Bonnie Dunbar: Orbit By Design

16 Sunsets

Before we get back on the road to the historic launch of STS-1, we have another special episode to share with you. This time an interview recorded by Kevin Fong and Andrew Luck-Baker with former mission specialist astronaut Bonnie Dunbar while they were touring the U.S. gathering material for this podcast. She’s now a professor of aerospace engineering at Texas A and M university and they spoke to her there. Dunbar studied engineering at college and went on to work for Rockwell constructing the first Shuttle Orbiters, Enterprise and Columbia. Bonnie flew in something of a golden era of human spaceflight, logging five space shuttle missions aboard Challenger, Atlantis, Endeavour and twice aboard Columbia, the shuttle that she had worked on while an engineer.

We hear about that tale of moving from the state of Washington to the high desert in California, watching the first space shuttle come to life. From there to her selection in the 1980 astronaut class and on to her first mission on, STS-61a in the autumn of 1985.

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