Frequently Asked Questions for Scott Carpenter

What did you think of The Right Stuff?
Part of my affection for the book comes from my great affection for Tom Wolfe. But trying to put that aside, I believe the book itself accurately depicts in all its essential details Project Mercury. Tom takes literary license with nonessential details. It’s a fine book and made a fine movie, but the movie took even more license with nonessential details than Wolfe took in the book. My opinion of the book and movie is not widely shared by the rest of the Mercury guys. I liked the movie. But I wasn’t portrayed in much detail and the Carpenter character you saw didn’t invite controversy.

Is the face on Mars really Elvis’s?
Do I really have to answer this?

What advances have been made in undersea exploration since Sealab?
We’ve developed much better closed-circuit SCUBA equipment; better breathing mixtures (tri-mix) and we’ve taken some major strides in keeping divers warm in cold water. Diver-to-diver and diver-to-surface communications have been vastly improved too; although limits still exist, we can go much deeper now.

If you could have chosen your ideal spaceflight, what type would it be and what would you have hoped to accomplish?
Everybody’s dream spaceflight was a lunar landing. For me a lunar landing offered the greatest opportunity for bringing back new truths and new knowledge.

What lessons from Sealab could benefit development of bases on the moon and Mars?
Well, Sealab was a very close-at-hand, totally isolated habitat and was an ideal place for the study of long-term crew interaction in a hostile environment. We had three crews of 10 men each for Sealab 2 [July–September 1965]. It’s more realistic than the polar unit NASA’s proposing. NASA is working with NOAA on a shallow habitat off Key Largo, Florida. The project is called NEEMO Aquarius and it’s 45 ft. down and has a crew of six. It’s a very effective training device in many ways, particularly in EVA activities.

Would you fly on the shuttle?
Of course. But I don’t really want to spend two years training first.

In your opinion, should we have an agency for undersea exploration like NASA is for space?
Well, yes. But we have such an agency in NOAA.

Do you envision robotic undersea explorers that function like our space probes?
Sure. We have some of those—like Jason, which was Bob Ballard’s robotic vehicle. They’re irreplaceable—as are those in space.

Would you go to the ISS as a space tourist?
I’d rather have some work to do. I’d like to go with a purpose rather than for my own enjoyment. Bringing back new truths and new knowledge.

What’s your opinion about the condition and ecology of the oceans?
The oceans are in dire straits. We’re overfishing. We’re polluting. And we don’t appear to understand that the ocean has limits. One would have to write a book to document all the abuses we’re inflicting on our oceans.

After your Mercury flight, why didn’t you go on to fly Gemini or Apollo missions?
When I came back from my flight [Aurora 7, May 24, 1962], I had been single-minded about earth orbit for too long and had been so heavily involved with preparations for both John’s flight [Friendship 7 MA-6—editor’s note] and then my own that I wanted, and needed, a change of pace and didn’t want to get back in to flight rotation right away.
I had flown in space, achieving a goal I’d had since I learned about Project Mercury in 1959. Sealab at the time was a more attractive opportunity for me. It was a new challenge.
After a while, restored by the underwater work, I tried to regain my flight status. I thought a lunar landing would be a rewarding challenge. But the operation to repair the injury to my left arm did not succeed. I was medically grounded. I couldn’t have a Gemini or Apollo flight, even if I wanted one.1

Did you train any astronauts later on, one on one?
I can’t remember—some of my ideas for physical conditioning programs at NASA inspired some head scratching (fencing) or produced injury (the trampoline). I had an idea for neutral buoyancy training for EVA that I kept proposing for years. It wasn’t approved until 1966, and I left NASA in 1967.
I do remember training Buzz [Aldrin] one on one. I remember his drive and general budding excellence—he was quick to learn.

Was Gordo Cooper the “best pilot you ever saw,” the way Tom Wolfe tells the story in The Right Stuff?

No, he wasn’t. And Gordo laughed about the legend. He himself believed it was a preposterous idea but accepted it as part of the color of the Mercury Seven, thanks to Tom Wolfe. And the legend created evidence that an attitude, “I am the best,” kind of prevailed in the group.
You can’t prove you’re the best, but you can think it! The actual best in any group doesn’t have to prove it or say it. It is a fact evident to everyone.

What do you think is the future, near- and far-term, of human space exploration?
The farthest we can look right now is human habitation of Mars. In the near term it is human habitation of the moon.

Underwater cities: strictly “Aquaman” or maybe someday?
Possible perhaps at 1 atmosphere. But I don’t see the purpose of a 1-atmosphere habitat. To live at pressure has some advantage for an industrial community. But no advantage for residential or tourist communities.

Project Mercury flight director Chris Kraft maligned your flight in his 2001 memoir. Why? And what’s your response?
Chris’s book was reviewed in the New York Times “Book Review.” I wrote a letter to the editor, which appears below.
________________________________________________________________________
To the Editor:
Regarding Henry S. F. Cooper Jr.’s review of Flight: My Life in Mission Control (March 11, 2001), Chris Kraft’s new memoir:

John Glenn’s historic flight aboard Friendship 7 took place more than 39 years ago. I was his backup pilot. Rightly or wrongly, Deke Slayton was ruled ineligible for the follow-on flight because of a minor heart condition. Rightly or wrongly, I was named to take his place.

All manner of hard feelings stemmed from these two unpopular decisions, which I did not make and over which I had no control. I took the flight, named my capsule Aurora 7 and trained hard for the six weeks I had. The flight plan, originally Deke’s, called for a number of radical space maneuvers, more photography, more observation and some experiments, all of which I accomplished, in addition to returning safely to earth with the capsule unharmed. These facts alone should be enough to vindicate the flight of Aurora 7.

But there was even more: the system failures I encountered during the flight would have resulted in loss of the capsule and total mission failure had a man not been aboard. My postflight debriefings and reports led, in turn, to important changes in capsule design and future flight plans. These too I consider major contributions to our knowledge about spaceflight and to the successes that Wally Schirra and Gordo Cooper met with in their own subsequent flights.

Chris Kraft and I have always been at odds about my flight. Yet in his review of Flight, Henry Cooper seems unaware of the dispute. Chris’s style, he says admiringly, succeeds in “pulling no punches,” as though this promises a candid and true book, when it could instead be merely vindictive and skewed. A question lingers in this rattled old septuagenarian brain: why is Chris still in the ring throwing punches?

Finally, the reviewer notes with interest Chris’s early, stark realization that “things happened so fast in rocketry that an astronaut couldn’t do anything” without help from the ground. A debatable proposition. In any event, Chris never acknowledged that the reverse also holds true: in space things happen so fast that only the pilot knows what to do, and even ground control can’t help. Maybe that’s why he is still fuming after all these years.

Scott Carpenter
Vail, Colo.

[published in “Letters,” April 1, 2001, New York Times Book Review]