NASA Career
Chaffee was an avid hunter. After completing the astronaut application process, he went hunting to calm his nerves. It was while he was on that hunting trip that NASA called him to offer him an astronaut slot. On October 18, 1963 he was officially announced as one of 14 chosen for Astronaut Group 3.
He served as a capsule communicator, along with Virgil "Gus" Grissom and Eugene Cernan, for the Gemini 4 mission, in which Edward H. White II made his space walk. Chaffee later served as one of the pallbearers for fellow astronaut Elliot See, who was killed in a plane crash while training for the Gemini 9 mission.
He never got a seat on a Gemini mission, but was tasked with working on flight control, communications, instrumentation, and attitude and translation control systems in the Apollo program. He was paired with Grissom to fly chase planes to photograph the launch of an unmanned Saturn 1B rocket. On 21 March 1966, he received his first spaceflight assignment as Pilot for the first manned Apollo flight, AS-204, along with Command Pilot Grissom and Senior Pilot White. In June, the men got permission to name their flight Apollo 1.
Read more about this topic: Roger B. Chaffee
Famous quotes containing the words nasa and/or career:
“If we did not have such a thing as an airplane today, we would probably create something the size of NASA to make one.”
—H. Ross Perot (b. 1930)
“Clearly, society has a tremendous stake in insisting on a woman’s natural fitness for the career of mother: the alternatives are all too expensive.”
—Ann Oakley (b. 1944)