To understand just how long the space shuttle has been flying, and how many generations of astronauts it has ferried to orbit, consider this: Of the six men assigned to the 134th and last scheduled mission (above), four weren't even born when the first shuttle commander, John Young, joined NASA in 1962. Young, 80 (opposite, left), and his STS-1 pilot Bob Crippen, 73, are now retired, as are almost all the original shuttle astronauts - the Apollo-era holdovers as well as the "Thirty-Five New Guys," as they called themselves, hired in 1978 to fly the new reusable spaceplane. The younger pilots, engineers, and scientists who replaced those first shuttlenauts had the same fire for space travel, says Crippen. They were "Type-A personalities who want to press forward and do something adventurous.
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