Amazon.comM. Scott Carpenter was America"s fourth man in space, his 1962 three-orbit mission in a tiny Mercury capsule closely paralleling that of John Glenn"s previous mission. But that"s where the similarities end: a malfunctioning navigational system caused Carpenter to splash down, dangerously, some 250 miles off-target, and Glenn"s fame would somehow forever eclipse that of all seven of his fellow original astronauts combined. This memoir, penned in conjunction with Carpenter"s daughter Kris, oddly distances itself from Carpenter"s life through use of a third-person narrative (only the astronaut"s calm account of his perilous mission is delivered directly in his voice), a device that ultimately echoes the more personal distances Carpenter endured inhis own fateful, if troubled, journey toward the stars.
While Carpenter may have been able to trace his lineage back to the Plymouth colony of the 1630s, his immediate family seemed shattered. His research-chemist father was successful but absent, his mother often a bedridden invalid. Carpenter"s journey to the Mercury program after a Rocky Mountain childhood and a stint on lumbering Naval patrol planes is one of the more unlikely of the original astronaut class, and he offers up his own perspectiveson what has become a compelling body of American folklore (thanks largely to Tom Wolfe"s The Right Stuff and the memoirs of other participants). While the account of NASA"s infancy seems quaint, its officialdom often comes off as nothing short of cutthroat, perhaps inspiring the pioneering spaceman to the book"s final adventures exploring a distinctly different frontier--the bottom of the ocean--as part of the Navy"s endurance-minded SeaLab program. --Jerry McCulleyBook Description
Carpenter also shares a family story of tenderness and fortitude. Raised by his grandparents in Boulder, Colorado, while his mother lay sick for years with tuberculosis, Carpenter witnessed bravery, love, sacrifice, and endurance that prepared him for life as a Navy pilot during two wars, service to country as a Mercury astronaut, and finally as a pioneering underwater explorer.
Written with his daughter, Kris Stoever, For Spacious Skies tells a wonderful American family story filled with never-before-told insider tales from the earliest days of NASA and, for the first time ever, Carpenter"s own account of his controversial flight and splashdown.