Rusty Schweickart

Rusty Schweickart

Russell Louis "Rusty" Schweickart aka Schweikart (born October 25, 1935) is an American former astronaut, research scientist, US Air Force fighter pilot, business and government executive. Schweickart, chosen in NASA's third astronaut group, is best known as the Lunar Module pilot on the Apollo 9 mission, the first manned flight test of the LM, on which he performed the first in-space test of the Portable Life Support System used by the Apollo astronauts who walked on the Moon. As backup commander of the first Skylab mission, he was responsible for developing the hardware and procedures used by the first crew to perform critical in-flight repairs of the Skylab station. After Skylab, he served for a time as Director of User Affairs in NASA's Office of Applications.

Schweickart left NASA in 1977 to serve for two years as California governor Jerry Brown's assistant for science and technology, then was appointed by Brown to California's Energy Commission for five and a half years, serving as chairman for three.