posted 06-11-2025 06:29 PM               

The news of his death came from a fellow docent at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Museum in Florida where Crews volunteered as a guide for many years.

Adapted from a now-offline PBS biographical sketch and a 2007 NASA biographical data sheet as part his oral history:

Crews was born on March 23, 1929, in El Dorado, Arkansas. He earned a bachelor of science degree in chemical engineering from the University of Southern Louisiana in 1950 and a master of science in aeronautical engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology in 1959.

Crews joined the U.S. Air Force in 1950 and after graduating from test pilot school, he flew as a test pilot for the Aerospace Research Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base in California in 1962. That same year, he was chosen to fly the X-20 Dyna-Soar, a space plane designed to gather intelligence, bomb targets and sabotage enemy satellites.

With only a prototype built, the Dyna-Soar program was canceled on Dec. 10, 1963. That same day, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara announced plans to develop the Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL). Out of the six Dyna-Soar astronauts, only Crews went on to join MOL.

When the MOL program was canceled in 1969, Crews transferred to NASA and joined the flight crew operations directorate at the Johnson Space Center. He flew the Super Guppy cargo transport plane and WB-57F atmospheric research aircraft, as well as OV-095, the simulator at the heart of the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory (SAIL).

He retired from NASA and the U.S. Air Force, having reached the rank of colonel, in 1994.

posted 06-13-2025 07:57 PM               

As astronaut office rep, he would fly aboard our Learjet and communicate directly with Mission Control. In the event of a shuttle abort to the TAL site we would become the chase ship for the landing. As an instructor, I elected to let him fly the jet with me … he had the best hands of any pilot I have ever flown with.