The shuttle launch of NASA''s space shuttle Endeavour was still slated at press time to blast off Dec. 5, carrying Naval Postgraduate School alums Daniel Bursch and Mark Kelly towards the International Space Station while fighter jets, attack helicopters and surface-to-air missiles waited in the wings.

The launch was delayed twice while Russian cosmonauts fixed a problem at the shuttle''s destination, the International Space Station, and a third time because of bad weather at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

NPS grads have walked on the moon, flown on three Apollo missions, orbited the earth in Skylab-America''s first experimental space station-and participated in numerous other shuttle trips since the inception of the U.S. Space Program.

But one of the Endeavour''s astronauts-Daniel Bursch, a Navy captain and former test pilot who earned a master''s degree at NPS in 1991-is on his way to boldly go where no NPS grad has gone before. He''s going to live on the International Space Station for the next six months.

Currently 19 NPS alumni are serving as astronauts-there are 150 total. Since the inception of American''s manned space program, 34 NPS grads have made the cut.

"We''ve graduated more astronauts than any other graduate institution," says Rob Bourke, NPS alumni director. "A graduate of NPS has been on one of every three space flights since the beginning."

Bourke, an admitted space buff, dreamed of becoming an astronaut before harsh reality set in-some people are born with good eyes and some aren''t. He does have Alan Sheppard''s autograph, dated eight years to the day after Sheppard''s moon walk. "He''s not a Naval Postgraduate grad, but definitely a friend of the institution," Bourke says. "He played a lot of golf on our golf course."

Bourke has known several of the NPS astronauts and has the tales to prove it. "Some of the older astronauts have the space-cowboy attitude. By golly, they walked on the moon and they know it."

One of these is Eugene Cernan, the first NPS grad in space, who piloted Apollo 10 in May 1969, orbiting the moon and testing the lunar module for the upcoming lunar landing of Apollo 11. This was his second space mission-in June 1966, Cernan co-piloted the Gemini IX mission. Cernan got his wish to walk on the moon on the final Apollo mission, Apollo 17. He holds the dubious honor of being the last man to walk on the moon.

"Gene Cernan was the mission commander of Apollo 17, and he''s one of the very few people to have been to the moon two times," Bourke says. "On the last flight, they stayed three days on the surface of the moon-the world''s most exotic camping exhibition. No bathrooms, no showers."

Scott Altman, an NPS grad and shuttle astronaut, completed his first space flight in 1998 on board the Columbia. He''s completed a second mission since then, and will command a February 2002 mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. Before taking to space, Altman flew F14s in the movie Top Gun, most notably as a pilot double for the character Goose, who gives the finger to an enemy MIG pilot in a close fly-by.

A framed poster hangs above Bourke''s desk in the alumni relations office showing a launch, the crew and the mission patch from shuttle mission STS-106. Altman made it for Bourke, commemo- rating the launch in which he carried a Naval Postgraduate School sign into space, printed on Bourke''s printer, "to create an artifact," Bourke says.

There''s a slide show Bourke crated last summer that shows off NPS'' starry-eyed alums. In one photograph of two astronauts and a small, shiny bell, Bill Shepherd, the first commander of the International Space Station, "rings aboard" visiting Endeavour Captain Brent Jett (NPS ''89) on the International Space Station.

"Every Navy ship has a ship''s bell," Bourke explains. "And one of the ceremonial purposes of the bell is that when the commanding officer of another ship comes aboard, you ring the bell. It was the first time the ship had united with the space station. Since then, with every space shuttle that has visited the Space Station, they''ve continued that tradition."

Bursch, Kelly and the rest of the current Endeavour crew will likely hear that welcoming bell in early December. Of the 11 missions to the International Space Station, eight have included NPS graduates. The space shuttle Endeavour-the 12th mission-will deliver the Expedition Four Crew-the Russian Commander and two American flight engineers, including Bursch-to the station. Pilot Mark Kelly and the rest of Expedition Three will return home to earth. The launch will be Kelly''s first space flight and Bursch''s fourth.

Bursch was in fact selected for NASA''s astronaut program before he had finished his degree work at NPS.

"To accommodate for that another professor and I went into long-distance mode while Dan was in Houston," says professor Rudy Ranholzer, Bursch''s thesis advisor at the time and the current dean of the Graduate School of Engineering and Applied Science. "It involved lots of phone conversations, sort of a directive-studies program. This was before distance learning."

"When Dan was chosen, he was just beaming. Other people were a little surprised he was selected because he''s very unassuming. But he''s very smart and very helpful-I believe that''s why he''s so well liked by the other astronauts," Panholzer says.

Future space cowboys, take note.