Gordon Cooper

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 This article contains information regarding a deceased person who is scheduled to be buried in space in the next 11 days.

Details may change as the countdown and ascent progress. Launch details: SpaceX will use a Falcon 1 to launch Trailblazer and two CubeSats for the American Air Force and MDA, and for Malaysia's ATSB. Launch will occur from Omelek Island at Kwajalein Atoll. A Celestis Space burial payload, Explorers, including the remains of astronaut Gordon Cooper and Star Trek actor James Doohan is also being flown. If the launch is successful, it will be the first privately funded liquid-fuelled rocket to reach low Earth orbit.

Launch is scheduled for 23 June 2008 at 23:00 UTC. See 2008 in spaceflight and the Spaceflight Portal for further details.
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Leroy Gordon Cooper, Jr.
Gordon Cooper
Astronaut
Nationality American
Born 6 March 1927
Shawnee, Oklahoma
Died 4 October 2004
Ventura, California
Other occupation Test Pilot
Rank Colonel, USAF
Space time 222h
Selection 1959 NASA Group
Missions Mercury 9 (Faith 7), Gemini 5
Mission
insignia

Leroy Gordon Cooper, Jr., also noted as Gordo Cooper, (6 March 1927 – 4 October 2004) was an American astronaut. Cooper was one of the seven original astronauts in Project Mercury, the first manned-space effort by the United States. He flew the longest spaceflight of the Mercury project, was the first American to sleep in orbit and has been noted as the last American to fly alone in earth orbit thus far.

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[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 and achieved the second highest rank of 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 wife of a Mercury astronaut with a private pilot's license) while in Hawaii and they married in 1947. Cooper transferred his commission to the Air Force in 1949, was placed on active duty and received flight training at Perrin AFB, Texas and Williams AFB, Arizona.

Cooper's first flight assignment came in 1950 at Landstuhl, West Germany where he flew F-84 Thunderjets and F-86 Sabres for four years. While in Germany he also attended the European Extension of the University of Maryland. Returning to the United States, he studied for two years at the Air Force Institute of Technology in Ohio and in 1957 completed his bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering. Cooper was then assigned to the Experimental Flight Test School at Edwards Air Force Base in California and after graduation 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] Astronaut

Cooper in an SSTV broadcast from Faith 7
Cooper in an SSTV broadcast from Faith 7

[edit] Mercury program

While at Edwards, Cooper was intrigued to read an announcement saying a contract had been awarded to McDonnell Aircraft in St. Louis, Missouri to build a space capsule. Shortly after this 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 along with other special assignments. Cooper specialized in the Redstone rocket (and developed a personal survival knife for astronauts to carry). He also chaired the Emergency Egress Committee, responsible for working out 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). He was backup pilot for Wally Schirra in Mercury-Atlas 8 (Sigma 7).

Cooper was launched into space on 15 May 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 was the first American astronaut to sleep not only in orbit but on the launch pad during a countdown.

[edit] Spam in a can

Like all Mercury flights Faith 7 was designed for fully automatic control, a controversial engineering decision which in many ways reduced the role of an astronaut to that of a passenger and stirred Chuck Yeager to describe Mercury astronauts as spam in a can.[2]

Towards the end of the Faith 7 flight there were mission-threatening technical problems. During the 19th orbit the capsule had a power failure, carbon dioxide levels began rising and the cabin temperature jumped to over a hundred degrees. Cooper fell back on his understanding of star patterns, took manual control of the tiny capsule and successfully estimated the correct pitch for re-entry into the atmosphere. Some precision was needed in the calculation since if the capsule came in too deep it would burn up and if its trajectory was too shallow it would bounce off the atmosphere into space. Cooper drew lines on the capsule window to help him check his orientation before firing the re-entry rockets. "So I used my wrist watch for time," he later recalled, "my eyeballs out the window for attitude. Then I fired my retrorockets at the right time and landed right by the carrier."[3][4] Cooper's cool-headed performance and piloting skills led to a basic rethinking of design philosophy for later space missions.

[edit] Gemini

Two years later (21 August 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 and 56 minutes, showing 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.

[edit] Retirement from astronaut corps

Cooper was selected as backup commander for Apollo 10 and was scheduled to fly to the moon as commander of Apollo 13. However, after a falling-out with NASA management, Alan Shepard was chosen instead (Shepard's crew was later moved onto Apollo 14 and the Apollo 13 command went to Jim Lovell). Having flown 222 hours in space, Cooper retired from NASA and the Air Force on 31 July 1970 as a colonel.

[edit] Later years

After leaving NASA, Cooper served on several corporate boards and as technical consultant for more than a dozen companies in fields ranging from high performance boat design to energy, construction and aircraft design. During the 1970s, he worked for The Walt Disney Company as a vice-president of research and development for Epcot.

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) along with Elizabeth Jo and Colleen Taylor (from his second marriage).

Cooper received an honorary doctorate of science degree from Oklahoma State University in 1967. His autobiographical book Leap of Faith (ISBN 0-06-019416-2) recounted his experiences with the Air Force and NASA along with 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 offered Cooper's final published thoughts on his life and career.

[edit] UFO claims

Cooper claimed to have seen his first UFO while flying over West Germany in 1951, although he denied reports, he had seen a UFO during his Mercury flight.[5] In his memoirs Cooper wrote he had seen other unexplained aircraft several times during his career and also said hundreds of similar reports had been made, often by military jet pilots responding to radar or visual sightings from the ground. He further claimed these sightings had been "swept under the rug" by the US government.[3] Throughout his later life Cooper was convinced he had seen extra-terrestrial crafts and described his recollections for the documentary Out of the Blue.[3]

[edit] Death

Cooper developed Parkinson's disease late in life and at age 77 died from heart failure at his home in Ventura, California on October 4, 2004, the same day SpaceShipOne made its second official qualifying flight and won the Ansari X-Prize.

[edit] Memorial sub-orbital flight

On 29 April 2007 Cooper's ashes (along with those of Star Trek actor James Doohan and 200 others) were launched from New Mexico on a sub-orbital memorial flight by a privately owned Aerospace Spaceloft XL sounding rocket. Although the capsule carrying the ashes fell back earthward as planned it was lost in mountainous landscape. The search was thwarted by bad weather but after a few weeks the capsule was found and the ashes it carried were returned to the families.[6][7]

[edit] Awards and decorations

Cooper received many 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.

Gordon Cooper Technology Center in Shawnee, Oklahoma is named after Cooper.

[edit] Cultural influence

Cooper's accomplishments (along with his widely noted and appealing personality) were depicted in the 1983 film The Right Stuff in which he was portrayed by actor Dennis Quaid. Cooper worked closely with the production company on this project and reportedly, every line uttered by Quaid is attributable to Cooper's recollection. Quaid met with Cooper before the casting call and rapidly learned his mannerisms. Quaid also had his hair cut and dyed to match how the former astronaut's hair looked during the 1950s and 1960s. Cooper was later depicted in the 1998 HBO series From the Earth to the Moon, in which his character was played by Robert C. Treveiler. Cooper appeared as himself in an episode of the television series CHiPs and during the early 1980s made regular call in appearances on Late Night with David Letterman. The Thunderbirds character Gordon Tracy was named after him.

[edit] Quotes

“ No bucks, no Buck Rogers! ”
(This expression about the high level of funding needed for spaceflight was popular among test pilots and astronauts in the United States during the late 1950s and early 1960s)


“ In the early days, there was so little that we knew about space. Every day was an 'oh, gee-whiz day' or big adventure. ”


“ Who's the best pilot y'ever saw? ”

[edit] References and notes

  1. ^ Gray, Tara, L. Gordon Cooper, Jr., history.nasa.gov, retrieved 20 January 2008
  2. ^ Wolfe, Tom, The Right Stuff 1979 ISBN 978-0312427566
  3. ^ a b c space.com, Gordon Cooper Touts New Book Leap of Faith, 30 July 2000, retrieved 20 January 2008
  4. ^ Wagener, Leon, One Giant Leap, Forge Books, 2004 ISBN 978-0312873431
  5. ^ Martin, Robert Scott, Gordon Cooper: No Mercury UFO, space.com, 10 September 1999, retrieved 20 January 2008
  6. ^ uk.reuters.com, Ashes of "Star Trek's" Scotty found after space ride, 18 May 2007, retrieved 20 January 2008
  7. ^ Sherriff, Lucy, Scotty: ashes located and heading home, 22 May 2007, retrieved 20 January 2008

[edit] External links

v • d • e
NASA Astronaut Group 1 (Mercury Seven)
v • d • e
NASA Astronaut Groups