“Honor your curiosity — follow it to an answer.”
Posted on 10/10/2013 12:59:25 PM PDT by Borges
Edited on 10/10/2013 1:01:27 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
M. Scott Carpenter, whose flight into space in 1962 as the second American to orbit the Earth was marred by technical glitches and ended with the nation waiting anxiously to see if he had survived a landing far from the target site, died on Thursday in Denver. He was 88 and one of the last two surviving astronauts of America
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Godspeed, hero....
We’re not making any new ones to replace these guys.
RIP Good guy!
RIP and Godspeed to a hero.
I have more respect for Scott Carpenter than anyone in the government.
“His death leaves John H. Glenn Jr., who flew the first orbital mission on Feb. 20, 1962, and later became a United States senator from Ohio, as the last survivor of the Mercury 7. “
John Glenn is 92 years old.
5.56mm
Really, NYTimes?! Is this really the time to bring up almost 50 year old dirty laundry? He must have been a Republican.
These pioneers inspired me as a child to my entire career. I remember watching these early flights in the cafeteria with my fellow first graders on a small black and white TV with grainy images. He inspired the entire country. How I miss the heroes that were the early astronauts.
Godspeed, sir.
We must be of the same vintage.
In the early 1960s—the possibilities were endless.
What a time to be a kid.
“We’re not making any new ones to replace these guys.”
***
And that’s what makes his passing really sad.
I got to meet Gordon Cooper before he passed, at a speech he gave down in Arizona. He was a character, still had a great sense of humor. (He was the guy Dennis Quaid played in “The Right Stuff”)
“Honor your curiosity — follow it to an answer.”
Here is the military, pre-NASA, career of Astronaut Scott Carpenter:
Upon graduation, he was accepted into the V-12 Navy College Training Program as an aviation cadet (V-12a), where he trained until the end of World War II. The war ended before he was able to finish training and receive an overseas assignment, so the Navy released him from active duty. He returned to Boulder in November 1945 to study aeronautical engineering at the University of Colorado at Boulder. While at Colorado he joined Delta Tau Delta International Fraternity.[4] At the end of his senior year, he missed the final examination in heat transfer, leaving him one requirement short of a degree. After his Mercury flight, the university granted him the degree on grounds that, “His subsequent training as an Astronaut has more than made up for the deficiency in the subject of heat transfer.”[3][5]
On the eve of the Korean War, Carpenter was recruited by the United States Navy’s Direct Procurement Program (DPP), and reported to Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida in the fall of 1949 for pre-flight and primary flight training. He earned his aviator wings on April 19, 1951, in Corpus Christi, Texas. During his first tour of duty, on his first deployment, Carpenter flew Lockheed P2V Neptunes for Patrol Squadron Six (VP-6) on reconnaissance and anti-submarine warfare (ASW) missions during the Korean War. Forward-based in Adak, Alaska, Carpenter then flew surveillance missions along the Soviet and Chinese coasts during his second deployment; designated as PPC (patrol plane commander) for his third deployment, LTJG Carpenter was based with his squadron in Guam.
Carpenter was then appointed to the United States Naval Test Pilot School, class 13, at NAS Patuxent River, Maryland in 1954. He continued at Patuxent until 1957, working as a test pilot in the Electronics Test Division; his next tour of duty was spent in Monterey, California, at the Navy Line School. In 1958, Carpenter was named Air Intelligence Officer for the USS Hornet.
MY postscript: Anyone that flew anything along the Chinese and Soviet frontier, in those days, were already ‘written off’. Again, another true American Hero.
RIP Scott Carpenter. Now you get to see it all from the other side and without all of the noise.
In ‘The Right Stuff’, Scott Carpenter was played by the fairly unknown actor Charles Frank.
We need a lot more of “the right stuff.”
Pres. JFK put VP. LBJ in charge of the race to space program. The scientists wanted to stick with monkeys for launch subjects, but LBJ recognized men had to be risked sooner rather than later. LBJ picked military test pilots as they were used to facing danger and were subject to discipline, thus not likely to speak out of turn.
Pres. JFK put VP. LBJ in charge of the race to space program. The scientists wanted to stick with monkeys for launch subjects, but LBJ recognized men had to be risked sooner rather than later. LBJ picked military test pilots as they were used to facing danger and were subject to discipline, thus not likely to speak out of turn.
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