Scott Douglas "Scooter" Altman, born August 15, 1959 in Illinois, is an astronaut with four Space Shuttle missions under his belt but he will probably be best known as the pilot in Top Gun, who gives the finger to the Soviet fighter pilots.
He entered the U.S. Navy in 1981 and became a figher pilot and was awarded the Air Medal for being a strike leader in support of Operation Southern Watch. He performed aerial stunts in Top Gun including buzzing the tower and the scene mentioned above.
As if that wasn't exciting enough, he became an astronaut in 1994 and flew on four flights, logging 40 days in space. His first mission was April 17-May 3, 1998 on Columbia (STS-90). Then he flew on Atlantis in September 2000 (STS-106) to the International Space Station to get it ready for a permanenet crew. His third mission was in March 2002 aboard Columbia (STS-109) to the Hubble Space Telescope to perform maintenance. His final mission (STS-125) on Atlantis was the last servicing mission to the Hubble Telescope. This mission was filmed in IMAX.
He retired from NASA in 2010 and is working somewhere over here in Greenbelt, MD.
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