Scott Carpenter | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Carpenter in 1964 | |
| Born | Malcolm Scott Carpenter (1925-05-01)May 1, 1925 Boulder, Colorado, U.S. |
| Died | October 10, 2013(2013-10-10) (aged 88) Denver, Colorado, U.S. |
| Education | University of Colorado, Boulder (BS) |
| Spouse | |
| Awards | Legion of Merit Distinguished Flying Cross NASA Distinguished Service Medal |
| Space career | |
| NASA astronaut | |
| Rank | Commander,USN |
Time in space | 4h 56m |
| Selection | NASA Group 1 (1959) |
| Missions | Mercury-Atlas 7 |
Mission insignia |  |
| Retirement | August 10, 1967 |
Malcolm Scott Carpenter (May 1, 1925 – October 10, 2013) was an Americannaval officer andaviator,test pilot,aeronautical engineer,astronaut, andaquanaut. He was one of theMercury Seven astronauts selected forNASA'sProject Mercury in April 1959. Carpenter was the second American (afterJohn Glenn) toorbit the Earth and the fourth American inspace, afterAlan Shepard,Gus Grissom, and Glenn.
Commissioned into the U.S. Navy in 1949, Carpenter became a naval aviator, flying aLockheed P-2 Neptune withPatrol Squadron 6 (VP-6) on reconnaissance andanti-submarine warfare missions along the coasts of theSoviet Union and China during theKorean War and theCold War. In 1954, he attended theU.S. Naval Test Pilot School atNAS Patuxent River,Maryland, and became a test pilot. In 1958, he was namedAir Intelligence Officer ofUSS Hornet, which was then in dry dock at theBremerton Navy Yard.
The following year, Carpenter was selected as one of the Mercury Seven astronauts. He was backup to Glenn during the latter'sMercury Atlas 6 orbital mission. Carpenter flew the next mission,Mercury Atlas 7, in the spacecraft he namedAurora 7. Due to a series of malfunctions, the spacecraft landed 250 miles (400 km) downrange from its intendedsplashdown point, but both pilot and spacecraft were retrieved.
In 1964, Carpenter obtained permission from NASA to take a leave of absence to join the U.S. NavySEALAB project as an aquanaut. During training he suffered injuries that grounded him, making him unavailable for further spaceflights. In 1965, he spent 28 days living on the ocean floor off the coast of California as part of SEALAB II. He returned to NASA as Executive Assistant to the Director of theManned Spacecraft Center, then joined the Navy'sDeep Submergence Systems Project in 1967 as Director of Aquanaut Operations for SEALAB III. He retired from NASA in 1967 and the Navy in 1969, with the rank ofcommander.
Carpenter became a consultant to sport and diving manufacturers, and to the film industry on space flight and oceanography. He gave talks and appeared in television documentaries. He was involved in projects related to biological pest control and waste disposal, and for the production of energy from industrial and agricultural wastes. He appeared in television commercials and wrote a pair of technothrillers and an autobiography,For Spacious Skies: The Uncommon Journey of a Mercury Astronaut, co-written with his daughter, Kristen Stoever.
Malcolm Scott Carpenter was born on May 1, 1925, inBoulder, Colorado,[1] the son of Marion Scott Carpenter (1901–1973), a research chemist, and Florence Kelso (née Noxon, known in her family as "Toye"; 1900–1962). Carpenter, known in his childhood as Bud or Buddy, moved with his parents toNew York City, where his father had been awarded a postdoctoral research post atColumbia University, in 1925.[2]
In the summer of 1927, Carpenter's mother, who was ill withtuberculosis, returned to Boulder, taking him with her. (In those days, mountain air was believed to aid recovery). Her condition deteriorated, and she entered the Mesa Vista Sanatorium in 1930. She recovered sufficiently to become chief medical librarian atBoulder Community Hospital in 1945. Carpenter's father remained in New York, but found it hard to find work during theGreat Depression. Eventually his father secured a good position atGivaudan. Carpenter's parents divorced in 1945, and his father remarried.[3]
Carpenter lived with his maternal grandparents in the family home at the corner of Aurora Avenue and Seventh Street.[3] He later denied naming his spacecraftAurora 7 after Aurora Avenue.[4] He was educated at University Hill Elementary School in Boulder andBoulder High School, where he played theclarinet, was acheerleader, and served on the editorial board of the student newspaper.[5][6] He was aBoy Scout, and earned the rank ofSecond Class Scout.[7]
Like many teenagers in Boulder, Carpenter was deeply affected by theattack on Pearl Harbor, which brought the United States intoWorld War II, and he resolved to become anaval aviator.[8] On February 12, 1943, he went to theU.S. Navy's recruiting office atLowry Field nearDenver and applied to join the Navy'sV-5 Aviation Cadet Training Program. After obtaining his father's permission, he traveled to the headquarters of the12th Naval District inSan Francisco, where he passed physical and written examinations, and was accepted for training as an aviation cadet on April 11.[9]
The Navy had a large number of potential aviators in the pipeline at this time, so to retain young men like Carpenter, theV-12 Navy College Training Program was created, whereby cadets attended college until training positions became available. When Carpenter graduated from high school in 1943, he became a V-12A aviation cadet atColorado College inColorado Springs. Three semesters there were followed by six months of preflight training atSaint Mary's College of California inMoraga, California, and primary flight training atOttumwa, Iowa, in aStearman N2S for four months.[10][11][12] The war ended before he finished training, so the Navy released him from active duty in September 1945.[13]
After visiting his father and stepmother in New York, Carpenter returned to Boulder in November 1945 to studyaeronautical engineering at theUniversity of Colorado. He was given credit for his previous study, and entered as ajunior.[13] While there he joinedDelta Tau Delta International Fraternity.[14] He was severely injured in a car accident on September 14, 1946, after he fell asleep at the wheel of his1934 Ford. The car went over a cliff and overturned.[15] At the end of his senior year, he missed his final examination inheat transfer; a washed-out bridge prevented him from getting to class. This left him one requirement short of a degree.[16][a]
Carpenter metRene Louise Price, a fellow student at the University of Colorado, where she studied history and music at the campus bookstore, where she worked part-time. She was a member of theDelta Delta Deltasorority. Her parents had also separated when she was young, and her mother too suffered from tuberculosis. They were married at St. John's Episcopal Church in Boulder in September 1948.[19]
Plans to retake his heat transfer course were put aside when Carpenter was recruited by the Navy's Direct Procurement Program (DPP) as its 500th candidate. Through an oversight, the Navy assumed that he had earned his degree. He reported for duty on October 31, 1949, atNaval Air Station Pensacola,Florida, for pre-flight training. He graduated from pre-flight training on March 6, 1950, and then commenced primary flight training atNaval Air Station Whiting Field, learning to fly in anSNJ trainer.[20] He then went on toNaval Air Station Corpus Christi for advanced training. Most newly-trained naval aviators—including Carpenter—aspired to fly jet fighters, but in view of his responsibilities as a husband and father (his first child was born on January 20, 1950, and Rene was pregnant with a second), he elected the less dangerous option of flying multi-engine patrol aircraft. Rene disagreed with this decision. His advanced training was in theConsolidated PB4Y-2 Privateer, a single-tail version of theConsolidated B-24 Liberator. Rene pinned hisaviator wings on him on April 19, 1951, signifying completion of his flight training.[21]
After three months at the Fleet Airborne Electronics Training School inSan Diego, California, Carpenter went to aP2V Neptune transitional training unit atWhidbey Island, Washington,[1] after which he was assigned toPatrol Squadron 6 (VP-6), based atNaval Air Station Barbers Point,Hawaii, in November 1951. On his first deployment, Carpenter flew on reconnaissance andanti-submarine warfare missions fromNaval Air Station Atsugi in Japan during theKorean War.[22] The missions could be dangerous: on November 6, 1951, one of his squadron's aircraft was shot down over theSea of Japan by two SovietLavochkin La-11 fighters, with the loss of all ten crew.[23]
On his second deployment, forward-based atNaval Air Facility Adak,Alaska, he flew surveillance missions along the Soviet and Chinese coasts.[24] For his third and final deployment, he was based onGuam, flying missions off the coast of China. He was designated as patrol plane commander, the only one in VP-6 with the rank oflieutenant (junior grade)—all the rest held higher rank.[25]
Impressed with his performance, the commanding officer of VP-6, Commander Guy Howard,[26] recommended Carpenter's appointment to theU.S. Naval Test Pilot School.[27] Carpenter was part of Class 13, atNAS Patuxent River,Maryland, in 1954. He flew aircraft such as theAD Skyraider and theMartin P4M Mercator. For the first time, he flew jets, including theF9F Panther,F11F Tiger andA3D Skywarrior.[28] He remained at Patuxent River until 1957, working as atest pilot in the Electronics Test Division.[11]
Carpenter attended theNavy General Line School inMonterey, California, in 1957,[11] and then the Naval Air Intelligence School atNAS Anacostia inWashington D.C.[29] In 1958 he was namedAir Intelligence Officer ofUSS Hornet, which was in dry dock at theBremerton Navy Yard.[30]
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On October 4, 1957, theSoviet Union launchedSputnik 1, the first artificialsatellite. This shattered Americans' confidence in their technological superiority, creating a wave of anxiety known as theSputnik crisis. Among his responses,PresidentDwight D. Eisenhower launched theSpace Race. TheNational Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was established on October 1, 1958, as a civilian agency to develop space technology. One of its first initiatives wasProject Mercury,[31] which aimed to launch a man intoEarth orbit, evaluate his capabilities in space, and return him safely to the Earth.[32]
The firstastronaut intake was drawn from the ranks of military test pilots. The service records of 508 graduates of test pilot schools were obtained from theDepartment of Defense. Of these, 110 met the minimum standards:[33] the candidates had to be younger than 40, possess a bachelor's degree or equivalent and to be 5 feet 11 inches (1.80 m) or less. While these were not all strictly enforced, the height requirement was firm, owing to the size of the Project Mercury spacecraft.[34] DPP was restricted to those withbachelor's degrees, so it was assumed that Carpenter had one.[35]
On February 2, 1959, the first 35 candidates went toThe Pentagon, where they met with theChief of Naval Operations,AdmiralArleigh Burke, and theChief of Staff of the United States Air Force,General (United States)Thomas D. White, who assured them that the services would support them if they volunteered to become astronauts, and that their professional progress and promotions would not be affected. The number of candidates was reduced to 32, which the NASA selection panel considered to be an adequate number from which to select 12 astronauts. The degree of interest also indicated that far fewer would drop out during training than anticipated, which would result in training astronauts who would not be required to fly Project Mercury missions. It was therefore decided to halve the number of astronauts.[36]
Then came a grueling series of physical and psychological tests at theLovelace Clinic and theWright Aerospace Medical Laboratory.[37] Carpenter had the lowest body fat, scored highest on the treadmill and cycling tests, and was able to hold his breath the longest.[38] This was despite the fact that he had smoked a pack of cigarettes a day since joining the Navy in 1943, and did not quit smoking until 1985.[39]
NASA'sCharles J. Donlan called Carpenter's home on April 3, 1959, to inform him that he had been one of the seven men selected. Rene answered; Carpenter was onHornet, but she could reach him. Carpenter called Donlan from a wharfside pay phone to accept the offer, butHornet's skipper,Captain Marshall W. White, refused to release him. Donlan called Burke, who contacted White and promised to send him another intelligence officer, but told him that the country needed Carpenter for the NASA assignment.[40]
The identities of the seven were announced at a press conference atDolley Madison House in Washington, D.C., on April 9, 1959:[41] Carpenter,Gordon Cooper,John Glenn,Gus Grissom,Wally Schirra,Alan Shepard, andDeke Slayton.[42] The magnitude of the challenge ahead of them was made clear a few weeks later, on the night of May 18, 1959, when the seven astronauts gathered atCape Canaveral to watch their first rocket launch, of anSM-65D Atlas, which was similar to the one that would carry them into orbit. A few minutes after liftoff, it spectacularly exploded, lighting up the night sky. The astronauts were stunned. Shepard turned to Glenn and said: "Well, I'm glad they got that out of the way."[43]
Carpenter, along with the other six Mercury astronauts, participated in the development of the Mercury spacecraft.[44] Each had a specialty; Carpenter's was the onboard navigational equipment.[45] He served as backup pilot onMercury-Atlas 6 for Glenn,[46] who flew the first U.S. orbital mission aboardFriendship 7 in February 1962. Carpenter, serving ascapsule communicator on this flight, can be heard saying "Godspeed, John Glenn" on the recording of Glenn's liftoff.[47]
The next mission, a second crewed orbital flight, was to be flown by Slayton in a spacecraft he would have namedDelta 7, but Slayton was suddenly grounded for anatrial fibrillation.[48] Carpenter was assigned to replace him instead of Slayton's backup, Schirra, as Carpenter had more training time in the simulators.[49] In contrast to Glenn's flight,Mercury-Atlas 7 was planned as a scientific mission rather than an engineering one.[50]
After the most trouble-free countdown of Project Mercury to date, Carpenter flew into space on May 24, 1962, watched by 40 million television viewers.[51] He performed five onboard experiments per the flight plan,[b] and became the first American astronaut to eat solid food in space. He also identified the mysterious "fireflies" observed by Glenn duringFriendship 7 as particles of frozen liquid loosened from the outside of the spacecraft, which he could produce by rapping on the wall near the window. He renamed them "frostflies".[53]
Unnoticed by ground control or the pilot, an overexpenditure of fuel was caused by an intermittently malfunctioning pitch horizon scanner (PHS). Still, NASA later reported that Carpenter had:
exercised his manual controls with ease in a number of [required] spacecraft maneuvers and had made numerous and valuable observations in the interest of space science. ... By the time he drifted near Hawaii on the third pass, Carpenter had successfully maintained more than 40 percent of his fuel in both the automatic and the manual tanks. According to mission rules, this ought to be quite enough hydrogen peroxide, reckoned Kraft, to thrust the capsule into the retrofire attitude, hold it, and then to reenter the atmosphere using either the automatic or the manual control system.[54]
At the retrofire event, the PHS malfunctioned once more, forcing Carpenter to manually control hisreentry. This caused him to overshoot the plannedsplashdown point in the Atlantic Ocean by 250 mi (400 km).[55] The PHS malfunction yawed the spacecraft 25 degrees to the right, accounting for 170 miles (270 km) of overshoot; the delay caused by the automatic sequencer required Carpenter to fire the retrorockets manually. This effort took two pushes of the override button and accounted for another 15 to 20 miles (30 km) of overshoot. The thrusters had a set ignition sequence, and this sequence was delayed by Carpenter manually firing them. This added another 60 miles (100 km), producing a 250-mile (400 km) overshoot.[55] Had Carpenter not assumed manual control, the overshoot would have been greater still.[56] The spacecraft splashed down at 19°27'N, 63°59'W, about 50 nmi (93 km; 58 mi) north ofAnegada in theBritish Virgin Islands.[57] The flight lasted 4 hours and 56 minutes,[58] during whichAurora 7 had attained a maximum altitude of 166 miles (267 km) and an orbital velocity of 17,532 miles per hour (28,215 km/h) and traveled 81,358 miles (130,933 km).[57][53]
There was a great deal of public concern over whether Carpenter had survived. Broadcasting from aCBS news van in Florida,Walter Cronkite painted a grim picture. AlthoughAurora 7's Search And Rescue And Homing (SARAH) beacon broadcast its precise location, and the recovery vessels, theaircraft carrierUSS Intrepid and thedestroyerUSS John R. Pierce, were on their way, NASA did not pass this information along to the news media.[59] Cronkite reported that "while thousands watch and pray, certainly here at Cape Canaveral, the silence is almost intolerable."[60]
Knowing that the recovery vessels might take some time to get to him, and aware of the danger ofAurora 7 foundering, as had happened to Grissom'sLiberty Bell 7, Carpenter made his way out through the neck of the spacecraft, something the less agile Glenn had been unable to do. He inflated his life raft, climbed into it, and awaited rescue. The sea around him was stained with green dye released to attract the rescue helicopter. The life raft had no radio.[61]
About 36 minutes after splashdown, Carpenter spotted two aircraft. A P2V Neptune fromPatrol Squadron 18 flying out ofNaval Air Station Jacksonville was the first to sight and mark Carpenter's position. It was followed by aPiper Apache, which circled and photographed. Carpenter then knew he had been located.[62][61][63] They were followed bySC-54 Skymaster aircraft, one of which parachuted two frogmen,Airman First Class John F. Heitsch andSergeant Ray McClure, while another dropped a flotation collar that the frogmen attached toAurora 7. A radio battery was dropped, but not the radio. An Air ForceSA-16 Albatross arrived to collect them, but NASA Mission Control forbade it for fear that the seaplane might break up, although the crew did not consider the swell dangerous. After three hours, Carpenter was picked up by aHSS-2 Sea King helicopter, which took him toIntrepid, whileAurora 7 was recovered byJohn R. Pierce.[61][63]
Postflight analysis described the PHS malfunction as "mission critical" but noted that the pilot "adequately compensated" for "this anomaly ... in subsequent inflight procedures,"[64] confirming that backup systems—human pilots—could succeed when automatic systems fail.[54] Organizational tensions between the astronaut office and the flight controller office and simmering resentment among the latter of the astronauts' hero status—account for much of the criticism of Carpenter's performance during his flight.[65]
NASA's 1989 official history of Project Mercury says that until the third pass over Hawaii,Christopher C. Kraft Jr. (who directed the flight from Cape Canaveral) "considered this mission the most successful to date; everything had gone perfectly except for some overexpenditure of hydrogen peroxide fuel".[54] However, then problems occurred. Kraft wrote in his 2001 memoir: "He was completely ignoring our request to check his instruments... I swore an oath that Scott Carpenter would never again fly in space."[66] Kraft went so far as to name the chapter of his memoirs dealing with Carpenter's flight "The Man Malfunctioned".[67]
Yet fuel consumption and other aspects of the vehicle operation were, during Project Mercury, as much if not more the responsibility of the ground controllers.Gene Kranz, assistant flight director at the time, acknowledged that and placed some of the blame on the shoulders of ground control: "A crewman distracted and behind in the flight plan is a danger to the mission and himself. ... The ground had waited too long in addressing the fuel status and should have been more forceful in getting on with the checklists."[68]
In a 2001 letter toThe New York Times written in response to a review of Kraft's memoir, Carpenter wrote:
the system failures I encountered during the flight would have resulted in loss of the capsule and total mission failure had a man not been aboard. My postflight debriefings and reports led, in turn, to important changes in capsule design and future flight plans.[69]
"One might argue," wroteTom Wolfe, "that Carpenter had mishandled the reentry, but to accuse him ofpanic made no sense in light of the telemetered data concerning his heart rate and his respiratory rate."[70] Schirra would later experience problems with the override button on the subsequentMercury-Atlas 8 flight.[71]Some memoirs, such as that ofGene Cernan, revived the controversy over who or what, exactly, was to blame for the overshoot, suggesting, for example, that Carpenter was distracted by the science and engineering experiments dictated by the flight plan and by the well-reported fireflies phenomenon:
Scott was the only multi-engine pilot among the elite cadre of veteran jet pilots, and it was whispered that he didn't volunteer for the space program, his dynamic and attractive wife did. Scott was just glad to be around, and was physically fit to an amazing degree. But he screwed up his own Mercury flight by joyriding, not paying enough attention to the job, missing his retrofire cue and splashing down several hundred miles from the target area. It became pretty obvious that Scott would never fly in space again.[72]
In 1963, Carpenter metJacques Cousteau, who was giving a public lecture at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology. When Carpenter expressed interest in underwater research, Cousteau suggested that he consider the U.S. Navy'sSEALAB project. Carpenter sought out CaptainGeorge F. Bond from SEALAB, and obtained permission from NASA to take a leave of absence to join the project. In July 1964, he went as part of the SEALAB team to Bermuda, where they held training exercises at Plantagenet Bank in 200 feet (61 m) of water. While in Bermuda, Carpenter sustained an injury from amotorcycle accident when he crashed into a coral wall,[73] leaving him with a compound fracture in his right arm and damage to his left knee.[74]
In August and September 1965, Carpenter spent 28 days living on the ocean floor in SEALAB II at a depth of 205 feet (62 m) about 3,000 feet (910 m) off the coast of California. The depth required a cabin gas mixture of 85% helium, 11% nitrogen and 4% oxygen.[75][76] He suffered another injury when his right index finger was wounded by the toxic spines of ascorpion fish.[77][78][79] SEALAB II coincided with Cooper'sGemini 5 mission, and Cooper and Carpenter held the first conversation between a craft in outer space and one on the ocean floor.[80][81]
Carpenter returned to NASA as Executive Assistant to the Director of theManned Spacecraft Center. He spent the last part of his NASA career developing underwater training to help astronauts with futurespacewalks. He resigned from NASA on August 3, 1967, and joined the Navy'sDeep Submergence Systems Project based inBethesda, Maryland, as a Director of Aquanaut Operations for SEALAB III.[75][82] In the aftermath of aquanautBerry L. Cannon's death while attempting to repair a leak in SEALAB III, he volunteered to dive down to SEALAB and help return it to the surface, but SEALAB was ultimately salvaged in a less hazardous manner.[83]
After failing to regain mobility in his arm that had been damaged in the motorcycle accident despite surgical interventions in 1964 and 1967,[84][85] and diagnosed withavascular necrosis in the knees from deep-sea diving, Carpenter was ruled ineligible for further spaceflight and deep-sea missions. He retired from the Navy in 1969 with the rank of commander, after which he founded Sea Sciences, Inc., a corporation for developing programs for using ocean resources and improving environmental health.[86][85]
After retiring from the Navy, Carpenter became a consultant to sport and diving manufacturers, and to the film industry, on space flight and oceanography. He gave talks and appeared in television documentaries on these subjects. He was involved in projects related to biological pest control and waste disposal, and for the production of energy from industrial and agricultural wastes.[87][11] Together with the other Mercury Seven astronauts, he established the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation for science and engineering students.[88]
Carpenter appeared in television commercials for brands such asOldsmobile,Standard Oil of California,Nintendo, andAtari. He wrote a pair of technothrillers,The Steel Albatross (1991) andDeep Flight (1994), and in 2003 he published his autobiography,For Spacious Skies: The Uncommon Journey of a Mercury Astronaut, which was co-written with his daughter, Kristen Stoever.[87][11] OnVeterans Day in 2008, he joined PresidentGeorge W. Bush and fellow astronautBuzz Aldrin in a ceremony aboard theIntrepid, the ship whose helicopter had recovered him after hisAurora 7 spaceflight having since becomea museum. In 2012, he joined Glenn and former NASA support staff to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Glenn's mission.[88]
Carpenter was married four times, divorced three times, and had a total of eight children by three wives, seven of whom survived to adulthood.[89] He married his first wife, Rene, in September 1948.[90] They had five children: Marc Scott, Kristen Elaine, Candace Noxon, Robyn Jay,[91] and Timothy Kit, who died in infancy.[92][93] By 1968, Carpenter and his wife had separated, with him living in California and Rene with their children inWashington, D.C. The Carpenters divorced in 1972.[94]
In 1972, Carpenter married his second wife, Maria Roach, the daughter of film producerHal Roach.[94] Together, they had two children: Matthew Scott andNicholas Andre, who would later become a filmmaker.[89] He married his third wife, Barbara Curtin, in 1988. They had a son, Zachary Scott, when Carpenter was in his 60s. The marriage ended in divorce a few years later.[89] In 1999, when he was 74, Carpenter married his fourth wife, Patricia Barrett. They resided inVail, Colorado.[95]
In September 2013, Carpenter suffered astroke and was hospitalized at theSwedish Medical Center in Denver. He was then admitted to the Denver Hospice Inpatient Care Center. He died on October 10, 2013, at age 88. He was survived by his wife, four sons and two daughters, a granddaughter, and five step-grandchildren.[96][93]
TheGovernor of Colorado,John Hickenlooper, ordered flags to be flown athalf-mast. A public memorial service was held at St. John's Episcopal Church in Boulder, which was attended by fellow astronauts John Glenn, Gene Cernan,Charles Duke,Rusty Schweickart,Jack Schmitt,David Scott,Charles Bolden,Dan Brandenstein,Bob Crippen,Bruce McCandless II,Dick Truly andCharles D. Walker.[97] His remains were cremated and the ashes buried on the family's ranch nearSteamboat Springs, Colorado.[98]
When asked in 2012 what his legacy would be, Carpenter replied: "I was an astronaut and an aquanaut."[99]
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In 1962, Boulder community leaders dedicated Scott Carpenter Park and Pool in his honor. The park features a 25-foot tall climbable metal rocket spaceship.[104][105] The now-closed Aurora 7 Elementary School, also in Boulder, was named for Carpenter's spacecraft.[106][107] Scott Carpenter Middle School inWestminster, Colorado, was named in his honor,[108] as was M. Scott Carpenter Elementary School inOld Bridge, New Jersey.[109][110] TheScott Carpenter Space Analog Station was placed on the ocean floor in 1997 and 1998. It was named in honor of his SEALAB work in the 1960s.[111]
Carpenter was inducted into theInternational Air & Space Hall of Fame in 2008,[112] theInternational Space Hall of Fame in 1981,[113] and theNational Aviation Hall of Fame in 2017.[114] Along with the rest of the Mercury Seven astronauts, he was named to theU.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame in 1990.[115]
Speaking from theblockhouse at the launch ofFriendship 7, Carpenter said "Godspeed, John Glenn" as Glenn's vehicle rose off the launch pad to begin the first U.S. orbital mission on February 20, 1962.[116] The quote was included in the voiceovers of the teaser trailer for the 2009Star Trek film.[117] The audio phrase is also used inKenny G's "Auld Lang Syne" (The Millennium Mix).[118]
Scott Tracy in theThunderbirds television series was named after Carpenter.[119] In the 1983 filmThe Right Stuff, Carpenter is played byCharles Frank. Although his appearance is relatively minor, the film plays up Carpenter's friendship with Glenn (as played byEd Harris). This film is based onthe 1979 book by Tom Wolfe.[120] In the 2015ABC TV seriesThe Astronaut Wives Club, Carpenter is portrayed byWilson Bethel,[121] and Rene Carpenter byYvonne Strahovski.[122] In the 2020Disney+ miniseriesThe Right Stuff, Carpenter is played byJames Lafferty.[123]
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