Hi, it's me, Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut.
Unfortunately, I have some bad news to share with everyone and that is that we just found
out today that astronaut John Young has passed away.
John Young is honestly one of my all time favorite astronauts.
I just wanted to take a quick moment and share with you some of my favorite memories of him
and just help you remember why John Young was an incredible human being.
And we're going to start off with I think the most uh famous story of John Young, one
of them, it shouldn't be but it is, it's at least one the most hilarious space stories.
He smuggled a corned beef sandwich with him into space on Gemini 3 in 1965.
Now this was significant because at the time the Gemini program was to help NASA figure
out how to get humans to the moon and one of those things they had to figure out was
how do we feed astronauts and not only nourish them but also make it taste ok and not be
super crumby.
So they spend millions of dollars developing new space food and all of a sudden John Young
shows up and smuggles a corned beef sandwich in his pocket of his space suit, pulls it
out mid flight, takes a bite and immediately obviously the rye bread crumbs just float
off everywhere which was not very ideal with a lot of sensitive electronics.
That's awesome, he actually got in trouble for that.
As an astronaut, he was phenomenal.
He flew on 6 missions.
He actually flew on two Gemini missions, Gemini 3 and Gemini 10, he flew on two Apollo missions,
Apollo 10 and Apollo 16 and he flew on two Space Shuttle missions, STS-1, the first space
shuttle mission, and then STS-9.
He not only commanded the Gemini capsule, he also commanded the Apollo command module,
he also commanded the Apollo Lunar excursion module, the LEM, he also is the only person
to have walked on the moon and flown on a space shuttle.
So that's amazing.
One of my favorite stories about him is talking about being on the moon, when he was landing
on the moon, for Apollo 16, his heart rate was only 90 bpms.
That's like my resting heart rate now and to compare that to Neil Armstrong, his heart
rate was 170 bpms.
So this guy is just off the charts awesome.
I'm going to show you a real quick clip here of him talking about that.
"I found out from the flight surgeon later on that my heart beat was 144 uh at lift off,
John's was 70."
"Yeah, well I told em, I said mine was too old to go any faster.
Yeah."
And here we get a really good sense of his humor too.
He's very dead pan, very dry sense of humor and John is also famous for having driven
the lunar rover and he was very aggressive with it went very quickly on the moon uh and
came, they ended up shooting this footage that ended up being called the "Lunar Gran
Prix" which you've probably all seen, which if you see someone going really too fast on
the surface of the moon on the lunar rover, that's John Young.
Yup, that's him and he quoted, and I think this is hilarious he said, "It was hard to
tell how fast you were going, because there were no telephone poles."
I think one of my favorite things too is he was asked if he was nervous about you know
being on the first space shuttle and his quote is "Anyone who sits on top of the largest
hydrogen-oxygen fueled system in the world, knowing they're going to light the bottom
and doesn't get a little worried does not fully understand the situation."
I think that's amazing and to reflect upon his brilliance, he was the back up crew for
Apollo 13, and remember Apollo 13 was a spacecraft that had an anomaly on the way to the moon
and almost left all three astronauts stranded with out a possible way of returning home
alive.
The back up crew was very crucial in doing a lot of tests and procedures and coming up
with a lot of the plans on how to actually get these three people home safe and he's
credited with being one of the people that actually came up with a lot of the procedures
that saved their lives.
So, that's amazing.
Um but I think one of the biggest things that I think i want to end on, one of my favorite
things that John Young has ever said and that is, "The human race is at total war.
Our enemy is ignorance, pure and simple." and to me, that's as true now more than ever
so.
Um, John Young, you will be forever missed, you'll be forever remembered, and our thoughts
are with you and family today.
Um, we're very sad to have lost such an incredible person, but guys I encourage you to go watch
some videos of John Young.
"When we left Earth" was a phenomenal video series, he's featured in it a lot.
You get a good sense of his humor in that series, so try to find that if you can, I'll
try to find a link and put it in the description but, um but I just want us all to take a minute
and remember John Young today, goodbye John, you'll be forever missed.
but that's going to do it for me today, I'm Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut, bringing
space down to earth for everyday people.