Gerald P. Carr orbited the Earth for 84 days during the final Skylab mission in 1973 and 1974.
He was born August 22, 1932, in Denver, Colorado. He received Bachelor of Science degrees in mechanical engineering from the University of Southern California in 1954 and in aeronautical engineering from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in 1961 and a Master of Science in aeronautical engineering from Princeton University in 1962.
Gerald Carr joined the Navy in 1949, and upon graduation, he received his commission and attended the U.S. Marine Corps Officers’ Basic School in Quantico, Virginia. He received flight training at Pensacola, Florida, and Kingsville, Texas, and was then assigned to Marine All-Weather-Fighter-Squadron 114. NASA selected him as one of 19 new astronauts in April 1966.
Carr’s first and only space assignment was to command Skylab 4, the third and final flight to the Skylab space station. He and Command Module Pilot William Pogue and Science Pilot Edward Gibson were launched in their Apollo capsule on November 16, 1973. They linked up with the orbiting laboratory and settled in for a long stay. Carr and Pogue busied themselves with Earth Resources cameras and sensors and metals processing experiments. The astronauts took four two-man space walks, with the main goal of each to change film in the telescope cameras. Carr made three of the walks, totaling 15 hours 48 minutes outside the lab.
After what was then a record 84 days in space, Carr, Pogue and Gibson bid farewell to Skylab and returned to Earth on February 8, 1974. They had circled the globe 1,214 times, traveled 34.5 million miles and brought back 1,718 pounds of film, data and biomedical specimens for scientific study.
Carr retired from the Marine Corps as a colonel in 1975 and from NASA in 1977 after working in the Astronaut Office. He currently is president of CAMUS, Inc., a firm providing consultation on human potential.
Gerald Carr was inducted into the Astronaut Hall of Fame on October 4, 1997.
EDUCATION: Graduated from Santa Ana High School, Santa Ana, California; received a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Southern California in 1954 and in Aeronautical Engineering from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in 1961, and a Master of Science degree in Aeronautical Engineering from Princeton University in 1962; also presented an Honorary Doctorate of Science from Parks College of Saint Louis University, Cahokia, Illinois, in 1976.
