John Young: The Orlando Boy Who Walked on the Moon

John Young grew up catching lizards and building model airplanes in Orlando. He would go on to fly in space six times, drive a rover across the Moon, and command the first Space Shuttle, a career unmatched in the history of spaceflight.

A Florida Childhood

Born in 1930, Young moved with his family to Orlando as a boy and grew up there during the Great Depression, graduating from Orlando High School before earning an aeronautical engineering degree at Georgia Tech. He became a Navy test pilot, then joined NASA in 1962, just as the country was racing to the Moon. The Florida kid was about to spend the next forty years at the leading edge of human exploration.

Six Flights and a Moonwalk

Young is the only astronaut to fly Gemini, Apollo, and the Space Shuttle. He orbited the Moon, then returned in 1972 to command Apollo 16, spending three days exploring the lunar highlands and bounding across the surface in the rover. In 1981 he commanded STS-1, the daring first flight of the shuttle Columbia, riding an untested spacecraft into orbit. Over forty-two years he made six spaceflights, more than anyone before him.

A Quiet Legend

Despite his record, Young was known for being humble, plainspoken, and relentlessly focused on safety, willing to challenge NASA leadership when he thought lives were at risk. He kept working at the space center into his seventies and died in 2018. Every rocket that rises off the Florida coast carries a little of the curiosity of an Orlando boy who looked up and wondered what was out there.