Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: rpm on October 05, 2004, 05:58:08 PM
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Gordon Cooper, astronaut on final Mercury mission
Matthew L. Wald NYT
Wednesday, October 6, 2004
WASHINGTON Gordon Cooper, the astronaut who flew the last of the pioneering Mercury space missions and stayed aloft in a Gemini capsule long enough to demonstrate that a trip to the moon was feasible, died at his home in Ventura, California, NASA announced. He was 77.
Cooper, who died Monday, was the last Mercury astronaut, and thus the last American astronaut to fly alone in space. His mission, on May 15 and 16 in 1963, took 34 hours, 20 minutes, more than all five of the previous Mercury shots combined.
His second, and final, trip into space was on Gemini 5, a two-man, eight-day mission in August 1965 that set a space endurance record, just short of 191 hours.
In an era ripe with firsts, he was reported to be the first American to sleep in space - seven and a half hours, dreamlessly, he reported - and the first to fly twice. He was also the first American televised from space.
He was raring to go long before his launching. Visiting the factory where the booster rocket for his mission was being built, he attached a NASA seal to its side, drew an arrow pointing up and wrote, "Launch This Way!"
Toward the end of his Mercury mission, the automatic system that was supposed to control his descent failed, and he had to take control manually. When Cooper, then an air force major, was asked by flight controllers if he was in position for firing his retrorockets, he replied, "Right on the old bazoo." He made a bull's-eye landing 21,000 feet, or 6,400 meters, from a waiting aircraft carrier, the Kearsarge.
Among other achievements on that flight, Cooper reported using a handkerchief to chase down droplets of water floating around in the zero-gravity environment and obscuring the view of his instruments.
"He truly portrayed the right stuff," Sean O'Keefe, the NASA administrator, said in a statement on Monday, recalling the Tom Wolfe book that recounted the history of the Mercury program. Cooper "helped gain the backing and enthusiasm of the American public, so critical for the spirit of exploration," O'Keefe said.
Cooper said he first took the controls of an airplane at age 7 or 8, when his father, an army colonel, took him up. He was selected for the astronaut corps in April 1959 - at 32 the youngest of the astronauts.
Leroy Gordon Cooper Jr. was born on March 6, 1927, in Shawnee, Oklahoma. He completed three years at the University of Hawaii and received an army commission; he later transferred to the air force and went on active duty in 1949, where he was given flight training. He flew F-84s and F-86s. In 1956, he received a bachelor of science degree in aeronautical engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology. Later, he flight-tested experimental fighter aircraft at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
Cooper retired from the air force in 1970 as a colonel.
The New York Times
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A true pioneer and personal hero of mine.
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He's lived a good life. Some people have the right to go out smiling.