Photo by Kim Shiflett - NASA
Former Astronaut Scott Carpenter
Mercury astronaut Scott Carpenter sits in front of the plot from the Mercury control center on display at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida.
I had just settled into my hotel room when the phone jingled. It was the evening before I was to speak at a national conference and the organizer was calling.
“Would you like to go to dinner with Scott Carpenter?” she asked.
“Are you kidding?” I replied.
I knew that Scott, one of the original Mercury astronauts, was to keynote at the conference, but I assumed he would merely rush in, give his remarks and depart. I never imagined I would break bread with him.
It is a rare blessing to receive a stretch of uninterrupted time with a person aptly designated a bonafide hero. And should it occur, it is not uncommon to walk away disillusioned, for most heroes, try as they may, fall short of the larger-than-life personas created for them by the media.
The Right Stuff
Photo courtesy of NASA
Astronaut Scott Carpenter and the Aurora 7
Astronaut M. Scott Carpenter looks into his Mercury-Atlas 7 spacecraft, the Aurora 7, before being inserted to begin the launch in 1962.
The only human to be both an astronaut and aquanaut (he spent a month on the ocean floor in the Navy’s Man-in-the-Sea program), Scott was the fourth American in space and the second to experience orbital flight. A Navy aviator who served in the Korean War and then became a test pilot, he and his fellow Mercury astronauts were selected from a pool of candidates because they had what author Tom Wolfe termed “the right stuff.” Referring to the movie The Right Stuff, I asked him how realistically it depicted his experiences and those of his colleagues. “Pretty close,” he said.
This right stuff was tested not only during the rigorous training the astronauts endured, but also when Scott’s space capsule overshot its landing site by over 250 miles, leaving him adrift and lost at sea for almost an hour. When a search plane finally arrived, he was calmly awaiting retrieval.
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Given such personal mettle and historic achievements, one would expect such a soul to sport at least a dash of hubris, but the man showed none. Rather, he proved humble, gracious and more interested in hearing our stories than in telling his own.
Quiet Essence
Then in his late 70s (now deceased), Scott remained a trim, handsome figure with a sharp and inquisitive mind. But, more notably, he exuded a quiet but palpable essence, a gentle strength of character and peace of mind that suggests he was somehow different than most famous persons.
In a world plagued with puffed up athletes, holier-than-thou proselytizers, posturing politicians and narcissistic brats disguised as leaders, this American elder remains a living embodiment of hero. And, given the state of our nation, we could use more people of character to admire.
The seven Mercury astronauts were unlikely recipients for the miraculous and transcendental experience of space flight, a province that would have been more existentially suited to poets or philosophers. In contrast, they were selected for their ability to keep emotions in check, to think and act with robotic precision, and regard their extraordinary adventures as missions rather than epiphanies. Unlike today’s gilded space tourists who are misnamed “astronauts,” these pioneers put their lives on the line, a fairly thin line at that time.
To a man they were spiritually transformed by escaping the bonds of Earth, a metamorphosis that beamed through Scott Carpenter’s old but steady eyes. As Carl Sagan put it, they saw “a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark.” And they were forever changed.
Angel’s Vision
The next day when Scott rose from the head table to give his speech, he put a gentle hand on my shoulder, pausing amidst the thundering applause to warmly smile at me, as if he saw into my soul with an angel’s vision. And perhaps that is what these privileged few truly possessed.
They gazed upon the world from a perspective most humans can only regard as divine. They beheld the living Earth, a miracle of creation set like a dazzling jewel amidst the vast and indifferent cosmos.
Scott Carpenter embodied this quote from tennis great and civil rights pioneer Arthur Ashe, who said: “True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost.”
