Gordon Cooper

Gordon Cooper grew up in the cockpit. His father, an Oklahoma judge and former Army pilot, rigged the pedals of his plane so his son could reach them, and Cooper was soloing unofficially by 12 and licensed at 16. He enlisted in the Marines too late for World War II combat, then earned an Air Force commission through ROTC at the University of Hawaii in 1949 and spent the early 1950s flying fighters in West Germany during some of the Cold War's tensest years. He went back to school for an aeronautical engineering degree in 1956, graduated into test pilot school alongside Gus Grissom, and in 1959, at 32, became the youngest of the seven men NASA picked for Project Mercury.

Cooper flew the last and longest of the Mercury missions, Faith 7, launched May 15, 1963: 22 orbits and more than 34 hours, longer than all four previous American flights combined, and enough for him to become the first American to sleep in space. Late in the flight the capsule's electrical system began failing one piece at a time, power first, then the automatic control system, then rising carbon dioxide, and Cooper flew the reentry by hand, using a wristwatch and the stars outside his window to time it, landing within four miles of the recovery ship. Two years later he commanded Gemini 5 with Pete Conrad, setting a new endurance record over nearly eight days that proved astronauts could physically survive a round trip to the Moon.

Deke Slayton, who ran astronaut flight assignments, later said Cooper had grown lax about training during the Gemini program, so lax that fellow astronauts had to coax him into the simulator ahead of Gemini 5. When Alan Shepard returned to flight status after inner-ear surgery, Slayton moved him ahead of Cooper in the rotation, and a backup command on Apollo 10 was the closest Cooper ever came to a third spaceflight. NASA chafed at him off duty: in 1968 it ordered him to withdraw from the 24 Hours of Daytona over the risk, and Cooper told reporters, only half joking, that 'NASA wants astronauts to be tiddlywinks players.' The man who had once flown a dying spacecraft home by hand spent his last NASA years managed by people who no longer fully trusted him with one.

Cooper retired from NASA and the Air Force in 1970 as a colonel with 222 hours logged in space, then spent his later years telling audiences the government was covering up evidence of extraterrestrial visitation, citing a 1951 sighting over Germany and an alleged 1957 UFO landing at Edwards Air Force Base, and in 1978 he formally addressed the United Nations on the subject. He died of heart failure in Ventura, California, on October 4, 2004, at 77. Dennis Quaid played him in the 1983 film The Right Stuff, based on Tom Wolfe's book, which fixed Cooper's easy Oklahoma confidence into popular memory more firmly than NASA's private doubts about him ever did.

Gordon Cooper's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Mercury-Atlas 9 (Faith 7) mission
  22 orbits; hand-flown reentry after an electrical failure 1963
• Gemini 5 mission
  Eight-day endurance flight with Pete Conrad 1965
• United Nations address on UFO sightings speech
  Told the General Assembly the government was withholding evidence 1978

• March 6, 1927 aged 0 Born in Shawnee, Oklahoma
• 1949 aged ~22 Commissioned in the Air Force after ROTC at the University of Hawaii
• April 9, 1959 aged 32 Named one of NASA's Mercury Seven astronauts The youngest of the seven, at 32.
• May 15, 1963 aged 36 Flies Mercury-Atlas 9 (Faith 7), 22 orbits over 34 hours Hand-flew reentry after an electrical failure, using a wristwatch and the stars.
• August 1965 aged 38 Commands Gemini 5 with Pete Conrad, setting an endurance record
• 1968 aged ~41 Ordered by NASA to withdraw from the 24 Hours of Daytona
• July 31, 1970 aged 43 Retires from NASA and the Air Force
• 1978 aged ~51 Testifies before the United Nations on UFO sightings
• October 4, 2004 aged 77 Dies of heart failure in Ventura, California, at 77

• Tom Wolfe 1930–2018
  New Journalism pioneer whose The Right Stuff and Bonfire of the Vanities chronicled American culture. chronicled in The Right Stuff
• Walter Cronkite 1916–2009
  CBS Evening News anchor known as the most trusted man in America during a pivotal era of broadcast journalism. covered by
• Pete Conrad 1930–1999
  Apollo 12 commander and third person to walk on the Moon, known for his humor and skill. Gemini 5 crewmate
• John Glenn 1921–2016
  First American to orbit Earth and later the oldest person to fly in space at age 77. fellow Mercury Seven astronaut