For Spacious Skies: The Uncommon Journey Of A Mercury Astronaut - Softcover

Carpenter, Scott; Stoever, Kris

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0451211057 ISBN 13: 9780451211057

Publisher: NAL Trade, 2004

Synopsis

A Project Mercury astronaut recounts his childhood with a terminally ill parent, his experiences as a Navy pilot and an undersea explorer, and his history-making endeavors aboard the Aurora 7, in a paperback edition enhanced by new material and photographs. Reprint.

About this title

Review:

M. Scott Carpenter was America's fourth man in space, his 1962 three-orbit mission in a tiny Mercury capsule closely paralleling that of John Glenn's previous mission. But that's where the similarities end: a malfunctioning navigational system caused Carpenter to splash down, dangerously, some 250 miles off-target, and Glenn's fame would somehow forever eclipse that of all seven of his fellow original astronauts combined. This memoir, penned in conjunction with Carpenter's daughter Kris, oddly distances itself from Carpenter's life through use of a third-person narrative (only the astronaut's calm account of his perilous mission is delivered directly in his voice), a device that ultimately echoes the more personal distances Carpenter endured in his own fateful, if troubled, journey toward the stars.

While Carpenter may have been able to trace his lineage back to the Plymouth colony of the 1630s, his immediate family seemed shattered. His research-chemist father was successful but absent, his mother often a bedridden invalid. Carpenter's journey to the Mercury program after a Rocky Mountain childhood and a stint on lumbering Naval patrol planes is one of the more unlikely of the original astronaut class, and he offers up his own perspectives on what has become a compelling body of American folklore (thanks largely to Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff and the memoirs of other participants). While the account of NASA's infancy seems quaint, its officialdom often comes off as nothing short of cutthroat, perhaps inspiring the pioneering spaceman to the book's final adventures exploring a distinctly different frontier--the bottom of the ocean--as part of the Navy's endurance-minded SeaLab program. --Jerry McCulley

From the Inside Flap:

On May 24, 1962, the tiny spacecraft Aurora 7 carried Scott Carpenter into space, American history, and a lifetime of controversy. For Spacious Skies offers this Mercury astronaut's never-before-told account of life at NASA. He takes us through the mysteries of the selection process, to the desert for survival training, into the simulator, and onto the contour couch. He describes, in stunning detail, the flight that made him the second American to orbit the Earth.

During the early days of the space program, each mission helped to determine NASA's research progress, the efficiency of its design, and its status in the race to the moon; when Aurora 7 began to malfunction, everyone at hand frantically tried to detect the cause. What was ultimately found to be a glitch in Aurora 7's pitch horizon scanner forced the astronaut to overshoot his expected landing site by 250 miles and later brought all decisions made during the flight under intense scrutiny. Scott Carpenter, with his daughter, Kris Stoever, clears up all lingering questions about his flight while telling the history of an amazing frontier family and the strength of the American pioneer spirit.

About this edition

• Publisher: NAL Trade
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0451211057
• ISBN 13: 9780451211057
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384