Scott Carpenter
Malcolm Scott Carpenter was an American naval officer and aviator, test pilot, aeronautical engineer, astronaut, and aquanaut. He was one of the Mercury Seven astronauts selected for NASA's Project Mercury in April 1959. Carpenter was the second American to orbit the Earth and the fourth American in space, after Alan Shepard, Gus Grissom, and Glenn.
Commissioned into the U.S. Navy in 1949, Carpenter became a naval aviator, flying a Lockheed P-2 Neptune with Patrol Squadron 6 on reconnaissance and anti-submarine warfare missions along the coasts of the Soviet Union and China during the Korean War and the Cold War. In 1954, he attended the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School at NAS Patuxent River, Maryland, and became a test pilot. In 1958, he was named Air Intelligence Officer of, which was then in dry dock at the Bremerton Navy Yard.
The following year, Carpenter was selected as one of the Mercury Seven astronauts. He was backup to Glenn during the latter's Mercury Atlas 6 orbital mission. Carpenter flew the next mission, Mercury Atlas 7, in the spacecraft he named Aurora 7. Due to a series of malfunctions, the spacecraft landed downrange from its intended splashdown point, but both pilot and spacecraft were retrieved.
In 1964, Carpenter obtained permission from NASA to take a leave of absence to join the U.S. Navy SEALAB project as an aquanaut. During training he suffered injuries that grounded him, making him unavailable for further spaceflights. In 1965, he spent 28 days living on the ocean floor off the coast of California as part of SEALAB II. He returned to NASA as Executive Assistant to the Director of the Manned Spacecraft Center, then joined the Navy's Deep Submergence Systems Project in 1967 as Director of Aquanaut Operations for SEALAB III. He retired from NASA in 1967 and the Navy in 1969, with the rank of commander.
Carpenter became a consultant to sport and diving manufacturers, and to the film industry on space flight and oceanography. He gave talks and appeared in television documentaries. He was involved in projects related to biological pest control and waste disposal, and for the production of energy from industrial and agricultural wastes. He appeared in television commercials and wrote a pair of technothrillers and an autobiography, For Spacious Skies: The Uncommon Journey of a Mercury Astronaut, co-written with his daughter, Kristen Stoever.
Early life
Malcolm Scott Carpenter was born on May 1, 1925, in Boulder, Colorado, the son of Marion Scott Carpenter, a research chemist, and Florence Kelso. Carpenter, known in his childhood as Bud or Buddy, moved with his parents to New York City, where his father had been awarded a postdoctoral research post at Columbia University, in 1925.In the summer of 1927, Carpenter's mother, who was ill with tuberculosis, returned to Boulder, taking him with her.. Her condition deteriorated, and she entered the Mesa Vista Sanatorium in 1930. She recovered sufficiently to become chief medical librarian at Boulder Community Hospital in 1945. Carpenter's father remained in New York, but found it hard to find work during the Great Depression. Eventually his father secured a good position at Givaudan. Carpenter's parents divorced in 1945, and his father remarried.
Carpenter lived with his maternal grandparents in the family home at the corner of Aurora Avenue and Seventh Street. He later denied naming his spacecraft Aurora 7 after Aurora Avenue. He was educated at University Hill Elementary School in Boulder and Boulder High School, where he played the clarinet, was a cheerleader, and served on the editorial board of the student newspaper. He was a Boy Scout, and earned the rank of Second Class Scout.
Naval service
Like many teenagers in Boulder, Carpenter was deeply affected by the attack on Pearl Harbor, which brought the United States into World War II, and he resolved to become a naval aviator. On February 12, 1943, he went to the U.S. Navy's recruiting office at Lowry Field near Denver and applied to join the Navy's V-5 Aviation Cadet Training Program. After obtaining his father's permission, he traveled to the headquarters of the 12th Naval District in San Francisco, where he passed physical and written examinations, and was accepted for training as an aviation cadet on April 11.The Navy had a large number of potential aviators in the pipeline at this time, so to retain young men like Carpenter, the V-12 Navy College Training Program was created, whereby cadets attended college until training positions became available. When Carpenter graduated from high school in 1943, he became a V-12A aviation cadet at Colorado College in Colorado Springs. Three semesters there were followed by six months of preflight training at Saint Mary's College of California in Moraga, California, and primary flight training at Ottumwa, Iowa, in a Stearman N2S for four months. The war ended before he finished training, so the Navy released him from active duty in September 1945.
After visiting his father and stepmother in New York, Carpenter returned to Boulder in November 1945 to study aeronautical engineering at the University of Colorado. He was given credit for his previous study, and entered as a junior. While there he joined Delta Tau Delta International Fraternity. He was severely injured in a car accident on September 14, 1946, after he fell asleep at the wheel of his 1934 Ford. The car went over a cliff and overturned. At the end of his senior year, he missed his final examination in heat transfer; a washed-out bridge prevented him from getting to class. This left him one requirement short of a degree.
Carpenter met Rene Louise Price, a fellow student at the University of Colorado, where she studied history and music at the campus bookstore, where she worked part-time. She was a member of the Delta Delta Delta sorority. Her parents had also separated when she was young, and her mother too suffered from tuberculosis. They were married at St. John's Episcopal Church in Boulder in September 1948.
Plans to retake his heat transfer course were put aside when Carpenter was recruited by the Navy's Direct Procurement Program as its 500th candidate. Through an oversight, the Navy assumed that he had earned his degree. He reported for duty on October 31, 1949, at Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida, for pre-flight training. He graduated from pre-flight training on March 6, 1950, and then commenced primary flight training at Naval Air Station Whiting Field, learning to fly in an SNJ trainer. He then went on to Naval Air Station Corpus Christi for advanced training. Most newly-trained naval aviators—including Carpenter—aspired to fly jet fighters, but in view of his responsibilities as a husband and father, he elected the less dangerous option of flying multi-engine patrol aircraft. Rene disagreed with this decision. His advanced training was in the Consolidated PB4Y-2 Privateer, a single-tail version of the Consolidated B-24 Liberator. Rene pinned his aviator wings on him on April 19, 1951, signifying completion of his flight training.
File:Lockheed P2V-7 Neptune in flight near NAS Patuxent River in 1954.jpg|thumb|left|A Lockheed P2V Neptune in flight near NAS Patuxent River in 1954
After three months at the Fleet Airborne Electronics Training School in San Diego, California, Carpenter went to a P2V Neptune transitional training unit at Whidbey Island, Washington, after which he was assigned to Patrol Squadron 6, based at Naval Air Station Barbers Point, Hawaii, in November 1951. On his first deployment, Carpenter flew on reconnaissance and anti-submarine warfare missions from Naval Air Station Atsugi in Japan during the Korean War. The missions could be dangerous: on November 6, 1951, one of his squadron's aircraft was shot down over the Sea of Japan by two Soviet Lavochkin La-11 fighters, with the loss of all ten crew.
On his second deployment, forward-based at Naval Air Facility Adak, Alaska, he flew surveillance missions along the Soviet and Chinese coasts. For his third and final deployment, he was based on Guam, flying missions off the coast of China. He was designated as patrol plane commander, the only one in VP-6 with the rank of lieutenant —all the rest held higher rank.
Impressed with his performance, the commanding officer of VP-6, Commander Guy Howard, recommended Carpenter's appointment to the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School. Carpenter was part of Class 13, at NAS Patuxent River, Maryland, in 1954. He flew aircraft such as the AD Skyraider and the Martin P4M Mercator. For the first time, he flew jets, including the F9F Panther, F11F Tiger and A3D Skywarrior. He remained at Patuxent River until 1957, working as a test pilot in the Electronics Test Division.
Carpenter attended the Navy General Line School in Monterey, California, in 1957, and then the Naval Air Intelligence School at NAS Anacostia in Washington D.C. In 1958 he was named Air Intelligence Officer of, which was in dry dock at the Bremerton Navy Yard.
NASA career
Mercury Seven
On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite. This shattered Americans' confidence in their technological superiority, creating a wave of anxiety known as the Sputnik crisis. Among his responses, President Dwight D. Eisenhower launched the Space Race. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration was established on October 1, 1958, as a civilian agency to develop space technology. One of its first initiatives was Project Mercury, which aimed to launch a man into Earth orbit, evaluate his capabilities in space, and return him safely to the Earth.The first astronaut intake was drawn from the ranks of military test pilots. The service records of 508 graduates of test pilot schools were obtained from the Department of Defense. Of these, 110 met the minimum standards: the candidates had to be younger than 40, possess a bachelor's degree or equivalent and to be or less. While these were not all strictly enforced, the height requirement was firm, owing to the size of the Project Mercury spacecraft. DPP was restricted to those with bachelor's degrees, so it was assumed that Carpenter had one.
On February 2, 1959, the first 35 candidates went to The Pentagon, where they met with the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Arleigh Burke, and the Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force, General Thomas D. White, who assured them that the services would support them if they volunteered to become astronauts, and that their professional progress and promotions would not be affected. The number of candidates was reduced to 32, which the NASA selection panel considered to be an adequate number from which to select 12 astronauts. The degree of interest also indicated that far fewer would drop out during training than anticipated, which would result in training astronauts who would not be required to fly Project Mercury missions. It was therefore decided to halve the number of astronauts.
File:Visit of Scott Carpenter and his family to the White House.jpg|thumb|left|Carpenter and his family visit the White House. Left to right: Rene, President John F. Kennedy, Kristen, Carpenter, Scott, Candace and Jay.
Then came a grueling series of physical and psychological tests at the Lovelace Clinic and the Wright Aerospace Medical Laboratory. Carpenter had the lowest body fat, scored highest on the treadmill and cycling tests, and was able to hold his breath the longest. This was despite the fact that he had smoked a pack of cigarettes a day since joining the Navy in 1943, and did not quit smoking until 1985.
NASA's Charles J. Donlan called Carpenter's home on April 3, 1959, to inform him that he had been one of the seven men selected. Rene answered; Carpenter was on Hornet, but she could reach him. Carpenter called Donlan from a wharfside pay phone to accept the offer, but Hornet skipper, Captain Marshall W. White, refused to release him. Donlan called Burke, who contacted White and promised to send him another intelligence officer, but told him that the country needed Carpenter for the NASA assignment.
The identities of the seven were announced at a press conference at Dolley Madison House in Washington, D.C., on April 9, 1959: Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard, and Deke Slayton. The magnitude of the challenge ahead of them was made clear a few weeks later, on the night of May 18, 1959, when the seven astronauts gathered at Cape Canaveral to watch their first rocket launch, of an SM-65D Atlas, which was similar to the one that would carry them into orbit. A few minutes after liftoff, it spectacularly exploded, lighting up the night sky. The astronauts were stunned. Shepard turned to Glenn and said: "Well, I'm glad they got that out of the way."