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. Continue reading →