Bill Pogue
William R. “Bill” Pogue, former Skylab astronaut who grew up in Sand Springs, dies at 84, Tulsa World
“Pogue, together with astronauts Gerald Carr and Edward Gibson, spent 84 consecutive days in space from 1973 to 1974 aboard Skylab, the first American space station. Their 12 weeks in orbit was a record at the time, topping the previous Skylab mission’s eight weeks. They orbited the earth 1,214 times while aboard the station, traveling 35.5 million miles.”
Bill was a great fellow who gave great advice to me when my NASA payload training organization was trying to figure out how to train the crews on the ISS. Godspeed, sir.
I had the great pleasure to meet Bill Pogue at an International Space Development conference in Washington D.C. when I was 15. It was my first visit to the United States from Australia and looked forward to meeting all the attending astronauts.
Everyone wanted to meet John Glenn and Buzz Aldrin and the crowds surrounded them, but behind the crowds standing in the corner was Bill Pogue so I went over and said hello and he had all the time in the world for me. Something that I will always remember.
I had the honor and privilege of working with Bill while he was consulting to Boeing for the Space Station. I learned so much from him. He had an influence on many of us who went on to bring the ISS into reality. Thank you Bill, your contributions to space exploration live on and we will continue to use that knowledge you passed on.