‘The name of the game was to walk on the moon’
DREAM ELUDED ASTRONAUT RECALLED AS ‘PERFECT CREW MEMBER’
Richard Gordon, who under took what became a harrowing and abortive spacewalk in a 1966 NASA mission, then orbited the moon three years later, but never achieved his dream of walking on the lunar surface, has died at his home in San Marcos, Calif., near San Diego. He was 88.
His Nov. 6 death was confirmed by NASA.
Gordon and Charles Conrad flew in the September 1966 Gemini 11 mission to advance the technique for the rendezvous and docking of two spacecraft, a procedure required for moon landings. They soared to 850 miles above the earth, setting a record for manned space flight.
Gordon piloted the command module Yankee Clipper during its orbit of the moon in November 1969 while Conrad and his fellow Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean carried out the first extensive moon walks, four months after the pioneering Apollo 11 mission that sent Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the moon.
After taking photos of the moon’s topography to scout tentative landing sites for future missions, Gordon performed docking manoeuvres, allowing his fellow astronauts to return to the capsule in the lunar lander that had descended from it.
“The name of the game as far as I was concerned was to walk on the moon, and at that time I was relegated not to do that,” Gordon told a NASA interviewer in 1999 when asked if he was disappointed that he had to remain 60 miles above the lunar surface after having come so far.
“I had a job and a function to perform,” he continued. “And I was happy for them, that they were going to get to do that.”
Bean, in an interview last week, said, “Dick Gordon was the perfect crew member in that he was easy to get along with all the time, and no matter what happened he never got upset, through the ups and downs of training.”
Gordon’s missions also included two troublesome episodes.
He emerged f rom t he Gemini 11 cabin for a spacewalk that was to last an hour and 47 minutes after a separately launched unmanned space vehicle, the Agena, had docked with it. He was tethered to his Gemini capsule. But he quickly experienced difficulty stabilizing himself while trying to carry out various tasks.
He accomplished some of his scheduled assignments in his first 10 minutes outside the capsule, but the work was so arduous that he was perspiring into his helmet, temporarily losing vision in one eye, and his heart rate soared. He rested outside the Gemini for another half-hour, but had to re-enter it at that point because he was too drained to continue.
“Our understanding of spacewalking was still not good,” Chris Kraft, the director of flight operations for the mission, recalled in his 2001 memoir, Flight. “His strength was fading rapidly and his frustrations were growing apace. At one point, I thought he was going to have a panic attack.”
Gordon later spent more than two hours standing in an open hatch of the Gemini 11 spacecraft taking photographs for analysis by astronomers.
After docking with the Agena and uncoupling several times, Gemini 11 completed a three-day flight with a splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean.
There was trouble anew for Gordon, and a worrisome moment as well for his two fellow astronauts, all three of them navy officers, in the first minute of their blastoff during a thunderstorm from Cape Kennedy, Florida, in Apollo 12.
Lightning twice struck the craft, and warning lights flashed on the astronauts’ console, si gnalling t hat the electrical and primary guidance systems had been knocked out. Batteries took over, but the systems were restored quickly and the flight continued without further electrical problems.
Gordon’s f ellow astronauts advanced the exploration of the moon with their treks on its surface, the setting up of experiments and the collection of lunar rocks. Apollo 12 concluded a 10-day flight with a splashdown in the Pacific.
Richard Francis Gordon Jr. was born on Oct. 5, 1929, in Seattle, the eldest of five children of Richard Sr., a machinist, and his wife, Angela, an elementary school teacher. He majored in chemistry at the University of Washington and graduated in 1951. He then became a navy aviator, graduated from flighttest school and was selected as a Gemini astronaut in October 1963.
He had hoped to walk on the moon as the commander of the scheduled Apollo 18 flight, but it was cancelled because of budget cuts. He retired from NASA and from the navy in January 1972 as a captain — and then embarked on an odd career change.
Gordon’s friend John Mecom Jr., the owner of the New Orleans Saints of the NFL, hired him as the team’s executive vice- president, a post that included handling the duties of general manager, though his previous football experience had consisted only of one season as a high school halfback.
“If anybody has any suggestions on how to run a football team, I’ ll be glad to listen,” Gordon said at his introductory news conference.
Gordon spent five years with t he Saints, during which they continued the losing ways they had endured since entering the league in 1967.
He later held executive posts with companies focusing on technology and energy.
Gordon’s wife, the former Linda Saunders, died in 2017. His first marriage, to Barbara Field, ended in divorce; she died in 2014. He is survived by five children from his first marriage, Carleen Trevino, Richard, Lawrence, Thomas and Diane Briggs; his sisters Barbara Pethick and Mary Frederick, and his brother, Norman; two stepchildren, Traci and Christopher; and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Alan Bean, one of Gordon’s fellow Apollo 12 astronauts, devoted much of his life after his NASA career to painting. One of his artworks solidified a bond between Gordon and his fellow crewmen, notwithstanding his disappointment over never having explored the moon.
“It’s called ‘ The Fantasy,’” Gordon told a NASA interviewer in 1999. “He’s got one of all three of us standing on the lunar surface.”
HIS STRENGTH WAS FADING RAPIDLY AND HIS FRUSTRATIONS WERE GROWING.