Paul J. Weitz

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Paul Weitz
Paul Weitz
Country: United States
Organization: NASA
selected on April 4, 1966
(5th NASA Group)
Calls: 2 space flights
Start of the
first space flight: 		May 25, 1973
Landing of the
last space flight: 		April 9, 1983
Time in space: 33d 1h 13min
EVA inserts: 2
EVA total duration: 2h 14min
retired on March 1988
Space flights

Paul Joseph Weitz (born July 25, 1932 in Erie , Pennsylvania , † October 22, 2017 in Flagstaff , Arizona ) was an American astronaut .

Start of career

Weitz's father was a bosun in the US Navy during World War II , so Weitz came into contact with the military at an early age. Even as a schoolboy he wanted to become a naval aviator.

He graduated from Harborcreek High School in Harborcreek , Pennsylvania in 1949 . He then studied aeronautical engineering at Pennsylvania State University on a Navy scholarship and received a bachelor's degree in 1954 .

Weitz joined the US Navy and served a year on the destroyer USS John A. Bole before becoming a naval pilot. He then worked as a tactical instructor in Florida and as a project officer in California , where he tested air-to-ground weapons. On the initiative of the Navy, he continued his aeronautical engineering studies at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey , California , from 1962 , where he met the future astronauts Eugene Cernan , Ronald Evans and Jack Lousma , among others . He achieved his master's degree in 1964.

Then Weitz resumed his military service. He was assigned to the "Four Runners", the 4th Combat Squadron, which was stationed on Whidbey Island ( Washington ). During the Vietnam War he flew with his squadron missions with the bomber A-3B "Skywarrior" .

Astronaut activity

Support with the moon missions

Weitz came to NASA with the 5th astronaut group in April 1966. During his basic training, he acted as a technical consultant for the Apollo program and worked on the design of the ALSEP experiment package . In April 1969 he was assigned to the Apollo 12 support team. Among other things, he worked as a liaison spokesman ( Capcom ).

Skylab

After the flight of Apollo 13 , Weitz was assigned to the Apollo Application Program (AAP) in 1970, which at the time was the only project working on the Skylab space station . For Weitz this meant that in all likelihood he would not make a moon flight. Again he worked on the design and development of an experiment package , this time on the Earth Resources Experiment Package (EREP).

On January 19, 1972, Weitz was officially assigned as a pilot for Skylab 2 , the first crew of the new space station. A space exit was not intended for him.

Together with Pete Conrad , who ran Skylab 2, and Joe Kerwin , Weitz set out for the space station at the end of May 1973 as the pilot of the first crew. During the first half of the four-week flight, the three astronauts had to bring the station damaged during take-off into a habitable condition. Before the trio could even enter the station, Weitz performed an outboard mission to deploy a solar cell boom. He stood in the open hatch of the Apollo command module while Kerwin held him by the legs and Conrad maneuvered the spaceship. However, this attempt had to be given up after 40 minutes.

Only then could they proceed to their original task (scientific research). Towards the end of the flight, Weitz and Conrad left the station to change film cassettes. Kerwin was originally intended for this mission, but it had waived in favor of Weitz.

When they landed at the end of June, the three of them had set a new long-term record in manned spaceflight at 28 days, which the Skylab-3 team soon exceeded.

LANDSAT

After completing the Skylab program, Paul Weitz worked as a consultant for a Landsat satellite application for about a year . The aim of the LACIE (Large Area Crop Inventory Experiment) project was to predict and record grain production through satellite observation.

Space shuttle

From 1975 Weitz worked on the space shuttle project, the next generation of manned spacecraft in the USA. Another eight years passed before he got an opportunity to fly on a space shuttle.

STS-6 was Weitz 'second and final mission. It was the maiden flight of the Challenger orbiter and took place in April 1983. Weitz, as the commander, led the flight with three other crew members, each of whom made their first flight. The company's main task was to deploy TDRS-1 , a NASA-owned communications satellite , and to test the new spacesuits during the first American space exit since Skylab.

Management career at NASA

Even before his shuttle flight, Weitz was appointed deputy head of the astronauts office, where he worked under John Young . While Young was preparing for his STS-9 flight , Weitz had to replace him almost entirely.

This was followed by a move to the management level of the Johnson Space Center (JSC) . He served as the technical advisor to the JSC director until 1987 when he was named vice director of the JSC in Houston . Since his boss, Aaron Cohen, spent a lot of time at NASA headquarters in Washington, Weitz led the JSC alone at times. When Cohen left NASA in August 1993, Weitz was also officially acting director of the JSC until Carolyn Huntoon took over that position in January 1994. Paul Weitz retired in May 1994. In October 1997 he was inducted into the Astronaut Hall of Fame .

Personal

Paul Weitz was married and had two children. He died in October 2017 at his Arizona home, aged 85, after being diagnosed with myelodysplastic syndrome .

See also

Web links

Commons : Paul J. Weitz  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Paul Weitz, astronaut who helped repair Skylab and commanded space shuttle, dies at 85. washingtonpost.com, October 24, 2017, accessed October 25, 2017 .
  2. ↑ a b Astronaut Paul Weitz, helped save Skylab, commanded Challenger, dies at 85. In: collectSPACE. October 23, 2017, accessed October 24, 2017 .
personal data
SURNAME Weitz, Paul J.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Weitz, Paul Joseph
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American astronaut
DATE OF BIRTH July 25, 1932
PLACE OF BIRTH Erie , Pennsylvania
DATE OF DEATH October 22, 2017
Place of death Flagstaff , Arizona