NASA Astronaut Group 4

• 1. Introduction

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  NASA Astronaut Group 4, known inside the agency as "The Scientists," broke a rule that had governed American spaceflight since its beginning. Every astronaut before them had been chosen for their ability to fly military jets. These six were chosen for something else entirely: PhDs. On the 29th of June 1965, NASA introduced the group to the public at a press conference, and the space program would never look quite the same.

  The six men who stood before the cameras that day carried credentials from Harvard, Caltech, Stanford, and Northwestern. They were geologists, engineers, and medical doctors. NASA had recruited them knowing it would have to teach them to fly. The question that hung over all of them, though, was whether the agency that built the Mercury capsule around test pilots was truly ready to make room for scientists.

• 2. Why Scientists, Why Now

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  Sputnik 1 launched on the 4th of October 1957, and the shock it sent through American society was immediate. President Dwight D. Eisenhower responded by creating NASA as a civilian agency, partly to emphasize the scientific character of American space work over its military dimensions. Yet the earliest astronaut selection processes leaned hard on test pilot credentials, and scientists watching from universities found much to criticize.

  Project Mercury drew particular fire from researchers who felt the program was too narrow, too focused on demonstrating human endurance rather than conducting genuine inquiry. The Space Science Board of the National Academy of Sciences formally adopted a resolution at its meeting on the 10th and the 11th of February 1961 to support crewed exploration, signaling that the scientific community wanted a seat at the table.

  Yuri Gagarin's orbit of the Earth on the 12th of April 1961 changed the political calculus entirely. Kennedy's announcement on the 25th of May 1961, pledging to land a man on the Moon by the end of the decade, accelerated the entire program. A review commissioned by NASA and conducted at the State University of Iowa between the 17th of June and the 31st of July 1962 recommended explicitly that scientists be included in the astronaut corps, and that a scientist fly on the first Moon landing.

  Robert B. Voas, NASA's Assistant Director for Human Factors, put a formal proposal on paper on the 6th of May 1963. He argued that bringing scientists in would strengthen NASA's standing with Congress at a moment when the budget was under pressure. NASA officially announced its intention to recruit scientist astronauts on the 5th of June 1963, and a second announcement followed on the 1st of October 1964.

• 3. The Selection Gauntlet

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  The rules for applying were precise. Candidates had to be United States citizens, born on or after the 1st of August 1930, stand no taller than six feet, and hold a doctorate in the natural sciences, medicine, or engineering. The height limit was not negotiable; it was dictated by the dimensions of the Apollo spacecraft.

  By the deadline of the 31st of December 1964, a total of 1,351 applications had arrived. Roughly 200 were rejected immediately for failing the basic requirements of age, citizenship, height, or uncorrected vision. Contact lenses were considered unsuitable for the space environment, and the helmets astronauts wore could not fit glasses. That left 400 applicants passed along to the National Academy of Sciences for academic review; four of those 400 were women.

  The NAS selection board included Eugene Shoemaker, Thomas Gold, and seven other reviewers. They cut the field to fifteen. On the 2nd of May 1965, those fifteen candidates traveled to the United States Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine at Brooks Air Force Base near San Antonio, Texas, for medical examinations. Ten days later, on the 12th of May 1965, they faced a NASA interview panel that included Mercury Seven astronauts Alan B. Shepard and Donald K. Slayton alongside physicians and engineers. Six names emerged from that process.

• 4. The Six

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  Owen K. Garriott was born in Enid, Oklahoma, on the 22nd of November 1930. He had earned a PhD in electrical engineering from Stanford in 1960 and risen to associate professor there before NASA called. His academic background in electrical engineering would later make him a natural fit for Skylab's science operations.

  Edward G. Gibson, born in Buffalo, New York, on the 8th of November 1936, took both his master's degree and his doctorate in engineering from the California Institute of Technology, finishing in 1964. He left NASA in December 1974, returned in March 1977, and resigned a second time in October 1982, an arc that reflected the tensions the group as a whole experienced.

  Duane E. Graveline, from Newport, Vermont, and born on the 2nd of March 1931, had earned an MD from the University of Vermont College of Medicine in 1955 and added a master's in public health from Johns Hopkins. His tenure at NASA would be the briefest of all six. Joseph P. Kerwin, born in Oak Park, Illinois, on the 19th of February 1932, held a BA in philosophy from the College of the Holy Cross and an MD from Northwestern University Medical School. He qualified as a naval flight surgeon in December 1958 and earned his naval aviator wings in 1962, making him one of only two in the group who arrived already able to fly.

  F. Curtis Michel, born in La Crosse, Wisconsin, on the 5th of June 1934, completed his PhD in physics at Caltech in 1962, the same institution where he had earned his undergraduate degree. He later held a named chair, the Andrew Hays Buchanan Professorship of Astrophysics at Rice University. Harrison H. Schmitt, born in Santa Rita, New Mexico, on the 3rd of July 1935, brought a PhD in geology from Harvard, completed in 1964. Before selection, he had worked at the US Geological Survey's Astrogeology Center in Flagstaff, Arizona, training other astronauts in lunar geology, a role that put him closer to Moon mission planning than any of his future group members.

• 5. Learning to Fly

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  Of the six, only Michel and Kerwin arrived as qualified pilots. Michel had flown F-86D Interceptors in the United States and Europe during his Air Force service; Kerwin had qualified as a naval aviator at Beeville, Texas, in 1962. The other four were sent to Williams Air Force Base in Arizona for 55 weeks of flight training.

  All six then entered a shared curriculum with the nineteen pilot astronauts of NASA Astronaut Group 5. The schedule ran Monday through Wednesday in classrooms, with Thursdays and Fridays reserved for field work. The heaviest classroom loads fell on geology, at 112 hours, and astronomy, at 154 hours. Aerodynamics, rocket propulsion, and computers each received only 8 hours.

  Geology field trips took the group to the Grand Canyon, Meteor Crater in Arizona, Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico, the Horse Lava Tube System in Bend, Oregon, and the ash flow of the Marathon Uplift in Texas, as well as locations in Alaska and Hawaii. Survival training ran in three environments: jungle exercises in Panama, desert training near Reno, Nevada, and water survival at Naval Air Station Pensacola using the Dilbert Dunker. Thirty hours of briefings covered the Apollo spacecraft; twelve more focused on the lunar module.

  The group barely had time to settle into this routine before it lost its first member. On the 18th of August 1965, Graveline resigned after his wife, Carole Jane Tollerton, filed for divorce, accusing him of violent outbursts. NASA demanded the resignation to avoid a scandal and to signal expectations to others in the program.

• 6. Assignments and Frustrations

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  As early as 1967, it was clear that NASA would fly fewer missions than originally planned, and the scientists of Group 4 found themselves watching their chances narrow. The agency made provisions to keep pilot astronauts current in the cockpit; no equivalent concession existed for researchers trying to keep their laboratory careers alive. Apart from Michel, who could walk across Houston to Rice University, most found they could not maintain their previous scientific work.

  Edward Gibson became the first of the six formally named to a crew when, in April 1969, he was assigned to the Apollo 12 support crew. But the announcement in August 1969 of prime and backup crews for Apollo 13 and Apollo 14 was a breaking point. Eight members of the 1966 pilot group filled those slots, and Apollo 14 would be commanded by Mercury Seven veteran Alan Shepard. Michel resigned in September 1969. He was soon followed out the door by NASA scientists Donald U. Wise, Elbert A. King Jr., Wilmot N. Hess, and Eugene Shoemaker, all critical of the agency's treatment of researchers.

  The pressure produced a response. Deputy Administrator George Mueller wrote in September 1969 to Robert R. Gilruth, director of the Manned Spacecraft Center, asking him to give the matter his personal attention. On the 26th of March 1970, Slayton announced that Schmitt would serve as backup lunar module pilot on Apollo 15. Under the rotation system then in place, that assignment set Schmitt up to fly on Apollo 18.

• 7. The Moon and Skylab

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  Apollo 18 never flew. In September 1970, two more Moon missions were cancelled, leaving Apollo 17 as the final lunar landing. Frustration flared again. Associate Administrator Homer E. Newell Jr. made the case directly to NASA Administrator James C. Fletcher, recommending that a scientist fly on the next Moon mission and that two scientists be assigned to each Skylab mission. Slayton held out for two trained pilots per Skylab crew, but on the 13th of August 1971, Schmitt was named to the prime crew of Apollo 17.

  Apollo 17 launched in December 1972. As the mission's lunar module pilot, Schmitt became the twelfth person to walk on the Moon. His training at the USGS Astrogeology Center, where he had once taught other astronauts to read lunar terrain, came full circle. He was also the last scientist to step onto the lunar surface, a distinction that the cancellation of later missions made permanent.

  Garriott, Gibson, and Kerwin each flew on Skylab, each as the sole scientist on a three-person crew with the title of Science Pilot. Kerwin flew on Skylab 2 in May and June 1973, the station's first crew. Garriott followed on Skylab 3 in July 1973. Gibson flew on Skylab 4, the third and final crew, from November 1973 to February 1974. Garriott flew a second time on STS-9 in November 1983 as a mission specialist on the Spacelab mission, the only member of the group to reach orbit twice. Schmitt left NASA in August 1975 to run for the United States Senate in New Mexico, and he won on the 2nd of November 1976, serving one term before returning to academia as an adjunct professor of engineering physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.