John Young obituary
The astronaut John Young, who has died aged 87, was the ninth man to walk on the moon, as commander of Nasa's Apollo 16 mission in 1972, and landed the first US space shuttle in 1981. Young epitomised the indomitable spirit of his era; after the space shuttle landing, he said: "We're really not too far from going to the stars." He was described by Lee Silver, the California Institute of Technology professor who trained many Apollo astronauts, as the "archetypical extraterrestrial".
Young's career as an astronaut began in the early 1960s. The first astronauts had been recruited in 1959, with the Mercury Seven, a group that included the first American in space, Alan Shepard, and the first American in orbit, John Glenn. In 1962 came the New Nine, also known as Astronaut Group 2, among them the first man to walk on the moon, Neil Armstrong, and Young.
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