John Young

John Young, NASA's longest serving astronaut, retired in December 2005.

In January of 2005 NASA hosted an event to honor John Young's 42 year career with the space agency.

I was tasked to create a piece that would play both on the IMAX screen at the National Air and Space Museum, and on NASA TV.

When I started researching our archives I realized there was not a lot of film or video footage I could use... but there were scores of still images.

I took the still images and animated them in Adobe After Effects.

There is no film of video footage in the piece, it is all animated still images.

One of the thrills about working for NASA TV is that I get to produce projects about my childhood heroes.

Mark R. Hailey
Art Director, NASA Television

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• NASA
• John
• Young
• gemini
• apollo
• shuttle
• sts-1
• astronaut
• mrhailey
• hailey
• space
• exploration
• tvspace
• moon

[mrhailey]

In honor of John Young's 80th Birthday.... Happy Birthday John

[fokjock]

Sorry friend-John Young was THE best astronaut-anybody who know the slightest about the space programme would agree.He is THE most experienced astronaut, having flown the most amount of vehicles, and staying the distance after everyone else left after Apollo.

He was known amongst the others as the one who went the extra mile.

And an extremey nice man to boot.

I am pround to have shaken his hand.

[peeple2000]

I bet Charlie was glad to have John in the LM. I can hear it now . . . "Don't worry Chuck, I've been here before!"

Imagine having THAT on your resume?!

[TennisUK11]

@fokjock Yep, John Young had the 'Right stuff' before they had a name for it.

[MightySaturn5]

@imranite I agree -Gemini, Apollo and the shuttle...incredible person with a very calm personality -truly the right stuff

[imranite]

@toddsmitts I found the source. Its on nasaimages website and the caption says "Portrait of seven original Mercury astronauts plus new members " . Its an autographed group photo.

[imranite]

@toddsmitts so then the only strong explanation could be that it was probably a gathering of the astronauts somewhere.

[toddsmitts]

@imranite I know how the crew rotation worked but there were still some surprises. Dave Scott was picked for the Gemini 8 prime crew without serving on a back-up crew first, for instance. Then, of course, there was the fateful place crash that killed Elliot See and Charlie Bassett and indirectly led to Buzz Aldrin getting a spot on a Gemini mission (without which he probably wouldn't have been on Apollo 11).

[imranite]

@toddsmitts Some of the guys did know what was coming. Slayton's pecking order was such that you back up a crew, skip 2 flights and be the prime crew. Anyway, this could be a gathering of the astronauts or some other photo op.

[toddsmitts]

@imranite Kind of odd. They took photos of astronauts in their groups, and crews of missions, but aside from pictures of the Mercury Seven, I'd never heard of all the astronauts from one program being photographed together. Especially odd since some Gemini mission were done long before guys even knew if they'd be assigned to a crew.

[imranite]

@toddsmitts probably just a group photo of the Gemini astronauts? 

[arealmench]

John Young rolling, using manual control now