Scott Carpenter died last week, at the age of 88. Did you notice? Did you even remember who Scott Carpenter was?
I remember who he was and what he did, but I didn’t know that he had died. The world stops when the actor who played Tony Soprano dies, but an aged American hero and explorer? The news media says “Meh.” If Carpenter was still famous or a celebrity at all, it was only in the vague, foggy sense that obscure rock artists from the 60’s and expired pop icons are famous. I think Tony Dow, Barbara Feldon and Mama Cass are about as familiar to today’s public as Scott Carpenter, if not more. I just asked my son, who is 18 and better schooled in history and culture than most of his contemporaries. He knew Mama Cass was a member of the Mamas and the Pappas. The rest? Crickets.
Yet Scott Carpenter was, unlike those people, important. He was one of the original Mercury astronauts, and in 1961, he orbited the Earth. After he left NASA he became a different kind of explorer, challenging “inner space,” the ocean’s mysterious depths. He launched an undersea habitation called Sealab II, where he and three other men conducted experiments on how well humans function in a high-pressure undersea conditions for extended periods. Carpenter was a deep-water pioneer, mining on the sea bottom and harvesting exotic fish and other sea creatures. He salvaged and refloated a sunken jet fighter; he built an undersea petroleum-exploration platform.
Scott Carpenter, however, wasn’t famous by the time he died, because one of his fellow astronauts and good friends, John Glenn, orbited the Earth before him. Glenn went on to become a U.S. Senator based on his fame and heroic reputation (it helped that he was a combat pilot and decorated military hero as well). Carpenter did something important, dangerous, selfless, difficult and heroic, but he did it second, after John Glenn. We don’t remember second, and the distance between the accolades and honors heaped on #1 and the shrugs that follow #2 is disproportionate and unfair.
Carpenter is not the most glaring example of this unfortunate and unchangeable bug in human nature. There are many who suffered his injustice. My personal favorite is Larry Doby, the second black baseball player to break the color barrier after Jackie Robinson. In 1948, one year after Robinson shocked the National League by appearing on a previously segregated major league baseball field for the Brooklyn Dodgers and showing that he not only could equal his white counterparts in ability but exceed them. Negro Leagues star outfielder Larry Doby joined the Cleveland Indians an became the first black player in the American League. Unlike Robinson, he led his team to a pennant and World Series victory. Do you think the racism Doby encountered on the road, from opposing dugouts, in jeers from the fans and even from his own team mates was dramatically less that what Robinson had to cope with? I doubt it very much, but Jackie Robinson is a symbol and a legend, while Doby is a footnote.
This is in the “life isn’t fair” category, I know. Nothing can be done about it, nor should the first remarkable individuals to break down barriers and expand human limits have their fame or significance diminished in any way in an attempt to be fairer to those who showed that what they achieved was no fluke. I am only noting that an important human being has died, and that he deserves our respect, gratitude, and if we can manage it, remembrance.
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Graphic: KSTP
Ethics Alarms 
I noticed. (And I was shocked to see how old he was; but that’s just about me.)
This is a very good tribute to a very important person, thank you.
Well… I DID note Commander Carpenter’s passing and I DO remember his flight in Aurora 7. Because of a fuel shortage in his altitude jets (hydrogen peroxide thrusters used to manuever the spacecraft) his re-entry burn was slightly off-angle, resulting in his splashdown being more that 200 miles out of the target area. There was a real concern that his spacecraft had been destroyed when he failed to come down where expected and when communications failed. Note that there had been similar concerns with John Glenn’s previous flight. But the Navy quickly reacted and found him in short order, calmly awaiting rescue in his life raft alongside his bobbing Mercury capsule.
Some NASA officials circulated rumors that the off-the-mark splashdown was HIS fault because of his overuse of the control jets. The evidence, however, bore out Carpenter’s contention that a stuck valve had prematurely depleted the gas reserve. Soon after, he left the space program for valuable work in subsea exploration. Sadly, neither his work in outer space nor “inner space” has born the benefits that it should have over the decades. The passing of Malcolm Scott Carpenter should be noted by all thoughtful Americans as to the opportunities that this man and his fellows opened for us in those great years of exploration and how much we’ve left undone in building on the tremendous legacy they bequeathed us.
Thanks for sharing that info, Steven.
I recall that Walter Cronkite was almost at the point of giving his obituary on the air when the Navy found him!
It is somewhat fair (” distance between the accolades and honors heaped on #1 and the shrugs that follow #2 is disproportionate and unfair”) because the #1’s are the ones who set the foundation for their successors to succeed.
I knew he died, I heard it on the local news.
Due to our proximity to the cape, we probably get more NASA news than most people.
I, too, was surprised at his age, I guess none of us are immune to our heroes getting older.
I have nothing but admiration for these guys, they really, honestly were the heroes of my youth.
You know, back in the day when a kid could still be proud to be American.
RIP Scott Carpenter. the sky’s the limit.
Thanks, for the post, Jack.
I heard about it and remembered. Thanks for the better sketched out life story.
No, he did it third, after Yuri Gagarin (or maybe even later, if yet other Soviet ones got in between). But you are almost right that we don’t remember second, because we only remember that if there are special circumstances – like the British remembering Scott of the Antarctic because of the associated tragedy, or Americans remembering John Glenn out of U.S. exceptionalism that tunes out anyone else who was even earlier.
I believe it was Gregor Titov who was the Soviet’s second man in orbit around that time.
It is sad that someone like Scott Carpenter falls into what I call “everyday heroes”. There are a lot of them and they are all around us. When I was a child, I met the first man to “loop” a helicopter. The movie “Blue Thunder” made it famous, but he did it first and I can’t even remember his name. He took me through Fairchild plant when they released a new version of the A-10. I met one of the first solid-state physicists, Jack Hinckle. He was ‘drafted’ during WWII to work on the development of the transistor at Bell Labs. I have met two astronauts, one of whom was portrayed in the Apollo 13 movie. I met an aircraft mechanic, John Freeman, who worked on the #3 engine of the Enola Gay in Hawaii (they told him all the engines of THIS plane needed to be at peak efficiency). I knew one of the members of Team Viper, Richard Blight, who helped change the way cars were made (remember, the Viper was really a project to see if a small group of people could develop an entire car for $50 million).
These people are all around us, its sad we don’t really give them the recognition they are due.
Thanks, Jack. I had not heard that he died, nor was I aware of his age. Sad, his passing; more sad that his passing was virtually unnoticed by the media.
I met Colonel Buzz Aldrin who was the second man to put his footprint on the moon at a local book signing. He was very gracious, signed my book with a flourish, and actually shook my hand and smiled. I don’t think he cared that he was number two. These guys truly had “The Right Stuff” and he seems much more interested in doing what he can to convince those that control the purse strings that American should again step up to the plate and eventually colonize Mars. Those that scoff, think of JFK and the national goal of “landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth” by the end of the 1960s.