NASA MERCURY - ATLAS 9 FAITH 7 GEMINI 5 APOLLO ASTRONAUT COOPER AUTOGRAPH SIGNED
Item History & Price
| Reference Number: Avaluer:48423675 | Modified Item: No |
| Theme: Astronauts & Space Travel | Country/Region of Manufacture: United States |
| Type: AUTOGRAPH SIGNATURE CARD |
ASTRONAUTGORDON "GORDO" COOPER (1927-2004)EARLY AMERICANASTRONAUT, NASA PROJECTMERCURY PROGRAM ASTRONAUT – PILOTING MERCURY-ATLAS 9 “FAITH 7”COMMANDPILOT OF GEMINI 5 IN 1965&BACKUPPILOT FOR APOLLO MISSIONS.Gordo Cooper flew thelongest spaceflight of the Mercury project, was the first American to sleep inorbit, and was the last American to launch alone into Earth orbit and conductan entire solo orbital mission.Throughout his laterlife Cooper expressed repeatedly in interv...iews he had seen extra-terrestrial crafts(UFOs), and that the US Government is engaged in a cover-up!HERE’sAN AUTHENTIC AUTOGRAPH SIGNATURE CARD SIGNED BY COOPER IN HIS DISTINCTIVE HAND!Thecard document measures 5” x 3” and is in Very Fine, Clean Condition.THIS WOULD MAKE A FINE ADDITION TO YOUR SPACE AUTOGRAPH& MANUSCRIPT COLLECTION!! A GREAT RELIC OF THE SPACE RACE !!Chosenfrom hundreds of test pilot applicants, Gordon Cooper was one of the OriginalMercury Seven astronauts along with six of his peers. On May 15, 1963 Cooperwas launched into orbit on the last mission of the Mercury program. He spent aday and a half in space for a then record 22 orbits. During the last few orbitsof the flight all of his electrical systems shorted out except his radio and hewas forced to complete a manual re-entry. Such were his piloting skills that helanded closer to the recovery carrier than any of the previous automatedre-entry flights. This is the story of that harrowing flight as well as hiscareer as a NASA astronaut. In 1965 Cooper flew again in space along withfuture moonwalker Pete Conrad. They set another record for eight days in spacetesting critical fuel cell technology that would be used in the Apollo program.In every respect, Cooper was a true American hero. Cooper rarely made public appearances. Afterretiring from NASA Cooper became an expert on UFO phenomenon and made acompelling argument for their existence in the last third of his book, “Leap ofFaith.”BIOGRAPHY OF NASA ASTRONAUT GORDO COOPER :::::::::>>>LeroyGordon Cooper, Jr., also noted as Gordo Cooper, (March6, 1927 – October 4, 2004) was an American astronaut. Cooper was one of theseven original astronauts in Project Mercury, the first manned-space effort bythe United States. He flew the longest spaceflight of the Mercury project, wasthe first American to sleep in orbit, and was the last American to launch aloneinto Earth orbit and conduct an entire solo orbital mission. Earlyyears Cooper was born in Shawnee, Oklahoma. He grew up there andin Murray, Kentucky where he attended public schools. He was active in the BoyScouts of America and achieved the second highest rank of Life Scout. Cooperserved in the Marine Corps in 1945 and 1946, then received an Army commissionafter completing three years of coursework at the University of Hawaii. Coopermet his first wife Trudy (the only wife of a Mercury astronaut with a privatepilot's license) while in Hawaii and they married in 1947. Cooper transferredhis commission to the Air Force in 1949, was placed on active duty and receivedflight training at Perrin AFB, Texas and Williams AFB, Arizona. Cooper's first flight assignment came in 1950 at Landstuhl, West Germany where he flew F-84 Thunderjets and F-86 Sabres for four years.While in Germany he also attended the European Extension of the University ofMaryland. Returning to the United States, he studied for two years at the AirForce Institute of Technology in Ohio and in 1957 completed his bachelor'sdegree in aerospace engineering. Cooper was then assigned to the ExperimentalFlight Test School at Edwards Air Force Base in California and after graduationwas posted to the Flight Test Engineering Division at Edwards where he servedas a test pilot and project manager testing the F-102A and F-106B. Cooperlogged more than 7, 000 hours of flight time, with 4, 000 hours in jet aircraft.He flew all types of commercial and general aviation airplanes and helicopters.Astronaut Mercuryprogram While at Edwards, Cooper was intrigued to read anannouncement saying a contract had been awarded to McDonnell Aircraft in St.Louis, Missouri to build a space capsule. Shortly after this he was called toWashington, D.C. for a NASA briefing on Project Mercury and the part astronautswould play in it. Cooper went through the selection process with the other 109pilots and was not surprised when he was accepted as one of the first sevenAmerican astronauts. Each of the Mercury astronauts was assigned to a differentportion of the project along with other special assignments. Cooper specializedin the Redstone rocket (and developed a personal survival knife for astronautsto carry). He also chaired the Emergency Egress Committee, responsible forworking out emergency launch pad procedures for escape. Cooper served ascapsule communicator (CAPCOM) for John Glenn's first orbital spaceflight inMercury-Atlas 6 (Friendship 7) and Scott Carpenter's flight on Mercury-Atlas 7(Aurora 7). He was backup pilot for Wally Schirra in Mercury-Atlas 8 (Sigma 7).Cooper was launched into space on May 15, 1963 aboard theMercury-Atlas 9 (Faith 7) spacecraft, the last Mercury mission. He orbited theEarth 22 times and logged more time in space than all five previous Mercury astronautscombined – 34 hours, 19 minutes and 49 seconds, traveling 546, 167 miles(878, 971 km) at 17, 547 mph (28, 239 km/h), pulling a maximum of 7.6 g (74.48m/s²). Cooper achieved an altitude of 165.9 statute miles (267 km) at apogee.He was the first American astronaut to sleep not only in orbit but on thelaunch pad during a countdown. Spam in acan Like all Mercury flights Faith 7 was designed for fullyautomatic control, a controversial engineering decision which in many waysreduced the role of an astronaut to that of a passenger and stirred ChuckYeager to describe Mercury astronauts as spam in a can.Towards the end of the Faith 7 flight there weremission-threatening technical problems. During the 19th orbit the capsule had apower failure, carbon dioxide levels began rising and the cabin temperaturejumped to over a hundred degrees. Cooper fell back on his understanding of starpatterns, took manual control of the tiny capsule and successfully estimatedthe correct pitch for re-entry into the atmosphere. Some precision was neededin the calculation since if the capsule came in too deep it would burn up andif its trajectory was too shallow it would bounce off the atmosphere intospace. Cooper drew lines on the capsule window to help him check his orientationbefore firing the re-entry rockets. "So I used my wrist watch fortime, " he later recalled, "my eyeballs out the window for attitude.Then I fired my retrorockets at the right time and landed right by thecarrier." Cooper's cool-headed performance and piloting skills led to abasic rethinking of design philosophy for later space missions. Gemini Two years later (August 21, 1965) Cooper flew as commandpilot of Gemini 5 on an eight-day, 120-orbit mission with Pete Conrad. The twoastronauts established a new space endurance record by traveling a distance of3, 312, 993 miles (5, 331, 745 km) in 190 hours and 56 minutes, showing astronautscould survive in space for the length of time necessary to go from the Earth tothe Moon and back. Cooper was the first astronaut to make a second orbitalflight and later served as backup command pilot for Gemini 12. Retirement from astronaut corps Cooper was selected as backup commander for Apollo 10 andhoped for an assignment as commander of Apollo 13. However, after a falling-outwith NASA management, Alan Shepard was chosen instead (Shepard's crew was latermoved onto Apollo 14 and the Apollo 13 command went to Jim Lovell). Havingflown 222 hours in space, Cooper retired from NASA and the Air Force on July31, 1970 as a colonel. Lateryears After leaving NASA, Cooper served on several corporateboards and as technical consultant for more than a dozen companies in fieldsranging from high performance boat design to energy, construction and aircraftdesign. During the 1970s, he worked for The Walt Disney Company as avice-president of research and development for Epcot. After divorcing his first wife Trudy, Cooper married SuzanTaylor in 1972. He had four daughters, Camala Keoki (Cooper) Tharpe and JanitaLee (Cooper) Stone (both from his first marriage) along with Elizabeth Jo andColleen Taylor (from his second marriage). Cooper received an honorary doctorate of science degree fromOklahoma State University in 1967. His autobiography, Leap of Faith (ISBN0-06-019416-2), co-authored by Bruce B. Henderson, recounted his experienceswith the Air Force and NASA along with his efforts to expose an alleged UFOconspiracy theory. Cooper was also a major contributor to the book In theShadow of the Moon (published after his death) which offered Cooper's finalpublished thoughts on his life and career. UFO claimsCooper claimed to have seen his first UFO while flying overWest Germany in 1951, although he denied reports he had seen a UFO during hisMercury flight. However, these claims are controversial because of a conflictCooper had with the brass at NASA. In 1957, when Cooper was 30 and a captain, he was assignedto Fighter Section of the Experimental Flight Test Engineering Division atEdwards Air Force Base in California. He acted as a test pilot and projectmanager. On May 3 of that year, he had a crew setting up an Askania-cameraprecision landing system on a dry lake bed. This camera system would takepictures at one frame per second as an aircraft landed. The crew consisted ofJames Bittick And Jack Gettys who began work at the site just before 0800, using both still and motion picture cameras. According to his accounts, laterthat morning they returned to report to Cooper that they saw a"strange-looking saucer" like aircraft that did not make a soundeither on landing or take off. According to his accounts, Cooper realized that these men, who on a regular basis have seen experimental aircraft flying and landingaround them as part of their job of filming those aircraft, were clearly workedup and unnerved. They explained how the saucer hovered over them, landed 50yards away from them using three extended landing gears and then took off asthey approached for a closer look. Being photographers with cameras in hand, they of course shot images with 35mm and 4-by-5 still cameras as well as motionfilm. There was a special Pentagon number to call to report incidents likethis. He called and it immediately went up the chain of command until he wasinstructed by a general to have the film developed (but to make no prints ofit) and send it right away in a locked courier pouch. As he hadn't beeninstructed to NOT look at the negatives before sending them, he did. He saidthe quality of the photography was excellent as would be expected from theexperienced photographers who took them. What he saw was exactly what they haddescribed to him. He did not see the movie film before everything was sentaway. He expected that there would be a follow up investigation since anaircraft of unknown origin had landed in a highly classified militaryinstallation, but nothing was ever said of the incident again. He was neverable to track down what happened to those photos. He assumed that they ended upgoing to the Air Force's official UFO investigation, Project Blue Book, whichwas based at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. He held claim until his death that the government is indeedcovering up information about UFOs. He gives the example of President HarryTruman who said on April 4, 1950, "I can assure you that flying saucers, given that they exist, are not constructed by any power on Earth." He alsopointed out that there were hundreds of reports made by his fellow pilots, manycoming from military jet pilots sent to respond to radar or visual sightingsfrom the ground. He was quite convinced till the day he died that he had seenUFOs and was a strong advocate to make the government come clean with what itknew. In his memoirs Cooper wrote he had seen other unexplainedaircraft several times during his career and also said hundreds of similarreports had been made, often by military jet pilots responding to radar orvisual sightings from the ground. He further claimed these sightings had been"swept under the rug" by the US government. Throughout his later lifeCooper expressed repeatedly in interviews he had seen extra-terrestrial craftsand described his recollections for the documentary Out of the Blue. Death Cooper developed Parkinson's disease late in life and at age77 died from heart failure at his home in Ventura, California on October 4, 2004, which was also the 47th anniversary of the Sputnik 1 launch and the sameday SpaceShipOne made its second official qualifying flight and won the AnsariX-Prize. Memorial spaceflights On April 29, 2007 Cooper's ashes (along with those of StarTrek actor James Doohan and 206 others) were launched from New Mexico on asub-orbital memorial flight by a privately owned UP Aerospace SpaceLoft XLsounding rocket. Although the capsule carrying the ashes fell back towardsEarth as planned, it was lost in mountainous landscape. The search was thwartedby bad weather but after a few weeks the capsule was found and the ashes itcarried were returned to the families.The ashes were then launched on theExplorers orbital mission (August 3, 2008) but were lost when the Falcon 1rocket failed two minutes into the flight.Awards anddecorations Cooper received many awards including the Air Force Legionof Merit, the Distinguished Flying Cross with oak leaf clusters, the NASAExceptional Achievement Medal, the Collier Trophy, the Harmon Trophy, theDeMolay Legion of Honor, the John F. Kennedy Trophy, the Iven C. KincheloeAward, the University of Hawaii Regents Medal and the Columbus Medal. He was aMaster Mason (member of Carbondale Lodge 82 in Carbondale, Colorado) and a 33rdDegree Scottish Rite Mason. Cooper was a member of several groups and societiesincluding the Society of Experimental Test Pilots, the American AstronauticalSociety, Scottish Rite, York Rite, Shriners, Rotary Club, Order of Daedalians, Confederate Air Force and Boy Scouts of America. Gordon Cooper Technology Center in Shawnee, Oklahoma isnamed after Cooper. Culturalinfluence Cooper's accomplishments (along with his widely noted andappealing personality) were depicted in the 1983 film The Right Stuff in whichhe was portrayed by actor Dennis Quaid. Cooper worked closely with theproduction company on this project and reportedly, every line uttered by Quaidis attributable to Cooper's recollection. Quaid met with Cooper before thecasting call and rapidly learned his mannerisms. Quaid also had his hair cutand dyed to match how the former astronaut's hair looked during the 1950s and1960s. Cooper was later depicted in the 1998 HBO series From the Earth to theMoon, in which his character was played by Robert C. Treveiler. Cooper appearedas himself in an episode of the television series CHiPs and during the early1980s made regular call in appearances on Late Night with David Letterman. TheThunderbirds character Gordon Tracy was named after him. Quotes“ No bucks, no Buck Rogers! ” (This expression about the high level of funding needed forspaceflight was popular among test pilots and astronauts in the United Statesduring the late 1950s and early 1960s) “ In the early days, there was so little that we knew aboutspace. Every day was an 'oh, gee-whiz day' or big adventure. ”“ Who's the best pilot y'ever saw? ” I am a proud member of the Universal Autograph Collectors Club(UACC), The Ephemera Society of America, the Manuscript Society and theAmerican Political Items Collectors (APIC) (member name: John Lissandrello). Isubscribe to each organizations' code of ethics and authenticity is guaranteed.~Providing quality service and historical memorabilia online for over 20years.~
WE ONLY SELL GENUINE ITEMS, i.e., NO REPRODUCTIONS, FAKES OR COPIES!
WE ONLY SELL GENUINE ITEMS, i.e., NO REPRODUCTIONS, FAKES OR COPIES!
