Gordon Cooper

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Template:Infobox Astronaut

Leroy Gordon "Gordo" Cooper, Jr. (March 6 1927 – October 4 2004) was an American astronaut. He was one of the original astronauts in Project Mercury, the first manned-space effort by the United States.

Contents 1 Early years 2 Early astronaut career 3 "Spam in a Can" 4 Later astronaut career 5 Awards and decorations 6 Later years 7 Media 8 Trivia 9 Notes 10 External links

[edit] Early years

Cooper was born in Shawnee, Oklahoma. He grew up there and in Murray, Kentucky, where he attended public schools. He was active in the Boy Scouts of America where he achieved its second highest rank, Life Scout. Cooper served in the Marine Corps in 1945 and 1946, then received an Army commission after completing three years of coursework at the University of Hawaii. Cooper met his first wife, Trudy - the only Mercury wife to have a private pilot's license - while in Hawaii, and they married in 1947. In 1949, Cooper transferred his commission to the Air Force, was placed on active duty, and received flight training at Perrin AFB, Texas and Williams AFB, Arizona.

Cooper's first flight assignment was in Landstuhl, West Germany in 1950, where he flew F-84 Thunderjets and F-86 Sabres for four years; he also attended the European Extension of the University of Maryland while overseas. Upon returning to the United States and after two more years of study at the Air Force Institute of Technology in Ohio, he completed his bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering in 1957. Cooper was then assigned to the Experimental Flight Test School at Edwards Air Force Base in California until 1957. When he graduated from the school, he was posted to the Flight Test Engineering Division at Edwards, where he served as a test pilot and project manager testing the F-102A and F-106B.^[1]

Cooper logged more than 7,000 hours of flight time, with 4,000 hours in jet aircraft. He flew all types of commercial and general aviation airplanes and helicopters.

[edit] Early astronaut career

While at Edwards, Cooper read an announcement saying that a contract had been awarded to McDonnell Aircraft in St. Louis, Missouri to build a space capsule. This intrigued him, and shortly after reading this announcement he was called to Washington, D.C. for a NASA briefing on Project Mercury and the part astronauts would play in it. Cooper went through the selection process with the other 109 pilots, and was not surprised when he was accepted as one of the first seven American astronauts.

Each of the Mercury astronauts was assigned to a different portion of the project and to a few other special assignments. Cooper specialized in the Redstone rocket, and developed a personal survival knife for the astronauts to carry in the spacecraft. He also chaired the Emergency Egress Committee, responsible for working out the emergency launch pad procedures for escape. Cooper served as capsule communicator (CAPCOM) for John Glenn's first orbital spaceflight in Mercury-Atlas 6 (Friendship 7) and Scott Carpenter's flight on Mercury-Atlas 7 (Aurora 7), and backup pilot for Wally Schirra in Mercury-Atlas 8 (Sigma 7).

Cooper was launched into space on May 15, 1963 aboard the Mercury-Atlas 9 (Faith 7) spacecraft, the last Mercury mission. He orbited the earth 22 times and logged more time in space than all five previous Mercury astronauts combined – 34 hours, 19 minutes and 49 seconds, traveling 546,167 miles (878,971 km) at 17,547 mph (28,239 km/h), pulling a maximum of 7.6 g (74.48 m/s²). Cooper achieved an altitude of 165.9 statute miles (267 km) at apogee. He also gained the distinction of becoming the first American astronaut to sleep not only in orbit but on the launch pad during a countdown.

[edit] "Spam in a Can"

Faith 7, like all of the Mercury flights, was designed for fully automatic control. This was a controversial engineering decision that effectively reduced the role of the astronauts to mere passengers and famously prompted Chuck Yeager to disparagingly describe them as "spam in a can."^[2]

Towards the end of the Faith 7 flight, mission-threatening technical problems arose:

On the nineteenth orbit ... Gordon experienced total power failure. ...Carbon dioxide levels rose and the temperature soared to well over a hundred degrees ... [Cooper] took control of the dead ship manually, estimating the correct pitch for the delicate job of reentering the atmosphere - not too deep so as to burn up and not too shallow as to bounce off. Rather incredibly, considering the complexity of the calculations, he did the job perfectly ... making the most accurate splashdown to date."^[3]

Cooper's nerveless manual re-entry contributed to a basic rethinking of design philosophy for later space missions.

[edit] Later astronaut career

Two years later, on August 21, 1965, Cooper flew as command pilot of Gemini 5 on an eight-day, 120-orbit mission with Pete Conrad. The two astronauts established a new space endurance record by traveling a distance of 3,312,993 miles (5,331,745 km) in 190 hours, 56 minutes, proving that astronauts could survive in space for the length of time necessary to go from the earth to the moon and back. Cooper was the first astronaut to make a second orbital flight, and later served as backup command pilot for Gemini 12 and backup commander of Apollo 10.

After a falling-out with NASA management, Alan Shepard was chosen over him to be commander of Apollo 13. Shepard's crew was later moved onto Apollo 14 and the Apollo 13 command went to Jim Lovell. Cooper retired from NASA and the Air Force on July 31, 1970 as a colonel, having flown 222 hours in space.

[edit] Awards and decorations

During his life, Cooper received numerous awards, including the Air Force Legion of Merit, the Distinguished Flying Cross with oak leaf clusters, the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal, the Collier Trophy, the Harmon Trophy, the DeMolay Legion of Honor, the John F. Kennedy Trophy, the Iven C. Kincheloe Award, the University of Hawaii Regents Medal, and the Columbus Medal. He was a Master Mason (member of Carbondale Lodge 82 in Carbondale, Colorado) and a 33rd Degree Scottish Rite Mason.

Cooper was a member of several groups and societies, including the Society of Experimental Test Pilots, the American Astronautical Society, Scottish Rite, York Rite, Shriners, Rotary Club, Order of Daedalians, Confederate Air Force, and Boy Scouts of America.

[edit] Later years

Cooper claimed that the U.S. government was covering up information about UFOs. He said he had seen his first UFO while flying over West Germany in 1951^[4] and wrote in his memoirs that he had seen other unexplained aircraft several times during his career. Cooper also stated that there were hundreds of reports made by other pilots, many coming from military jet pilots sent to respond to radar or visual sightings from the ground.^[5][6] He was convinced until the day he died that he had seen UFOs.^[5] He described his sighting for the documentary Out of the Blue in a live interview.

After leaving NASA, Cooper served on several corporate boards and as technical consultant for more than a dozen different companies, in fields ranging from high performance boat design to energy, construction, and aircraft design. He worked for The Walt Disney Company as a vice-president for research and development for Epcot in the 1970s. Later, he went into business with Bill Paynter, a fellow Air Force colonel and who in retirement was pilot to Ronald Reagan during his days as governor of California.^[7] They hired several retired engineers from the Lockheed Corporation and Northrop and created engineering redesigns of existing high performance aircraft beginning with the delta wing series of fighters.^{[citation needed]}

After divorcing his first wife, Trudy, Cooper married Suzan Taylor in 1972. He had four daughters: Camala Keoki (Cooper) Tharpe and Janita Lee (Cooper) Stone, both from his first marriage, and Elizabeth Jo and Colleen Taylor from his second marriage.

Cooper received an honorary doctorate of science degree from Oklahoma State University in 1967. He wrote a book, Leap of Faith (ISBN 0-06-019416-2), which chronicled his experiences with the Air Force and NASA as well as his efforts to expose an alleged UFO conspiracy theory. Cooper was also a major contributor to the book In the Shadow of the Moon , published after his death, which captured his final published thoughts on his life and career.

Late in life, Cooper developed Parkinson's disease. He died from heart failure at his home in Ventura, California in 2004 at age 77.

In 2005, Space Services, Inc. announced that Cooper's ashes would be included on a memorial launch using a Falcon 1 rocket in late 2006.^[8] The actual launch occurred on April 28, 2007 aboard a private SpaceLoft XL rocket. ^[9]

[edit] Media

• 1983 film The Right Stuff - played by Dennis Quaid. Every line uttered by Quaid is attributable to Cooper's recollection (Cooper worked very closely with the film company on the project).
• 1998 HBO series From the Earth to the Moon - played by Robert C. Treveiler
• Cooper portrayed himself in an episode of the television series CHiPs.

[edit] Trivia

• Cooper died on October 4, 2004, the same day SpaceShipOne made its second official qualifying flight and won the Ansari X-Prize.
• Actor Dennis Quaid, wanting to improve his chances of winning the role of Cooper in The Right Stuff, met with the former astronaut prior to the casting call. Quaid rapidly learned Cooper's mannerisms, and even had his hair cut and dyed to match Cooper's.
• Cooper made regular call in appearances on Late Night with David Letterman in the early '80s.
• Most famous quote: "No bucks - no Buck Rogers!".

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

• 40th Anniversary of Mercury 7 NASA biography
• Johnson Space Center biography
• Spacefacts biography of Gordon Cooper
• Remembering 'Gordo' – NASA memories of Gordon Cooper
• Interview about UFOs and aliens
• Space.com article "Pioneering Astronaut Sees UFO Cover-up"
• Out of the Blue at the Internet Movie Database

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