ASTRONAUTS TO BOBBLE AT BALLPARK RENOWNED TEST PILOTS ALL DOLLED UP.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Staff Writer

LANCASTER - Joining the likes of Willie Mays, Dale Earnhardt and the Rolling Stones, NASA test pilots and astronauts Pete Knight and Gordon Fullerton have become bobblehead dolls.

Two thousand flight-suited figurines with oversize spring-mounted heads bearing the pilots' facial features - 1,000 each for the late state lawmaker Knight, who entered politics after his aviation career, and Fullerton - were commissioned by the Lancaster JetHawks and will be given away at an Aug. 13 game saluting the Antelope Valley aerospace industry.

``It gives our fans something different,'' the JetHawks general manager, Brad Seymour, said. ``It's a unique way to use the bobblehead craze, and these are obviously two very well-respected people in the community.''

Seymour added: ``There's a lot of new people who live in the valley, myself included, and this will help educate people about what the valley's contribution to aerospace has been.''

Before the baseball game, Fullerton will fly over Lancaster Municipal Stadium in a NASA F/A-18 jet - like one mounted on a pedestal outside the stadium gates - and then return to sign autographs.

NASA and the Society of Experimental Test Pilots will have booths, and Antelope Valley Republicans will staff a table displaying information about Knight's post-Air Force political career.

The dolls will be given out to the first 2,000 fans at the 7:15 p.m. Aug. 13 game against the Modesto A's. There are 1,000 of each, but fans won't have a choice. The bobbleheads come in unmarked boxes, so fans won't know which one they are handed.

The two pilots agreed to have bobbleheads made in their likenesses before Knight's May 7 death from leukemia at age 74.

``Gordon is very humble. It took him a little bit to come around to the idea. Sen. Knight was very excited about the idea,'' Seymour said.

Modeled after a 1965 photo of Knight in front of an X-15 rocket plane at Edwards Air Force Base, the Knight bobblehead wears the silver X-15 pressure suit and cradles a space helmet under its arm.

NASA sent the JetHawks more than a dozen photos of Fullerton - front, back, side, back of his head - in a modern anti-gravity flight suit. The Fullerton doll, holding a pilot's helmet, is dressed in the brown and tan flight suit with a U.S. flag on its shoulder.

At earlier games the JetHawks gave away more traditional sports bobbleheads: of Florida Marlin Juan Pierre, wearing the uniform of the Lancaster Stealth team that played in the short-lived California Fall League in 1999, and of former major league pitcher Jim Slayton, an Antelope Valley High School graduate.

Knight had a 32-year in the Air Force before he went into politics.

He tested planes at Edwards and was picked to pilot a winged spacecraft called the Dyna Soar - canceled before it flew. But he earned his astronaut wings by flying X-15 rocket planes at Edwards, and in an X-15 in 1967 he set a speed record of 4,520 mph that still stands.

Sent to Vietnam, he flew F-100 fighter jets in 253 combat missions, earning three Distinguished Flying Crosses.

Later involved in the development of the F-15 fighter jet, Knight returned to Edwards as its test center vice commander and stayed until he retired in 1982.

Two years after his Air Force retirement, Knight was elected to the Palmdale City Council, and he later was elected mayor.

Antelope Valley voters sent Knight to the state Assembly in 1992, then to the state Senate in 1996, representing a district that runs from Ventura County to the Victorville area.

Fullerton, 67, went into space twice and has flown high-performance aircraft for more than four decades, starting as an Air Force pilot in F-86 fighters and B-47 bombers.

He was a NASA astronaut from 1969 until 1986, when he joined the agency's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards as a pilot. He piloted the space shuttle Columbia in 1982 on its third flight and commanded the shuttle Challenger in 1985.

Honors he has won include the Air Force Distinguished Flying Cross and the NASA Distinguished and Exceptional Service Medals.

He was presented the Iven C. Kincheloe Award from the Society of Experimental Test Pilots in 1978, the year after he flew landing tests at Edwards in the shuttle prototype Enterprise.

Charles F. Bostwick, [phone]

chuck.bostwick(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

4 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color in AV edition only) Brad Seymour, the Lancaster JetHawks manager, shows bobblehead dolls of Gordon Fullerton, left, and Pete Knight.

(2 -- ran in AV edition only) The Lancaster JetHawks team will give away bobblehead dolls of aviation legends Gordon Fullerton and Pete Knight.

Tom Mendoza/Staff Photographer

(3 -- color -- ran in AV edition only) The late lawmaker Pete Knight was a renowned X-15 test pilot in the `60s. He set a speed record that still stands.

(4 -- color -- ran in AV edition only) Former astronaut Gordon Fullerton piloted the Columbia in 1982 and commanded the Challenger in 1985.