Scott Carpenter and

Why Carpenter did not fly in Gemini and Apollo? Was it really Chris
Craft who clipped his wings? Was the flight director so powerful in
Nasa?

Kris Stoever writes in For Spacious Skies that after Mercury Slayton
had asked all astronauts if they will fly Gemini -Carpenter too- and
Carpenter said no, p. 313. So it was Carpenters´s own decision??? In
Notes, p. 355, note 6, Stoever writes that Kraft had arranged Scott´s
as he claims to have Scott´s wings clipped.

Nasa had treated Carpenter better than Grissom after he lost Liberty
Bell.. but Grissom fly Gemini and was due to fly Apollo and to be the
first man in the Moon. Why not Carpenter? What really happened to him?

Bestest, IL of FI

On 30 Jan 2005 22:35:22 -0800, (Ilpo
Lagerstedt) wrote:

Why Carpenter did not fly in Gemini and Apollo? Was it really Chris
Craft who clipped his wings? Was the flight director so powerful in
Nasa?

Kris Stoever writes in For Spacious Skies that after Mercury Slayton
had asked all astronauts if they will fly Gemini -Carpenter too- and
Carpenter said no, p. 313. So it was Carpenters´s own decision??? In
Notes, p. 355, note 6, Stoever writes that Kraft had arranged Scott´s
as he claims to have Scott´s wings clipped.

Nasa had treated Carpenter better than Grissom after he lost Liberty
Bell.. but Grissom fly Gemini and was due to fly Apollo and to be the
first man in the Moon. Why not Carpenter? What really happened to him?

....There's going to be a lot of speculation on this for probably as
long as historians look at the Glory Days of NASA. From my own studies
of accounts from both sides, Carpenter's grounding was essentially a
combination of three things working against Carpenter:

1) A backlash to "Astropower". One of the headaches that the NASA
brass, from Kraft all the way up to Webb, Seamens, et al, was that
these "test pilots" had developed a group methodology for dealing with
what they considered "excessive red tape" - they put forth a common
front, bolstered it with their egos, and refused to budge. It started
small, with the flap over flight pay qualification requirements and
the fact that NASA wasn't letting the "best test pilots in the world"
even fly a single-engine prop job. Once they won that battle, the
Original 7 kept the common front going for pretty much every battle
they fought. This rankled the higher-ups, who felt *they* were in
charge of the program, and that the Astronauts should do exactly what
*they* wanted them to do. And, while you can't argue against the good
that Deke Slayton did for the program when he became Chief of the
Astronaut Office after his grounding, there was some resentment at the
fact that the Astronauts had used their common front to have Deke
installed in that position instead of the military officer that NASA
wanted to bring in to force the Astronauts to tow the line.

2) Like most normal human beings, each of the Original 7 had their own
distinct personalities. Shepard was bipolar, waffling between your
best buddy and a neomartinet with a fetish for strict protocol.
Grissom was not quite as serious as Shepard, but was a fairly
no-nonsense sort of guy who knew when to have fun and how far to take
it. Schirra, on the other hand, tended to take the jokes a bit farther
than the rest of the O7, but at the same time didn't stand for
anything that could distract from a mission - ergo, no "Larry
Lightbulb" or "Mr. Wizard" experiments at all costs. Glenn was, as the
myths and facts tend to agree upon, Mr. Clean Marine, with the only
thing keeping him from sainthood was the fact that he was a "Marine, a
trained killer..."; that, and the fact that none of the other
Astronauts loved hearing his sermonizing on the "extracurricular
activities" that tended to happen. Cooper tended to combine the
extremes of laid-back attitude with reckless daredeviltry, which had
his fellow Astronauts shaking their heads in disbelief and admiration,
while the NASA admins were contstantly debating how and when to get
rid of him.

Carpenter, on the other hand, was a somewhat different sort of pilot.
By his own account and the estimates of his fellow Astronauts *and*
the NASA brass, he was more open to understanding the -experience- of
flight, and not just whether pushing the envelope warped a baffle
plate at Mach 1.4 or 1.6 at Angels 90. He was admittedly more
philosophical in his approach to test flight, but when you consider
his test flight experience was on twin-engine prop jobs, such flight
testing isn't as instantaneously fatal as, say, the Century-series
fighter jets that Grissom tested, or the Naval fighters that Shepard
flew, Carpenter had *time* to wax philosophical about his life and his
job and where his place was in the Universe.

And, as far as both his fellow Astronauts and the NASA hierarchy were
concerned, that was his problem. The program needed test pilots in its
infancy, not explorers. There were far too many unknowns associated
with just getting into space, much less trying to understand what was
going on up there. This was a serious concern with regards to flight
assignments, and while Carpenter was, without question, in the best
physical shape of any of his peers, there was always this constant
concern about whether he had the "right stuff" with regards to being a
test *pilot*.

3) Finally, there were problems with the Mercury capsule itself.
Carpenter's flight was intended to test out a new "fly-by-wire"
attitude control system. While testing the system, Carpenter used RCS
fuel at a rate that depleted the system before reentry. This occurred
despite Flight orders to cut back on RCS usage, and occurred during
Carpenter's albeit successful attempts to discern what Glenn's
"Fireflies" actually were. Kraft, who was Flight for the mission,
became increasingly convinced that Carpenter wasn't thinking straight
and was easily being distracted based on his periodic deviations from
reporting spacecraft conditions and instead giving his impressions of
what space was like. Even when aligning the capsule manually for
reentry, he was giving his impressions, including descriptions of what
was visible outside the window. When he fired his retros three seconds
late - which resulted in his landing 250 miles past the drop zone and
scaring most of the home audience including Walter Cronkite to ****s
in the process thinking he'd burned up - Kraft was convinced that
Carpenter wasn't flight test material, and vowed he'd never fly for
Kraft again, much less for anyone else. Carpenter's "What? Me Worry?"
attitude upon retrieval apparently cemented Kraft's opinion not only
with Kraft, but with much of the NASA brass.

....So, in a nutshell, Carpenter got grounded for two reasons:

1) Carpenter's flight was used as proof by the NASA admins that space
flight pioneering needed to be done by test pilots whose sole interest
was in flying the spacecraft and finding out what does and does not
work. The science and exploration aspects will come later when the
ships are far more reliable and those flying them can afford the time
to look out the window and go "wow!" Ergo, would-be scientist-pilots
like Carpenter were persona non grata at NASA.

2) A techicality that wasn't Carpenter's fault. What was not
understood until after the mission review was that the new RCS system
had a faulty controller, which caused excessive fuel use when trying
to automatically maintain a preset attitude. This was uncovered during
the post-flight review, but conveniently ignored by Kraft & others as
part of the efforts to not only ground Carpenter, but to send a
message to the rest of the Seven that no Astronaut was unexpendable,
and they could all easily be grounded permanently for the slightest
****up.

....That's my take on it. I'm sure Henry will pop in any minute now to
correct me :-)

OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

Why Carpenter did not fly in Gemini and Apollo?

Judging by his heart rate during his mission, Carpenter was
calm throughout his flight and didn't appear to be in a panic:

"Effects of weightlessness on man during u. s. suborbital and orbital
flights"

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/ca...1965019886.pdf

Page 27

Heart rates During Mercury Missions

Astronaut...Count
.............Down...Launch...Flight...Retro...Re-entry...Descent

Shepard.....80.....138......108......-.......132........-
Grissom.....96.....168......150......171.....163.. ......173
Glenn.......70.....114.......86......-.......109........134
Carpenter...62......96.......70......-........84........104
Schirra.....72.....112.......76......-.......104........-
Cooper......73.....154.......89......-.......140........184


Grissom had the highest heart rates during most phases of his mission,
although Cooper had the highest of all during descent.

- Rusty

OM, that's the finest and fairest summation of weeks of
on-line discussions on space history, that I've ever seen.

Thanks.

Have you considered submitting it as an article to
Encyclopedia Astronautica? It's far more thorough
and balanced than anything I've seen there on this
issue -- and of the quality we all should strive for.

"Jim Oberg" ) writes:
OM, that's the finest and fairest summation of weeks of
on-line discussions on space history, that I've ever seen.

Agreed. We are all JimO...

Thanks.

Have you considered submitting it as an article to
Encyclopedia Astronautica? It's far more thorough
and balanced than anything I've seen there on this
issue -- and of the quality we all should strive for.

I would agree with that, as well, and suggest, politely,
and understanding that anyone has the sole right to decline
any suggestions, that you do submit it there, OM.

Well done.

Andre


--
" I'm a man... But, I can change... If I have to... I guess. "
The Man Prayer, Red Green.

"Rusty" wrote in message
oups.com...
Why Carpenter did not fly in Gemini and Apollo?

Judging by his heart rate during his mission, Carpenter was
calm throughout his flight and didn't appear to be in a panic:

Heart rate is greatly influenced by the physical condition of the astronaut.
As has been previously noted on sci.space.history, Carpenter and Glenn were
considered to be in very good physical condition.

The other factor that you must take into account is that Scott Carpenter
grew up in Colorado (at altitudes greater than 5,000 feet).
[This is also a factor in why the Olympic training camp is in Colorage
Springs)

This contributed to his lower resting heart rate and additional lung
capacity --
Scott was at the top for these factors among the Original 7, as well as the
medical tests for the selection of the 7.

gb

"OM" om@our_blessed_lady_mary_of_the_holy_NASA_researc h_facility.org wrote
in message ...

snip

Nice post, thanks for taking the time!

On Tue, 01 Feb 2005 01:57:38 GMT, "Tim K." wrote:

"OM" om@our_blessed_lady_mary_of_the_holy_NASA_researc h_facility.org wrote
in message ...

snip

Nice post, thanks for taking the time!

....No prob. I needed to take a break from my website work, and that
fit the bill just fine. Only don't take my word solely for it -
eventually someone like Henry or Jim Oberg will pop in and correct my
observations.

OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

OM om@our_blessed_lady_mary_of_the_holy_NASA_researc h_facility.org
wrote:

snippage OM's great post... Damm son, we need more of that stuff
hereabouts.

Theory; Carpenter (in a more rational world) shouldn't have been in
the O7, but should have been picked later.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

OM wrote:

...No prob. I needed to take a break from my website
work, and that fit the bill just fine. Only don't
take my
word solely for it - eventually someone like Henry or
Jim
Oberg will pop in and correct my observations.

Have you not seen JimO's comment? I read that before I
saw your post.

I think you missed your calling, Bob. Really, really
nice work.

rl