Scott Douglas "Scooter" Altman (born August 15, 1959) is a retired United States Navy Captain and naval aviator, engineer, test pilot and former NASA astronaut.

He is married to the former Jill Shannon Loomer of Tucson, Arizona and has three children, the second oldest of whom graduated Rice University in Houston, Texas in May 2009.

[3] Scott's sister Sarah Beardsley is the publisher of Venus Zine, a women's music, DIY and culture multi-media company.

[4] As a member of Fighter Squadron 51 at (then) NAS Miramar, Altman completed two deployments to the Western Pacific and Indian Ocean flying the F-14A Tomcat from the USS Carl Vinson.

[4] Altman performed many of the aerial stunts in the 1986 film Top Gun, most notably in the scene where Tom Cruise's character, Maverick, "flips the bird" at the enemy MiG pilot (played by Robert F.

Then the skipper got together and tried to pick four guys that he thought, were mature enough, I guess, to handle, you know, the capability that they were being given in working with the movie, and all the things that were required.

And, of course, they wanted nine different takes – so we did it nine times!Selected as an astronaut candidate by NASA in December 1994, Altman reported to the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in March 1995.

He completed a year of training and was initially assigned to work technical aspects of orbiter landing and roll out issues for the Astronaut Office Vehicle Systems Branch.

Altman retired from NASA in September 2010 to join ASRC Federal Research and Technology Solutions in Greenbelt, Maryland.

STS-109 orbited the Earth 165 times, and covered 3.9 million miles in over 262 hours, culminating in a night landing at Kennedy Space Center, Florida.

The mission also replaced a Fine Guidance Sensor, six gyroscopes, and two battery unit modules to allow the telescope to continue to function at least through 2014.