America’s second orbiting spaceman will go down in history for extreme adventures. He also explored the depths as an aquanaut.
Scott Carpenter spoke of his two careers in an interview prior to joining fellow astronauts Eugene Cernan and Thomas Stafford to speak to youngsters July 21 at the San Diego Air & Space Museum about space exploration yesterday, today and tomorrow.
Cernan is one of only three people to voyage to the moon on two different occasions, and one of only 12 to walk on the moon. Stafford was part of the Apollo 10 crew.
These “Space Cowboys” spoke of renewed interest in establishing an outpost on the moon and trips beyond to Mars. The single-day meeting was partnered with Ben Bridge, Omega Watches and NASA.
Carpenter, now 81, and John Glenn are the only living members of the original seven Mercury astronauts. Others were Wally Schirra, Gordon Cooper, Alan Shepherd, Donald Slayton and Gus Grissum.
Carpenter emphasized the importance of inspiring youngsters about the space program and to gain adult appreciation and understanding.
He joined the underwater SeaLab exploration after severely damaging an arm in a motorcycle accident that prevented future space flights.
“It kept me out of the Gemini program,” he said. “I underwent another operation but it didn’t help.”
He met Jacques Cousteau during a lecture at MIT and asked to join his program, believing his knowledge of outer space would be of value to him.
“I felt there was a lot of tradeoff and a good flow of technology,” Carpenter said.
He listed Cousteau as one of his three heroes. The others were scientist Wernher von Braun and President John F. Kennedy, the latter because of his interest in space travel.
Carpenter came to La Jolla in 1967 for a 45-day SeaLab 2 experiment in which they plunged 205 feet off Scripps Pier and remained for 30 days.
“I was the team leader for Sea-Lab 1 but another motorcycle accident curtailed that,” he said. “I broke my other arm. It [the mission] was to explore greater depths and to deal with high-pressure nervous syndrome. Up to then, this was a basic fear of reaching the bottom of the sea.”
He was asked why the then-Soviet Union didn’t pursue a moon trip.
“They were totally involved in trying to reach the moon but they had four catastrophic failures on the pad,” he said. “Their booster was like our Saturn 5 but they needed someone with Von Braun’s talent in design. Their Command One program was swept under the rug.
“We’re cooperating now and that’s important. It is not just for Russia or the United States, it is for all of us.”
About his 1962 orbit flight, Carpenter said he piloted his Aurora 7 spacecraft through three evolutions of the earth, reaching a maximum altitude of 164 miles.
“On my return, I had the worst kind of failure,” he said. “The horizon sensor intermittently failed and was off about 20 degrees. You couldn’t point the retros in the right direction. So I had to go to manual control.
“Because of this, I set the record for missing the target by 250 miles. They knew where I was but didn’t reach me until four hours later.”
He said the descent toward the Atlantic Ocean was about 25 feet per second. The heat shield released to form a curtain that cushioned the impact.
As he pointed out: “It was a benign landing.”
The question of UFOs came up.
He said: “No one but Gordo (fellow astronaut Gordon Cooper) claimed he saw one. There is no hard evidence.”
Internationally famous test pilot Chuck Yeager, highly respected by all of the first seven astronauts, failed to make the team because he didn’t have a degree.
“He handled that much better than the public,” Carpenter said. “He didn’t feel any discrimination. He was the dean and was a hero to all of us.”