A Florida State historical marker is set right outside this still used middle-class home in Orlando. It reads:
"John Watts Young, NASA astronaut, Gemini veteran, Apollo moonwalker, and space shuttle commander, was the first American to travel in space six times. As an Orlando High School student, Young lived in this house at 815 West Princeton Street from 1945 until graduation in 1948. In 1965, he co-piloted Gemini-Titan III, a program that directly benefited Project Apollo's development and the first voyage to the moon. In 1972, Young was aboard Apollo XVI, the fifth manned landing on the moon, and was the ninth person to walk on the moon. He was commander on the first human-guided test flight of the first space shuttle, Columbia STS-1 in 1981 and the Challenger STS-9 in 1983, which carried Spacelab-1, a removable science laboratory. Young became the Special Assistant to the Director of the Johnson Space Center for Engineering, Operations and Safety in Houston, Texas, in 1987."
Wikipedia (
visit link) adds:
"John Watts Young (born September 24, 1930) is a retired American astronaut, Naval officer, test pilot and aeronautical engineer, who became the ninth person to walk on the Moon as commander of the Apollo 16 mission in 1972.
Young enjoyed the longest career of any astronaut, becoming the first person to make six space flights, over the course of 42 years of active NASA service,[1] and is the only person to have piloted four different classes of spacecraft: Gemini, the Apollo Command/Service Module, the Apollo Lunar Module, and the Space Shuttle.
In 1965 Young flew on the first manned Gemini mission, and in 1969 was the first person to orbit the moon alone during Apollo 10. He is one of only three persons who twice journeyed to the Moon, and drove the Lunar Roving Vehicle on the Moon's surface. He also commanded two Space Shuttle flights, including its first launch in 1981, and served as Chief of the Astronaut Office from 1974–1987. Young retired from NASA in 2004."