Posted on 10/04/2004 3:59:59 PM PDT by good_fight
Not to mention, I am surprised that no one has referenced "He screwed the pooch!" fsf
I must be suffering from CRS, I'm guilty. :^) Of course it was Chuck Yeager. I read his biography last year.
"My heroes have always been astronauts..."
Mine are cowboys and astronauts...
I think Gordo was a bit of a cowboy as well.
George W. Bush will be reelected by a margin of at least ten per cent
Election 2004 threads on FR
I remember several appearances on David Letterman. He had a great sense of humor. RIP Gordo!
This voice over has stuck with me although I haven't seen The Right Stuff in about 10 years... (of course I copied it off the internet...I didn't remember it THAT well...)
Its the very last dialoge in the movie...
"But On That Glorious DayIn May, 1963, Gordo Cooper Went Higher, Farther, And Faster Than Any Other American.
22 Complete Orbits Around The World.
He Was The Last American Ever To Go Into Space Alone.
For A Brief Moment, Gordo Cooper Became The Greatest Pilot Anyone Had Ever Seen."
Since my 5th grade teacher, Mrs Thelma Garton, lived on a ranch, she had an apartment in town about two blocks from school. She took us to to her apartment where she had a TV so we could watch Alan Shepard become the first American into space on May 5, 1961, which just happened to be my 11th birthday.
We knew the names of all seven Mercury program astronauts, and parts of their bios. Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, "Gus" Grissom, Walter Schirra, Alan Shepard, and "Deke" Slayton. They were pioneers and are some of the real heros for our generation.
Bump!
Last of Mercury Astronauts Remember 'Gordo' Cooper
Fri Oct 15, 2004 02:55 PM ET
By Jeff Franks
HOUSTON (Reuters) - The last of the seven Project Mercury astronauts who pioneered U.S. space exploration in the 1960s remembered one of their own as a fearless pilot with the "right stuff" in an emotional memorial ceremony on Friday for Gordon Cooper.
Cooper died on Oct. 4 at the age of 77 in his Ventura, California, home, leaving only John Glenn, Wally Schirra and Scott Carpenter from the seven young men selected in 1959 to lead the Cold War space race against the Soviet Union.
"In flying terms, most of these people up on this platform have a lot more runway behind them than ahead of them," Glenn, 83, said at Johnson Space Center.
"Gordo has scrambled, he's out there ahead of us with Gus and Al and Deke, and I'm sure we'll all rendezvous out there someday," he said, referring to late Mercury astronauts Gus Grissom, Alan Shephard and Deke Slayton.
Glenn, the former U.S. senator from Ohio, remembered several humorous incidents involving Cooper as well as his bravery in space on the two missions he flew -- the 22-orbit Faith 7 flight that concluded the Mercury program in 1963 and the eight-day Gemini 5 flight in 1965.
On the Faith 7 flight, he manually took over controls after a technical malfunction and coolly fired landing rockets at just the right instant to steer his space capsule home, Glenn said.
"He was asked a little later how it worked out and Gordo, in his best technical language, in NASA unapproved communication procedure, replied 'landed right on the old kazoo."' Glenn said, drawing a laugh from a crowd that included a number of major figures from NASA's earliest days.
"You could always depend on Gordo," he said.
Carpenter, 79, recalled that the Cold War hopes of the United States were seen as riding on the shoulders of the Mercury 7.
"This was at a time when world opinion had it that pre-eminence in space was a condition of national survival," he said.
Cooper, he said, was a key figure in giving the group a sense of solidarity: "It is proper now to say farewell, Gordon Cooper. It was an honor being a member of your fraternity."
"We regret losing Gordon, he was one of our dear friends," said Schirra, 81. "Not too bad of a water skier, not too bad of a pilot, but a heck of a good astronaut."
Astronauts Mike Fincke and Gennady Padalka aboard the International Space Station paid tribute to Cooper by ringing the ship's bell three times.
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