A life in space
Stafford was born in Weatherford, Oklahoma, in 1930. After he graduated from high school, he attended the U.S. Naval Academy and later transferred to the newly created branch known as the U.S. Air Force.
Despite achieving so much so early in his career, the only place to go was up. On his 31st birthday, NASA announced the selection of Astronaut Group 2, which included Stafford and several future moon-walkers, including Neil Armstrong. Stafford visited space four times in his astronaut career.
On his first space mission in 1965, Stafford piloted Gemini 6 with fellow astronaut Wally Schirra and achieved one of the greatest milestones in spaceflight history when they performed the first orbital rendezvous with another spacecraft, Gemini 7. Stafford piloted Gemini 6 within a foot of its sister spacecraft, which was piloted by future Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell.
Less than a year later, he returned to space with Eugene Cernan on board Gemini 9.
NASA next had its sights on the moon, and Stafford was picked to command Apollo 10, the final mission before the legendary Apollo 11 moon landing. During that mission, Stafford piloted the lunar module into the moon’s orbit before turning around and heading back to Earth.
During Apollo 10, Stafford and his crew of Cernan and John Young set the all-time human speed record of 24,791 mph, or nearly seven miles per second, as they returned home, a record that will likely stand until future space missions head to Mars.
Stafford capped off his spaceflight career in 1975 with the Apollo-Soyuz mission. Amid continuing Cold War tensions, the in-flight rendezvous and docking with a Soviet spacecraft launched decades of cooperation and friendship between the two space agencies. For his participation, Stafford received a nomination for a Nobel Peace Prize.
Stafford’s top secret leadership
Already a general in the Air Force, Stafford retired from NASA and became commanding officer at Edwards Air Force Base in California. According to his obituary released by the Stafford Air and Space Museum, he led the Experimental Flight Test Center where new aircraft models were tested and test pilots were trained.
While there, he oversaw and participated in the final testing of some of the most important aircraft ever flown, with many still on America’s front lines today including the F-15, F-16, A-10, B-1B and prototypes for the C-17.
A little-known fact is that during this time in his life, he also was commanding general of the military installation commonly known as Area 51, according to the Stafford Museum. While
Stafford officially retired from the Air Force in 1979. Looking back on his life, though, he still had a lot of work to do.
After leaving the military, Stafford founded his own aerospace consulting firm and was picked by incoming President Ronald Reagan to serve as a defense adviser on Reagan’s transition team. In 1990, President George H.W. Bush asked Stafford to lead the development of guidelines for future missions to the moon and Mars, which are still important to mission planners to this day.
While he was in retirement, NASA continued seeking out Stafford’s leadership and advice. He chaired the team that analyzed and came up with a fix for the newly deployed but flawed Hubble Space Telescope.
He was instrumental in developing a relationship with the Russian space program that eventually led to the International Space Station.
After the space shuttle Columbia and its crew were lost on reentry in 2003, Stafford co-chaired the oversight committee that ensured all necessary safety changes were made before the shuttle was allowed to fly again.
Even at age 93, Stafford continued to chair NASA’s Space Station Oversight Committee for ISS safety, preparedness and operation.
Stafford is survived by his wife, Linda. They have two sons, Michael Thomas, and Stanislav “Stas” Patten. His first marriage was to the late Faye L. Shoemaker. From that marriage came two daughters, Dionne Kay and Karin Elaine, and two grandsons, Thomas P. Stafford II and Andrew Alexei Harrison. Linda has two children from a previous marriage, Kassie Neering and Mark Hill, and four grandchildren, Sloane, Lee, Marcus and Tara.