Astronaut John Young died, who visited the moon and controlled the first shuttle

I also carried a sandwich to the spacecraft!

In the USA, on January 5, astronaut John Young died, a man with one of the brightest quarries in the history of space development. Yang was 87 years old. He ended up in the second detachment of NASA astronauts in 1962 at the age of 32 and worked at the agency 42, taking part in three different programs of manned flights - “Jamini”, “Apollo” and “Space Shattle”.

Young flew into space six times and became the first person who achieved such a result (now the record - seven times). His first flight in 1965 was the first piloting launch as part of the Gemini program. This flight is also known thanks to a sandwich with beef, who Yang carried on board (it is believed, secretly) and suddenly offered the commander of the ship Gus Grissoom instead of food for astronauts, which they had to eat during the flight.

The incident caused the dissatisfaction of several congressmen, and, as Young later wrote in the memoirs, the NASA leadership had to assure them that the agency took measures against the "appearance of the sandwiches with beef in the following flights."

John Young flew twice to the moon. In 1969, as part of the Apollo-10 mission, he participated in the general rehearsal of the landing of people to the moon and after the separation of the lunar module that imitated the adjustment, became the first person who alone took a flight in the lunar orbit.

For the second time, with the Apollo 16 mission in 1972, he spent three days on the moon with Charles Duke. During his stay there, Yang at some point forgot that there was a communication session with the Earth and he was heard not only by Duke-and he complained to his partner in gases in the intestines from orange juice, which they drank in large quantities to increase the level of potassium. In addition, he said on the air the word Fucking, saying : “I have not eaten so many citrus fruits in 20 years! I’ll say what: in the next damn 12 days I will not eat a single one! ” From the official transcription of negotiations, this word was cut out, but an audio recording was published (in the video - with bills):

In 1974, John Young headed the NASA astronauts. In 1981, he became the commander of the first flight in the program of reusable spaces of Space Shattl. According to The Washington Post, he explained that he was recommended to appoint the chief astronaut. “At that time I was the main thing,” Yang added. The peculiarity of the flight was that before that the shuttle was not experienced in unmanned mode. After 25 years, in an interview, he admitted that it was "probably a rather bold act."

In 1983, Young made his last flight on the shuttle of Columbia - this was the first launch of a shuttle with a crew of six people. When landing at the ship, auxiliary power plants lit up and the computer turned off, but Young successfully planted it.

Working in NASA, Young constantly raised flight safety issues. According to The Washington Post, the impetus for this was the death of Gas Grissom and other participants in the Apollo program during testing in 1967. After the Challenger Chattle disaster in 1986, in the internal document, he sharply criticized the leadership of the space agency, saying that the security of the astronauts was threatened for the sake of compliance with the schedule, and that the participants of the previous flights were “lucky”. “Whenever and wherever I find a possible security problem, I did everything possible to raise noise and attract attention to it,” he wrote in memoirs.

In 1987, he was transferred to the post of assistant director of the Lindon Johnson space center, where the NASA manned programs were being developed - in this position he oversaw, including security. From 1996, before retirement in 2004, he was the technical director of the center.

According to colleagues, Young was an excellent engineer and pilot. Astronaut Charles Bolden said that for all the time in aviation he practically did not meet such as Young and - "Everyone got into his planes, and John and Hut [astronaut Robert Gibson] put them on themselves." After the death of Yang, several astronauts called him their hero, and Chris Hadfield and Scott Kelly - "astronaut of the astronauts."

Victor Davydov