Thomas P Stafford
THOMAS P Stafford, who has died at 93, was a US astronaut who commanded a dress rehearsal flight for the 1969 moon landing and the first US-Soviet space link-up.
General Stafford, a retired Air Force three-star general, took part in four space missions. Before Apollo 10, he flew on two Gemini flights, including the first rendezvous of two US capsules in orbit.
He was one of 24 people who flew to the moon, but he did not land on it. Only seven of them are still alive.
After he put away his flight suit, Gen Stafford was consulted by Nasa when it sought independent advice on everything from human Mars missions to safety issues to returning to flight after the 2003 space shuttle Columbia accident.
He chaired an oversight group that looked into how to fix the then-flawed Hubble Space Telescope, earning a Nasa public service award.
The Apollo 10 mission in May 1969 set the stage for Apollo 11’s historic mission two months later. Gen Stafford and Gene Cernan took the lunar lander nicknamed Snoopy within nine miles of the moon’s surface. Astronaut John Young stayed behind in the main spaceship dubbed Charlie Brown.
“The most impressive sight, I think, that really changed your view of things is when you first see Earth,” Gen Stafford recalled in 1997. Then came the moon’s far side: “The Earth disappears. There’s this big black void.”
Apollo 10’s return to Earth set the world’s record for fastest speed by a crewed vehicle at 24,791mph.
After the moon landings ended, Nasa and the Soviet Union decided on a joint docking mission and Gen Stafford, a one-star general at the time, was chosen to command the American side.
It meant intensive language training, being followed by the KGB while in the Soviet Union, and lifelong friendships with cosmonauts.
The 1975 mission included two days during which the five men worked together on experiments. After, the two teams toured the world together, meeting then-US president Gerald Ford and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev.
“It helped prove to the rest of the world that two completely opposite political systems could work together,” Gen Stafford recalled at a 30th anniversary gathering in 2005.
The two crews became so close that years later Alexei Leonov arranged for Gen Stafford to be able to adopt two Russian boys when Gen Stafford was in his 70s.
Later, Gen Stafford was a central part of discussions in the 1990s that brought Russia into the partnership building and operating the International Space Station.
Growing up in Weatherford, Oklahoma, Gen Stafford would recall seeing giant DC-3 planes fly overhead on early transcontinental routes. He went to the US Naval Academy where he graduated in the top 1% of his class and flew in the backseat of some planes and loved it.
He volunteered for the Air Force and had hoped to fly combat in the Korean War. But by the time he got his wings, the war ended. He went to the Air Force’s experimental test pilot school, graduated first in his class there and stayed on as an instructor.
In 1962, Nasa selected Gen Stafford for its second set of astronauts, which included Neil Armstrong, Frank Borman and Pete Conrad.
He was assigned along with Wally Schirra to Gemini 6. Their original mission was to rendezvous with an empty spaceship. But their 1965 launch was scrubbed when the spaceship exploded soon after lift-off. Nasa improvised and in December, Gemini 6 rendezvoused with but did not dock with two astronauts aboard Gemini 7.
In all, Gen Stafford logged 507 hours in space and flew four different types of spacecraft and 127 types of aircraft and helicopters.
He later became an executive for an Oklahoma-based transportation company and later moved to Florida, near Cape Canaveral.
He is survived by his wife, Linda, two sons, two daughters and two stepchildren.