Glynn lunney biography for kids video

An employee of NASA since its creation in , Lunney was a flight director during the Gemini and Apollo programs, and was on duty during historic events such as the Apollo 11 lunar ascent and the pivotal hours of the Apollo 13 crisis. At the end of the Apollo program, he became manager of the Apollo—Soyuz Test Project, the first collaboration in spaceflight between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Lunney was a key figure in the US human spaceflight program from Project Mercury through the coming of the Space Shuttle. He received numerous awards for his work, including the National Space Trophy, which he was given by the Rotary Club in Chris Kraft, NASA's first flight director, described Lunney as "a true hero of the space age", saying that he was "one of the outstanding contributors to the exploration of space of the last four decades".

Glynn Stephen Lunney was born in the coal city of Old Forge, Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania , on November 27, , the eldest son of William Lunney, a welder and former miner who encouraged his son to get an education and to find a job beyond the mines, and his wife Helen Glynn Lunney. That family's surname rhymes with "sunny". He graduated from the Scranton Preparatory School in A childhood interest in model airplanes prompted Lunney to study engineering in college.

After attending the University of Scranton — , he transferred to the University of Detroit , where he enrolled in the cooperative training program run by the Lewis Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. Cooperative students at NACA took part in a program that combined work and study, providing a way for them to fund their college degrees while gaining experience in aeronautics.

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Lunney graduated from college in June , with a Bachelor of Science degree in aerospace engineering. His first job was as a researcher in aerospace dynamics at Lewis Research Center, where he worked with a team studying the thermodynamics of vehicles during high-speed reentry. Using a B Canberra bomber, the team sent small rockets high into the atmosphere in order to measure their heating profile.

His timing was perfect, for as Lunney later said, "there was no such thing as space flight until the month I got out of college". Lunney was soon transferred to Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia , where in September he became a member of the Space Task Group, which was the body given responsibility for the creation of NASA's human spaceflight program.

Aged twenty-one, he was the youngest of the forty-five members of the group.