The Astronaut Hall of fame has a strict set of guidelines that allow new members. Typically, new inductees must pass a scrutiny of their careers and contributions to space exploration by a select panel appointed by the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation, which owns and operates the Hall of Fame. The voting panel includes space historians, flight directors and journalists. They vote on a scale of 1-10. Candidates with the highest average score garnered by the panel are passed onto the Foundation, who then decides how many of the top scorers will be admitted.
Besides the honor of having been inducted into the Hall of Fame, it also means a special place in the Hall of Fame museum. Members have a special display that can include anything from their own space suits, to High School yearbooks. The idea is that their careers in space exploration, and how they got there, are adequately cataloged.
The four new inductees have had careers that have had a hand in the development and the subsequent first flights of the Space Shuttle. While today the Shuttle seems commonplace, these men helped develop it and then piloted it during its first flights and key missions.
Robert Crippen first became an astronaut for the Air Force in 1966. He was slated to fly in the Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) program, but the program was cancelled. In 1969 he switched over to NASA. Once at NASA, he was assigned to the Skylab program and participated in the Skylab Medical Experiment Altitude Test (SMEAT). Conducted in 1972, it was a 56-day simulation of what it would be like to live aboard Skylab. He was also a support astronaut for all 3 Skylab missions. After more than a decade of work on Skylab and the Space Shuttle, Crippen flew as pilot on the first flight of the Shuttle in 1981. He would go on to command three other flights in the early 1980's.
