Fred Haise

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Fred Haise
Fred Haise
Country: United States
Organization: NASA
selected on April 4, 1966
(5th NASA Group)
Calls: 1 space flight
Begin: April 11, 1970
Landing: April 17, 1970
Time in space: 5d 22h 54min
retired on June 1979
Space flights

Fred Wallace Haise, Jr. (born November 14, 1933 in Biloxi , Mississippi ) is a retired American astronaut .

His only space flight was without the hoped-for success: Due to a breakdown with Apollo 13 on the way to the moon , the planned moon landing had to be canceled. However, it was possible to bring the crew back to earth healthy and unharmed.

The Apollo program

Haise was one of 19 men NASA had selected on April 4, 1966 in the fifth astronaut group, and who were trained for the Apollo program .

For the flight of Apollo 8 in December 1968, he was assigned to replace William Anders , but was not used.

As was customary, the backup crew should an Apollo flight three flights are the main team later, and so Haise was a pilot for the lunar module of Apollo 11 nominated in July 1969, that is, that he should be one of the first men on the moon. But Michael Collins , who could not take part in Apollo 8 for health reasons, was nominated for Apollo 11 as a pilot of the Apollo command module. This task should actually have been taken over by Edwin Aldrin , who became the pilot of the Eagle lunar module. Haise had to move to the substitute team and was not used again.

On April 11, 1970, he made his first space flight with Apollo 13 . Haise was supposed to control the lunar module Aquarius and was intended to be the sixth person to step on the lunar surface. However, due to an explosion in the Apollo spaceship en route to the moon, the moon landing was canceled, and Haise was happy to have returned to Earth alive with James Lovell and John Swigert . Immediately after landing, Haise, like the other two Apollo 13 astronauts, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Richard Nixon , one of the two highest civilian awards in the United States.

During the Apollo 14 flight from January 31 to February 9, 1971, Haise served as the liaison officer ( CapCom ).

For Apollo 16 in April 1972 he was reassigned to the substitute team, this time as a replacement in command for John Young . Haise would have had a good chance of stepping onto the lunar surface as the commander of Apollo 19 after all, but NASA had already canceled this flight, originally planned for 1973, in 1970 for cost reasons.

The space shuttle

Haise stayed with NASA and switched to the space shuttle project in April 1973 , where he was the manager's technical assistant until January 1976.

Haise commanded one of the two two-man teams that carried out the extensive approach and landing tests ( ALT ) of the Shuttle Enterprise . Haise and his co-pilot Gordon Fullerton flew two of the three space shuttle tests on June 18 and July 26, 1977, in which the Enterprise was mounted on the back of a Boeing 747 and was not released.

In five further tests, the Enterprise was detached from the 747 in flight and landed independently within a few minutes while gliding. Three of these tests were flown by Haise and Fullerton on August 12, September 23, and October 26, 1977.

During this time it was still planned that the space shuttle's maiden flight would take place in 1979. Haise was initially intended as the commander for the third flight, during which the shuttle Columbia was to dock with the Skylab space station in order to carry it into a higher orbit . When it became apparent that Skylab would crash earlier than expected, this mission was brought forward and should now take place on the second space shuttle flight (STS-2A). Due to delays in the shuttle program, it stopped, and Skylab finally burned up on July 11, 1979, almost two years before the first space shuttle flight. Haise left NASA shortly before, on June 29, 1979, without having been in space or even on the moon a second time.

Farewell to NASA

Haise then held various managerial positions at Grumman Aerospace Corporation before retiring in 1996.

Special features and records

See also

Web links and receipts

Commons : Fred Haise  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Haise, Fred
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Haise, Fred Wallace Jr.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American astronaut
DATE OF BIRTH November 14, 1933
PLACE OF BIRTH Biloxi , Mississippi