Jake Garn: The Utah Senator in Orbit and the Space Sickness Garn Scale

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Jake Garn was born in Richfield, Utah, in 1932, the son of a World War I pilot. After a business and finance degree from the University of Utah in 1955, he flew Martin P-5M Marlin flying boats for the Navy and then KC-97L and KC-135A tankers in the Utah Air National Guard, retiring as a colonel with 17,000 flight hours. He served on the Salt Lake City Commission, was elected mayor in 1972, led the National League of Cities in 1975, and won Wallace F. Bennett's Senate seat in 1974. His 1980 reelection with 74 percent was the largest statewide victory margin in Utah history, and as Banking Committee chairman he shaped the Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982, which deregulated the savings and loan industry.

As head of the appropriations subcommittee over NASA's budget, Garn pushed for a shuttle seat from 1981, saying he needed to kick the tires of the program he funded. In April 1985 he flew on Discovery mission STS-51D as a payload specialist and test subject for space adaptation syndrome, and his severe nausea led astronauts to call the maximum level of space sickness one Garn. Mike Mullane criticized sending a politician, while Charles Bolden noted that Garn had more flight hours than anyone in the astronaut office. His first wife, Hazel, died in a 1976 car crash in Nebraska, and in 1986 he donated a kidney to his 27 year old daughter Susan.

• He and Representative Henry Hyde resigned from the board of a pro-life PAC whose director drew up a hit list of lawmakers.
• STS-51D logged 108 orbits and more than 2.5 million miles.
• In 1989 he co-wrote Night Launch, a thriller about terrorists hijacking Discovery during a joint U.S. and Soviet mission.
• NASA named its astronaut training facility after him.
• After leaving the Senate in 1992 he became a supporter of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.