second quad began to leak, raising fears that tainted nitrogen tetroxide had damaged both quads. If this were true, then the remaining two quads and the CSM’s Service Propulsion System (SPS) main engine might also be compromised; though the individual quads and the SPS all had independent propellant systems, all contained oxidizer from the same batch.
If the leaks continued, moreover, nitrogen tetroxide might contaminate the inside of the CSM’s drum-shaped Service Module, damaging other systems - and necessitating the rescue of the crew
A Skylab rescue crew photo had been made, and I also used to have a pass of some sort for the flight, but the mission was canceled after analysis showed that the nitrogen tetroxide in the Skylab CSM’s propulsion system was not tainted, and that the two thruster quad failures lacked a detectable common cause.
Tests also showed that the Skylab crew could maneuver their CSM with a single functioning thruster quad.
Lind was a member of the astronaut office's operations missions development group, responsible for developing payloads for the early Space Shuttle orbital flight test (OFT) missions.
Lind was a mission specialist on STS-51-B (April 29 to May 6, 1985) and has logged over 168 hours in space.
Lind left NASA in 1986.
STS-51-B, the Spacelab-3 science mission, launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on April 29, 1985. This was the first operational Spacelab mission.
The seven man crew conducted investigations in crystal growth, drop dynamics leading to containerless material processing, atmospheric trace gas spectroscopy, solar and planetary atmospheric simulation, cosmic rays, laboratory animals and human medical monitoring.
Lind developed and conducted an experiment to make unique 3-dimensional video recordings of the earth's aurora. After completing 110 orbits of the earth, the Orbiter Challenger landed at Edwards Air Force Base, California, on May 6, 1985.
Don L. Lind
I was excited to see the mailman pull up to the mailbox with a large white envelope - that means one of my sendouts has come back.
I used to have Don L. Lind's autograph on a flyer, not sure if I had his book at one time. I picked up this litho of him in his Skylab suit, then sent it off, getting it back within a week.
Lind hold the unenviable record of longest time between astronaut selection, in 1966, and making a spaceflight, in 1985 after 19 years. (Former Canadian astronaut Bjarni V. Tryggvason comes close, having been selected in 1983 but not flying until 1997.)
Lind served as backup science-pilot for Skylab 3 and Skylab 4 (the second and third manned Skylab missions) and as a member of the rescue crew for the Skylab missions.
Sources say he would have been the lunar module pilot for Apollo 20, had that mission not been canceled. And Lind came close to flying in July 1973 on the Skylab Rescue flight (along with Vance Brand.)
Previously, the Skylab 3 (Expedition 2) Apollo Command and Service Module separated from the second stage of its Saturn IB launch vehicle and began maneuvers to catch up with Skylab. During final approach to the Workshop, one of the steering thruster quads on the CSM began to leak nitrogen tetroxide oxidizer. The crew dutifully shut off the quad and used the three quads remaining to complete docking without further incident.
Later, a second quad began to leak, raising fears that tainted nitrogen tetroxide had damaged both quads. If this were true, then the remaining two quads and the CSM’s Service Propulsion System (SPS) main engine might also be compromised; though the individual quads and the SPS all had independent propellant systems, all contained oxidizer from the same batch.
If the leaks continued, moreover, nitrogen tetroxide might contaminate the inside of the CSM’s drum-shaped Service Module, damaging other systems - and necessitating the rescue of the crew
A Skylab rescue crew photo had been made, and I also used to have a pass of some sort for the flight, but the mission was canceled after analysis showed that the nitrogen tetroxide in the Skylab CSM’s propulsion system was not tainted, and that the two thruster quad failures lacked a detectable common cause.
Tests also showed that the Skylab crew could maneuver their CSM with a single functioning thruster quad.
Lind was a member of the astronaut office's operations missions development group, responsible for developing payloads for the early Space Shuttle orbital flight test (OFT) missions.
Lind was a mission specialist on STS-51-B (April 29 to May 6, 1985) and has logged over 168 hours in space.
Lind left NASA in 1986.
STS-51-B, the Spacelab-3 science mission, launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on April 29, 1985. This was the first operational Spacelab mission.
The seven man crew conducted investigations in crystal growth, drop dynamics leading to containerless material processing, atmospheric trace gas spectroscopy, solar and planetary atmospheric simulation, cosmic rays, laboratory animals and human medical monitoring.
Lind developed and conducted an experiment to make unique 3-dimensional video recordings of the earth's aurora. After completing 110 orbits of the earth, the Orbiter Challenger landed at Edwards Air Force Base, California, on May 6, 1985.