Jake Garn | |
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United States Senator from Utah | |
In office December 21, 1974 –January 3, 1993 | |
Preceded by | Wallace F. Bennett |
Succeeded by | Bob Bennett |
28th Mayor of Salt Lake City | |
In office December 1972 –December 20,1974 | |
Preceded by | J. Bracken Lee |
Succeeded by | Conrad B. Harrison |
Personal details | |
Born | Edwin Jacob Garn October 12,1932 Richfield,Utah,U.S. |
Political party | Republican |
Education | University of Utah (BS) |
Military service | |
Allegiance | ![]() |
Branch/service | ![]() |
Years of service | 1956–1960 (active) 1963–1979 (reserve) |
Unit | Utah Air National Guard |
Space career | |
NASA payload specialist (congressional observer) | |
Time in space | 6d 23h 55m |
Missions | STS-51-D |
Mission insignia | ![]() |
Edwin Jacob "Jake" Garn (born October 12,1932) is an American politician and member of the Republican Party who served as a member of the United States Senate representing Utah from 1974 to 1993. Garn became the first sitting member of the United States Congress to fly in space when he flew aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery as a payload specialist during NASA mission STS-51-D (April 12–19,1985). Prior to his time in Congress,he served as the mayor of Salt Lake City.
The son of a World War I pilot, [1] Garn was born in Richfield,Utah. He attended East High School,Clayton Middle School,and Uintah Elementary School. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in business and finance from the University of Utah in 1955,where he was a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity.
Senator Garn is a former insurance executive. He served in the United States Navy as a Martin P5M Marlin pilot. He also served as a pilot of the 151st Air Refueling Group of the Utah Air National Guard,where he flew the Boeing KC-97L and KC-135A. He retired as a colonel in April 1979. [2] He was promoted to brigadier general after his Space Shuttle mission. [3] He had flown 17,000 hours in military aircraft when he flew in space. [4]
Before his election to the Senate,Garn served on the Salt Lake City commission for four years and was elected as the mayor in 1971,entering office in 1972. He was the last Republican to hold that office to date. Garn was active in the Utah League of Cities and Towns and served as its president in 1972. In 1974,Garn was the first vice-president of the National League of Cities,and he served as its honorary president in 1975.
Garn was first elected to the Senate in 1974,succeeding retiring Republican Wallace Bennett,father of later Senator (and his eventual successor) Robert Bennett. Garn was re-elected to a second term in November 1980 with 74 percent of the vote,the largest victory in a statewide race in Utah history. Garn was re-elected a second time in 1986.
Though strongly anti-abortion,Garn joined U.S. Representative Henry Hyde of Illinois in resigning from the board of the United States Pro-Life Political Action Committee when the executive director of the organization,Peter Gemma,issued a "hit list" to target certain lawmakers who supported abortion rights. Garn and Hyde,the author of the Hyde Amendment,which limited abortions financed by Medicaid,said that "hit lists" are counterproductive because they create irrevocable discord among legislators,any of whom can be subject to a "single issue" attack of this kind by one interest group or another. Gemma said that he was surprised by the withdrawal of Garn and Hyde from the PAC committee but continued with plans to spend $650,000 for the 1982 elections on behalf of anti-abortion candidates. [5]
Garn was chairman of the Senate Banking,Housing,and Urban Affairs Committee and served on three subcommittees:Housing and Urban Affairs,Financial Institutions,and International Finance and Monetary Policy. He also was a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee and served as chairman of the HUD-Independent Agencies Subcommittee. He served on four other Appropriations subcommittees:Energy and Water Resources,Defense,Military Construction,and Interior. Garn served as a member of the Republican leadership from 1979 to 1984 as secretary of the Republican Conference.
His Institute of Finance has been called a "hot tub of influence peddling". [6]
Garn retired from the Senate in 1992. [7] He is a supporter of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. [8]
As chairman of the Senate Banking Committee,Garn was co-author of the Garn–St. Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982,the law that partially deregulated the savings and loan industry and attempted to forestall the looming Savings and loan crisis.
Garn asked to fly on the Space Shuttle because he was head of the Senate appropriations subcommittee that dealt with NASA,and had extensive aviation experience. He had previously flown a Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit prototype and driven a new Army tank. [9] [10] He began publicly asking NASA about flying on the Shuttle in 1981, and the agency had long planned to fly "citizen passengers" such as artists,journalists,entertainers,and the Teacher in Space Project,but the November 1984 announcement that a member of Congress would go to space surprised most observers. Garn said that flying on the Shuttle would be a fact-finding trip:"I do really think that it is a necessity that Congressmen check things out that they vote for and make certain that funds are being spent adequately. It might be necessary to have a Senator kick the tire". [11]
STS-51-D was launched from and returned to land at the Kennedy Space Center in the U.S. state Florida in April 1985. Its primary objective was to deploy two communications satellites,and to perform electrophoresis and echocardiograph operations in space in addition to a number of other experiments. As a payload specialist,Garn's role on the mission was as a congressional observer [12] and as a subject for medical experiments on space adaptation syndrome. [1] At the conclusion of the mission,Garn had traveled over 2.5 million miles (4.0 million kilometers) in 108 Earth orbits,logging over 167 hours in space.
The space sickness Garn experienced during the journey was so severe that a scale for space sickness was jokingly based on him,where "one Garn" is the highest possible level of sickness. [13] Some NASA astronauts who opposed the payload specialist program,such as Mike Mullane,believed that Garn's space sickness was evidence of the inappropriateness of flying people with little training. [10] Garn was in excellent physical condition,however,and began flying at the age of 16. [1] Astronaut Charles Bolden described Garn as "the ideal candidate to do it,because he was a veteran Navy combat pilot who had more flight hours than anyone in the Astronaut Office". [4] Fellow 51-D payload specialist Charles Walker—who also suffered from space sickness on the flight despite having flown before—stated that:
He worked out extraordinarily well, and quite frankly, I think the U.S. space program, NASA, has benefited a lot from both his experience and his firsthand relation of NASA and the program back on Capitol Hill. As a firsthand participant in the program, he brought tremendous credibility back to Capitol Hill, and that's helped a lot. He's always been a friend of the agency and its programs. [9]
The Jake Garn Mission Simulator and Training Facility, NASA's prime training facility for astronauts in the Shuttle and Space Station programs, [14] is named after him.
Upon his return, he co-wrote the 1989 novel Night Launch . The book centers around terrorists taking control of the Space Shuttle Discovery during the first NASA–USSR Space Shuttle flight.
Garn married Hazel Rhae Thompson in 1957. [15] Together, they had four children: Jacob, Susan, Ellen, and Jeffrey. [15] Hazel died in an automobile accident in 1976. [15] [16] In 1977, Garn married Kathleen Brewerton, who had a son, Brook, from a previous marriage. [15] Jake and Kathleen had two children together, Matthew and Jennifer. [15] Kathleen died on May 31, 2018. He is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. [17]
In 1986, Garn donated a kidney to his 27-year-old daughter, Susan, who was experiencing progressive kidney failure as a result of diabetes. [18]
STS-3 was NASA's third Space Shuttle mission, and was the third mission for the Space Shuttle Columbia. It launched on March 22, 1982, and landed eight days later on March 30, 1982. The mission, crewed by Jack R. Lousma and C. Gordon Fullerton, involved extensive orbital endurance testing of Columbia itself, as well as numerous scientific experiments. STS-3 was the first shuttle launch with an unpainted external tank, and the only mission to land at the White Sands Space Harbor near Alamogordo, New Mexico. The orbiter was forced to land at White Sands due to flooding at its originally planned landing site, Edwards Air Force Base.
Clarence William Nelson II is an American politician and attorney serving as the administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Nelson previously served as a United States senator from Florida from 2001 to 2019. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served in the Florida House of Representatives from 1972 to 1978 and in the United States House of Representatives from 1979 to 1991. In January 1986, Nelson became the second sitting member of U.S. Congress to fly in space, after Senator Jake Garn, when he served as a payload specialist on mission STS-61-C aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia. Before entering politics he served in the U.S. Army Reserve during the Vietnam War.
STS-41-D was the 12th flight of NASA's Space Shuttle program, and the first mission of Space Shuttle Discovery. It was launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on August 30, 1984, and landed at Edwards Air Force Base, California, on September 5, 1984. Three commercial communications satellites were deployed into orbit during the six-day mission, and a number of scientific experiments were conducted, including a prototype extendable solar array that would eventually form the basis of the main solar arrays on the International Space Station (ISS).
STS-51-D was the 16th flight of NASA's Space Shuttle program, and the fourth flight of Space Shuttle Discovery. The launch of STS-51-D from Kennedy Space Center (KSC), Florida, on April 12, 1985, was delayed by 55 minutes, after a boat strayed into the restricted Solid Rocket Booster (SRB) recovery zone. STS-51-D was the third shuttle mission to be extended.
STS-51-B was the 17th flight of the NASA Space Shuttle program and the seventh flight of Space Shuttle Challenger. The launch of Challenger on April 29, 1985, was delayed by 2 minutes and 18 seconds, due to a launch processing failure. Challenger was initially rolled out to the pad to launch on the STS-51-E mission. The shuttle was rolled back when a timing issue emerged with the TDRS-B satellite. When STS-51-E was canceled, Challenger was remanifested with the STS-51-B payloads. The shuttle landed successfully on May 6, 1985, after a week-long mission.
STS-61-C was the 24th mission of NASA's Space Shuttle program, and the seventh mission of Space Shuttle Columbia. It was the first time that Columbia, the first space-rated Space Shuttle orbiter to be constructed, had flown since STS-9. The mission launched from Florida's Kennedy Space Center on January 12, 1986, and landed six days later on January 18, 1986. STS-61-C's seven-person crew included the first Costa Rican-born astronaut, Franklin Chang-Díaz, the second African-American shuttle pilot, Charles Bolden, and the second sitting politician to fly in space, Rep. Bill Nelson (D-FL). Both Bolden and Nelson would also later go on to become Administrators of NASA. STS-61-C was the last shuttle mission before the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, which occurred ten days after STS-61-C's landing.
Charles David "Charlie" Walker is an American engineer and astronaut who flew on three Space Shuttle missions in 1984 and 1985 as a Payload Specialist for the McDonnell Douglas Corporation.
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STS-95 was a Space Shuttle mission launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida on 29 October 1998, using the orbiter Discovery. It was the 25th flight of Discovery and the 92nd mission flown since the start of the Space Shuttle program in April 1981. It was a highly publicized mission due to former Project Mercury astronaut and United States Senator John H. Glenn Jr.'s return to space for his second space flight. At age 77, Glenn became the oldest person to go into space, a record that remained unbroken for 23 years until 82-year-old Wally Funk flew on a suborbital flight on Blue Origin NS-16, launching on 20 July 2021, which in turn was broken by William Shatner at age 90 on 13 October 2021 and then by Ed Dwight on May 19 2024. Glenn, however, remains the oldest person to reach Earth orbit. This mission is also noted for inaugurating ATSC HDTV broadcasting in the U.S., with live coast-to-coast coverage of the launch. In another first, Pedro Duque became the first Spaniard in space.
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NASA Astronaut Group 9 was a group of 19 NASA astronauts announced on May 29, 1980, and completed their training by 1981. This group was selected to supplement the 35 astronauts that had been selected in 1978, and marked the first time that non-Americans were trained as mission specialists with the selections of ESA astronauts Claude Nicollier and Wubbo Ockels. In keeping with the previous group, astronaut candidates were divided into pilots and mission specialists, with eight pilots, eleven mission specialists, and two international mission specialists within the group.
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[Dr. Robert Stevenson:] Jake Garn was sick, was pretty sick. I don't know whether we should tell stories like that. But anyway, Jake Garn, he has made a mark in the Astronaut Corps because he represents the maximum level of space sickness that anyone can ever attain, and so the mark of being totally sick and totally incompetent is one Garn. Most guys will get maybe to a tenth Garn, if that high. And within the Astronaut Corps, he forever will be remembered by that