"Godspeed, John Glenn."
So intoned Scott Carpenter on the morning of February 20, 1962, as his friend and colleague roared into space aboard Friendship 7. Carpenter himself would follow with his own solo flight aboard Aurora 7 three months later.
Along with Glenn, Scott Carpenter was among the nation's original seven astronauts, selected fifty years ago. The only Americans who would ever go into space alone, the men of Project Mercury faced a staggering array of engineering and biological uncertainties. The booster rockets that were to get them to space kept blowing up during tests, and some aeromedical experts doubted that the astronauts' lungs and hearts would be able to sustain the gravitational pressures of launch.
And yet, over the next four years, Project Mercury enjoyed spectacular success, setting America on an accelerated course toward the moon and turning its original seven astronauts into enduring legends of the Cold War.
Join us on September 23 for a rare conversation with Commander Scott Carpenter (USN, ret.) about Project Mercury and his own solo spaceflight.
Scott Carpenter was a Navy test pilot chosen as a Project Mercury astronaut in April 1959. He was designated the prime pilot for the MA-7 mission, America's second orbital spaceflight, which flew on May 24, 1962. He named his spacecraft Aurora 7 after the goddess of the dawn, noting that Project Mercury represented the dawn of the space age.
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Thomas Mallon is the author of the novels Henry and Clara, Two Moons, Dewey Defeats Truman, Aurora 7, Bandbox, and most recently Fellow Travelers. He has authored six works of nonfiction and is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly. He attended Brown University as an undergraduate and earned an M.A. and a Ph.D. from Harvard.
Kris Stoever is the daughter of Scott Carpenter and co-author of For Spacious Skies: The Uncommon Journey of a Mercury Astronaut. She is a graduate of Georgetown University with a degree in history and has worked as an author and editor.