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[i]A good-natured bulldog makes its home in the aft compartment of the Space Shuttle Endeavour, which is poised to orbit the Dog Crew II on Mission STS-69... The five astronauts of Dog Crew II trace their pedigree to the "Dogs of War," a tight pack of flight controllers, astronaut trainers, and astronauts who carried out STS-53/Discovery in Dec. 1992, the last of the Defense Department's classified shuttle missions. Each team member adopted a dogtag, or nickname... Navy Captain David Walker, known throughout his years of military service as Red Dog, commanded STS-53. When the veteran shuttle astronaut was chosen as top dog for STS-69, the red-headed native of Eustis, FL, dug up the bone of camaraderie again. "It's a morale-builder, he barks... Joining Red Dog on Endeavour's ninth flight into space are: Dogface (Army Colonel James Voss, payload commander, from Opelilia, AL, as well as the original litter), Cujo (Shuttle Pilot Kenneth Cockrell, a mild-mannered native of Austin, TX), Pluto (James Newman, Ph.D., mission specialist-2, a physicist and computer whiz from San Diego, CA), and Underdog, the spaceflight rookie and mission specialist-3 (Michael Gernhardt, Ph.D., a bioengineer from Mansfield, OH)... A fellow Dog of War, Dog Gone (astronaut Guion Bluford) bestowed Voss' dogtag as a tribute to the Dogface Soldiers, the Army Infantrymen of World War II. Cockrell takes his Cujo dogtag from the Stephen King novel of the same name. Newman is tagged Pluto because of his interest in science and what his crew mates describe as a "unique perspective on life." Underdog was a natural tag for Gernhardt, the pup, who turned tail on a career as a professional deep-sea diver to become an astronaut... They're the Dog Crew II, and they roam the planet in the Dogmobile, arguably the hottest jalopy in Houston. As conveyance for the crew of a classified Defense Department mission, "Endogvour" had a coat of flat- black paint. Now the 1979 Pontiac station wagon is a peaceful T-38 trainer white jet, trimmed in blue and dotted with paw prints. It sports a variety of surplus flight hardware.[/i] (Photos courtesy of Paige Walker)
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