Leap of Faith: An Astronaut's Journey Into the Unknown

by Gordon Cooper, Bruce Henderson

Overview

“An exciting insider’s look at Projects Mercury, Gemini and Apollo . . . NASA’s internal politics, disasters, glitches and close calls” by a pioneering astronaut (Publishers Weekly).
 
Gordon “Gordo” Cooper was one of the original Mercury Seven astronauts, pilot for Apollo X, head of flight crew operations for the United States’ first orbiting space station, and the last American to venture into space alone. Stretching from the dawning days of NASA to the far reaches of the unknown, Cooper’s distinguished career as a record-setting astronaut helped shape America’s space program and blazed a trail for generations to come.
 
In this astonishing memoir—written with #1 New York Times bestseller Bruce Henderson—Cooper crosses paths with such aviation luminaries as Amelia Earhart, Wiley Post, and German rocket scientist Wernher von Braun; he shares his early days at Edwards Air Force Base and the endeavors that became the basis for The Right Stuff; he takes us inside NASA with candid accounts of his defeats and accomplishments; he reflects on the triumphs and tragedies of his heroic colleagues; and he finally reveals the reasons behind his belief in extraterrestrial intelligence, including the US military’s long-standing UFO cover-ups.
 
Buckle yourself in for a breathtaking ride because in Leap of Faith, Gordon Cooper takes readers to places they’ve never been before.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781504054249
Publisher:	Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
Publication date:	10/23/2018
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	276
Sales rank:	679,240
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Leroy Gordon “Gordo” Cooper Jr. (1927–2004) was an aerospace engineer and air force pilot who became one of the seven original astronauts in Project Mercury, the United States’ first manned space program. In 1963 he piloted the final Mercury spaceflight and was the last American to fly an entirely solo orbital mission. Two years later Cooper served as command pilot of Gemini 5 on an eight-day mission alongside astronaut Pete Conrad. In 1970, having flown 222 hours in space, he retired from NASA and the air force at the rank of colonel.

After leaving NASA, Cooper served on numerous corporate boards and was a technical consultant in such fields as high-performance boat design, construction, and energy. He also worked for the Walt Disney Company as vice president of research and development for Epcot. His hobbies included deep-sea salvaging and designing aircraft inspired by the UFOs he observed and studied during his career as a pilot and astronaut.
 
 

Bruce Henderson is the author of more than twenty nonfiction books, which have been published in a dozen countries. His #1 New YorkTimes bestseller And the Sea Will Tell was made into a television miniseries. Among his other books are Sons and Soldiers: The Unknown Story of the Jews Who Escaped the Nazis and Returned with the U.S. Army to Fight Hitler; Hero Found: The Greatest POW Escape of the Vietnam War; and Trace Evidence: The Hunt for the I-5 Serial Killer.

A former newspaper reporter, magazine editor, private investigator, and field producer for television news, Henderson has taught reporting and writing courses at Stanford University and USC School of Journalism. He lives outside San Francisco, California.
 

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

In early January 1959 I received unexpected orders to report to Washington, D.C. At the time I was a thirty-two-year old air force captain with twelve years of service, based at topsecret Edwards Air Force Base in the California desert.

The best test pilots in the air force were assembled at Edwards, and I had a great job. As a test pilot in the engineering branch, I had the best of both worlds. I saw a project from the design and administrative side as well as from the pilot's seat. I was testing and flying the nation's top new aircraft-hot fighters like the F-102 and F-106, and the secret U-2, a reconnaissance aircraft built like a graceful glider (and not much faster than one) with an unusually long wingspan and lightweight fuselage, that could fly higher than the surface-to-air missiles of the day.

A day or two before I was due to leave for Washington, I was called into the base commander's office with three other test pilots-including one named Donald "Deke" Slayton-who had received similar orders.

Our commanding officer, General Marcus F. Cooper (no relation), asked if any of us knew what our orders were about.

"No, sir," we all replied.

"No one will tell me anything," the general groused.

He was a good CO, a lot better than the old-stick-in-the mud general he'd replaced a year earlier. General Cooper remembered what it was like to be a young pilot, and he was very protective of his men as long as we did the job he asked of us.

I did see in the paper the other day," he went on, "that McDonnell Aircraft has been awarded a contract for the new manned space program that's starting up."

Myears perked up. I knew nothing about any "manned space program."

"Gentlemen," General Cooper said with authority, "if this has anything to do with flying in space, I want you to be very careful what you volunteer for. I don't want my best pilots to be involved in some idiotic program."

It had been a little over a year since that historic day in October 1957 when the Russians launched Sputnik, the world's first manmade satellite. The 184-pound satellite-about the size of a basketball-could be heard by American tracking stations as it orbited Earth making a characteristic "beep-beep" sound. Residents of neighborhoods across the country waited anxiously in their yards and streets, peering into the sky at a fastmoving speck of light that was surprisingly easy to see.

I had realized that Sputnik stood to open up a whole new era, and that the Soviet Union had the potential for being one up on us militarily. It reasoned that people and events on Earth could one day be observed from space. When that happened, there would be nowhere to hide.

Two months later, the U.S. Navy attempted to launch the first American satellite. It was also the first nationally televised rocket launch. Upon completion of the countdown, the Vanguard rocket lifted less than a foot off the ground before the first stage, loaded to the gills with fuel, exploded. The rest of the rocket sank in slow motion toward the ground, embedding itself in the sand next to the launch platform like a bumed-out firecracker. It left an indelible image of America's opening bid in the space race.

Were they now actually thinking of strapping a man onto a rocket?

Unbeknownst to any of us, qualifications for prospective astronaut-pilots had been established by NASA, the newly founded civilian agency designated to lead America's efforts in space, which had received funding from Congress only after Sputnik. Although the United States did not yet have the spacecraft and other hardware necessary to send a man into space, NASA came up with a list of specific requirements to describe the kind of space pilots it was seeking.

It was believed that they needed to be in their physical prime while possessing a degree of maturity to handle difficult situations. Maximum age was set at forty. Maximum height was five feet, eleven inches, an arbitrary cutoff that eliminated any number of otherwise well-qualified pilots. The spacecraft already on the drawing board had its dimensions dictated by the diameter of the available boosters—the Redstone and Atlas missiles—that would launch it into space. Those dimensions were seventy-four inches wide at the base, and it was determined that once a pilot had on helmet and pressure suit and was strapped in for liftoff, anyone six feet or taller wouldn't be able to squeeze inside.

The weight limit was set at 180 pounds for two reasons. The first had to do with the finite (and limited) payload of the available boosters-the more a man weighed, the less room there would be for the equipment that would be necessary for a safe and successful mission. Just as important was the belief that anyone who met the height requirement but weighed more than 180 pounds would probably be overweight and therefore have a less than optimal metabolic and circulatory system to handle the stresses of prolonged weightlessness and rapid changes in temperature.

The search for candidates narrowed to the ranks of practicing test pilots—meaning pilots from the air force, navy, and marines, along with a handful of civilians. The theory was that test pilots had the instincts and training required to handle a complex spacecraft traveling at high speeds and high altitudes. It made sense that the same men who were testing our country's hottest jets should be in the driver's seat when it came time to launch a manned space vehicle.

Table of Contents

• Dedication
• Prologue
• 1 We Seven
• 2 Liftoff
• 3 Bringing Her Home
• 4 “Gordon Cooper’s UFOs”
• 5 Amelia, Pancho, and Dad
• 6 Back to Space
• 7 Cosmonauts and Deepest Africa
• 8 “Our Germans Are Better Than Their Germans”
• 9 “There’s a Fire in Here!”
• 10 Reaching the Moon and Losing Mars
• 11 Stumbling Across History
• 12 UFOs at the United Nations
• 13 Flying Saucers: Made in the USA
• 14 Help From the Cosmos?
• 15 The Space Shuttle Transmission
• 16 Tesla: Twentieth-Century Genius
• 17 Reservation for an Alien Saucer Ride
• 18 Windows in Time and Space
• Epilogue
• Farewell to a Buddy
• Image Gallery
• Index
• About the Authors

What People are Saying About This

Art Bell

You must read Leap of Faith. Gordon Cooper is a true American hero from a stock in short supply today.

Editorial Reviews

"For ages, man had dreamed of traveling to the moon. In Leap of Faith, Gordon Cooper tells the remarkable and interesting story of how it was accomplished.” —Des Moines Register
 
“[Cooper] draws on his background as an astronaut to bolster his persuasively argued position that, whatever UFO’s may actually be, a policy of cover-up and obfuscation isn’t going to help turn them into IFO’s—identified flying objects. Full of tasty nuggets for space and ufology buffs.” —Booklist
 


“For ages, man had dreamed of traveling to the moon. In Leap of Faith, Gordon Cooper tells the remarkable and interesting story of how it was accomplished.” —Des Moines Register
 
“[Cooper] draws on his background as an astronaut to bolster his persuasively argued position that, whatever UFO’s may actually be, a policy of cover-up and obfuscation isn’t going to help turn them into IFO’s—identified flying objects. Full of tasty nuggets for space and ufology buffs.” —Booklist
 

From the Publisher

In this engaging memoir, Mercury 7 astronaut Cooper adds his compelling voice to the chorus of critics charging a U.S. governmental coverup of the UFO phenomenon. Written in the first person with Henderson (coauthor of And the Sea Will Tell), this book will challenge UFO skeptics and believers alike. On the one hand, Cooper states that, despite many reports to the contrary, neither he nor other astronauts saw UFOs in outer space. On the other hand, he reports that in 1951, as a young air force pilot based in Germany, he chased saucer-shaped UFOs, and that groups of UFOs passed over the base daily at speeds far superior to any manmade craft. In 1957, at Edwards Air Force Base in the California desert, Cooper was given photographs of a "classic saucer" that had reportedly landed at the top-secret military installation. He sent the photos to a Pentagon general, but never heard about the matter again. In the late 1970s, Cooper (who's now an aeronautical designer) unsuccessfully tried to launch a research company devoted to free worldwide energy transmission using Nikola Tesla's discoveries, as well as to advanced medical devices and other projects. His partner in this venture, Valerie Ransone, claims to receive scientifically useful telepathic transmissions from extraterrestrial sources. The story gets a lot weirder, as Cooper agrees to join Ransone in the Arizona desert for a telepathically arranged rendezvous with a UFO. Joining them at this alleged meeting (which was canceled) was Atlas missile aerospace engineer Dan Fry, who claims to have flown over Texas on board a UFO in 1950. On a more mundane level, Cooper's reminiscence offers an exciting insider's look at Projects Mercury, Gemini and Apollo, full of startling details about NASA's internal politics, disasters, glitches and close calls. 16 pages of color photos. (Aug.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

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