Astronaut Gordon 'Gordo' Cooper, 1927-2004 295
Grant writes "Leroy Gordon 'Gordo' Cooper, one of America's first seven astronauts, died today in his home at the age of 77. A number of space related sites are carrying the news." Grant points to coverage at SpaceRef.com, Space.com, Nasa Watch, and CNN, writing "His accomplishments will continue to inspire and he will be missed."
He will be remembered (Score:0, Insightful)
Farewell (Score:5, Insightful)
Blue skies, Gordo.
Re:Sadly ironic (Score:2, Insightful)
I was thinking exactly the opposite: 77 seems so premature. These guys were getting the best physical conditioning and medical care the science of the day could get. Why did he have a shorter life than the average life expectancy in a typical developed country today?
A memorable day, for better or worse (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
The Greatest Pilot Anyone Had Ever Seen (Score:2, Insightful)
Reminds me of a line... (Score:3, Insightful)
Gordon Cooper : You know what makes this bird go up? FUNDING makes this bird go up.
Gus Grissom : He's right. No bucks, no Buck Rogers.
who's the best? (Score:3, Insightful)
Stupîd media (Score:5, Insightful)
Stupid media. Always going after the useless thing.
Re:Reminds me of a line... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's been said once, it's been said a million times: SpaceShipOne does not mean that NASA is a useless, wasteful government agency. SpaceShipOne did not go into orbit, a very major distinction (not to knock what they did). But it's a very different ball game, and NASA does quite a bit of other research as well. Who do you think did the inital research that developed many of the technologies that SpaceShipOne uses? It's not a nail in the coffin of government-sponsered spaceflight research.
Re:Sadly ironic (Score:5, Insightful)
Gordo is now meeting with Shepard, Slayton, Grissom and Conrad. That should be a party. It's hard to believe that Glenn and Schirra are the only ones left.
Godspeed Gordo, we will miss you.
Re:Let's be REALISTIC here (Score:5, Insightful)
The first group of astronauts were at the apex of the pilot pyramid. A VERY competitive field. Test pilots are engineers who happen to fly extremely well.
And it was not quite as simple as you make it seem, because no one had ever done it before. NASA didn't simply build it and dump some random warm body in it. The astronauts were as much a part of the development team as the sliderule carrying geeks. The campaigned (and won) for windows ("Oh, the extra stress factor!"), and a control stick to actually fly the damn thing.
Get off your military bashing, and realize that some people go into the military for other reasons beyond "a bleak future". That is the only place where you can fly fighter jets. If you'd ever flown or ridden in one, or known some of these pilots, you might get the merest inkling of what these guys were all about.
ufos are a modern religion (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, because it makes perfect sense for the air force to talk about classified flyers (thats assuming you've got the ear of someone high up there) to the press. And its just a big coincidence that so many of these "sightings" are not only around air force bases but indistinguishable from once-classified jets.
On top of it, you have a lot of opportunists who are ready to make (and have made) a mint from "believers." The stories start plausible enough and then the worst stereotypical 50's sci-fi elements are tossed in. Or New Age BS about abductions, etc.
The history of UFO's is really interesting in the way the history of religion is. They both show us what we project. Early sightings were often met with messages regarding (at the time) a new and dangerous threat called nuclear weapons. Everyone who claimed to met an alien claimed to have a message of world peace, sometimes from Jesus or some other deity who is in cahoots with the aliens.
The idealistic 60s ended and the 80s brought us abductions and comical "space rapes." I'm not sure what this says about our collective unconscious, but I'm sure its not exactly a positive message.
Then the 90s came by with more "proof" this time in form of crop circles. Believers flocked to them like a concrete stain that looks like Jesus in the bible belt. Now we know that they were just pranks and easily reproduced.
Its sad people still believe these things. I would hope they could work out their emotional issues within a credible and responsible religious organization or choose a secular approach to life instead of UFO conspiracy theories.
Re:Godspeed, Gordo (Score:3, Insightful)
Shouldn't that read:
"It's ironic that on the day we lose the last human to go into space alone, we send another human into space alone."
Patriotism is for those that need to believe they are better than all others, based solely on geography and ethnocentrism.
Re:Planet Starbucks (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sadly ironic (Score:5, Insightful)
How many times have innovators become the major obstruction, either deliberately or even just by being there? Sometimes, you have to let go, in order to move on.
Gordon Cooper represented the Old Order. The NASA way of doing things. The big-budget, cutting-edge frontier of science way of viewing the world. In his time, that was an essential perspective. Nobody could do anything, if it weren't for the first few. Nobody would know how, and few enough of those would be willing to take such enormous risks.
Without the achievements of the Americans in the form of NASA, the Russians and (ultimately) the Germans, SpaceShipOne would never have existed. Even the very recent work (eg: remote-controlled probes and landers, the ion drive and guidance system AI of DS-1, etc) will be essential for successful migration to a space-based society.
Let's not forget the other players, either. The British HOTOL program (despite being cancelled) did result in a lot of progress in engine technology. It also inspired a lot of progress in reusability, far beyond NASA's vision of the Space Shuttle.
The Australians, too, with their successful development of SCRAM-jet technology, have made it viable, for the first time, to think of vehicles capable of reaching LEO without the aid of rockets. None of this is research the private sector could have afforded, even if it had the vision necessary to understand what could be done.
Every single one of the pioneering astronauts, Gordon Cooper amongst them, represented this kind of heavy-duty R&D. They were, after all, the guys test-flying this stuff. If they did not absolutely understand what they were doing, did not absolutely understand the capabilities and behaviour of what they were flying, they probably wouldn't have made it back to Earth.
Those who have died along the way have invariably done so because either they, or those they depended upon, did NOT have that depth of understanding. That's not a critisism - it's a plain and simple fact. The more unknowns you face, the lower your chances of survival. The only way to ensure survival, therefore, is to know as much as physically possible.
There's a lot of cutting-edge R&D that still needs to be done, by the Gordon Coopers of the world. But not for sub-orbital and LEO flights. That work's been done. It's been done well enough that Scaled Composites could build a vehicle capable of a 70+ mile altitude (mostly) controlled flight.
Gordon Cooper has earned his rest. The day the X-Prize was won proved, beyond all doubt, that his work had a meaning beyond the (somewhat inane and childish) political squabbles of the 60s. I hope he did get to see the flight that secured the prize. His send-off was the successful transfer of the edge of space to humanity. If you're going to die, could you ask for anything better?
Re:Sadly ironic (Score:1, Insightful)
And in further news, 2+2=4.
Re:OK, mea culpa... (Score:1, Insightful)
Who *CARES* about life expectancy? (Score:3, Insightful)
kind of OT but (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Godspeed, Gordo (Score:3, Insightful)
It would be a nice sentiment but a very false statement. Yang Liwei did a solo space flight for China in 2003, and AFAIK is still alive. Likewise Vladimir Shatalov of Russia is still alive I believe.