Space Shuttle: 20 Years "Frost" page
I was so glad that through the Space Foundation I was able to get the signature of ret. Air Force Col. Gary E. Payton added to my "Space Shuttle: The First 20 Years" book.
Payton, in addition to being the No. 46 contributor, was one of a half-dozen or so who were signing copies of the book when it came out at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. I tried but could not secure a copy of that particular edition.
Payton was also the second Manned Spaceflight Engineer to sign my book, after Edward "Pete" Aldridge.
Payton was the first Manned Spaceflight Engineer to make a flight on the shuttle, on board STS-51-C/Discovery. MSEs were mostly Air Force payload specialists who flew on classified Department of Defense missions. There was a cadre of about 30 such astronauts, but only two flew, owing in part to the loss of Challenger. Colorado Springs, Colo., 22 June 2013.
When a chance came along to get Edward T. Lu at a presentation, I jumped at it. This was my second shot at getting Lu's signature. He had appeared at a Friday morning event at the Hayden Planetarium, but unfortunately just could not get out of bed. (I'm still kicking myself for not forcing myself, since Sochi Noguchi, a JAXA astronaut was there - also a hard autograph to get - as well as a Romanian cosmonaut.)
I was successful - well worth getting only two hours worth of sleep!
Lu flew on two shuttle missions - STS-84/Atlantis, the sixth Shuttle-Mir docking - and STS-106/Atlantis, an International Space Station assembly flight.
He had originally been scheduled for STS-101, but the postponement of the Russian Zvezda module launch led NASA to split the STS-101 mission into two flights. Lu, along with Yuri I. Malenchenko and Boris Morukov were spun off of 101 and placed in 106.
Malenchenko and Lu made up the first two-person ISS crew, Expedition 7. Originally, ISS Exp. 7 was to have been a three-person crew - among various incarnations Alexander Kaleri, who moved to Exp. 8 was to have rounded out the mission - but the loss of Columbia caused the change in the number of ISS astronauts on the station until the shuttle again became operational. (Alexander Poleshchuk was the original third member of ISS Exp. 7 as announced, then replaced by Sergei Moschenko. Apparently, Moschenko had problems with English, so he was replaced by Kaleri.)
And due to the loss of Columbia, Lu became the first American astronaut to launch and land in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
This page also shows Lu's STS-84 crewmates (along with Mario Runco), so I had him sign this page. Linthicum Heights, Md., 10 Sept. 2014.
Space Shuttle: 20 Years "Frost" page
I was so glad that through the Space Foundation I was able to get the signature of ret. Air Force Col. Gary E. Payton added to my "Space Shuttle: The First 20 Years" book.
Payton, in addition to being the No. 46 contributor, was one of a half-dozen or so who were signing copies of the book when it came out at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. I tried but could not secure a copy of that particular edition.
Payton was also the second Manned Spaceflight Engineer to sign my book, after Edward "Pete" Aldridge.
Payton was the first Manned Spaceflight Engineer to make a flight on the shuttle, on board STS-51-C/Discovery. MSEs were mostly Air Force payload specialists who flew on classified Department of Defense missions. There was a cadre of about 30 such astronauts, but only two flew, owing in part to the loss of Challenger. Colorado Springs, Colo., 22 June 2013.
When a chance came along to get Edward T. Lu at a presentation, I jumped at it. This was my second shot at getting Lu's signature. He had appeared at a Friday morning event at the Hayden Planetarium, but unfortunately just could not get out of bed. (I'm still kicking myself for not forcing myself, since Sochi Noguchi, a JAXA astronaut was there - also a hard autograph to get - as well as a Romanian cosmonaut.)
I was successful - well worth getting only two hours worth of sleep!
Lu flew on two shuttle missions - STS-84/Atlantis, the sixth Shuttle-Mir docking - and STS-106/Atlantis, an International Space Station assembly flight.
He had originally been scheduled for STS-101, but the postponement of the Russian Zvezda module launch led NASA to split the STS-101 mission into two flights. Lu, along with Yuri I. Malenchenko and Boris Morukov were spun off of 101 and placed in 106.
Malenchenko and Lu made up the first two-person ISS crew, Expedition 7. Originally, ISS Exp. 7 was to have been a three-person crew - among various incarnations Alexander Kaleri, who moved to Exp. 8 was to have rounded out the mission - but the loss of Columbia caused the change in the number of ISS astronauts on the station until the shuttle again became operational. (Alexander Poleshchuk was the original third member of ISS Exp. 7 as announced, then replaced by Sergei Moschenko. Apparently, Moschenko had problems with English, so he was replaced by Kaleri.)
And due to the loss of Columbia, Lu became the first American astronaut to launch and land in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
This page also shows Lu's STS-84 crewmates (along with Mario Runco), so I had him sign this page. Linthicum Heights, Md., 10 Sept. 2014.