Biography

After leaving NASA in 1984, he became a consultant on manned aerospace operations.

He graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., and received a master's degree in nuclear engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. Early in his Air Force career, he was a flight instructor and a nuclear systems analyst.

He was an Air Force veteran who joined NASA's astronaut corps in September 1969. In 1983, he joined the crew of the sixth NASA space shuttle mission, and the Challenger's first flight.