John Young was born on September 24, 1930. He has logged 835 hours in space on 6 missions. His first mission was on Gemini 3. He was the pilot, he went up with Gus Grissom. Gemini 10 was Young's second mission he was commander with Michael Collions as pilot. Young was the command module pilot on Apollo 10. Apollo 10 went into lunar orbit, but never landed on the moon. However, Yound did make it to the moon on Apollo 16. He spent 3 days on the moon along with Charles Duke.

His last two missions were aboard the space shuttle. Young commanded the first space shuttle flight STS-1 on April 12-14, 1981. His final mission STS-9 was the first flight to carry the European Space Lab. Young was going to command the mission that was going to bring the Hubble Telescope into space but that was postponed because of the Challenge tragedy.