I was selected to be an astronaut on a military program called the Manned Orbiting Laboratory back in '67. That program got cancelled in '69 and NASA ended up taking half of us.

He was selected to be a member of Naval Aviators Golden Eagles in 2009. Following the cancellation of the MOL program he became a NASA astronaut in September 1969 and was a member of the astronaut support crew for the Skylab 2 Skylab 3 and Skylab 4 missions and for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project mission. Awards and honors

Crippen's accomplishments have earned him many notable awards including the NASA Exceptional Service Medal in 1972.

He married Pandora Lee Puckett of Miami Florida. At the Johnson Space Center Robert Crippen was the first Payload Deployment and Retrieval System training supervisor and a member of the initial Space Shuttle training team.