Jake Garn Edwin Jacob " Jake " Garn ( born October 12 , 1932 ) is an American politician , a member of the Republican Party , and served as a U . S . Senator representing Utah from 1974 to 1993 . Garn became the first sitting member of the United States Congress to fly in space when he flew aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery as a Payload Specialist during NASA mission STS - 51 - D ( April 12 – 19 , 1985 ) . Early life . Born in Richfield , Utah , Garn earned a Bachelor of Science degree in business and finance from the University of Utah in 1955 , where he became a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity . He also attended East High School , Clayton Middle School , and Uintah Elementary School . Experience . Senator Garn is a former insurance executive . He served in the United States Navy as a pilot . He also served as a pilot of the 151st Air Refueling Group of the Utah Air National Guard . As a pilot , he flew the KC - 97L Stratotanker and a KC - 135A Stratotanker . He retired as a Colonel in April 1979 . He was promoted to Brigadier General after his space shuttle mission . He has flown more than 10 , 000 hours in military and private civilian aircraft . Prior to his election to the Senate , Garn served on the Salt Lake City commission for four years and was elected as the mayor in 1971 , entering office in 1972 . Garn was active in the Utah League of Cities and Towns and served as its president in 1972 . In 1974 , Garn was the first vice - president of the National League of Cities , and he served as its honorary president in 1975 . Garn was first elected to the Senate in 1974 , succeeding retiring Republican Wallace Bennett . Garn was re - elected to a second term in November 1980 , receiving 74 percent of the vote , the largest victory in a statewide race in Utah history . Garn was chairman of the Senate Banking , Housing , and Urban Affairs Committee and served on three subcommittees : Housing and Urban Affairs , Financial Institutions , and International Finance and Monetary Policy . He also was a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee and served as Chairman of the HUD - Independent Agencies Subcommittee . He served on four other Appropriations subcommittees : Energy and Water Resources , Defense , Military Construction , and Interior . Garn served as a member of the Republican leadership from 1979 to 1984 as Secretary of the Republican Conference . Garn retired from the Senate in 1992 . Savings and loan . As Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee , Garn was co - author of the Garn – St . Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982 , the law that partially deregulated the savings and loan industry and attempted to forestall the looming Savings and Loan crisis . Spaceflight . Garn asked to fly on the Space Shuttle because he was head of the Senate appropriations subcommittee that dealt with NASA , and had extensive aviation experience . He had previously flown a B - 2 Spirit prototype and driven a new Army tank . STS - 51 - D was launched from and returned to land at the Kennedy Space Center , Florida . Its primary objective was to deploy two communications satellites , and to perform electrophoresis and echocardiograph operations in space in addition to a number of other experiments . As a payload specialist , Garn ' s role on the mission was as a congressional observer and as a subject for medical experiments on space motion sickness . At the conclusion of the mission , Garn had traveled over 2 . 5 million miles in 108 Earth orbits , logging over 167 hours in space . The space sickness he experienced during the journey was so severe that a scale for space sickness was jokingly based on him , where " one Garn " is the highest possible level of sickness . Some NASA astronauts who opposed the payload specialist program , such as Mike Mullane , believed that Garn ' s space sickness was evidence of the inappropriateness of flying people with little training . Fellow 51 - D payload specialist Charles D . Walker — who also suffered from space sickness on the flight despite having flown before — stated , however , that The Jake Garn Mission Simulator and Training Facility , NASA ' s prime training facility for astronauts in the Shuttle and Space Station programs , is named for him . Upon his return , he co - authored a novel entitled " Night Launch " . The book centers around terrorists taking control of the Space Shuttle " Discovery " during the first NASA – USSR space shuttle flight . It was published in 1989 . Personal life . Garn married Hazel Rhae Thompson in 1957 . Together , they had four children : Jacob , Susan , Ellen , and Jeffrey . Hazel died in 1976 . In 1977 , Garn married Kathleen Brewerton , who had a son , Brook , from a previous marriage . Jake and Kathleen had two children together , Matthew and Jennifer .