Curtis Lee ‘Curt’ Brown Jr.

“My passion for flying began when I was a little kid,” said Brown, 67, a North Carolina native. “That passion existed long before I ever became a pilot.”

Brown learned to fly in the U.S. Air Force where he flew A–10s, became a test pilot, and then joined NASA as an astronaut where he flew six space shuttle missions. He’s also raced a Hawker Sea Fury at Reno, flown for the airlines, and currently flies a Grumman Albatross and a Howard 500 near his home in Minnesota. He also owns a North American T–6.

To keep aviation fresh, Brown says he seeks to keep learning.

“The challenge is to fly perfectly, and that’s something I’ve never done,” he said. “But the pursuit of it never gets old.”

After the military and NASA, Brown joined an airline where he started at the bottom of the seniority list as a Boeing 727 flight engineer. He enjoyed the experience, even though many of his peers regarded it as a step down.

“I’d flown single-seat airplanes in the military,” he said, “so being part of an airline crew was new and different.”

Air racing is dynamic and competitive, classic aircraft are complex and sometimes quirky, helicopters require forethought and dexterity, and formation flying is all about teamwork.

Brown flew more than 6,000 hours in the military, spent 1,383 hours in space, and has logged many thousands of additional hours in a dizzying variety of aircraft, and he tries not to “waste” any of them.

“Every flight is a chance to learn,” he said. “The same is true of every person you fly with.”

Brown has a long list of certificates as well as a curious history of getting them in the “wrong” order. He earned a multiengine rating in the military, for example, before becoming licensed to fly civilian single-engine, land airplanes. And he doesn’t have a glider rating at all, even though he’s flown the word’s heaviest and fastest glider—the space shuttle. His next checkride will be for a single-engine seaplane rating, even though he’s flown many hours as pilot in command of multiengine seaplanes.

“I’ve got a habit of doing things backwards,” he said. “But that passion for flying I had as a kid has never left me.”

[email protected]