Leap of Faith: An Astronaut's Journey Into the Unknown

Author: Gordon Cooper

Review by Theresa Welsh

First of all, Cooper did NOT see any UFOs in his long Mercury flight orbiting earth in 1963. But he did see UFOs years earlier, in 1951, while flying over Germany in an F-86, and he was involved in an incident at Edwards Air Force Base in which a UFO landed very close to military cameramen who were photographing state-of-the-art planes landing. The men who saw it got a good look, as well as pictures. Cooper, who was their boss, contacted Washington about the sighting and was told to develop the film and send it immediately, without making any prints. However, he took a good look at the negatives and saw very clear pictures of a saucer-shaped vehicle. He never heard anything from Washington about the pictures, which seemed to just vanish.

A Pioneer in Space

There’s more 3 lots more 3 about UFOs in this book, but it would be a mistake to simply classify this as another book from someone alleging that earth is being visited by aliens. The author this time has much more to tell us; he is, after all, Gordon Cooper, one of America’s Mercury astronauts, a pioneer in space whose adventures form an incredibly interesting story of a life lived to the hilt. Gordo (“the best pilot you ever saw”) tells us about his early years testing the hottest planes on earth, then competing for the chance to be an astronaut. Flying since he was five years old, he couldn’t resist an opportunity to fly higher and further than anyone ever had before, even lying to NASA about his marital status so he could qualify (NASA wanted only happily married men, so Cooper and his wife reconciled so he could join the astronaut program).

We learn about the personalities of the other astronauts. Alan Shepherd was always looking for ways to move up his name on the list of who would be on the next mission. John Glenn really was the “clean marine” and should have gotten the nod to be the first man to walk on the moon instead of Neal Armstrong, who soon dropped out of sight instead of becoming a good will ambassador for space exploration as Cooper felt he should. Gus Grissom was a good friend whose death shocked Cooper. He reveals new details about the pressures to do the “hot tests” the day that Grissom, Chafee and White died as a fire began inside their Apollo 1 capsule. President Kennedy’s mandate to put a man on the moon before the end of the decade led to cutting corners and doing the tests with people inside when there were known problems with the craft. Cooper also tried to erase any lingering doubts about Grissom’s performance, making it clear that Grissom’s Mercury capsule being lost at sea was not his fault -- the hatch blew on its own, just as Grissom always said.

Amazing Adventures for this Mercury Astronaut

Cooper made many trips while working for NASA, going for survival training in the jungles of South America where he dined on grilled piranha, and staying at the palace of Emperor Haile Selassie in Ethiopia where two tame cheetahs guarded the doors and he and the conservation-minded emperor went hunting with cameras. He was buddies with Wernher von Braun whom he describes as wanting to build rockets to explore space, not for destruction. His version of von Braun is that this ex-German was a loyal American whose Saturn V rocket was a stupendous achievement never topped. Von Braun, we are told, was convinced the universe is teeming with life and we should be out exploring it. It’s hard to buy into his totally positive picture of this man who had, after all, worked for Hitler and whose German rockets were built by slave labor.

But Cooper’s tale is very much his own view of life and what he has experienced during his years as an American icon. He actually knew three presidents: Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson. Truman used to take walks from the white house at night to where Cooper was serving with the Presidential Honor Guard. They would have coffee and chat. Cooper met a number of times with Kennedy and talked with him the day before he died. Kennedy asked Cooper to come to Dallas and ride in the motorcade, but Cooper couldn’t make it. Johnson was eager to carry out Kennedy’s plans for space exploration, but did not have the same personal fascination with it as Kennedy had.

This personal account of Cooper’s Mercury flight is a gripping story. He had to call on all his training and courage when, nearing the last orbit, he suffered a total systems failure. That meant he had to bring his Faith 7 vehicle home under manual control, with temperatures building up in his suit over 100 degrees (130 degrees in the cabin) and an overload of carbon dioxide that affected his breathing. Under these adverse conditions, he still managed to bring his capsule down safely, and almost on top of the rescue ship. It was a perfect performance. Cooper is not modest or shy about letting us know his skills are the very best. He thrived on trouble, dealing with it calmly and logically. He was almost not allowed to go on the Mercury mission because of a stunt he pulled the night before, going up in a high performance jet and buzzing astronaut headquarters on a low pass over the buildings. His boss was not amused and told Gordo he was sending his backup, Shepherd, up instead, but finally relented. Cooper makes it pretty clear he did not like a lot of the straight-laced rules of NASA. He was often in the “bad boy” role, once chasing away a PR guy who wrote a speech for Cooper to give before the US Congress. Cooper was none too polite in letting this hapless man know he was capable of writing his own speech. Cooper twice addressed Congress and his ticker tape parade after the Mercury flight was the biggest ever.

Being Pals with Soviet Cosmonauts

Cooper tells us about meeting the Russian cosmonauts and feeling immediate rapport with them. These space pioneers may have worked for nations that competed fiercely to be first, but among themselves they eagerly exchanged stories and information, aware that national differences were less important than the fact that they were all members of a very exclusive club. Cooper says he explained to the cosmonauts how use of a drogue (a funnel-shaped parachute) to open first during the descent before the main parachute opened would keep the craft stable on the way down. He drew a picture of one on a napkin. The Soviets subsequently had an accident where the craft tumbled and spilled the chute on descent, killing a cosmonaut. They then began using drogues which, as Cooper says, “looked very much like what I drew that morning on my napkin.” Cosmonauts came down over land rather than water like our astronauts, and in one landing that was way off course, two cosmonauts and their craft landed in a tree in Siberia and nearly froze to death while being harassed by a big bear all night before they were found. Cooper took the cosmonauts and their families on a tour of the US. They visited Detroit where General Motors engineers let them drive experimental cars. They later said driving those hot cars in Detroit was the high point of their trip (this was interesting to me because I live in suburban Detroit; we usually get such bad press).

Leaving NASA, but not Leaving Adventures

Cooper finally quit NASA when he realized he would not be given command of an Apollo mission. He was perpetually the backup and he reveals that he blamed Deke Slayton and Alan Shepherd, who made the assignments, for this for many years afterward. However, Gordon Cooper went right on having adventures, searching for treasure in Mexico and discovering an important Olmec archeological site, working for Disney on novel technology, and getting involved with a project to exploit technological advances that came in part from psychic messages received by the mysterious and beautiful lady who was the project leader. Her belief was that these message came from alien civilizations. Many made use of the inventions or concepts pioneered by Nikola Tesla. Unfortunately, the people involved were unable to get funding and the group eventually disbanded. It was a disallusioning lesson about the forces working against technological advances that might disrupt industry profits.

Evidence That UFOs Exist

Cooper tells us about seeing working models of a flying saucer built by a man who had seen such a craft up close and had spent many years building models of what he had seen in the skies. The man died before he could finish any of them, but Cooper was impressed with the partially built models he saw. Cooper tells us NASA never gave the astronauts any information about UFOs or what to do if they saw one. He gives us a picture of a government that might know much more than it makes public. Cooper is a knowledgable source on anything that flies and he tells us that the capabilities of UFOs observed by pilots indicate maneuvers that cannot be done by any known type of aircraft. He leaves the door open a little to the possibility that someone on earth has secretly built these vehicles, but if so, it must be a very covert operation and for unknown reasons. Not mentioned in the book is the similar observation made by astronaut Edgar Mitchell, who has said publicly that vehicles with capabilities beyond that of known aircraft exist. He does not, as far as I know, make any claims about who has built them. Are they the work of aliens? Cooper seems not too worried about aliens as a threat to mankind (as Col. Corso was in his book, The Day After Roswell), but is more of the opinion that we could learn from them.

Cooper is an Original — an Original Hero!

I found this book a “can’t put down” good read, not only for what it revealed about UFOs, but for what it revealed about Gordon Cooper. Brash, idealistic, and intelligent, he is bigger than life. Probably abrasive at times and not easy to live with, he remains a hero whose life and thoughts are of interest to those of us who remember with fondness the Mercury flights and the excitement we all felt about what should have been a new era for mankind, the age of space exploration. What a letdown since those wonderful days when the spirit of discovery was alive! John Glenn gave us a bit of that back when he went into space as an aging hero. Cooper’s reaction to Glenn’s second chance? “I think it’s fine as long as I get to go to Mars when I’m 77.”

This book allowed me to relive those exciting years when we wanted to go into space because it was there and it was unknown. Cooper blames Senator Proxmire for killing the budget for space. While problems on earth are important too, mankind needs long-term goals to feed our souls and satisfy our curiosity. Space is truly the “final frontier” and the frontier has always been an important part of America. What would it take to rekindle that spirit of adventure, the desire to explore the frontier? Will another generation ever feel the same excitement, or will all the great accomplishments of men and women in space be merely lessons in a history book?

I also enjoyed reading about flying because I too had a pilot license some years back. I’m an inactive flyer now and any comparison between my miniscule knowledge of flying and Gordon Cooper’s level of skill is like comparing an ant to an elephant, but the book reminded me of the most important lesson I took from my flying days. It was this: No matter what happens, KEEP ON FLYING THE PLANE. I was delighted to see how true that was for Cooper. A pilot keeps his (or her) cool and keeps on flying even when instruments are failing and oxygen is running out. Pilots can’t fake it. They either fly the plane or they’re dead. In a world of phonies, Gordon Cooper is the real thing and I highly recommend Leap of Faith.

A collaboration between Cooper and writer Bruce Henderson, this book is full of adventure and speculation about what's "out there." I truly wish Cooper could have gone to Mars, at age 77 or any age, but it was not to be. He died in 2004, at the age of 77. Perhaps his spirit has made the flight to the red planet, and is beckoning the younger generation on earth to continue the journey of space exploration.

Gordo Cooper is gone now, but you can still read his book. Go to its amazon page: Leap of Faith: An Astronaut's Journey into the Unknown.

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