2023-11-10 01:22:57
Updated Friday, November 10, 2023 – 00:22
He was the oldest living American astronaut.
Former American astronaut Frank Borman.GETTY / AFP
Former American astronaut Frank Bormanwho made history by commanding the first manned flight around the Moon and later led Eastern Airlines as president through severe economic turbulence, He died at 95 years oldas reported this Thursday by NASA.
Borman, who spent a total of nearly 20 days in space on two trips in the 1960s, died Tuesday in Billings, Montana.
Born in Gary, Indiana, on March 14, 1928, he was the oldest living American astronaut; a witness that now passes Jim LovelHe, who is also 95 years old but 11 days younger.
Borman grew up fascinated by airplanes and while a schoolboy in Arizona he took flying lessons that he paid for by delivering newspapers.
became fighter pilot of the Air Force after graduating from the US Military Academy in 1950. Like most of his fellow astronaut generation, train as a test pilot before being selected for NASA’s second astronaut program in 1962. That experience was key, he said in his autobiography.
“We were veteran pilots before we became rookie astronauts, and that made a difference,” he said.
His first space flight was in the Gemini 7 spacecraft in 1965, acting as commander on a 14-day mission that included a rendezvous with another Gemini ship.
Three years later he was commander on Apollo 8 – the first lunar orbital mission – and made 10 trips around the Moon with his two crewmates on a mission that lasted through Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
The mission produced a stunning and unprecedented photo of Borman’s crewmate, William Anderswhich became known as Dawn of the Earth: a blue and white Earth seen as a partial orb rising above the blank lunar surface.
In 1970, Borman retired from NASA and the Air Force. and became an advisor to Eastern Airlines. In 1975 he became president of the airline and, a year later, he was named president.
“I didn’t want to ride the rest of my life on the publicity I had received from NASA and become a dancing bear,” he once said of his career change. “I knew (Eastern) had some problems and I thought I could contribute.”
One of his first measures was to impose the first congelacin salarial of history in an industry accustomed to high salaries, but he softened the measure by offering employees participation in the profits.
En 1984,Eastern registr losses of 380 million dollars in five years and Borman was criticized for pressing ahead with a costly fleet modernization program despite the influx of red numbers.
The return to profitability was not super impressive – Eastern earned $6.3 million in 1985 – and a year later, its financial problems forced Borman to look for a solution outside the company. Eastern agreed to be absorbed by the smaller Texas Air Corp, which became the largest airline holding company in the country.
In 1986, Borman announced his retirement and moved to Las Cruces, New Mexico, where he helped manage the car dealership of one of his two sons.
On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 8 mission, Borman spoke about the American space program with the media outlet Politico, stating that he supported the idea of a misin to Marte, but that it was “absurd” to try to colonize it.
#Frank #Borman #commander #Apollo #mission #Moon #dies