Robert Lawrence astronaut

Maj. Robert H. Lawrence, America’s first black astronaut, had already traveled far by the time he was selected as a military astronaut in 1967. His death later that year in a tragic accident not only cut short a promising career, it led full recognition of his accomplishments and hard-won status to be obscured for decades. Only after his supporters traveled their own difficult journey was Lawrence accorded his proper place in space history.

Lawrence was a 31-year-old Air Force officer when he was selected in 1967 to join a small team of military officers training for a planned small space station. The Pentagon's "Manned Orbiting Laboratory, " or MOL, was intended to explore the value of military space missions for astronauts. Two-man crews would be launched aboard advanced Gemini capsules and spend a month or more in orbit, practicing visual reconnaissance and communications intercepts and other national security tasks.

NASA astronauts had already made ten orbital flights aboard Gemini spacecraft, and had just begun the Apollo program and its race to the moon. But the 1960s space race wasn’t just about peaceful exploration, and both the Soviet Union and the United States were also developing manned space systems for military purposes.

Just two years later, however, the MOL project was canceled as its costs soared and as unmanned military satellites became more sophisticated. The astronaut team was disbanded, some returning to their parent services and the youngest ones transferring to NASA. Had Bob Lawrence lived, he likely would have been among the group sent to NASA, all of whom later flew in the space shuttle program.

Instead, Lawrence's death in a Dec. 8, 1967 jet crash made him the only member of the MOL team to lose his life in the line of duty on that program. The crash itself soon became entwined with garbled stories and widespread misunderstanding. Sometimes called a "training flight" or a "space shuttle landing test, " the true nature of the flight -– and the enormity of the loss -– remained elusive for decades, and this contributed to Lawrence’s remaining the "unsung astronaut."

In 1971, Apollo 15 astronauts left a memorial plaque on the moon that named fourteen American and Russian names. Lawrence was not included. When, in the wake of the Challenger shuttle disaster in 1986, a private foundation built a memorial at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Lawrence’s name was again omitted.

If in the end the difficulties turned out to have been more connected with the color of his uniform - Air Force blue -– than of his skin, the fact remains that Lawrence's legacy was allowed to go unheralded for decades.

'Gifted in every area'
Lawrence was born and raised in Chicago, where he excelled in school. At Bradley University he obtained a degree in chemistry and signed up for ROTC, where he became the corps commander. He graduated in 1956 and received an Air Force lieutenant’s commission.

After completing flight training at Malden AFB, he was assigned as an instructor pilot for the German air force, flying T-33 trainers at Furstenfeldbruck AFB near Munich. He then was assigned to Ohio State University to earn a PhD in physical chemistry, completing his thesis in 1965.

Fred Abramson attended graduate school with Lawrence and remembered him as extraordinary. When Ohio State dedicated a lecture hall in 2000 to Lawrence, Abramson sent in this remembrance:

"I still have that Reader's Digest 'The Most Unforgettable Character I Ever Met' attitude toward Bob, " Abramson wrote. “He was gifted in every area. He was smarter and more efficient than the rest of us. He could dust me off on the basketball court. And, oh yes, he could fly a jet fighter!”

Lawrence remained an active jet pilot while performing research at Kirtland AFB in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and eventually accumulated more than 2500 hours of flight time, 80 percent of that in jets. Much of that flying was done at Edwards AFB in California in early 1967, where he graduated from the Air Force Test Pilot Training School.

On June 10, Lawrence was officially designated a crewmember candidate for the Manned Orbiting Laboratory project, as part of the third selection of astronauts. He and his teammates remained at Edwards AFB performing various research and training tasks.

The fatal flight
Throughout the 1960s, both NASA and the Air Force were experimenting with small-winged (such as the X-15) and even no-winged flying craft (“lifting bodies”) that were seen as prototypes and test beds for future manned space vehicles. The key to making a successful runway landing was in performing a risky high speed maneuver just prior to touchdown.

Called a "flare, " the maneuver involved pulling the craft’s nose up to generate a short burst of extra lift (slowing the descent) by sacrificing a lot of forward speed (reducing touchdown speed). Timing was critical, and the aerodynamics were still being mapped out. Too soon, and you began falling again, too fast; too late, and you never slowed enough to survive runway contact.

One operational vehicle that could be used inexpensively to "explore the envelope" of such approaches was the F-104 Starfighter, with its stubby wings. By reducing the jet's flyability through extra air drag, reducing its engine thrust and flying a hazardous nose-high approach, it could be made to fly almost as unstably as the experimental craft did.

Lawrence had mastered this piloting task and made a number of test flights in a special two-seat version of the jet. On Dec. 8, 1967, he was the instructor pilot for another officer, Maj. John Royer, who was learning how to perform such maneuvers himself.

During one approach, the jet, with Royer at the controls, hit the runway hard, collapsing its landing gear and setting the undercarriage on fire. As detailed in the official accident report, the aircraft briefly became airborne again, then came back down on the runway and began rolling.

Both pilots ejected as it rolled, with Royer sent slightly upward and Lawrence, whose ejection seat had a slight timing delay to avoid contact with the first seat, sent to the side. Royer was severely injured; Lawrence fatally so.

What might have been
In later years, a series of high-performance vehicles used this same kind of "flare" to land at runways after high-altitude missions and even space missions. Seven of Lawrence’s fellow astronauts in the MOL program made space flights aboard NASA shuttle vehicles that landed this way.

These seven men were accepted into the NASA program in mid-1969, under an agreement that allowed the youngest -– those likely to be around for the long years of additional training –- to transfer. Lawrence’s date of birth put him squarely into the range of those accepted, and there’s no question that he would have been part of the transfer.

In retrospect, people who knew him have wondered what sort of space flight career he would have had.

Speaking at the lecture hall dedication in 2000, Ohio State president William Kirwan mourned the loss. “Robert Lawrence certainly was a tremendous individual and a true pioneer, ” he said. “I consider it a great loss that we were not able to witness and to benefit from the full flowering of Major Lawrence's career.”