Space News
- Happy 30th Moon Landing Anniversary!
- Pete Conrad dies
- Alan Shepard dies
- International Space Station
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Pete Conrad Famous for saying "Whoopee! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me!" (a reference to his height, 5 feet 6 inches, and Neil Armstrong's words after landing on the moon), Charles P. "Pete" Conrad Jr., the third man on the moon, died July 8 after surgery to repair internal injuries from a motorcycle accident. He was 69 years old.
His wife, Nancy Conrad, children Peter, Thomas, and Andrew, and seven grandchildren survive him.
Born and raised in Pennsylvania, Conrad grew up wanting to be a pilot, often pretending to fly The Spirit of St. Louis. He became a licensed private pilot at the age of 17. In 1953, he graduated from Princeton University after studying aeronautical engineering and immediately joined the U.S. Navy to be a test pilot. He was assigned to Patuxent Naval Air Station where he was a test pilot, flight instructor, and performance engineer.
Always cheerful and high-spirited, Conrad applied for the Mercury space program in 1959, but was not one of the seven chosen astronauts. He later claimed he was not chosen because when shown a blank card as part of a psychological test, he jokingly replied, "It's upside down." (He was also known for creating "Walter Frisbee", a fictional astronaut believed to have even been quoted in the newspapers.) Later on however, he was one of the nine chosen for the Gemini Project. He was the co-pilot of Gemini 5 which set a record eight day flight (approximately the time it took to reach the moon and back, a sort of test run to make sure humans could last long enough for a trip to the moon). He was also commander of Gemini 11, which set a space altitude record of 850 miles and docked with another space capsule (another test in preparation for the moon missions).
Perhaps his most important mission was the Apollo 12 mission in which he was commander. On November 19, 1969, Conrad and Navy Commander Alan L. Bean landed on the moon. They were to inspect Surveyor 3, a research vehicle that had been sent to the moon by remote control, and to conduct power experiments. Conrad and Bean, after landing within 600 feet of Surveyor 3 (an extraordinary feat at that time), spent seven hours and 45 minutes on the moon's surface. Conrad's last trip in space was on Skylab, a space station which spent 28 days in orbit between May and June of 1973. During this trip, Conrad made several space walks.
After 1,179 hours and 38 minutes in space, Conrad retired from NASA and the Navy to work at the American Television and Communications Corporation. Later on, he worked at McDonnell Douglas Corp., helping with the Delta Clipper rocket. He also founded a company concentrating on space tourism. He retired in 1996.
During his time at NASA and in the Navy, Conrad received the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, two NASA Distinguished Service Medals, two Distinguished Flying Crosses, along with being inducted into the Aviation Hall of Fame. He was also one of the main characters in Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff, a book about the first astronauts.
