Slayton, Donald Kent

Donald Kent Slayton, byname Deke, (born March 1, 1924, Sparta, Wis., U.S.—died June 13, 1993, League City, Texas), American astronaut who was one of the original seven Project Mercury astronauts in 1959 but did not make a space flight until 1975.

Slayton joined the U.S. air force in 1942 and flew 56 combat missions during World War II. After the war he earned a B.S. in aeronautical engineering (1949) from the University of Minnesota and then became an engineer with the Boeing Aircraft Company. In 1951 he was recalled to active duty with the Minnesota Air National Guard, and in 1955 he became a test pilot at Edwards Air Force Base in California. After joining the Mercury astronaut program, Slayton was grounded because he was found to have an irregular heartbeat. He proved instrumental, however, as the director of flight crew operations at the Johnson Space Center, where he directed astronaut training and chose crews for nearly all the Gemini and Apollo missions.

In 1975, after his heart ailment unaccountably disappeared, Slayton at age 51 was named docking module pilot for the Apollo-Soyuz mission (July 15–24, 1975; with Thomas P. Stafford and Vance D. Brand). After that flight was completed, Slayton served as manager of the orbital flight tests of the space shuttle until he retired in 1982. He then founded and directed Space Services, Inc., a pioneering company that launched small satellites.