Nine Chosen For Moon Training

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29931, 19 September 1962, Page 6

Nine Chosen For Moon Training

(N .Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright)

HOUSTON (Texas), September 17.

Two civilian test pilots, four Air Force officers, and three Navy flyers were chosen today to begin training as astronauts for the United States man-to-the-moon project.

The nine, selected from 253 aspirants, will join the seven origirraJ Mercury astronauts Chosen in 1969. for training art Houston's new mutti-mi'llion dollar manned soacecraifit centre. Freer, these 16 will come the men who about 1967 will attempt to land on the moon in an Apollo gpacerhip. The ages of tihe nine men range from 31 to 35—-the limit set by the National Aeronautics and Space Admen ist nation. They all have supersonic test flying experience.

The njne men are:— Neil A Armstrong, a 32-year-old NASA civilian test pilot, of Wapakoneta, Ohio. EMiobt M. See. jun, 35, a civilian, of Dallas, Texas. Air Force Major Frank Borman, 34. of Gary. Indiana. Air Force Captain James A. McDivitt. 33. of Chicago Air Force Captain Thomas P Stafford, 32. of Weatherford, Oklahoma Air Force Captain Edward H. White H. 32, of San Antonio. Texas. NavaJ Lieutenant - Commander John W. Young, 31, of San Francisco. Naval Lieutenant - Commander James A. Lovell, 34, of Cleveland, Ohio. Naval Lieutenant Charles Conrad. Jun., 32, of Philadelphia. -•The nine were introduced publicly at a press conference in Houston by the director of the manned spacecraft centre (Dr. Robert Gilruth). He said they had already been assigned to a comprehensive training programme at the centre. Mir Armstrong has been working with the Xl5 rocket plane project at Edwards Air Force base in California, and Was an experimental test pilot with the General Electric Company. Major Borman is an instructor at the Aerospace Research Pilot School. Captain Stafford is chief of the performance branch at the Aerospace Research School’s experimental test flight division, and Captain White is a<n experimental test pdliot at Wright-Patterson Air Force base, Ohio. Lieutenant Conrad Is safety officer for a fighter squadron. Lieutenant-Com-mander Lovell a flight instructor and safety officer at the Naval Air Station _ in Oceania, Virginia, and Lieu-tenant-Commander Young maintenance officer for a flight squadron at the Naval Ar Station in Miramar. California. Mr Gilruth said the nine men had been selected after six months of extensive evaluations of the original 253 applicants. This figure was reduced to 31 after medical examinations and other tests, and last month the 31 went through final testing and interviewing at the spacecraft centre before the final selections Dr Gilruth said the men named today were younger than the first astronauts—their average age is two years less than that of the original seven when they were chosen —because of the greater time required to prepare for the first moon trip.