Scott Carpenter

Malcolm Scott Carpenter (born May 1, 1925) was one of the original seven Mercury astronauts for Project Mercury, chosen in 1959 to lead America in its race to beat the Russians to the moon. He was the second American to orbit, and the fourth in space.

A pilot with the U.S. Navy, Carpenter flew into space on May 24, 1962, atop the Mercury-Atlas 7 rocket for a three-day mission. Carpenter was back-up pilot for John Glenn and when Deke Slayton was withdrawn on medical grounds from the second manned orbital flight of Project Mercury, Carpenter was assigned as pilot. His Aurora 7 spacecraft attained a maximum altitude of 164 miles and an orbital velocity of 17,532 miles per hour.

Carpenter was fascinated by observing the Earth and the 'fire fly' particles of frozen liquid around the craft, which had been observed by John Glenn in the previous Mercury flight. Fuel consumption was a problem during the flight and a mis-timed re-entry burn resulted in the craft overshooting the planned landing point by 250 miles.

Just who was to blame for this is a matter of some dispute. Chris Kraft, who led the team of flight controllers seems to squarely blame Carpenter, a position which has been taken up by others in the flight controller community such as Gene Kranz. On the other hand, monitoring fuel consumption and other aspects of the vehicle operation was as much, if not more, the responsibility of the ground controllers as the astronaut, and organizational tensions between the astronaut office and the flight controller office which weren't resolved until the later Gemini and Apollo programs may be reflected in Kraft's assessment of Carpenter's performance during the flight.

He was never chosen to fly in space again, and was given an extended leave of absence to work on the Navy's Sealab project in which in 1965 he spent 28 days living on the ocean bed. Carpenter retired from the Navy in 1969.

For an excellent first-hand account of his experiences as a pilot, a Mercury Astronaut, and his life after Mercury, including an account of what went wrong, and right, on the Aurora 7 spaceflight see his memoirs co-written with his daughter, entitled "For Spacious Skies" ISBN 0151004676 or the revised paperback edition ISBN 0451211057