Charles D. Walker
American engineer
Charles David Walker (born August 29, 1948) is an American engineer and astronaut who flew on three Space Shuttle missions in 1984 and 1985 as a Payload Specialist for the McDonnell Douglas Corporation.
Personal
Born in Bedford, Indiana, Walker is married to Susan Y. Flowers, of Joplin, Missouri. They have one daughter and two grandchildren. His recreational interests include photography, running, hiking, scuba diving, reading, collecting books on space, and bonsai.
Education
1966: Graduated from Bedford High School, Bedford, Indiana
1971: Received a Bachelor of Science degree in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering from Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana
Career
Following graduation from Purdue University he worked as a civil engineering technician, land acquisition specialist and forest firefighter for the U.S. Forest Service. Subsequently, he was a design engineer with the Bendix Aerospace Company where he worked on aerodynamic analysis, missile subsystem design, and flight testing. He also was employed as project engineer with the Naval Sea Systems Command with responsibility for computer-controlled manufacturing systems.
Walker applied for the 1978 astronaut class but was unsuccessful, as he was neither affiliated with a major university nor had a PhD. He saw the new Payload Specialist program as another way to fly in space, and sought a job that might give him the opportunity to serve as one. He joined the McDonnell Douglas Corporation in 1977 as a test engineer on the Aft Propulsion Subsystem for the Space Shuttle orbiters, then the company's Space Manufacturing (later named Electrophoresis Operations in Space, EOS) team as one of its original members. Walker shares in a patent for the McDonnell Douglas-developed continuous flow electrophoresis (CFES) device.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Charles D. Walker” as american engineer. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as american engineer. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1064074. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1948, 1984, 1985 and 1966.
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This entry incorporates text from “Charles D. Walker” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.