Spaceflight
| Edwin Jacob Garn | |
|---|---|
| U.S. Senate Payload Specialist | |
| Nationality | American |
| Born | October 12, 1932 Richfield, Utah |
| Other occupation | Pilot, Politician |
| Rank | Brigadier General (retired), Air National Guard |
| Time in space | 6 d 23 h 55 m |
| Missions | STS-51-D |
| Mission insignia | |
Garn asked to fly on the Space Shuttle because he was head of the Senate appropriations subcommittee that dealt with NASA, and had extensive aviation experience. He had previously flown a B-2 Spirit prototype and driven a new Army tank. STS-51-D was launched from and returned to land at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida. Its primary objective was to deploy two communications satellites, and to perform electrophoresis and echocardiograph operations in space in addition to a number of other experiments. As a payload specialist, Garn's role on the mission was as a congressional observer and as a subject for medical experiments on space motion sickness. At the conclusion of the mission, Garn had traveled over 2.5 million miles in 108 Earth orbits, logging over 167 hours in space.
The spacesickness he experienced during the journey was so severe that a scale for space sickness was jokingly based on him, where "one Garn" is the highest possible level of sickness. Some NASA astronauts who opposed the payload specialist program, such as Mike Mullane, believed that Garn's spacesickness was evidence of the inappropriateness of flying people with little training. Fellow 51-D payload specialist Charles D. Walker—who also suffered from spacesickness on the flight despite having flown before—stated, however, that
he worked out extraordinarily well, and quite frankly, I think the U.S. space program, NASA, has benefited a lot from both his experience and his firsthand relation of NASA and the program back on Capitol Hill. As a firsthand participant in the program, he brought tremendous credibility back to Capitol Hill, and that’s helped a lot. He’s always been a friend of the agency and its programs.In an interview with Carol Butler, when asked about the origins of "Garn" Robert E. Stevenson was quoted as saying:
Jake Garn was sick, was pretty sick. I don't know whether we should tell stories like that. But anyway, Jake Garn, he has made a mark in the Astronaut Corps because he represents the maximum level of space sickness that anyone can ever attain, and so the mark of being totally sick and totally incompetent is one Garn. Most guys will get maybe to a tenth Garn, if that high. And within the Astronaut Corps, he forever will be remembered by that.The Jake Garn Mission Simulator and Training Facility, NASA's prime training facility for astronauts in the Shuttle and Space Station programs, is named for him.
Upon his return, he co-authored a novel entitled Night Launch. The book centers around terrorists taking control of the Space Shuttle Discovery during the first NASA–USSR space shuttle flight. It was published in 1989.
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