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Archive 1

Correct Aurora 7 insignia

Thank you to the person who uploaded the correct Aurora 7 mission insignia (with the Blue 7), replacing the incorrect souvenir version with a red 7. SpaceHistory101 (talk) 19:05, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

References?

What edition of For Spacious Skies is being referenced in this article (i.e., reference to "p. 97" of the book)? Willy Logan 14:23, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Ah. It's the hardcover edition. Willy Logan 21:23, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
Better refs added. Jrcrin001 (talk) 02:01, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Godspeed, John Glenn

In popular culture section, I removed "It is also used as a sample in the Ian Brown song My Star" - Why? Because it was not found in the lyrics posted. - See http://www.completemyspace.com/index.php?page=Lyrics&id=181801&artist=Ian+Brown&song=My+Star Jrcrin001 (talk) 01:21, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

It might not actually be in the published lyrics but it is in the song see [1]--Kiern Moran (talk) 01:43, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Okay, it is in the introduction portion before the lyrics. We can now use this with the youtube link! Jrcrin001 (talk) 04:14, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Emphasis

"Nevertheless, after Carpenter's troubled Mercury mission, head of flight operations Christopher Kraft wrote he "swore an oath that Scott Carpenter would never again fly in space. ... He didn't."[1] Carpenter, in turn, responds at length and in detail to the criticism of his spaceflight in his 2003 autobiography."

Delete for a few problems here: Kraft wrote a very nice NASA report on Carpenter after Carpenter's mission. In 1962. In 2002 he wrote something else entirely. So Kraft writing "after Carpenter's troubled Mercury mission" is a dubious statement of fact. He wrote in 1962. And he wrote in 2002. He wrote an official report in 1962, with citations. And then he wrote a memoir in 2002, with none.

To continue, it is not a consensus view (nor was it at the time) that the flight of Aurora 7 was "troubled." The consensus view is that the flight of Aurora 7 was merely dramatic and that, despite the drama, it confirmed U.S. capabilities in manned spaceflight.

So one should want to see substantiation for "a troubled flight" and Kraft's dispositive oath from the pertinent ca. 1962 NASA publications and from contemporaneous newspaper accounts.

In other words, an overshoot, traceable to a mechanical malfunction, is one thing. But "troubled Mercury mission"--without explanation--is too broad a brush and irresponsible on its face.

Second, yes, Christopher Kraft swore during Carpenter's reentry, in something of a lather, "That [s.o.b.] will never fly for me again." Please see THE RIGHT STUFF and various memoirs by eyewitnesses. The anecdote presents POV problems.

The Kraft POV is that the fourth American in space was heedless of Mercury Control, might die during reentry, and therefore should "never fly in space again." The NASA POV is that Kraft was excitable, during an exciting reentry, and placed the blame, not on the intermittent mechanical failure that he and others failed to note, but on the man in the capsule now controlling reentry on manual. The Carpenter POV is, "Of course autopilot failed. We trained for that failure. That's why it's manned spaceflight. When automatic systems fail, we're here to make everything ok." A Wiki entry should seek to balance these different POVs. Either that, or just report the facts.

Yes, it's complicated.

In any event, it's clear: Carpenter sustained a grounding injury in July 1964, before even Project Gemini assignments were made.

[In the NASA history office files, archivists filed: “Motor Bike Spill Fractures Arm of Astronaut,” Baltimore Sun, July 17, 1964. The corrective surgery afterwards was also in the papers (“Gamble on Survey [sic: Surgery] Fails to Put Carpenter in Space,” Washington Star, April 17, 1967.] —Preceding unsigned comment added by KC Stoever (talk • contribs) 05:05, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

This footnoted article http://history.nasa.gov/40thmerc7/carpenter.htm says, "It is believed that because of his performance, Carpenter was told that he would never fly another NASA mission." It is at considerable variance with the emphasis of this Wiki article in regard to the Project Mercury. They can't both be right. Yopienso (talk) 05:32, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

It's difficult to take Stoever's comments as objective, since Stoever is Carpenter's daughter.C Scrutinizer (talk) 23:36, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

The current article wording is awkward. What I first read the Project Mercury section I got the sense I was looking at original research which someone trying to manufacture controversy by including some POVish extracted quotes and then laborious detail from a NASA report. It then says "simmering controversy" without citing a source that says there was controversy.
A couple of solutions come to mind to help balance out the article. One is to adopt a "he said ... she said ..." style where we just report the facts. Another is to drop all of this and use wording much like the Mercury-Atlas 7 article which handles this in one sentence though unfortunately, that sentence does not cite sources.
The part that looks bad at present is that it seems a Wikipedia editor is trying to defend Carpenter's by including a wall of text.
I ran into this article as I'm currently reading The Last Man on the Moon by Eugene Cernan and saw these comments.
  • pg. 51 - Scott Carpenter went up on Aurora 7, but didn't pay close enough attention to business and overshot his landing area, a mistake that cost him any future ride in space.
  • pg. 65 - Scott was the only multi-engine pilot among the elite cadre of veteran jet pilots, and it was whispered that he didn’t volunteer for the space program, his dynamic and attractive wife did. Scott was just glad to be around, and was physically fit to an amazing degree. But he screwed up his own Mercury flight by joyriding, not paying enough attention to the job, missing his retrofire cue and splashing down several hundred miles from the target area. It became pretty obvious that Scott would never fly in space again.
  • pg 65 also has - In my opinion, Shepard, Schirra and Grissom were sure to command future missions, and Cooper was still a probable. Carpenter was all but gone. So the Seven really were only four, which loosened things up slightly for future seat assignments, but not much.
It's not clear is if Cernan had a personal dislike for Carpenter or if he is writing about office scuttlebutt. Whatever it is, this is a source that says Carpenter screwed up and did not attempt to defend him at all. The comment about Carpenter's wife makes me wonder if there was personal animosity involved meaning statements about the overshoot are biased. --Marc Kupper|talk 06:41, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Identifying fireflies was planned?

There's a conflict in that the article has "Working through five onboard experiments dictated by the flight plan, Carpenter helped among other things to identify the mysterious 'fireflies' (which he renamed 'frostflies,' as they were in reality particles of frozen liquid around the craft), first observed by John Glenn during MA-6."

This makes it sound like identification the fireflies was one of the five planned experiments. The Mercury-Atlas 7 article says "At dawn of the third and final orbit, Carpenter inadvertently bumped his hand against the inside wall of the cabin and solved a mystery from the previous flight. The resulting bright shower of particles outside the spacecraft - what John Glenn had called "fireflies" - turned out to be ice particles shaken loose from the spacecraft's exterior."

Unfortunately, the five planned experiments are not detailed in either article though it seems they were the first study of liquids in weightlessness, Earth photography (geography and weather), an unsuccessful attempt to observe a flare fired from the ground, and to test atmospheric drag and color visibility data in space through deployment of an inflatable sphere. There's also "identification of the airglow layer observed by Astronaut Glenn" but it's not clear if that was a planned experiment. --Marc Kupper|talk (note added on 06:51, 31 January 2011)

If we can't verify a source, I think the safest thing to do would be to break them up into two separate sentences, removing the implied connection between the planned experiments and the "firefly" discovery. I don't think it was planned; I doubt bumping his hand against the capsule wall was part of any planned experiment, but we don't have to say so either way if we don't know.
I remember decades ago hearing a tape of Carpenter reporting the discovery; he said something like "If anyone's listening, I have the fireflies..." (or maybe, "I have John's fireflies.") which makes me think it occurred somewhere between ground stations, and he wasn't sure if he was in radio contact, which would add to the likelihood it was unplanned. JustinTime55 (talk) 21:11, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Life afterwards

This article misses everything from the 70s to now; Didn't Carpenter do anything? -- 76.65.131.217 (talk) 08:51, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

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  1. ^ Kraft, Flight, p. 170.
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