{"id":400,"date":"2010-01-24T19:59:22","date_gmt":"2010-01-25T00:59:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress65\/?p=400"},"modified":"2013-02-12T05:52:55","modified_gmt":"2013-02-12T10:52:55","slug":"discovery-launches-first-dod-shuttle-mission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/discovery-launches-first-dod-shuttle-mission\/","title":{"rendered":"DISCOVERY Launches on First DoD Shuttle Mission"},"content":{"rendered":"

Twenty-five years ago today — January 24, 1985, the Space Shuttle Discovery <\/em>launched from Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-51C<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n(Launch of mission STS-51C. NASA image.)<\/em><\/p>\n

The crew — Thomas K. Mattingly, Loren J. Shriver, Ellison S. Onizuka, James F. Buchli and Gary E. Payton — used an Air Force Inertial Upper Stage (IUS) booster to place a classified Department of Defense satellite in orbit, making this the first dedicated DoD mission.<\/p>\n

Space enthusiasts will recognize some of those astronauts’ names. Many know that Ken Mattingly, for instance, was originally scheduled to fly on the Apollo-13 mission; he later flew as the Command Module pilot for Apollo-16 and the mission commander for STS-4, the fourth space shuttle orbital test flight. And many will recognize Ellison Onizuka as one of the astronauts who died in the Challenger<\/em> explosion in 1986.<\/p>\n

My personal connection to this flight, however, is Gary Payton. He’s been the Deputy Under Secretary of the Air Force for Space Programs since 2005, and I worked with him when I was writing speeches for the Under Secretary, Dr. Sega. I found Mr. Payton to be a terrific person, extremely smart and talented.<\/p>\n

As I said in my retirement speech, if I couldn’t be an astronaut, at least I got to work with a few of them.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>by <\/span>\"feather\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Twenty-five years ago today — January 24, 1985, the Space Shuttle Discovery launched from Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-51C. (Launch of mission STS-51C. NASA image.) The crew — Thomas K. Mattingly, Loren J. Shriver, Ellison S. Onizuka, James F. Buchli and Gary E. Payton — used an Air Force \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[26,37,11,12,123],"class_list":["post-400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space","tag-launch","tag-nasa","tag-space-history","tag-space-shuttle","tag-usaf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":973,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400\/revisions\/973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}