The astronaut who almost reached the moon

Astronaut Richard Gordon was well versed in the dangers of space exploration. Orbiting Earth aboard the Gemini 11 capsule in 1966, Gordon embarked on what was supposed to be a nearly two-hour space walk. But the effort of carrying out tasks while keeping himself stabilized in the weightlessness of space exhausted him after 10 minutes. Gordon’s heart rate soared and he lost vision in his right eye from the sweat running down his face. After resting for half an hour, he maneuvered himself close enough to the capsule entrance for his co-commander to pull him in. There would be more hair-raising moments: As he blasted off from Cape Kennedy, Fla., in Apollo 12 in 1969, the craft was struck twice by lightning, momentarily knocking out its electrical systems. “It’s just like the old fighter pilot’s life,” Gordon said of being an astronaut. “Long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of stark terror.” Born in Seattle, “Gordon considered becoming a priest or a dentist before becoming fascinated by aeronautics,” said The Washington Post. After graduating from the University of Washington with a degree in chemistry in 1951, Gordon joined the Navy, where he served as a naval aviator and test pilot. “In 1961, piloting an F4H-1, he won the Bendix trophy, racing from Los Angeles to New York in a record 2 hours 47 minutes,” said The Guardian (U.K.). Selected for the space program in 1963, he piloted Gemini 11 with astronaut Pete Conrad. They performed the first docking with another spacecraft, an unmanned Agena Target Vehicle, and “set an altitude record of 850 miles above Earth.” Gordon “never achieved his dream of walking on the lunar surface,” said The New York Times. During the Apollo 12 mission, NASA’s second manned moon landing, he piloted the Yankee Clipper command module, remaining in orbit while astronauts Alan Bean and Charles Conrad explored the surface below. Gordon hoped to walk on the moon as commander of Apollo 18, but the mission was canceled because of budget cuts. He never complained about missing his opportunity, saying he had a job to do. Years later, his former crewmate Bean—who became an artist after resigning from NASA— made a painting inspired by Apollo 12. “It’s called The Fantasy,” Gordon told an interviewer in 1999. It’s “all three of us standing on the lunar surface.”