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I thought Deke Slayton was the first chief. Slayton was originally slated to fly Mercury 7in1962, but was grounded by NASA Administrator James Webb due to a heart rhythm irregularity. Between his grounding in 1962 and Alan Shepard's grounding in 1964 due to his Meniere's Syndrome, the active Mercury Seven astronauts made him the Chief of the Astronaut Office in order to prevent a non-astronaut from being brought in from the Air Force or Navy to boss the astronauts (then all of them military test pilots) to run the Astronaut Office. Only in 1964 did Shepard took over as Chief of the Astronaut Office when Slayton became Director of Flight Crew Operations at JSC.
Yes, I feel that a huge omission from this page is the fact that the role was originally Deke's and only after Deke was promoted did Alan get the job. As Director of Flight Crew Op, Deke was all of the astronauts' boss, including the Chief Astronaut. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.163.32.110 (talk) 05:36, 29 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I removed a link in the Steve Lindsey row of the table. It was inserted in 2009 in this rev [1] but the article cited was the result of a search that expired, not the article itself. So there's no telling what this article was. Feel free to replace it with a link to an actual article. Wizardimps (talk) 19:24, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
