Astronaut Gordon 'Gordo' Cooper, 1927-2004

Grant writes "Leroy Gordon 'Gordo' Cooper, one of America's first seven astronauts, died today in his home at the age of 77. A number of space related sites are carrying the news." Grant points to coverage at SpaceRef.com, Space.com, Nasa Watch, and CNN, writing "His accomplishments will continue to inspire and he will be missed."

Comments

Sadly ironic

[PrimeWaveZ]

That his death occured on the day the Anasari X-Prize was claimed by the first group successful for launching a commercially-developed space vehicle.

Re:Sadly ironic

[erick99]

Life expectancy is based on birth year. His life expectancy was 59.7 years. He did well!

Re:Farewell

[BigFire]

Truely a fantastic pilot. Sure he was more than confident, but he has the skills to back that up. During his historic Mercury 7 flight, he watch as each and every single one of the automatic guidence system failed on re-entry. In the end, he has two instruments left for guidence, the window and his watch. He still managed to bring his craft closer to the actual splashdown bullseye than all previous 6 capsules.

Gordon Cooper and the existence of UFOs

[sailracer6]

It is interesting to note that Gordon Cooper alleged in a book he wrote a few years ago, "Leap of Faith," that he encountered 'flying saucers' landing and flying while working as a military test pilot in the early 1950s, and that footage he had taken of these saucers was confiscated from him.

I don't know anything else. Would someone else care to comment on this?

Amazon link to the book:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0061098779/ qid=1096943403/sr=2-1/ref=pd_ka_2_1/002-2236212-76 16055

Nice early mention in Gene Kranz's book

[stucooper]

I'm reading Gene Kranz's book "Failure is Not an Option" and there's a nice mention early on about how he gets a lift from the airport to the base by some madman in sunglasses and an open necked shirt who gets saluted by the guards at the gate and drives 100 miles per hour and faster. Wondering why civilian speedsters get saluted at the gate, Kranz realises he's met his first Mercury astronaut, who was in fact Gordo Cooper.

Best epitaph from "The Right Stuff"

[Anonymous Coward]

From the end of the film "The Right Stuff" based on the book by Tom Wolfe. Not written as an epitaph, but it fits.

On that glorious day in 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
and for a brief moment, Gordo Cooper became
the greatest pilot anyone had ever seen.

Godspeed Gordo Cooper

Gordo steals the show at the end of the movie

[Anonymous Coward]

The movie The Right Stuff is one of my all time favorite flicks... I remember seeing it in the theater when I was a kid. (I've seen it several times since then, of course.)

Gordo (played by Dennis Quaid) steals the show at the end of the movie! Here's the movie's narrator's outcue, which, combined with the imagery of Dennis Quaid blasting into space and Bill Conti's awesome musical score, is one of the all-time coolest moments in cinema:

"The Mercury program was over.

Four years later, astronaut Gus Grissom was killed, along with astronauts White and Chaffey, when fire swept through their Apollo capsule.

But on that glorious day in May, 1963, Gordo cooper went higher, farther, and faster than any other American.

Twenty-two 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!"


You can read a transcript of the entire film here...

http://www2.ice.usp.ac.jp/wklinger/film/scripts/ri ghtstuff-s.txt

Re:Farewell

[NOLAChief]

Hard to believe...he was at Stennis Space Center just a few weeks ago with fellow astronauts Scott Carpenter and Wally Schirra promoting a scholarship program they had founded, so I got a chance to see him speak. Obviously they had all aged, but it looked like he had more than the others, unfortunately. But his confidence was still there; you could feel it in the room. Truly an extraordinary person. Thank you for leading the way, Mr. Cooper. We'll try to make you proud.

Godspeed Gordo, in your Corvette...

[ehintz]

I was fortunate enough to attend the memorial service for Alan Shephard at JSC in Houston back in '98... One of my fondest memories of the service was Gordo's eulogy, in which he said the following:

"We raced many miles in identical Corvettes," Cooper told the crowd, then looked straight ahead, as if joking to his late friend: "I'm sorry Al, but I never told you that I changed the ratio in the differential. You really weren't any less a driver, it's just that I cheated a little."

"Now you're up there in that big hangar in the sky," Cooper said. "We miss you, Al. We'll be there before long and we'll try some of that flying ourselves."

I hope your flying is good Gordo.

OK, mea culpa...

[mangu]

Well, he was a Gringo, of course. I was thinking of an "average" industrialized country, but the United States has the lowest life expexctancy of all of the "industrialized" countries. It's lower, according to the CIA Factbook you mention, than that of Finland, Japan, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Canada, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Austria, and Israel. These are all the "industrialized" countries I could remember.

OTOH, considering that Israel has total/male/female life expectancies of 79.17/77.08/81.37 years, vs. the US 77.43/74.74/80.36, wouldn't it be advisable to downgrade "terrorism" as a source of danger to life in general?