Malcolm Scott Carpenter (1925-2013)

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Malcolm Scott Carpenter (01.05.1925-10.10.2013)

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Z pierwszej siódemki został tylko John Glenn...

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Godspeed Malcolm....

Coraz więcej pierwszych kosmonautów odchodzi ;/

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Godspeed Malcolm....

Coraz więcej pierwszych kosmonautów odchodzi ;/

Szkoda, ze nie doczekali pierwszej misji na Marsa. Mam nadzieję, że tam z wysoka będą ją oglądać .... 

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R.I.P.

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Scott Carpenter (1925-2013)
BY MICHAŁ MOROZ ON 10 PAŹDZIERNIKA 2013


Scott Carpenter / Credits: NASA

Zmarł Scott Carpenter, czwarty amerykański astronauta. Uczestnik misji Mercury 7 miał 88 lat.

Urodził się 1 maja 1925 roku w Boulder w stane Colorado. Już jako pilot wojskowy, Scott Carpenter w 1959 roku został wybrany do pierwszej grupy astronautów NASA. Lot w kosmos odbył 3 lata później; jego jedyna misja trwała 4 godziny i 55 minut. Był drugim Amerykaninem na orbicie, oraz szóstym człowiekiem w kosmosie.

Już po locie Mercury 7, w wyniku urazu powypadkowego nie został dopuszczony do dalszych lotów, jednakże jako akwanauta żył miesiąc na dnie oceanu w habitacie Sealab II. W 1967 roku opuścił korpus astronautów.

Pod koniec września doznał wylewu. Mimo dobrych rokowań, zmarł 10 października. Z pośród pierwszej grupy astronautów NASA, tzw. Mercury Seven, żyje już tylko John Glenn. To podczas jego lotu, Carpenter wypowiedział słynne słowa “Godspeed, John Glenn.”

(CS, W)
https://kosmonauta.net/2013/10/2013-10-11-carpenter/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/scott-carpenter-mercury-7-astronaut-and-second-american-to-orbit-earth-dies-at-88/2013/10/10/7df363d2-31ec-11e3-8627-c5d7de0a046b_story.html?utm_term=.2b97ae631681
https://history.nasa.gov/40thmerc7/carpenter.htm

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Godspeed: Mercury astronaut Scott Carpenter dies at age 88
OCT 10 2013, 4:05 PM ET by ALAN BOYLE, SCIENCE EDITOR

Scott Carpenter, Mercury Seven astronaut and American hero, dies at 88

NASA pioneer astronaut Scott Carpenter died Thursday at the age of 88 due to medical complications from a recent stroke, leaving John Glenn as the last living member of the Mercury 7.

Carpenter had been hospitalized after suffering a stroke last month at his home in Vail, Colo. Word of his death at a Denver hospice came from family friends and was confirmed by his wife, Patty Barrett.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden paid tribute to Carpenter in a statement: "As one of the original Mercury 7 astronauts, he was in the first vanguard of our space program — the pioneers who set the tone for our nation's pioneering efforts beyond Earth and accomplished so much for our nation."

Second American in orbit

Carpenter was born on May 1, 1925, in Boulder, Colo., the son of research chemist M. Scott Carpenter and Florence Kelso Noxon Carpenter. He was commissioned in the U.S. Navy in 1949 and designated a naval aviator in 1951. Carpenter flew a variety of missions during the Korean War, became a test pilot and was selected as one of the Mercury 7 in 1959.

He had a special connection with John Glenn, a retired senator and astronaut who is still in good health at the age of 92. It was Carpenter who served as the backup for the Friendship 7 mission on Feb. 20, 1962, which made Glenn the first American in Earth orbit. And it was Carpenter who radioed, "Godspeed, John Glenn," from NASA's Cape Canaveral blockhouse as his colleague headed for history.

Carpenter became the second American in orbit on May 24, 1962, when he piloted his Aurora 7 capsule through three orbits. During that flight, he became the first American to eat solid food in space (in the form of energy snacks called "Space Food Sticks").

"When he went into orbit, instead of just worrying about being a test pilot, he was trying to analyze everything that was happening up there," said Jay Barbree, NBC News' Cape Canaveral correspondent. "That's why I call him the first scientist-astronaut."

One of Carpenter's discoveries pointed to the source of the mysterious "fireflies" that Glenn saw shining outside his window during the Friendship 7 flight. Carpenter thumped the side of his spacecraft and found that he could shake more of the sparkling specks loose from the capsule. "Scott discovered they were actually the moisture from the astronaut's body, which was released and dissipated outside into the cold," Barbree said.

Carpenter's splashdown generated some controversy because he overshot the designated landing zone, and it took 40 minutes for the recovery team to spot him in his life raft. Flight director Chris Kraft later complained that Carpenter used too much fuel during the flight, but Barbree said an investigation traced the fuel loss to equipment malfunction.

Aurora 7 was Carpenter's only spaceflight: He was removed from flight status after breaking his arm in a motorcycle accident in 1964, and left NASA in 1967.

Proud to be an aquanaut

In addition to his astronaut experience, the former naval aviator participated in the Navy's SeaLab underwater training program as an aquanaut. "He was just as proud of being an aquanaut as being an astronaut," Barbree recalled.

After his retirement from the Navy in 1969, Carpenter took on a number of business ventures and served as a movie consultant in the fields of spaceflight, oceanography and the environment. He wrote two novels as well as an autobiography, "For Spacious Skies: The Uncommon Journey of a Mercury Astronaut," which was co-written with his daughter Kris Carpenter Stoever.


Former astronaut Scott Carpenter stretches a hand behind his head to greet senator-astronaut John Glenn at a 40th-anniversary celebration of the Apollo 11 moon mission on Capitol Hill in Washington in 2009. At right is Carpenter's wife, Patty Carpenter. Scott Carpenter, who orbited Earth in 1962, died on Thursday in a Denver hospice center at age 88 of complications from a stroke, his wife said. Larry Downing

When Glenn returned to orbit aboard the space shuttle Discovery in 1998, Carpenter said the space missions that he and his Mercury crewmates flew were part of a decades-long effort that would ultimately send humans to Mars and beyond. "All these flights will one day lead to manned exploration of other worlds outside our own solar system," Carpenter said in an essay written for NBC News. "That will not be soon. But it is inevitable."

He gave his most famous phrase a reprise for Glenn's launch: "Good luck, have a safe flight, and ... once again, Godspeed, John Glenn."

Carpenter is survived by his wife, Patty; six children, Jay, Kris, Candace, Matthew, Nicholas and Zachary; one granddaughter and five step-grandchildren. "We're going to miss him," Patty Barrett Carpenter told The Associated Press.

https://www.nbcnews.com/sciencemain/godspeed-mercury-astronaut-scott-carpenter-dies-age-88-8C11373346

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Mercury 7 Astronaut Scott Carpenter Dies
by Robert Z. Pearlman — October 14, 2013


Scott Carpenter at Kennedy Space Center in 2011. Credit: collectSPACE.com

WASHINGTON — Scott Carpenter, the fourth U.S. astronaut to fly in space and the second to orbit Earth, died Oct. 10 after suffering a recent stroke. He was 88.

The original Mercury 7 astronaut was being cared for at a hospice center in Denver when he died. Carpenter was initially expected to make a full recovery from the stroke.

“Today, the world mourns the passing of Scott Carpenter,” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. “As one of the original Mercury 7 astronauts, he was in the first vanguard of our space program — the pioneers who set the tone for our nation’s pioneering efforts beyond Earth.”

“His accomplishments truly helped our nation progress in space from the earliest days to the world leadership we enjoy today,” Bolden said. “We will miss his passion, his talent and his lifelong commitment to exploration.”

Chosen in 1959 among NASA’s first astronauts, Carpenter made his first and only spaceflight on May 24, 1962, when he became the sixth man worldwide to leave the planet.

During his Mercury-Atlas 7 mission, Carpenter circled the Earth three times, conducted some of the first astronaut science experiments, and consumed the first solid space food — small square cubes composed of chocolate, figs, and dates mixed with high-protein cereals.

“You have to realize my experience with zero-g, although transcending and more fun than I can tell you about, was, in the light of current space flight accomplishments, very brief,” Carpenter said in 1999 during a NASA oral history interview. “The zero-g sensation and the visual sensation of space flight are transcending experiences, and I wish everybody could have them.”

He splashed down aboard his “Aurora 7” capsule 4 hours and 56 minutes after his launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla. — and 400 kilometers off course. His overshot re-entry was the result of several spacecraft malfunctions, including the intermittent failure of attitude indicators and the retrorockets firing late and under thrust.

“I had the record for overshooting the target for a long time until some cosmonauts came along some years later and missed theirs by 1,500 miles,” Carpenter said.

Carpenter never flew in space again, the result of an injury to his left arm sustained in a motorcycle accident in 1964. He did, however, become an aquanaut, spending a record 30 days on the ocean floor aboard the Navy’s SEALAB II, an experimental habitat located off the coast of California.

Besides his own space and sea adventures, Carpenter is popularly remembered for his radio call “Godspeed, John Glenn,” which heralded his fellow Mercury astronaut’s liftoff to become the first American in orbit on Feb. 20, 1962. With Carpenter’s passing, Glenn is the last of the Mercury 7 astronauts alive today.

Carpenter is survived by his wife, Patty Barrett, and seven children, four from his first marriage, two from his second marriage and one from his third. He is also survived by two stepchildren, a granddaughter and five step-grandchildren.

Robert Z. Pearlman is editor of CollectSPACE.com. Used with permission.

https://spacenews.com/37701mercury-7-astronaut-scott-carpenter-dies/

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Scott Carpenter, 1925-2013
Oct. 17, 2013


Mercury astronaut Scott Carpenter, the second American in orbit.Credits: NASA

Former astronaut Scott Carpenter, the second American in orbit, died Oct. 10, 2013. As one of the original Mercury astronauts, Carpenter "was in the first vanguard of our space program -- the pioneers who set the tone for our nation's pioneering efforts beyond Earth and accomplished so much for our nation," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said shortly after Carpenter's death.

Carpenter's Aurora 7 capsule circled the Earth three times on May 24, 1962, during its 4-hour, 54-minute flight.


Liftoff of Mercury-Atlas 7 on May 24, 1962 Credits: NASA

Three years later, on a leave of absence from NASA, Carpenter was an Aquanaut in the Navy's Man-in-the-Sea program. During the summer of 1965 he spent 30 days living and working in a sea-floor habitat 205 feet below the surface.

He was the only American who served as both an Astronaut and an Aquanaut.

He also was a believer in the human imperative to explore. "It's inevitable that we'll get to Mars," he told a reporter when he was 73. "I have an abiding faith in human curiosity."

Malcolm Scott Carpenter was born in Boulder, Colo., May 1, 1925. He earned a bachelor of science degree in aeronautical engineering from the University of Colorado in 1949.

He was commissioned in the Navy in 1949. He completed flight training in Pensacola, Fla., and Corpus Christi, Texas, and was designated a Naval aviator in 1951.


Carpenter at the Mercury Control Center in Florida. Credits: NASA

During the Korean War he flew antisubmarine, ship surveillance and aerial mining missions in the Yellow Sea, the South China Sea and the Formosa Straits.

He attended Navy Test Pilot School at Patuxent River, Md., and then was assigned to the Naval Air Test Center. He flew a variety of naval aircraft in that assignment, including single- and multi-engine jets, propeller-driven fighters, attack planes, patrol bombers, transports and seaplanes.

From 1957 to 1959 Carpenter attended Navy General Line School and the Navy Air Intelligence School. He was then assigned as air intelligence officer to the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Hornet.

After his selection as an astronaut, he specialized in spacecraft communication and navigation. He was backup pilot to John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth.

Carpenter's flight in the Aurora 7 capsule was challenging. Fuel for maneuvering thrusters ran so low that mission control almost ended the flight after two orbits, instead of allowing it to continue for the scheduled three.


A video feature on the 50th anniversary of Carpenter's Mercury flight in the Aurora 7 capsule. Credits: NASA Television

The firing of the capsule’s retrorockets was late and Aurora 7 landed 250 miles farther downrange than planned. For more than 30 minutes, the capsule was lost and people around the world following the flight on radio and television waited in suspense. Finally a recovery plane followed a homing beacon to the floating capsule.

During his subsequent leave of absence from the space agency, Carpenter was an Aquanaut in the Sealab II program off La Jolla, Calif. It was a 45-day experiment and he spent 30 of those days living and working on the seabottom. He commanded two of the three 10-man teams of Navy and civilian divers based in the habitat.

Back at NASA, he became executive assistant to the director of the Manned Spacecraft Center (now the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center). He helped design the Apollo Lunar Landing Module and was active in underwater training of astronauts for spacewalks.

Carpenter left NASA in 1967 and returned to the Navy as director of Aquanaut Operations. He retired from the service in 1969.

Aerospace and the sea remained focuses of his life. He founded Sear Sciences Inc., a venture capital company aimed at developing ocean resources and improving the environmental health of the planet.

He continued to act as a consultant in aerospace and ocean engineering and lectured in those areas. He served on the boards of several corporations. He also wrote two novels. The first, The Steel Albatross, was dubbed an "underwater techno-thriller."

For many years he lived in Vail, Colo. He was an avid skier. He also maintained a home in Manhattan, N.Y.

His awards included the Navy Legion of Merit, the Distinguished Flying Cross, NASA’s Distinguished Service Medal, the University of Colorado Recognition Medal and the Collier trophy.

https://www.nasa.gov/astronautprofiles/carpenter

galeria https://www.nasa.gov/carpenterphotos#.Ul_aZXfld8E

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Rene Carpenter (1928–2020), last surviving member of the Astronaut Wives Club
By John Maxwell July 25, 2020

Rene Carpenter (first name rhymes with “seen”) was a television host and columnist who first came to public attention as the wife of Mercury 7 astronaut M. Scott Carpenter.



Died: Friday, July 24, 2020 (Who else died on July 24?)
Details of death: Died in Denver of congestive heart failure at the age of 92.
We invite you to share condolences for Rene Carpenter in our Guest Book.

The Astronaut Wives Club

She and the other six wives have been described by “The Astronaut Wives Club” author Lily Koppel as “America’s first reality stars.” They were expected to embody the ideal mid-century American homemaker, raising children and supporting their husbands at all times, while also appearing glamorous during media events and public speaking engagements.

“The Prom Queen”

Carpenter’s physical appearance was often the focus of media attention. She was described as a “platinum blonde,” “prom queen,” and “a dish.” She joked that her stock answer to all questions was that she was “proud, thrilled, happy.” But she had a serious interest in the science of space travel and inner workings of NASA’s program. She became a valuable source to writer Tom Wolfe who immortalized the Mercury 7 project in “The Right Stuff.”

The bond of shared experience

Through personal hardships and under the extraordinary pressure of the public spotlight, the wives of the astronauts supported one another. Carpenter formed a particularly close bond with Annie Glenn, wife of astronaut John Glenn. When Glenn died earlier this year at the age of 100, Carpenter became the last surviving member of one of the most exclusive clubs in American history.

More than an astronaut’s wife

Carpenter had a quick wit and was a talented writer. From 1965 to 1968 she wrote a syndicated newspaper column about her perspective as a wife called “A Woman, Still.” But by 1968 her marriage to M. Scott Carpenter was falling apart. The couple separated and were divorced in 1972. That year she embarked on a successful new career as a television host for Washington, D.C. TV station WTOP (now WUSA).

Carpenter on being her own person:

“I am a single whole person—unencumbered by hyphens or gratuitous references to the past, and I am convinced I speak for a growing number of women who are newly responsive and aware of their own unique identities,” she wrote in response to a 1973 Washington Post story that described her as “ex-wife of the astronaut.”

https://www.legacy.com/news/celebrity-deaths/rene-carpenter-1928-2020-last-surviving-member-of-the-astronaut-wives-club/

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Rene Carpenter, Astronaut’s Wife Who Broke NASA Mold, Dies at 92

The last living member of the Mercury 7 couples who helped define America’s early space program, she went on to become a writer and television host.
Katharine Q. Seelye By Katharine Q. Seelye July 24, 2020

Rene Carpenter, the last surviving member of the much-glorified cohort of Mercury 7 astronauts and their wives, whom Tom Wolfe immortalized in his best-selling 1979 book “The Right Stuff,” died on Friday in Denver. She was 92.

Her daughter Kris Stoever said the cause was congestive heart failure.

Ms. Carpenter, who retained that surname even after she was divorced and remarried, was the wife of Scott Carpenter, one of the seven original Project Mercury astronauts, who carried the hopes of an anxious nation on their shoulders in the early days of space travel.

Thanks to NASA’s public relations machinery and coverage in publications like Life magazine, these 14 men and women were lionized at a time when the United States was seeking to catch the Soviet Union in the space race. Ms. Carpenter became the last living member of the group with the death of Annie Glenn, the wife of the astronaut John Glenn, in May at the age of 100.

Perhaps more than any of the seven wives, Ms. Carpenter broke the NASA mold, emerging with her own identity. On photo shoots, when the women were told to wear solid pastel dresses, Ms. Carpenter, a striking platinum blonde, showed up in a sleeveless red floral pattern. People magazine called her “the undisputed prom queen of the early space program.”

It was actually Ms. Carpenter who signed up her husband for Project Mercury. He had made it through the initial phases of qualification when a letter arrived while he was out of town. Ms. Carpenter opened it. The letter said that if he wanted to proceed to the next phase and enter the physical trials, he needed to respond immediately. Without checking with him first, she called the number and declared, “We volunteer!”

Ms. Carpenter immersed herself in NASA history and acquired a firm grasp of the science as well as the personalities involved.

“She was keenly alert to everything going on in the space program, from its orbital mechanics to its rivalries,” the novelist Thomas Mallon, a longtime friend, said by email.

Mr. Mallon said that Mr. Wolfe had gotten much of his best material for “The Right Stuff,” which was made into a movie in 1983, from Ms. Carpenter. And, he said, “Jackie Kennedy was so taken with her that they spent part of an afternoon together at the White House reciting Edna St. Vincent Millay poems.”

Project Mercury consisted of six different launches. When Mr. Carpenter lifted off from Cape Canaveral in his Aurora 7 capsule on May 24, 1962, to become the fourth American in space and the second to orbit the Earth, his wife and their children were in Florida watching the event in person from the beach.

“Rene said, ‘I’m going, I don’t care what NASA says,’” Ms. Stoever, her daughter, said in a phone interview. “Other families watched the launches from their homes, with children planted in front of the TV. But Rene wasn’t with the program.”

Ms. Carpenter wrote her own account for Life, recalling the tense moments during the flight when her husband had lost contact with mission control. She did not sugarcoat the life of a Navy wife.

“As a bride I was assured by glowing advertisements that I would spend my hours fingering the latest sterling silverware pattern and filling linen closets to overflowing,” she wrote. The reality, she said, was that “I learned to give birth alone, care for sick babies alone and wait at the end of a hundred almost forgotten runways for a plane to touch down again.”

She and the other astronaut wives, she wrote, “present gallant faces to the world, and inside we are as tough as the heat shield that arcs behind our husbands’ backs.”

Behind the scenes, Ms. Carpenter made fun of how the wives were all supposed to be “proud, thrilled, happy” after a successful launch. She invented a character she called Primly Stable, the wife of the astronaut Squarely Stable, who often said she was “proud, thrilled, happy.” Even as she mocked the phrase, Ms. Carpenter said she genuinely felt all those things — and more.

The women had plenty of stresses of their own and formed an informal support group called the Astronaut Wives Club. A book by that name, written by Lily Koppel, was published in 2013, followed two years later by an ABC series of the same name.

Ms. Carpenter, who was played by Yvonne Strahovski as a glamour queen, was not a fan. “Every segment of the show is fiction,” she told The Washington Post.

Ms. Carpenter was a passionate Democrat. Raised during the Depression, when she handed out fliers for Franklin D. Roosevelt, she jumped at the chance to campaign for Mr. Glenn when he first ran for the Senate from Ohio in 1964. When he was incapacitated by a fall, and Annie Glenn was sidelined by a near-paralyzing stutter, Ms. Carpenter took to the hustings and delivered Mr. Glenn’s speeches. She wowed the national media, but Mr. Glenn was forced to withdraw because of his injuries.

Four years later, she campaigned alongside Senator Robert F. Kennedy and his wife, Ethel, during his bid for president. She was soon writing a syndicated column, “A Woman, Still,” and NBC-TV hired her to help cover the Apollo launches.

A smart, sociable and entertaining woman, she became a familiar Washington personality in the 1970s and ’80s, traveling in a social circle that included Ben Bradlee, Art Buchwald, Katharine Graham and David Brinkley.

In the 1970s, after she and Mr. Carpenter divorced, she had a television program of her own, “Everywoman,” which was pioneering in its feminist perspective and its frank treatment of previously off-limits subjects like birth control, natural childbirth and sexism.

Rene Louise Mason was born on April 12, 1928, in Clinton, Iowa. Her parents named her Rene (rhymes with “keen”) after a friend of her mother’s named Irene.

Her mother, Olive Loraine (Olson) Mason, was one of the first female clerks at Clinton’s railroad station. Clinton, a small river town, was hit hard by the Depression, and her father, Melville Francis Mason, was out of work and soon out of the picture, divorcing his wife in 1930.

Olive Mason later married Lyle Price, a brick mason, and he adopted Rene, who became Rene Louise Price. The family moved to Boulder, Colo., in 1941, where Mr. Price began a successful construction business.

Rene graduated from Boulder High School in 1946 and attended the University of Colorado, where she majored in history. She worked as an usher at the Boulder Theater, where she met Mr. Carpenter; they married in 1948. While he was in the Navy’s aviation officer training program, she bore five children, one of whom, Timothy Kit Carpenter, died in infancy.

Ms. Carpenter and Mr. Carpenter divorced in 1971, and she married Lester H. Shor, a developer. He died in 2017. Mr. Carpenter died in 2013 at 88.

In addition to her daughter Ms. Stoever, Ms. Carpenter is survived by a son, Robyn Jay Carpenter; another daughter, Candace Noxon Carpenter; a sister, Peggy Cronin; a brother, Walter Price; a granddaughter; and a great-granddaughter. Her son Marc Scott Carpenter died in 2011.

Mr. Mallon recalled that in the late 1990s, when he was interviewing Christopher Kraft, the retired director of NASA flight operations, for a news article, he mentioned that he was good friends with Ms. Carpenter.

“He lit up with delight and admiration,” Mr. Mallon recalled, “exclaiming, ‘She should have been picked for the program!’”

NYT

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Rene Carpenter, astronaut’s wife and D.C. television host, dies at 92
By Matt Schudel July 24, 2020 at 7:52 PM EDT


Rene Carpenter at the White House in 1962, with her husband Scott Carpenter, their children and President John F. Kennedy. (Henry Griffin/AP)

Rene Carpenter, who was expected to conform to the demure, virtuous image of middle-American womanhood in the 1960s as the wife of Mercury 7 astronaut M. Scott Carpenter and later, after their divorce, became an outspoken Washington television host, died July 24 at a Denver hospital. She was 92.

The cause was congestive heart failure, said a daughter, Kris ­Stoever.

Ms. Carpenter, whose first name rhymed with “keen,” was thrust into the public eye in 1959, when her husband was selected as part of the country’s first group of astronauts. The other in the Mercury 7 crew were Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Walter M. Schirra Jr., Alan B. Shepard Jr. and Donald “Deke” Slayton.

The astronauts were hailed as national heroes and were seen as embodying the spirit of American courage and know-how at the height of the Cold War. All seven were married, and their wives were expected to uphold the same ideal image of Space Age perfection.

Ms. Carpenter and the other astronauts’ wives first appeared on the cover of Life magazine on Sept. 21, 1959. She was at the center of the photograph, “no doubt because the editors regarded her as prettiest,” Tom Wolfe wrote in his best-selling 1979 book about the space program, “The Right Stuff.”

While their husbands trained for dangerous missions, the women were raising the children, managing households, maintaining a stoic cheerfulness and — according to the standards of the era — exuding a certain aura of glamour and charm.

“As far as the wives were concerned,” Wolfe wrote, “their outlook was the same as that of officers’ wives generally, only more so. The main thing was not to say or do anything that reflected badly upon your husband.”

The women were seen as appendages to their husbands and were portrayed in the media in the physically objectifying style commonplace at the time. Ms. Carpenter was invariably described as a “blue-eyed blonde” — or sometimes a “green-eyed blonde” — “shapely” and “a dish.”

“I’m a woman of 34 whose life has been shaped and conditioned by the world of men and their challenges,” Ms. Carpenter said in 1962, while addressing a group of 250 women in New York. “I’m a modern-day camp follower.” She told one interviewer, “A husband — a man — is a rare, wonderful creature, a pleasure to wait on and love.”

In May 1962, Scott Carpenter became the second U.S. astronaut, after Glenn, to orbit Earth. He landed somewhat off course and floated in a raft in the Atlantic Ocean for 40 minutes before he was found.

Scott Carpenter, Mercury 7 astronaut and second American to orbit Earth, dies at 88

Even under those circum­stances, a Washington Post story described the “silver blonde Mrs. Carpenter” as “smiling, radiant and lovely.”

Afterward, Ms. Carpenter and her four children accompanied her husband to the White House, where they were greeted by President John F. Kennedy. She appeared on Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show” and other TV programs and reportedly inspired the title character in playwright Neil Simon’s 1966 Broadway comedy “The Star-Spangled Girl.” She took part in a ticker-tape parade in New York.

“You can’t imagine what 5 million people looked like if you weren’t in New York that day,” Ms. Carpenter told The Post in 1974. “From the airport to city hall, hanging from buildings, packed into Wall Street, laughing and crying. I have seen the Kennedy hysteria, but this was something else. They treated those men as if they were super human.”

She knew all too well how human the astronauts really were. The women banded together in solidarity, as described in Lily Koppel’s 2013 book “The Astronaut Wives Club,” helping one another through the triumphs and trials of their highflying lives.

“Five of us built houses at once, in an area 30 miles below Houston,” Ms. Carpenter told The Post. “And, independently, without discussing it, we all built them with no windows in the front, and with walled courtyards, as if we knew what was coming.”

As “The Right Stuff” and “The Astronaut Wives Club” spelled out, several astronauts pursued other women and had affairs when they were away from home.

The wives comforted one another through public tragedies and private grief. When one of the women lost a child to leukemia, the others mowed her lawn and left meals in her freezer. Behind the courtyard walls, they smoked the cigarettes that couldn’t be seen in public and shared stories that only they would understand.

“I really see them as America’s first reality stars,” Koppel told NPR in 2013. “These women who were unknown military wives in the background, married to test pilots, obviously had to be pretty brave to even be married to a man with that kind of high-risk job. But all of a sudden, America’s looking to them as model housewives, and they’re going to have a role throughout the space race of presenting the perfect American family to the rest of the world.”

The bond among the wives was perhaps tighter than that among the hypercompetitive astronauts themselves. Ms. Carpenter was especially close to Annie Glenn, John Glenn’s wife, who had a speech disorder and found it almost impossible to speak in public or talk on the telephone. Annie Glenn died in May at age 100, leaving Ms. Carpenter as the last survivor of the original Mercury 7 astronauts and their spouses.

Annie Glenn, advocate and widow of astronaut and senator, dies at 100 of coronavirus

In 1965, Ms. Carpenter embarked on an independent career, writing a syndicated newspaper column, “A Woman, Still.” She settled in Bethesda, Md., and continued to appear as a dutiful astronaut’s wife until 1968. By then, she and her husband were separated, and she gave up her column.

“I didn’t feel honest anymore,” she said in 1974. “It was a wife’s column, and there wasn’t any marriage.”

She campaigned for Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-N.Y.) during the 1968 presidential campaign, until his assassination that June, and became friendly with Kennedy’s family and other members of Washington’s political and journalistic elite. After years apart, she and Scott Carpenter were divorced in 1972.

The same year, at the urging of Katharine Graham, then the publisher of The Washington Post, Ms. Carpenter became the host of “Everywoman,” a nightly interview show that ran on Washington’s Channel 9 (then known as WTOP-TV) for four years.

She was also co-host of a morning show and became known for confronting her guests about serious issues. When interviewing the creator of the Barbie doll in 1974, Ms. Carpenter called the doll “an anachronism, born 16 years ago, with breasts. . . . Does she ever paint picket signs? Is she for or against abortion?”

Still, even as Ms. Carpenter became a well-known TV personality, many people viewed her only in relation to her former husband. In a letter to the editor in 1973, she criticized a Post story that referred to her as “ex-wife of the astronaut.”

“I have lived totally apart from ‘the astronaut’ for six years,” Ms. Carpenter wrote. “I am a single whole person — secure and happy in that status. . . . I would like to be recognized as Me, unencumbered by hyphens or gratuitous references to the past, and I am convinced I speak for a growing number of women who are newly responsive and aware of their own unique identities.”

Rene Louise Mason was born April 12, 1928, in Clinton, Iowa. She was 2 when her parents divorced. She was adopted by her stepfather and, from 12, used his surname, Price.

She grew up in Iowa and in Boulder, Colo. Her mother worked for a time at a rail yard, and her stepfather was a builder.

After two years at the University of Colorado, she dropped out in 1948 to marry Carpenter, a Navy officer and test pilot. He died in 2013.

They had five children. A son, Tim Carpenter, died as an infant in 1951. Another son, Marc Scott Carpenter, died in 2011. Survivors include three children, Jay Carpenter, Kris Stoever and Candace Carpenter; a half sister; a half brother; a granddaughter; and a great-granddaughter.

In 1977, Ms. Carpenter married Lester Shor, a Washington real estate developer. They lived in Georgetown before moving to Colorado in 1990. He died in 2017.

Four of the marriages of the original seven astronauts ended in divorce. (One astronaut, Grissom, died in a launchpad accident in 1967.) It was common knowledge that Scott Carpenter had numerous affairs while they were married, but Ms. Carpenter never said anything derogatory about him in public. She was upset with what she considered the superficial and condescending tone of the book “The Astronaut Wives Club” and, especially, the ABC-TV series of the same name.

“Every segment of the show is fiction!” she told Post columnist John Kelly in 2015. “Every segment!”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/rene-carpenter-astronauts-wife-and-dc-television-host-dies-at-92/2020/07/24/bce0e22e-cdc4-11ea-91f1-28aca4d833a0_story.html

[Orionid]

Rene Carpenter, pioneering space writer and last member of 'astronaut wives club,' dies at 92
By Chelsea Gohd July 27, 2020


Rene Carpenter in 1969.  (Image credit: Leonard Mccombe/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images)

https://www.space.com/rene-carpenter-dies-astronaut-wives-club.html

[mss]

01.05.2021 mija 96 lat od dnia urodzenia byłego astronauty NASA z grupy 1 z 1959 roku - Malcolma Scotta Carpentera.

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