SKY-HIGH HONOR DRYDEN PILOT A HALL-OF-FAMER.Byline: Daily News EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE Edwards Air Force Base, U.S. military installation, 301,000 acres (121,805 hectares), S Calif., NE of Lancaster; est. 1933. It is one of the largest air force bases in the United States and has the world's longest runway. - NASA NASA: see National Aeronautics and Space Administration. NASA in full National Aeronautics and Space Administration Independent U.S. Dryden Flight Research Center The Dryden Flight Research Center (DFRC), located inside Edwards Air Force Base, is an aeronautical research center operated by NASA. On March 26, 1976 it was named in honor of the late Hugh L. chief research pilot C. Gordon Fullerton Charles Gordon Fullerton is a retired United States Air Force officer, a former USAF and NASA astronaut and is currently a research pilot at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Facility, Edwards, California. will be inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame The United States Astronaut Hall of Fame is located in Titusville, Florida. It features the world's largest collection of personal astronaut memorabilia, particularly focusing on those astronauts who have been inducted into the Hall of Fame, as well as spacecraft. at Kennedy Space Center Kennedy Space Center (Cape Canaveral) U.S. launch site for manned space missions. [U.S. Hist.: WB, So:562] See : Astronautics . Fullerton piloted the space shuttle space shuttle, reusable U.S. space vehicle. Developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), it consists of a winged orbiter, two solid-rocket boosters, and an external tank. prototype Enterprise in tests at Edwards Air Force Base in 1977, flying three of the five test flights - including the first one. Fullerton went on to pilot the shuttle Columbia for its third spaceflight in 1982 and commanded Challenger in 1985. ``It sounds fine,'' Fullerton said of the honor. ``I'm not sure why I was picked out of the names of guys who have flown more than me.'' Fullerton and two other 2005 inductees, Joseph Allen and Bruce McCandless, were selected by a committee of former NASA officials and flight controllers, journalists, historians, and Hall of Fame astronauts. The induction ceremony will be April 30. Fullerton said the event will give him a chance to catch up with Allen and McCandless, friends from his days at the Johnson Space Center. Fullerton logged more than 382 hours in space flight as a NASA astronaut from September 1969 until November 1986, when he retired from the astronaut corps and joined the research pilot staff at Dryden. Before his space shuttle flights, Fullerton served on the support crews for the Apollo 14, 15, 16 and 17 lunar missions at the NASA Johnson Space Center. His work included helping the crews train and serving as ``cap com,'' capsule communicator, talking to the Apollo 14 crew while they were on the moon. ``I went from being in awe of the guys in Apollo to being right in the middle of it,'' Fullerton said. Fullerton was a fighter and bomber pilot in the U.S. Air Force, which he joined in 1958 after earning bachelor's and master's degrees in mechanical engineering from California Institute of Technology California Institute of Technology, at Pasadena, Calif.; originally for men, became coeducational in 1970; founded 1891 as Throop Polytechnic Institute; called Throop College of Technology, 1913–20. . He attended the Air Force Aerospace Research Pilot School, now the Air Force Test Pilot School, at Edwards in 1964. In 1966, Fullerton was selected to serve as a member of the flight crew for the Air Force Manned Orbiting Laboratory program, which was canceled in 1969. He retired from the Air Force as a colonel in 1988. Fullerton has spent more than 15,000 hours flying 135 different types of aircraft. To be eligible for induction into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame, an individual must be a U.S. citizen, have been out of the active astronaut corps at least five years, have made his or her first flight at least 20 years before the induction year, be NASA-trained, and have orbited Earth at least once. CAPTION(S): photo Photo: (color) Dryden Flight Research Center's C. Gordon Fullerton will be inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame. NASA |
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