Pete Conrad

Charles "Pete" Conrad Jr. was born in Philadelphia in 1930 and fought through dyslexia to earn an aeronautical engineering degree from Princeton, making him the first Ivy Leaguer to fly for NASA. He joined the Navy in 1954, flew fighters, became a test pilot, and tried out for Mercury in 1959 but didn't make the cut. NASA's second astronaut class took him in 1962. In 1965 he set an eight-day endurance record on Gemini 5 with Gordon Cooper; a year later he commanded Gemini 11. Apollo 12 came in 1969 - the precision landing Armstrong's mission couldn't attempt. His last spaceflight, Skylab 2 in 1973, turned into an emergency repair job when the crew found their space station crippled at launch; they fixed it, and Jimmy Carter handed Conrad the Congressional Space Medal of Honor five years later. He left NASA and the Navy that same year, moved through executive posts at American Television and Communications and then McDonnell Douglas. A motorcycle crash killed him in July 1999; he was sixty-nine.