Payload specialist
The National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 states that NASA should provide the "widest practicable and appropriate dissemination of information concerning its activities and the results thereof".
Roger K. Crouch[2] and Ulf Merbold are examples of those who flew in space despite not meeting NASA physical requirements;[3]: 63 the agency's director of crew training Jim Bilodeau said in April 1981 "we'll be able to take everybody but the walking wounded".
[4] Payload specialists were not required to be United States citizens, but had to be approved by NASA and undergo rigorous but shorter training.
Michael Lampton estimated that about 20% of his training was general, including firefighter school, capsule communicator duty, and use of Personal Egress Air Packs and the space toilet.
Besides his own electrophoresis work, Walker operated an unrelated experiment for the University of Alabama Birmingham, and helped build homemade repair tools for a satellite launched on the mission.
The last flown payload specialist was the first Israeli astronaut, Ilan Ramon, who was killed in the Columbia disaster on mission STS-107 with the rest of the crew.
Many astronauts worried that without years of training together they would not be able to trust payload specialists in an emergency; Henry Hartsfield described their concern as "If you had a problem on orbit, am I going to have to babysit this person?"
[3]: 40, 51 [7] A 1986 post-Challenger article in The Washington Post reviewed the issue, reporting that as far back as 1982, NASA was concerned with finding reasonable justifications for flying civilians on the Shuttle as was directed by the Reagan administration.
The article says that "A review of records and interviews with past and present NASA and government officials shows the civilian program's controversial background, with different groups pushing for different approaches".
Garn advised STS-51-D colleague Jeffrey A. Hoffman to not play poker because, the astronaut quoted, "'It took you a while to disguise your initial skepticism about this whole thing'".
Mullane became less critical of them after his first mission; he and Hartsfield approved of Walker, as did Hoffman of Garn after STS-51-D.[3]: 40, 48, 50–52 The following list are people who were named as backup (also known as alternate) payload specialists.
