Owen Garriott (W5LFL) had a Ph.D. in electrical engineering at the time he was selected as one of the first six scientist-astronauts in 1965. He trained for and eventually flew on Skylab 3 in 1973.

Consider this: It is now four decades ago that astronaut Owen Garriott, callsign W5LFL, pioneered amateur radio communication from space. He was a crewmember on the space shuttle program's STS-9 ...