Land ... sea ... space
NAVAL AVIATORS
have led the way
T
he United States Navy and NASA have had a working relationship
for over 55 years now and they continue to complement each other
in many different aspects of space exploration. This relation was
forged way back in the late 1950s when NASA first began to look for pilots
to become Astronauts that would eventually fly aboard their new Mercury spacecraft. In fact three of the original seven Mercury astronauts
came from the ranks of the Navy. Wally M. Schirra, Scott Carpenter, and
the first American to go into outer space, Alan B. Shepard, were all Navy
pilots. The Air Force added three of their own to the program, Gordon
Cooper, Gus Grissom, and Deke Sleyton. Then toss in one famous Marine named John Glenn, and you’ve rounded out the original seven.
To date, there have been 330 NASA Astronauts, 201 of them
have come from the military, and of that 201, 83 of them were
from the Navy. That puts them in the number 1 spot, for now
at least, beating out the Air Force by just two astronauts.
And it’s not just astronauts that the Navy provides to NASA, they provide other services as well, but we’ll get to that a little later. First some
pioneering astronauts from the Navy that you may have heard of.
Story by Lloyd Campbell
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