And then there was one. 92-year old John Glenn stands as the last living member of the original Mercury 7 with the passing of Scott Carpenter on October 10th. Carpenter was the fourth American in space and the first to perform experiments during his three orbits of the Earth. Did Scott Carpenter have anything to do with cars, hot rods, racing, automotive engineering, or internal combustion engines? Nope. Does he deserve the admiration and respect of every American? Hell yes he does. Why? For starters the guy was literally one of the bravest people who has ever lived. That seems like pure hyperbole but the words are 100% true.

Carpenter sat on top of a 95ft tall rocket filled full of tens of thousands of gallons of explosive liquids, rode it into space, had to manually fly his capsule when a system failure occurred, landed 250miles away from where anyone thought he would in the middle of the ocean and floated peacefully, nibbling on a cracker until a Navy frogman popped up to welcome him home. Know what Carpenter famously did? He offered the guy a bite of the damned cracker. That sums up the attitude and steely courage that all of these guys possessed. The group of Mercury astronauts were culled from two places. There were some that were test pilots at what we now call Edwards Air Force base and the other guys were also test pilots but their work was being completed in the east at the Patuxent River Naval Station in Maryland. NASA officials needed the best pilots the military had and these guys were them.

Carpenter was best known for his famous quote, delivered to John Glenn as the first American to orbit the Earth was streaking toward the heavens. The simple words, “Godspeed, John Glenn” seemed to perfectly sum up the hopes, dreams, and gravity of the situation that Glenn and everyone in NASA control was facing at that moment. Glenn and Carpenter were life long friends and after hearing of his friend’s passing, Glenn returned the quote to Carpenter. Carpenter’s mission was different than Glenn’s not in duration but in content. It seems almost quaint by today’s standards, but Carpenter was tasked with completing some basic experiments while on his three short trips around the planet. Today, virtually all of space travel is rooted in the idea of scientific exploration and Carpenter is one of the people who laid the cornerstone for the things that today’s space travelers take for granted.

During his flight, Carpenter had to manually fire rockets that were supposed to fire on their own. There was controversy at the time that Carpenter didn’t do this quickly enough, causing an excess of fuel to be used, thusly messing up his landing location. After a NASA investigation, Carpenter was shown to be the capable and competent airman that he was purported to be. It wasn’t his fault, the capsule his was in suffered a failure, increasing its fuel usage. These space events were national news on the highest level during the 1960s, so when this mission splashed down and for a while no one knew where Carpenter was, guys like Walter Cronkite wondered aloud on air if Carpenter was dead or alive. Happily, he was very much alive, though he never went to space again.

Carpenter did however go to the bottom of the ocean…literally. As the only man who was both an astronaut and an aquanaut, he lived on Sealab II in 1965. During those 30 days, living a few hundred feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, Carpenter and the second guy on Sealab worked nearly 24 hours a day doing experiments and carrying out research work. He later said that his work on Sealab was the most rewarding of his career but the time he spent in space was the most thrilling of his life.

Here’s an excerpt from his book that describes his thoughts while waiting to be plucked from the ocean, after his trip to space –

“I sat for a long time just thinking about what I’d been through. I couldn’t believe it had all happened. It had been a tremendous experience, and though I could not ever really share it with anyone, I looked forward to telling others as much about it as I could. I had made mistakes and some things had gone wrong. But I hoped that other men could learn from my experiences. I felt that the flight was a success, and I was proud of that.”

Scott Carpenter was 88 years old, but in our eyes, he lived the lives of 10 men. We should all be so lucky.