Scott Carpenter
Encyclopedia
Malcolm Scott Carpenter (born May 1, 1925) is an American engineer
Engineer
An engineer is a professional practitioner of engineering, concerned with applying scientific knowledge, mathematics and ingenuity to develop solutions for technical problems. Engineers design materials, structures, machines and systems while considering the limitations imposed by practicality,...

, former test pilot
Test pilot
A test pilot is an aviator who flies new and modified aircraft in specific maneuvers, known as flight test techniques or FTTs, allowing the results to be measured and the design to be evaluated....

, astronaut
Astronaut
An astronaut or cosmonaut is a person trained by a human spaceflight program to command, pilot, or serve as a crew member of a spacecraft....

, and aquanaut
Aquanaut
An Aquanaut is any individual who remains underwater, exposed to the ambient pressure, long enough to come into equilibrium with his or her breathing media. Usually this is done in an underwater habitat on the seafloor for a period equal to or greater than 24 continuous hours without returning to...

. He is best known as one of the original seven
Mercury Seven
Mercury Seven was the group of seven Mercury astronauts selected by NASA on April 9, 1959. They are also referred to as the Original Seven and Astronaut Group 1...

 astronauts selected for NASA's Project Mercury
Project Mercury
In January 1960 NASA awarded Western Electric Company a contract for the Mercury tracking network. The value of the contract was over $33 million. Also in January, McDonnell delivered the first production-type Mercury spacecraft, less than a year after award of the formal contract. On February 12,...

 in April 1959.

Carpenter was the second American to orbit the Earth and the fourth American in space, following Alan Shepard
Alan Shepard
Alan Bartlett Shepard, Jr. was an American naval aviator, test pilot, flag officer, and NASA astronaut who in 1961 became the second person, and the first American, in space. This Mercury flight was designed to enter space, but not to achieve orbit...

, Gus Grissom
Gus Grissom
Virgil Ivan Grissom , , better known as Gus Grissom, was one of the original NASA Project Mercury astronauts and a United States Air Force pilot...

, and John Glenn
John Glenn
John Herschel Glenn, Jr. is a former United States Marine Corps pilot, astronaut, and United States senator who was the first American to orbit the Earth and the third American in space. Glenn was a Marine Corps fighter pilot before joining NASA's Mercury program as a member of NASA's original...

. Carpenter and Glenn are the last living members of the Mercury Seven.

Early life

Born in Boulder
Boulder, Colorado
Boulder is the county seat and most populous city of Boulder County and the 11th most populous city in the U.S. state of Colorado. Boulder is located at the base of the foothills of the Rocky Mountains at an elevation of...

, Carpenter moved to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 with his parents (Marion Scott Carpenter and Florence [née Noxon] Carpenter) for the first two years of his life. (His father had been awarded a postdoctoral research post at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

.) In the summer of 1927, young Carpenter returned to Boulder with his mother, then ill with tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...

. He was raised by his maternal grandparents in the family home at the corner of Aurora Avenue and Seventh Street, until his graduation from Boulder High School
Boulder High School
Boulder High School is a high school in Boulder, Colorado. It is a part of the Boulder Valley School District.-History:Boulder High School was founded in 1875 as part of the University of Colorado at Boulder as a preparatory school for the University...

 in 1943.

Naval aviator

Upon graduation, he was accepted into the V-12 Navy College Training Program
V-12 Navy College Training Program
The V-12 Navy College Training Program was designed to supplement the force of commissioned officers in the United States Navy during World War II...

 as an aviation cadet (V-12a), where he trained until the end of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. The war ended before he was able to finish training and receive an overseas assignment, so the Navy released him from active duty. He returned to Boulder in November 1945 to study aeronautical engineering at the University of Colorado at Boulder
University of Colorado at Boulder
The University of Colorado Boulder is a public research university located in Boulder, Colorado...

. At the end of his senior year, he missed the final examination in heat transfer
Heat transfer
Heat transfer is a discipline of thermal engineering that concerns the exchange of thermal energy from one physical system to another. Heat transfer is classified into various mechanisms, such as heat conduction, convection, thermal radiation, and phase-change transfer...

, leaving him one requirement short of a degree. After his Mercury flight, the university granted him the degree on grounds that, "His subsequent training as an Astronaut has more than made up for the deficiency in the subject of heat transfer."

On the eve of the Korean War
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...

, Carpenter was recruited by the USN
United States Navy
The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...

's Direct Procurement Program (DPP), and reported to NAS Pensacola
Naval Air Station Pensacola
Naval Air Station Pensacola or NAS Pensacola , "The Cradle of Naval Aviation", is a United States Navy base located next to Warrington, Florida, a community southwest of the Pensacola city limits...

 in the fall of 1949 for pre-flight and primary flight training. He earned his wings on April 19, 1951, in Corpus Christi, Texas
Corpus Christi, Texas
Corpus Christi is a coastal city in the South Texas region of the U.S. state of Texas. The county seat of Nueces County, it also extends into Aransas, Kleberg, and San Patricio counties. The MSA population in 2008 was 416,376. The population was 305,215 at the 2010 census making it the...

. During his first tour of duty, on his first deployment, Carpenter flew Lockheed P2V Neptunes
P-2 Neptune
The Lockheed P-2 Neptune was a Maritime patrol and ASW aircraft. It was developed for the United States Navy by Lockheed to replace the Lockheed PV-1 Ventura and PV-2 Harpoon, and being replaced in turn with the Lockheed P-3 Orion...

 for Patrol Squadron SIX (VP-6) on reconnaissance and ASW (anti-submarine warfare) missions during the Korean War
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...

. Forward-based in Adak
Adak, Alaska
Adak , formerly Adak Station, is a city in the Aleutians West Census Area, Alaska, United States. At the 2010 census the population was 326. It is the westernmost municipality in the United States and the southernmost city in Alaska. The city is the former location of the Adak Army Base and Adak...

, Carpenter then flew surveillance missions along the Soviet and Chinese
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

 coasts during his second deployment; designated as PPC (patrol plane commander) for his third deployment, LTJG Carpenter was based with his squadron in Guam
Guam
Guam is an organized, unincorporated territory of the United States located in the western Pacific Ocean. It is one of five U.S. territories with an established civilian government. Guam is listed as one of 16 Non-Self-Governing Territories by the Special Committee on Decolonization of the United...

.

Carpenter was then appointed to the United States Naval Test Pilot School
United States Naval Test Pilot School
The United States Naval Test Pilot School , located at Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Patuxent River, Maryland, provides instruction to experienced United States Navy, Marine Corps, Army, Air Force, and foreign military experimental test pilots, flight test engineers, and flight test...

, class 13, at NAS Patuxent River
Naval Air Station Patuxent River
"Pax River" redirects here. For the river, see Patuxent River.Naval Air Station Patuxent River , also known as NAS Pax River, is a United States Naval Air Station located in St. Mary's County, Maryland on the Chesapeake Bay near the mouth of the Patuxent River. It is home to the U.S...

 in 1954. He continued at Patuxent until 1957, working as a test pilot
Test pilot
A test pilot is an aviator who flies new and modified aircraft in specific maneuvers, known as flight test techniques or FTTs, allowing the results to be measured and the design to be evaluated....

 in the Electronics Test Division; his next tour of duty was spent in Monterey, California
Monterey, California
The City of Monterey in Monterey County is located on Monterey Bay along the Pacific coast in Central California. Monterey lies at an elevation of 26 feet above sea level. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 27,810. Monterey is of historical importance because it was the capital of...

, at the Navy Line School. In 1958, Carpenter was named Air Intelligence Officer
Air Intelligence Officer
An air intelligence officer serves to collect information about air operations and assist in the direction of their execution for maximum effect...

 for the USS Hornet
USS Hornet (CV-12)
USS Hornet is a United States Navy aircraft carrier of the Essex class. Construction started in August 1942; she was originally named , but was renamed in honor of the , which was lost in October 1942, becoming the eighth ship to bear the name.Hornet was commissioned in November 1943, and after...

.

NASA career

After being chosen for Project Mercury in 1959, Carpenter served as backup pilot for John Glenn, who flew the first U.S. orbital mission aboard Friendship 7 in February 1962. When Deke Slayton
Deke Slayton
Donald Kent Slayton , better known as Deke Slayton, was an American World War II pilot and later, one of the original NASA Mercury Seven astronauts....

 was withdrawn on medical grounds from Project Mercury's second manned orbital flight (to be titled Delta 7), Carpenter was assigned to replace him. He flew into space on May 24, 1962, atop the Mercury-Atlas 7
Mercury-Atlas 7
-Backup crew:-Crew notes:The original prime crew for Mercury Atlas-7 was to have been Deke Slayton, with Schirra as his back-up. However Slayton was removed from all flight crew availability after the discovery of cardiac arrhythmia during a training run in the g-loading centrifuge...

 rocket
Rocket
A rocket is a missile, spacecraft, aircraft or other vehicle which obtains thrust from a rocket engine. In all rockets, the exhaust is formed entirely from propellants carried within the rocket before use. Rocket engines work by action and reaction...

 for a three-orbit science mission that lasted nearly five hours. His Aurora 7 spacecraft attained a maximum altitude of 164 miles (263.9 km) and an orbital velocity of 17532 mi/h.
Working through five onboard experiments dictated by the flight plan, Carpenter helped, among other things, to identify the mysterious 'fireflies' (which he renamed 'frostflies,' as they were in reality particles of frozen liquid around the craft), first observed by John Glenn during MA-6. Carpenter was the first American astronaut to eat solid food in space.

Chris Kraft, directing the flight from Florida, considered Carpenter's "mission the most successful to date; everything had gone perfectly except for some overexpenditure of fuel"

Unnoticed by ground control or pilot, however, this "overexpenditure of fuel" was caused by an intermittently malfunctioning pitch horizon scanner that would later malfunction at reentry. Still, NASA later reported that Carpenter had:

"exercised his manual controls with ease in a number of [required] spacecraft maneuvers and had made numerous and valuable observations in the interest of space science. . . . By the time he drifted near Hawaii on the third pass, Carpenter had successfully maintained more than 40 percent of his fuel in both the automatic and the manual tanks. According to mission rules, this ought to be quite enough hydrogen peroxide, reckoned Kraft, to thrust the capsule into the retrofire attitude, hold it, and then to reenter the atmosphere using either the automatic or the manual control system."


At the retrofire event, however, the pitch horizon scanner malfunctioned once more, forcing Carpenter to manually control his reentry ("The malfunction of the pitch horizon scanner circuit [a component of the automatic control system] dictated that the pilot manually control the spacecraft attitudes during this event." The PHS malfunction jerked the spacecraft off in yaw by 25 degrees to the right, accounting for 170 miles (273.6 km) of the overshoot; the delay caused by the automatic sequencer required Carpenter to fire the retrorockets manually. This effort took two pushes of the override button and accounted for another 15 to 20 miles (32.2 km) of the overshoot. The loss of thrust in the ripple pattern of the retros added another 60 miles (96.6 km), producing a 250 miles (402.3 km) overshoot.

Forty minutes after splashdown, Carpenter was located in his life raft, safe and in good health by Maj. Fred Brown under the command of the Puerto Rico Air National Guard
Puerto Rico Air National Guard
The Puerto Rico Air National Guard is the air force militia of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, an unincorporated territory of the United States. It is, along with the Puerto Rico Army National Guard, an element of the Puerto Rico National Guard.History=...

, and recovered three hours later by the USS Intrepid
USS Intrepid (CV-11)
USS Intrepid , also known as The Fighting "I", is one of 24 s built during World War II for the United States Navy. She is the fourth US Navy ship to bear the name. Commissioned in August 1943, Intrepid participated in several campaigns in the Pacific Theater of Operations, most notably the Battle...

.

Postflight analysis described the PHS malfunction as "mission critical" but noted that the pilot "adequately compensated" for "this anomaly . . . in subsequent inflight procedures.", confirming that backup systems—human pilots—could succeed when automatic systems fail.

Some memoirs have revived the simmering controversy over who or what, exactly, was to blame for the overshoot, suggesting, for example, that Carpenter was distracted by the science and engineering experiments dictated by the flight plan and by the well-reported fireflies phenomenon. Yet fuel consumption and other aspects of the vehicle operation were, during Project Mercury, as much, if not more, the responsibility of the ground controllers. Moreover, hardware malfunctions went unidentified, while organizational tensions between the astronaut office and the flight controller office — tensions that NASA did not resolve until the later Gemini
Project Gemini
Project Gemini was the second human spaceflight program of NASA, the civilian space agency of the United States government. Project Gemini was conducted between projects Mercury and Apollo, with ten manned flights occurring in 1965 and 1966....

 and Apollo
Project Apollo
The Apollo program was the spaceflight effort carried out by the United States' National Aeronautics and Space Administration , that landed the first humans on Earth's Moon. Conceived during the Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower, Apollo began in earnest after President John F...

 programs — may account for much of the latter-day criticism of Carpenter's performance during his flight.

Carpenter never flew another mission in space. After taking a leave of absence from the astronaut corps in the fall of 1963 to train for and participate in the Navy's SEALAB program, Carpenter sustained a medically grounding injury to his left arm in a motorbike accident. After failing to regain mobility in his arm after two surgical interventions (in 1964 and 1967), Carpenter was ruled ineligible for spaceflight. He resigned from NASA in August 1967.

Ocean research

In July 1964 in Bermuda
Bermuda
Bermuda is a British overseas territory in the North Atlantic Ocean. Located off the east coast of the United States, its nearest landmass is Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, about to the west-northwest. It is about south of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, and northeast of Miami, Florida...

, Carpenter sustained a grounding injury from a motorbike accident while on leave from NASA to train for the Navy's SEALAB
SEALAB (United States Navy)
SEALAB I, II, and III were experimental underwater habitats developed by the United States Navy to prove the viability of saturation diving and humans living in isolation for extended periods of time...

 project. In 1965, for SEALAB II, he spent 28 days living on the ocean floor off the coast of California. He returned to work at NASA as Executive Assistant to the Director of the Manned Spacecraft Center
Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center
The Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's center for human spaceflight training, research and flight control. The center consists of a complex of 100 buildings constructed on 1,620 acres in Houston, Texas, USA...

, then returned to the Navy's Deep Submergence Systems Project in 1967, based in Bethesda, Maryland
Bethesda, Maryland
Bethesda is a census designated place in southern Montgomery County, Maryland, United States, just northwest of Washington, D.C. It takes its name from a local church, the Bethesda Meeting House , which in turn took its name from Jerusalem's Pool of Bethesda...

, as a Director of Aquanaut Operations for SEALAB III. In the aftermath of aquanaut Berry L. Cannon
Berry L. Cannon
Berry Louis Cannon was an American aquanaut who served on the SEALAB II and III projects of the U.S. Navy. Cannon died of carbon dioxide poisoning while attempting to repair SEALAB III...

's death while attempting to repair a leak in SEALAB III, Carpenter volunteered to dive down to SEALAB and help return it to the surface, although SEALAB was ultimately salvaged in a less hazardous way. Carpenter retired from the Navy in 1969, after which he founded Sea Sciences, Inc., a corporation for developing programs for utilizing ocean resources and improving environmental health.

Personal life

Carpenter has been married and divorced three times. He married Rene Louise Price in 1948. In 1972, he married Maria Roach, daughter of film producer Hal Roach
Hal Roach
Harold Eugene "Hal" Roach, Sr. was an American film and television producer and director, and from the 1910s to the 1990s.- Early life and career :Hal Roach was born in Elmira, New York...

. He married Barbara Curtin in 1988. He has four children from his first marriage: Marc Scott, Kristen Elaine, Candace Noxon, and Robyn Jay. He also has two children from his second marriage: Matthew Scott and filmmaker Nicholas Andre
Nicholas Carpenter
Nicholas Andre Carpenter is an American film director. He worked as a set production assistant on TV and on films such as Thank You for Smoking before going on to direct the 2009 horror anthology The Telling.-Early life:...

, and one child from his third marriage, Zachary Scott.

Honors and awards

In 1962, Boulder community leaders dedicated Scott Carpenter Park and Pool in honor of native son turned Mercury astronaut. The Aurora 7 Elementary School, also in Boulder (at 3995 Aurora Ave.), was named for Carpenter's spacecraft.

Scott Carpenter Middle School in Westminster, Colorado
Westminster, Colorado
Westminster is a Home Rule Municipality in Adams and Jefferson counties in the U.S. state of Colorado. Westminster is a northwest suburb of Denver. The Westminster Municipal Center is located north-northwest of the Colorado State Capitol. The United States Census Bureau that the city population...

 was named in his honor, as was M. Scott Carpenter Elementary School in Old Bridge, New Jersey.

The Scott Carpenter Space Analog Station
Scott Carpenter Space Analog Station
The Scott Carpenter Space Analog Station was designed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration as a seafloor research station—or underwater habitat. It was designed by NASA Aquanaut, Dennis Chamberland and Marine Engineer, Joseph M. Bishop and named in honor of the Mercury...

 was placed on the ocean floor in 1997 and 1998. It was named in honor of his SEALAB work in the 1960s.

In popular culture

Speaking from the blockhouse at the launch of Friendship 7, Carpenter, John Glenn's backup pilot, said "Godspeed, John Glenn," as Glenn rose off the launch pad to begin his first U.S. orbital mission on February 20, 1962.

This quote was included in the voiceovers of the teaser trailer for the 2009 Star Trek film. The audio phrase is used in Kenny G
Kenny G
Kenneth Bruce Gorelick , better known by his stage name Kenny G, is an American, adult contemporary and smooth jazz saxophonist. His fourth album, Duotones, brought him breakthrough success in 1986...

's "Auld Lang Syne" (The Millennium Mix). It is also used as a part of an audio introduction for the Ian Brown
Ian Brown
Ian George Brown is an English musician, best known as the lead singer of the alternative rock band The Stone Roses, which broke up in 1996 but are confirmed to reunite in 2012. Since the break-up of the Stone Roses he has pursued a solo career...

 song "My Star".

In the 1983
1983 in film
-Events:*February 11 - The Rolling Stones concert film Let's Spend the Night Together opens in New York*May 25 - Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, the final film in the original Star Wars trilogy, is released. Like the previous films, it goes on to become the top grossing picture of...

 film, The Right Stuff, Carpenter was played by Charles Frank
Charles Frank
Charles R. Frank is an American actor noted for playing Bret Maverick's cousin Ben Maverick in the 1978 TV-movie The New Maverick with James Garner and Jack Kelly, and in the short-lived 1979 television series Young Maverick. Graduated with the class of 1969 from MIddlebury College.-Career:From...

. Although his appearance was relatively minor, the film played up Carpenter's friendship with John Glenn, as played by Ed Harris
Ed Harris
Edward Allen "Ed" Harris is an American actor, writer, and director, known for his performances in Appaloosa, Radio, The Rock, The Abyss, Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind, A History of Violence, and The Truman Show. Harris has also narrated commercials for The Home Depot and other companies...

. This film is based on the book of the same name by Tom Wolfe
Tom Wolfe
Thomas Kennerly "Tom" Wolfe, Jr. is a best-selling American author and journalist. He is one of the founders of the New Journalism movement of the 1960s and 1970s.-Early life and education:...

.

The character of Scott Tracy
Scott Tracy
Scott Tracy is a fictional character from Gerry Anderson's Supermarionation television show Thunderbirds and the subsequent films Thunderbirds Are GO and Thunderbird 6. The character also appeared in the live action movie Thunderbirds....

 in the Thunderbirds
Thunderbirds (TV series)
Thunderbirds is a British mid-1960s science fiction television show devised by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson and made by AP Films using a form of marionette puppetry dubbed "Supermarionation"...

television series was named after him.
His recovery is referred to in the Peanuts
Peanuts
Peanuts is a syndicated daily and Sunday American comic strip written and illustrated by Charles M. Schulz, which ran from October 2, 1950, to February 13, 2000, continuing in reruns afterward...

comic strip
Comic strip
A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....

 of June 28, 1962 after Linus'
Linus van Pelt
Linus van Pelt is a character in Charles M. Schulz's comic strip Peanuts. The best friend of Charlie Brown, Linus is also the younger brother of Lucy van Pelt and older brother of Rerun van Pelt. He first appeared on September 19, 1952; however, he was not mentioned by name until three days later....

 security blanket is rescued under similar circumstances.

Books

  • For Spacious Skies: The Uncommon Journey of a Mercury Astronaut, ISBN 0-15-100467-6 or the revised paperback edition ISBN 0-451-21105-7, Carpenter's biography, co-written with his daughter Kris Stoever; describes his childhood, his experiences as a naval aviator, a Mercury astronaut, including an account of what went wrong, and right, on the flight of Aurora 7.

  • Into That Silent Sea
    Into That Silent Sea
    Into That Silent Sea: Trailblazers of the Space Era 1961-1965 is a 2007 non-fiction book by space historians Francis French and Colin Burgess...

    : Trailblazers of the Space Era, 1961-1965
    , by Francis French
    Francis French
    Francis French is a book and magazine author from Manchester, England, specializing in space flight history. He is a former director of events for Sally Ride Science, and a director at the San Diego Air & Space Museum....

     and Colin Burgess
    Colin Burgess (author)
    Colin Burgess is an Australian author and historian, specializing in space flight and military history. He is a former customer service manager for Qantas Airways, and a regular contributor to the collectSPACE online community. He lives in New South Wales...

    , 2007. A Carpenter-approved account of his life and space flight.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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