The U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame: from its 1990 opening to Heroes and Legends

The U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame opened in May 1990, outside the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, with the Mercury 7 astronauts as its first inductees. The idea was theirs. According to the visitor complex’s history of the hall, the six surviving Mercury 7 astronauts and Betty Grissom, widow of Gus Grissom, had earlier created the Mercury 7 Foundation to help university students in science, math and technology, and the same astronauts “conceived of a place where space travelers could be remembered,” much as baseball players are.

Building it

Three people did the work of making it real, by the visitor complex’s account: Henri Landwirth, who had helped incorporate the Mercury 7 Foundation as a nonprofit; Ed Buckbee, head of the United States Space Camp; and Howard Benedict, the Associated Press bureau chief, who later became executive director of the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation, as the Mercury 7 Foundation came to be called. The Space Camp organization then built a new educational space camp that incorporated the Hall of Fame, with an exhibit hall for the astronauts’ artifacts. It also served as the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation’s headquarters.

Into the visitor complex

Delaware North, which runs the visitor complex for NASA, acquired the Hall of Fame and reopened it on December 14, 2002, after a three-month renovation, as part of the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.

In 2015, the hall’s 25th anniversary year, the visitor complex broke ground on a new attraction called Heroes and Legends, featuring the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame, scheduled to open in 2016. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and Kennedy Space Center director Robert Cabana, both Hall of Fame astronauts themselves, were at the May 29 groundbreaking, held on the eve of that year’s induction.

Who gets in

Each year a committee of Hall of Fame astronauts, former NASA officials, flight directors, historians and journalists picks the inductees, and the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation runs the process. To be eligible, an astronaut must have made a first flight at least 17 years before induction, be a U.S. citizen, and be a NASA-trained commander, pilot or mission specialist who has orbited the Earth at least once. The foundation’s scholarships, by the visitor complex’s count, have passed $4 million, awarded to more than 400 students.

Further Reading

• The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe
• First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong by James R. Hansen