Early life and education Bean was born March 15, 1932, in
Wheeler, the seat of
Wheeler County in the northeastern
Texas Panhandle, to parents Arnold Horace Bean and Frances Caroline Bean ( Murphy). He considered
Fort Worth his hometown. As a boy, he lived in
Minden, the seat of
Webster Parish in northwestern
Louisiana, where his father worked for the
U.S. Soil Conservation Service. Bean was a
Boy Scout and he earned the rank of
First Class. He graduated from
R. L. Paschal High School in
Fort Worth, Texas, in 1949. Following his high school graduation in 1949, Bean enlisted in the
U.S. Naval Reserve.
Military service He was an Electronics Technician Striker at the
NAS Dallas,
Texas, until September 1950, when he was
honorably discharged. he attended the
U.S. Naval Test Pilot School (USNTPS) at
NAS Patuxent River,
Maryland, where his instructor was his future
Apollo 12 Commander,
Pete Conrad, graduating in November 1960. and flew as a
test pilot on several types of naval aircraft. Following his assignment at USNTPS and
aviation safety training with the
University of Southern California (USC), he went through additional instruction with his old Attack Squadron 44, Bean logged more than 7,145 hours of flying time, including 4,890 hours in
jet aircraft.
NASA career Bean was selected by NASA as part of
Astronaut Group 3 in 1963 (after not being selected for
Astronaut Group 2 the previous year). He was selected to be the backup command pilot for
Gemini 10, but was unsuccessful in securing an early Apollo flight assignment. He was placed in the
Apollo Applications Program in the interim. In that capacity, he was the first astronaut to dive in the
Neutral Buoyancy Simulator and was a champion of the process for astronaut training. When fellow astronaut
Clifton Williams was killed in an air crash, a space was opened for Bean on the backup crew for
Apollo 9. Apollo 12 Commander Conrad, who had instructed Bean at the Naval Test Pilot School years before, personally requested Bean to replace Williams. His paintings of what this photo would have looked like (titled
The Fabulous Photo We Never Took) and one of his fruitless search for the timer (
Our Little Secret) are included in his collection of Apollo paintings. Bean's suit is on display in the
National Air and Space Museum.
Skylab Bean was the spacecraft commander of
Skylab 3, the second crewed mission to
Skylab, from July 29 to September 25, 1973. With him on the mission were scientist-astronaut
Owen Garriott and
Marine Corps Colonel Jack R. Lousma. Bean and his crew were on Skylab for 59 days, during which time they covered a world-record-setting 24.4 million miles. Bean logged 1,671 hours and 45 minutes in space while at
NASA, of which 10 hours and 26 minutes were spent in
EVAs on the Moon and in
Earth orbit. ==Painting==