Pete Conrad
| Charles Conrad | |
|---|---|
|
|
| Country: | United States |
| Organization: | NASA |
| selected on | September 17, 1962 (2nd NASA Group) |
| Calls: | 4 space flights |
| Start of the first space flight: |
August 21, 1965 |
| Landing of the last space flight: |
June 22, 1973 |
| Time in space: | 49d 3h 38min |
| EVA inserts: | 4th |
| EVA total duration: | 12h 44min |
| retired on | February 1974 |
| Space flights | |
Charles "Pete" Conrad, Jr. (born June 2, 1930 in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania , † July 8, 1999 in Ojai , California ) was an American astronaut . He was the third person on the moon .
Life
youth
Conrad grew up in a family that had lost their fortune in the Great Depression. With the support of his uncle he was able to go to private school in Haverford . However, disabled by his dyslexia , he failed and had to leave school.
Conrad then went to the Darrow School in New Lebanon , where he was able to show good success through a different learning system. After graduating in 1949, he received not only admission to Princeton University , but also a US Navy scholarship .
Since he was 15 years old, Conrad took on odd jobs on the airfield in Paoli in order to get hold of flight opportunities and to be able to take over the helm from time to time. As a schoolboy he made his pilot's license himself.
marine
Conrad graduated from Princeton University in 1953 with a degree in aeronautical engineering and then went to the US Navy, where he became a pilot. He later became an instructor, then from 1957 test pilot at the Naval Air Station Patuxent River . He served on the aircraft carrier USS Ranger .
NASA
Selection and training
As a military test pilot, Conrad was also shortlisted for the astronauts of the first NASA group for the Mercury program in early 1959 . Conrad had to undergo medical tests at the Lovelace Clinic in New Mexico, but was very uncooperative and dropped out of the selection process.
When NASA recruited a second astronaut group in April 1962, Conrad was persuaded by Alan Shepard to apply. This time Conrad was selected and presented to the public by NASA on September 17, 1962 as one of the nine new astronauts. After completing his basic training, Conrad took on the cockpit layout and system integration for the Gemini spaceship as a specialty .
Gemini 5 and 8
On February 8, 1965, Conrad was nominated as a pilot for the Gemini 5 mission . Together with his commander Gordon Cooper , he was supposed to undertake a long-term flight and bring the all-time record back to the USA. This flight was the first for which NASA approved an official badge.
Gemini 5 took off on August 21, 1965, and landed on August 29 after just under eight days. This long-term record was already improved in December 1965 by the Gemini 7 team to just under 14 days.
Shortly after landing, on September 20, 1965, Conrad was nominated as the substitute commander of the Gemini 8 mission , which was to be coupled in space for the first time. The flight took place in March 1966 without Conrad's intervention being necessary.
Gemini 11
Two days after the landing of Gemini 8, on March 19, 1966, Conrad was nominated as commander of flight Gemini 11 . Richard Gordon was assigned to him as a pilot . During the short flights towards the end of the Gemini program, rendezvous , coupling and space exits were at the forefront of mission planning.
The start of Gemini 11 took place on September 18, 1966. Conrad and Gordon coupled with a previously launched Agena stage during the first orbit and let them bring them to the record height of 1374 km. Previously, Gordon had performed a 33-minute exit.
Apollo D and Apollo 9
After completing the Gemini 11 mission, Conrad was immediately transferred to the Apollo project. Alongside Grissom , McDivitt , Schirra , Borman , and Stafford, he was one of the six astronauts who had been nominated to command the first Apollo missions. From December 1966, Conrad was designated as a substitute commander for Mission E, which was to test the Apollo lunar module in a high earth orbit. After the Apollo 1 disaster in January 1967, all plans were put on hold.
In November 1967 a new plan was published, which Conrad provided as a substitute commander of the second manned Apollo flight, the Mission D (planned as Apollo 8). The members of his crew were Richard Gordon, with whom he had already flown in Gemini 11, and Alan Bean , for whom he had personally campaigned. According to the then usual rule that a substitute team formed the main team three flights later, Conrad had a good chance of becoming commander of Mission G (planned as Apollo 11), during which the first manned moon landing was to be carried out. Conrad was well on his way to becoming the first person on the moon.
However, due to a rescheduling by NASA in the summer of 1968, a moon flight without a lander was pushed between missions C and D. Through this Apollo 8 flight , the test of the lunar module in Earth orbit was numbered Apollo 9 . The flight took place in March 1969, Conrad was not used and served as Capcom .
Apollo 12
As expected, Conrad, Gordon, and Bean were nominated for the Apollo 12 crew in April 1969 . After the dress rehearsal in lunar orbit with Apollo 10 and the first manned moon landing with Apollo 11 , a precise landing and more scientific experiments were to be carried out with this mission. Apollo 12 was launched on November 14, 1969. During the launch, two lightning bolts struck the Saturn rocket , causing various systems to fail, but not causing any damage.
On November 19, Conrad and Bean touched down on the Intrepid lunar module in the ocean of storms . When Conrad stepped onto the surface of the moon, he cheered:
“Whoopee! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me. "
"Oops! Man, that was maybe a small one for Neil, but a big one for me. "
He was referring to Neil Armstrong 's sentence "It's one small step for man ..." and his own small height. As Conrad later revealed, it was a bet with Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci , who was convinced that NASA was telling the astronauts what to say. Conrad held $ 500 against saying what he wanted.
Conrad and Bean set up the first ALSEP experimental package on the moon , which was supposed to transmit scientific data back to Earth even after their return. After a rest of 12 hours in the lunar module, Conrad and Bean went to the lunar probe Surveyor 3 , from which they had landed only 160 meters away. They dismantled some parts so that they could be examined on earth.
After a total of 31 hours on the moon, Conrad and Bean started again for the mothership and landed back on earth with Gordon on November 24th.
Skylab
After completing the Apollo 12 mission, Conrad worked on the first American space station, Skylab . On January 19, 1972, he was announced by NASA as the commander of the first of three crews.
At the start on May 14, 1973, however, Skylab was badly damaged, so that it was not clear whether the planned mission of four weeks could take place. The start of the team with the mission designation Skylab 2 , which was planned for the following day , was postponed and then took place on May 25th. Together with the pilot Paul Weitz and the science astronaut Joseph Kerwin , Conrad approached the space station in the Apollo spacecraft to inspect the damage. One solar cell carrier had jammed, the other had been completely torn off during take-off.
In a risky maneuver, Conrad, Weitz and Kerwin tried to manually detach the jammed solar cell carrier from the opened Apollo hatch, but that failed. The astronauts nevertheless put the space station into operation. On June 7th, Conrad and Kerwin tried again to release the carrier during a space exit, which finally succeeded with a lot of effort, with which Skylab could also be used in the long term. Conrad made another exit on June 19th together with Weitz.
After landing on June 22, 1973, Conrad (like Jim Lovell and John Young before ) had reached the record mark of four space flights. In addition, he now held the record for the longest total duration in space with 49 days and, together with Weitz and Kerwin, the longest space flight with 28 days.
Conrad was particularly proud of his Skylab flight. It was not least thanks to the efforts of the three astronauts that the first American space station could be put into operation and all three planned missions were carried out in full.
The dentistry took the first step into space, as if Pete Conrad on the Skylab space station a dental examination in the weightlessness underwent by Kerwin, who is also a flight surgeon was.
According to NASA
Already during his time at NASA, between the moon flight and the preparation for Skylab, Conrad had worked as a consultant for the company Butler Aviation .
In December 1973, Conrad retired from the Navy and NASA. Conrad then worked for American Television and Communications Corporation (ATC) in Denver . There he was responsible for the operation and expansion of cable television networks . At the same time, he also advised the Martin Marietta Corporation on the conception of the planned LST ( Large Space Telescope ).
On March 1, 1976, Conrad moved to McDonnell Douglas in Saint Louis , where he rose in marketing. In 1990 Conrad moved to the space division of the McDonell Douglas Space Company . He worked there on the development of a single stage space transporter (SSTO, single stage to orbit) and its prototype Delta Clipper .
On March 31, 1996, Conrad left McDonnel Douglas, moved to California and ran his own company, Universal Space Lines , which he founded the year before. His goal was to make space flights affordable for private individuals.
death
On July 8, 1999, Conrad went on a motorcycle excursion with his wife and friends. It turned off the road on a slight curve near Ojai , California. His injuries were initially thought to be minor, but at the Ojai hospital he became increasingly breathless and his blood pressure dropped. He was operated on immediately, but his condition continued to deteriorate and he died of internal bleeding about five hours after the accident. He was buried with military honors in Arlington National Cemetery. On the gravestone, Conrad is honored with the designation "An Original".
Others
Jump due to lack of fuel
On May 10, 1972, while preparing for the Skylab mission, Conrad was flying a Northrop T-38 back from Dover, Delaware , where he had visited the spacesuit manufacturer ILC Industries . He flew through Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Georgia to Ellington Air Force Base near Houston . During the approach, he was rerouted to the nearby William P. Hobby Airport due to bad weather . He aborted the landing approach there in the thunderstorm after an on-board generator failed, which resulted in the loss of cockpit lighting and navigation systems. Conrad aborted the approach at 800 ft (approx. 240 m ) and the generator then resumed operation.
Conrad was diverted to Randolph Air Force Base near San Antonio , where he could have landed in visual flight. When it was found that he did not have enough fuel on board to reach Randolph, he was diverted to Bergstrom Air Force Base near Austin, Texas . Just as it reached Bergstrom, the plane ran out of fuel. Conrad catapulted himself out of the aircraft at a height of 3,700 ft (approx. 1,100 m ) with the ejector seat and landed on the parachute just 100 m from the airfield building. His machine crashed in an uninhabited area.
A committee of inquiry chaired by astronaut Stuart Roosa came to the conclusion after 14 months that a circuit board of the on-board electrical system was apparently insufficiently protected against moisture and had led to the failure of the generator. The committee recommended design changes to prevent water ingress.
Record flights
Conrad made a record flight in the land aircraft class between 6000 and 9000 kg takeoff weight. Together with Mark Calkins , Paul Thayer and Daniel Miller , he flew around the world in a Learjet from February 12 to 14, 1996 , reaching an average speed of 752 km / h.
Sports cars and auto racing
Conrad loved fast cars and drove car races himself. He made an important contribution to safety when, in the mid-1960s, he referred racing driver Bill Simpson to the fire-resistant material Nomex , which was made from aramid fibers by the chemical company DuPont . Simpson used it to produce fire-resistant clothing that was worn by almost all Indianapolis 500 drivers from 1967 onwards .
Like many other astronauts, Conrad had the option to lease a Chevrolet Corvette for the symbolic price of $ 1 a year. While preparing for the Apollo 12 mission, Conrad, Gordon and Bean drove Corvettes with a coordinated design. Conrad's license plate was “CDR XII” according to his role as Apollo 12 commander.
Conrad registered together with Stephen Behr and John Buffum in a Porsche 914/6 for the 12-hour race in Sebring on March 20, 1971 , but was unable to classify.
Honors
During his lifetime
Pete Conrad received numerous awards including
- the Congressional Space Medal of Honor (October 1978, as one of the first six astronauts)
- twice the NASA Exceptional Service Medal
- twice the NASA Distinguished Service Medal
- twice the Navy Distinguished Service Medal
- the Yuri Gagarin gold medal of the FAI (1970)
- the FAI gold medal (1974)
- induction into the National Aviation Hall of Fame (1980, fourth astronaut)
Posthumously
At the Johnson Space Center in Houston, NASA has planted a tree for every deceased astronaut, which will be lit with spotlights for Christmas. In contrast to the others, the tree to which Pete Conrad was dedicated is not illuminated with white light, but in red to underline the colorful character of Conrad.
"When you can't be good, be colorful."
"If you can't be good, at least be colorful."
The X-Prize Foundation has given an annual prize called the Pete Conrad Spirit of Innovation Award since 2007 . It is awarded to groups of students who have innovative ideas for the space industry.
Private
Conrad married in June 1953 and had four sons with his wife. The marriage ended in divorce in 1988, and Conrad later married a second time.
Motorsport statistics
Sebring results
| year | team | vehicle | Teammate | Teammate | placement | Failure reason |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1971 |
 Ralph Meaney Inc.
|
Porsche 914/6 |
Stephen Behr
|
John Buffum
|
not classified |
literature
- Nancy Conrad, Howard Klausner: Rocketman: Astronaut Pete Conrad's Incredible Ride to the Moon and Beyond. New American Library, New York 2005, ISBN 0-451-21509-5
- Charles Conrad Jr. , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 44/1999 from October 25, 1999, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)
Web links
- Short biography of Pete Conrad at spacefacts.de
- NASA biography of Pete Conrad (English; PDF)
- Biography of Pete Conrad in the Encyclopedia Astronautica (English)
- Pictures of the funeral, several press reports with résumés ; Arlington National Cemetery
- Conrad walks on the moon ; NASA video, 0.8MB in RM format
- Pete Conrad in the Internet Movie Database (English)
swell
- ↑ NASA Release 72-100 "Board Named to Investigate T-38 Accident", May 11, 1972, English
- ↑ NASA Release 73-91 "T-38 Accident Report", July 3, 1973, English
- ↑ FAI Record ID # 3113. FAI, accessed September 13, 2012 .
- ↑ John Nelson: The AstroVette. Vette Web, accessed November 15, 2009 .
- ↑ 12 h Sebring. In: World Championship 1971. wspr-racing.com, November 8, 2000, archived from the original on June 24, 2003 ; accessed on November 15, 2009 .
- ^ Spirit of space pioneers shines brightly at Astronaut Memorial Grove. NASA, December 12, 2007, accessed November 4, 2009 .
- ^ The Pete Conrad Spirit of Innovation Award. X Prize Foundation, archived from the original on July 16, 2008 ; accessed on November 12, 2009 .
Aldrin | Different | Armstrong | Bean | Borman | Fire | Carr | Cernan | Chaffee | Collins | Conrad | Cunningham | Duke | Eisele | Evans | Garriott | Gibson | Gordon | Grissom | Haise | Irwin | Kerwin | Lousma | Lovell | Mattingly | McDivitt | Mitchell | Pogue | Roosa | Schirra | Schmitt | Schweickart | Scott | Shepard | Slayton | Stafford | Swigert | Weitz | White | Been | Young
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Conrad, Pete |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Conrad, Charles (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American astronaut |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 2, 1930 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Philadelphia , Pennsylvania |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 8, 1999 |
| Place of death | Ojai , California |