Gordon Cooper dies...

[propforce]

A nice article on Gordo Cooper in this week's AW & ST...<br /><br />Gordon Cooper, Project Mercury, Gemini Astronaut Dies <br />Aviation Week & Space Technology <br />10/11/2004, page 40 <br /> <br />Craig Covault <br /> <br />Astronaut Cooper<br /><br />One of the "Original Seven" Project Mercury astronauts, U.S. Air Force Col. (ret.) Leroy Gordon (Gordo) Cooper, Jr., died on Oct. 4 in Ventura, Calif. He was 77.<br /><br />Cooper flew both Mercury and Gemini orbital missions and described the experience of flying in space as "humbling."<br /><br />Selected in 1959 along with Alan B. Shepard, Jr., Virgil I. (Gus) Grissom, John H. Glenn, M. Scott Carpenter, Walter M. (Wally) Schirra, Jr. and Donald K. (Deke) Slayton, Cooper flew the final mission in Project Mercury. <br /> <br />He was a free spirit in the astronaut office and on occasion, rather than take the official van, drove his Chevrolet Corvette--while wearing his spacesuit--to get to spacecraft tests at Atlas Launch Complex 14 here at the Cape.<br /><br />Launched on board his Faith 7 spacecraft in May 1963, Cooper flew a 22-orbit 34-hr. mission that was longer than the previous five Mercury missions combined. Near the end of that flight the spacecraft had a serious electrical problem that killed the artificial horizon on his instrument panel and disabled automatic attitude control. This presented serious challenges for reentry, since the spacecraft had to be in a precise position for retro-fire immediately after coming into daylight on the descent orbit.<br /><br />Flying Faith 7 manually and in darkness, Cooper used stars to align the yaw axis, the horizon to align roll and then, as daylight broke, a scribe mark on his window to align pitch. He flew so precisely that Faith 7 landed within sight of the recovery ship in the Atlantic. The flight was the U.S. space program's last solo-astronaut mission.<br /><br />During the follow-on Gemini project, Cooper became the first man to fly twice in space, commanding Gemini 5 with <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[davf]

It was a very colourful book... but did provide some insight into him.