Forgotten Astronauts of the Space Race
its frenetic pace. Suddenly, the responsibility of being on a back up crew became a more serious position. Astronauts now knew that they could be called on to replace a fellow astronaut at any moment. The system of the back up and support crew assured the space program, and the American people, that no matter what happened the space flights would continue. On June 1, 1966 Stafford and Cernan would go on to fly a near flawless mission on Gemini 9.
Predictably, as with any tragic circumstance, questions surfaced. Was NASA pushing its astronauts too hard? Astronauts were indeed flying across the country for training and appearances almost continuously all year. During Gemini, with a launch every two months for two years, their schedules were nothing less than hectic. Each astronaut, whether they were involved in a current mission or not, was assigned to a specific area of expertise. It was then there responsibility to keep other astronauts informed about what they were learning at various manufacturing plants and training centers around the country. Then, you could add the heavy load of speaking engagements, appearances, meetings, and personal life.
See and Bassett were not the only, or even the first astronauts, to meet their end in this manner, but what makes them unique is that they were a prime crew for an actual flight. The very first astronaut to die was Ted Freeman in October of 1964. During a training exercise in his T-38, a flock of snow geese shattered the glass of his cockpit and went into the air intake causing engine failure. With his plane rapidly dropping and pitched over, he ejected but his parachute never fully deployed. His body was found a hundred yards from the wreckage. After the Apollo 1 fire in January, astronaut Ed Givens was killed in a car accident on June 6, 1967. Givens had been pivotal in the development of the AMU. A few months later, in October, C.C. Williams was killed when his T-38 crashed over a swamp near Tallahassee, FL. Williams had served on the backup crew of Gemini 10, and was in line to fly on Apollo 12. In December, Robert Lawrence Jr. was killed while flying a F-104 jet. Lawrence was selected to be an astronaut for the United States Air Force’s Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) and is the first African-American astronaut. Despite the crashes, the T-38 was still regarded
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