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Hoot Gibson!? :-)

There are two things about Hoot Gibson's career as a Shuttle Commander that really stand out:

He was responsible for the best shuttle landing on record: flying Endeavour back to Kennedy he achieved something like a .1 FPS sink rate on touchdown.

He also commanded the mission that resulted in the most exterior damage to a shuttle except Columbia/STS-107. On that mission, Atlantis achieved significant damage when the port-side SRB nosecap exploded during separation. Unlike STS-107, Gibson and the crew knew the event had happened and could see the damage to the orbiter. Gibson thought he and the crew were going to die on reentry, even had a "I TOLD you so, a**holes" message prepared that he figured he'd have just enough time to tell the NASA engineers before Atlantis disintegrated (he figured he'd hear the RCS thrusters kick in to compensate for parts of the orbiter burning off just before the ship went out of control).

Thing about him is that after he left NASA he went and flew commercial airliners, for SouthWest, iirc. I have a friend who is deathly afraid of flying (actually, he's smart enough to realize that he's just afraid of the impact when the plane crashes), real white-knuckle thing, who flew on a Gibson-commanded flight. He recognized Gibson's name when introduced as the Captain, asked the Stew to confirm he was the former Shuttle Commander. Ended up being the only airplane flight he ever actually slept on.

This Hoot Gibson