NASA Astronaut Group 2


NASA Astronaut Group 2, also known as the New Nine and the Next Nine, was the second group of astronauts selected by NASA. Their selection was announced on September 17, 1962. The nine astronauts were Neil Armstrong, Frank Borman, Pete Conrad, Jim Lovell, James McDivitt, Elliot See, Tom Stafford, Ed White and John Young. Six of the nine flew to the Moon, and Armstrong, Conrad and Young walked on it as well. Seven of the nine were awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.
The group was required to augment the original Mercury Seven, with the announcement of the Gemini program leading to the Apollo program. While the Original Seven had been selected to accomplish the simpler task of orbital flight, the new challenges of rendezvous and lunar landing led to the selection of candidates with advanced engineering degrees as well as test pilot experience. Lovell and Conrad had been candidates for the Original Seven, but were not selected then. The nine became the first group with civilian test pilots; See had flown for General Electric, while Armstrong had flown the X-15 research plane for NASA.

Background

's selection of the first American astronauts for Project Mercury, known as the "Original Seven" or "Mercury Seven", was announced on April 9, 1959. President John F. Kennedy announced on May 25, 1961 the goal of putting a man on the Moon by the end of the decade, which gave direction to the Apollo program. NASA formally announced a two-man spacecraft between Mercury and Apollo on December 7, 1961, and on January 3, 1962 it was officially named Project Gemini.
On April 18, 1962, NASA formally announced that it was accepting applications for a new group of astronauts who would assist the Mercury astronauts with Project Mercury, and join them in flying Project Gemini missions. It was anticipated that they might go on to command Project Apollo missions. Unlike the selection process for the Mercury Seven, which was carried out in secret, this selection was widely advertised, with public announcements and the minimum standards communicated to aircraft companies, government agencies and the Society of Experimental Test Pilots.

Selection criteria

The five minimum selection criteria were that applicants:
The criteria differed from those of the Mercury Seven selection in several ways. The Gemini spacecraft was expected to be more capacious than the Mercury one, so the height requirement was relaxed slightly. This made Thomas P. Stafford eligible. A college degree was now required, but could be in the biological sciences. Civilian test pilots were now eligible, but the requirement for experience in high-performance jets favoured those with recent experience, and fighter pilots over those with multi-engine experience such as Scott Carpenter of the Mercury Seven. Perhaps the most important change was lowering the age limit from 40 to 35. This was because whereas Mercury was a short-term project, Project Apollo was going to run until the end of the decade at least. The changed selection criteria meant that the selection panel could not simply select another group from the Mercury Seven finalists.
Jerrie Cobb advocated for women to be allowed to become astronauts, and the Mercury 13 had passed the same medical tests given to the Mercury Seven astronauts. Although women were not prevented from applying, the requirement for jet test pilot experience effectively excluded them. NASA Administrator James E. Webb said "I do not think we shall be anxious to put a woman or any other person of particular race or creed into orbit just for the purpose or putting them there".

Selection process

The U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps submitted the names of all their pilots who met the selection criteria, but the U.S. Air Force conducted its own internal selection process, and only submitted the names of eleven candidates. The Air Force ran them through a brief training course in May 1962 on how to speak and conduct themselves during the NASA selection process. The candidates called it a "charm school". The Chief of Staff of the Air Force, General Curtis LeMay, told them: "There are a lot of people who'll say you're deserting the Air Force if you're accepted into NASA. Well, I'm the Chief of the Air Force and I want you to know I want you in this program. I want you to succeed in it, and that's your Air Force mission. I can't think of anything more important."
In all, 253 applications were received by the June 1, 1962, deadline. Neil Armstrong submitted his application a week after the deadline, but Walter C. Williams, the associate director of the Space Task Group, wanted the NASA test pilot, so he had Richard Day, who acted as secretary of the selection panel, add it to the pile of applications when it arrived. Paul Bikle, the director of the NASA's Flight Research Center, declined to recommend Armstrong for astronaut selection because he had misgivings about Armstrong's performance.
The three-person selection panel consisted of Mercury Seven astronauts Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton, and NASA test pilot Warren J. North, although Williams sat in on some sessions. They reduced the candidates to a more manageable 32 finalists, from whom they hoped to select between five and ten new astronauts. The Air Force's pre-selection process seems to have been successful; nine of the eleven were chosen as finalists, and one of those rejected, Joe Engle, was selected in a later intake in 1966. Of the rest, thirteen were from the Navy, four were Marines, and six were civilians. Four had been finalists in the Mercury Seven selection: Pete Conrad, Jim Lovell, John Mitchell and Robert Solliday. Lovell was not selected for the Mercury Seven due to a high bilirubin blood count.
The finalists were sent to Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio for medical examinations. The tests there were much the same as those employed to select the Mercury Seven. One candidate, Lieutenant Commander Carl Birdwell, was found to be too tall. Another four were eliminated on the basis of ear, nose and throat examinations. The remaining 27 then went to Ellington Air Force Base near Houston, where the Manned Spacecraft Center was being established. They were individually interviewed by the selection panel.
Nine candidates were selected, and their names forwarded to Gilruth for approval. Slayton informed each of them by phone on September 14. The nine arrived in Houston on September 15. To avoid tipping off the media, all checked into the Rice Hotel in Houston under the name of Max Peck, its general manager. On September 17, the media crowded into the 1800-seat Cullen auditorium at the University of Houston for the official announcement, but it was a more low-key event than the unveiling of the Mercury Seven three years before.
As with those who had been passed over in the Mercury Seven selection, most of the rejected finalists went on to have distinguished careers. William E. Ramsey became a vice admiral in the Navy, and Kenneth Weir, a major general in the Marine Corps. Four would become NASA astronauts in later selections: Alan Bean, Michael Collins and Richard Gordon in 1963, and Jack Swigert in 1966.

Demographics

The nine astronauts were Neil Armstrong, Frank Borman, Pete Conrad, Jim Lovell, James McDivitt, Elliot See, Tom Stafford, Ed White and John Young. Conrad, Lovell and Young were from the Navy; Borman, McDivitt, Stafford and White from the Air Force; and Armstrong and See were civilians. All were male and white, married with an average of two children. Their average age was 32.5, two years younger than the Mercury Seven at the time of selection. They had an average of 2,800 flying hours each, 1,900 of them in jets. This was 700 fewer flying hours than the Mercury Seven, but 200 more hours in jets. Their average weight was slightly higher — compared to.
All had college education. Three had master's degrees: Borman had a Master of Science degree in aeronautical engineering from the California Institute of Technology, See had one from the University of California at Los Angeles, and White had one from University of Michigan. Armstrong, Conrad, McDivitt and Young all had engineering degrees, and Lovell and Stafford had science degrees from the United States Naval Academy. Their mean IQ was 132.1 on the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale. Borman and McDivitt were early graduates of the USAF Aerospace Research Pilot School.

Group members

Training

The new astronauts became known as the Next Nine, or the New Nine. They moved to the Houston area in October 1962. Most bought lots and built houses in Nassau Bay, a new development to the east of the MSC. Conrad and Lovell built houses in Timber Cove, south of the MSC. Developers in Timber Cove and Nassau Bay offered astronauts mortgages with small down payments and low interest rates. The MSC complex was not yet complete, so NASA temporarily leased office space in Houston. Slayton's wife Marge and Borman's wife Susan organized an Astronauts' Wives Club, along the lines of the Officers' Wives Clubs that were a feature of military bases. As Slayton was in charge of astronaut activities, Marge was considered to be the equivalent of the commanding officer's wife. The nine were honored guests at Houston society parties, such as those thrown by socialite Joanne Herring, and their wives received $1,000 Neiman Marcus gift vouchers from an anonymous source.
A lawyer, Henry Batten, agreed to negotiate a deal for their personal stories with Field Enterprises along the lines of the Life magazine deal enjoyed by the Mercury Seven, for no fee. As with the Life deal, there was some disquiet about the propriety of astronauts cashing in on government-created fame, but Mercury Seven astronaut John Glenn intervened, and personally raised the matter with Kennedy, who approved the deal. The deals with Field and Time Life earned each of the nine $16,250 per annum over the next four years, and provided them with $100,000 life insurance policies. Due to the dangerous nature of an astronaut's job, insurance companies would have charged them unaffordably high premiums.
As Slayton was busy with Project Gemini, he delegated the task of supervising the Next Nine's training to Mercury Seven astronaut Gus Grissom. Initially, each of the astronauts was given four months' of classroom instruction on subjects such as spacecraft propulsion, orbital mechanics, astronomy, computing, and space medicine. Classes were for six hours a day, two days a week, and all sixteen astronauts had to attend. There was also familiarization with the Gemini spacecraft, Titan II and Atlas boosters, and the Agena target vehicle. Jungle survival training was conducted at the USAF Tropic Survival School at Albrook Air Force Station in Panama, desert survival training at Stead Air Force Base in Nevada, and water survival training on the Dilbert Dunker at the USN school at the Naval Air Station Pensacola in Florida and on Galveston Bay.
Following the precedent set by the Mercury Seven, each of the Next Nine was assigned a special area in which to develop expertise that could be shared with the others, and to provide astronaut input to designers and engineers. Armstrong was responsible for trainers and simulators; Borman for boosters; Conrad for cockpit layout and systems integration; Lovell for recovery systems; McDivitt for guidance systems; See for electrical systems and mission planning; Stafford for communications systems; White for flight control systems; and Young for environmental control systems and space suits.

Legacy

Collins wrote that in his opinion "this group of nine was the best NASA ever picked, better than the seven that preceded it, or the fourteen, five, nineteen, eleven and seven that followed." Slayton felt so too, describing them as "probably the best all-round group ever put together." The nine were deficient in only one respect: there was too few of them. Looking over the tentative schedule of Apollo missions, Slayton calculated that up to 14 three-person crews might be required, but the 16 astronauts on hand could fill just five. While he considered the schedule to be optimistic, he did not want a shortage of astronauts to be the reason the schedule could not be met, and therefore proposed that there be another round of recruiting. On June 5, 1963, NASA announced that it was seeking another ten to fifteen new astronauts.
The Next Nine went on to illustrious careers as astronauts. Apart from See and White, who were killed in a T-38 crash and in the Apollo fire, respectively, all went on to command Gemini and Apollo missions. Six of the nine flew to the Moon, and Armstrong, Conrad and Young walked on it as well. Seven of the nine received the Congressional Space Medal of Honor for their service, valor, and sacrifice: