TEMPO.CO, Jakarta – Former astronaut AS Frank Borman, who made history by commanding the first manned flight around the moon and then piloting Eastern Airlines as chief through severe economic turbulence, died at the age of 95, NASA said Thursday.
Borman, who spent a total of nearly 20 days in space over two trips in the 1960s, died Tuesday in Billings, Montana, NASA said in a statement on its website.
Born in Gary, Indiana, on March 14, 1928, he is the oldest living American astronaut; the mantle now passes to Jim Lovell, who is also 95 years old but eleven days younger.
Borman grew up interested in airplanes and as a schoolboy in Arizona took flying lessons which he paid for by delivering newspapers.
He became an Air Force fighter pilot after graduating from the U.S. Military Academy in 1950. Like many generations of astronauts, he trained as a test pilot before being selected for NASA’s second astronaut program in 1962. That experience was key, he said. in his autobiography.
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“We were veteran pilots before we were rookie astronauts, and that made a difference,” he said.
His first spaceflight was aboard Gemini 7 in 1965, serving as commander on a 14-day mission that featured rendezvous with other Gemini spacecraft.
Three years later he became commander of Apollo 8 – the first lunar orbital mission – and made 10 trips around the moon with two crewmates on a mission that took place over Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
The mission produced a stunning and unprecedented photo by Borman crew member William Anders of what became known as “Earthrise” – a blue and white Earth visible as a partial sphere rising above the moon’s empty 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 was appointed chairman.
“I didn’t want the rest of my life to follow the publicity I received from NASA and be a dancing bear,” he once said of his career change. “I knew (East) had some problems and I thought I could contribute.”
One of his first acts was to impose the first wage freeze in an industry accustomed to high wages, but he tempered the measure by offering profit sharing to employees.
In 1984 Eastern posted a five-year loss of $380 million and Borman came under criticism for continuing an expensive fleet modernization program despite the flow of red ink.
Its return to profitability was unimpressive – Eastern earned $6.3 million in 1985 – and a year later, its financial problems forced Borman to look outside the company for solutions. Eastern agreed to be taken over by the smaller Texas Air Corp., which became the nation’s largest airline holding company.
In 1986, Borman announced his retirement, saying he would move to Las Cruces, New Mexico, where he would help operate his son’s car dealership, work on the books and be closer to his family.
To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 8 mission, Borman discusses the space program United States of America with news outlet Politico, and said that he supports the idea of a mission to Mars but that it “doesn’t make sense” to try to colonize it.
Borman and his wife Susan have two sons.
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2023-11-10 03:10:49
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