US Astronaut. A 1969 graduate of the US Naval Academy, he earned a degree in astrogeophysics from the University of Colorado in 1970. His nine-year service as a naval officer included 99 combat missions in Southeast Asia aboard the USS Enterprise. In 1978 he joined NASA as an engineer at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, and was selected for the astronaut corps in 1981. Lounge flew three space shuttle missions, aboard the Discovery (1985 and 1988) and the Columbia (1990), logging more than 482 hours in space; the 1988 Discovery flight was the first after the 1986 Challenger tragedy. From 1989 to 1991 he was chief of the Space Station Support Office. Following his retirement from NASA in 1991, Lounge continued to work in space exploration development for Astrotech and later Boeing. He died from complications of liver cancer. (bio by: Bobb Edwards)