by WASHINGTON (AP) – Astronaut Thomas P. Stafford, who led a dress practice flight for the 1969 moon landing and the first US-Soviet space link, died Monday. He was 93.
Stafford, a retired Air Force three-star general, participated in four space missions. Before Apollo 10, he flew on two Gemini flights, including the first rendezvous of two US capsules in orbit. He died at a hospital near his Florida Space Coast home, said Max Ary, director of the Stafford Air & Space Museum in Weatherford, Oklahoma.
Stafford was one of 24 people who flew to the moon, but did not land on it. Only seven of them are still alive.
“Today General Tom Stafford took to the eternal skies he so courageously explored as a Gemini and Apollo astronaut as well as an Apollo Soyuz astronaut,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said via X, formerly known as Twitter this. “We are privileged to know him very sad but grateful that we knew a giant.”
After putting away his flight suit, Stafford became the go-to person at NASA when he sought independent advice on everything from human Mars missions to safety issues to returning to flight after a shuttle accident Columbia space in 2003. He chaired an oversight group that looked into fixing the then-flawed Hubble Space Telescope, which won a NASA public service award.
“Tom was involved in so many things that most people didn’t know about, like being the ‘Father of Stealth,'” Ary said in an email. Stafford was in charge of the famous desert base “Area 51” which was the site of many UFO theories, but was also the testing ground for Air Force stealth technologies.
The Apollo 10 mission in May 1969 set the stage for the historic Apollo 11 mission two months later. Stafford and Gene Cernan the lunar lander nicknamed Snoopy came within 9 miles (14 kilometers) of the lunar surface. Astronaut John Young stayed behind in the main spacecraft named Charlie Brown.
“I think the most significant sight that really changed your view of things is when you see Earth for the first time,” Stafford recalled in a 1997 oral history, talking about the view from orbit. moon
Then came the far side of the moon: “The Earth disappears. There’s this big black void.”
When Apollo 10 returned to Earth the world record for the fastest speed in a crew vehicle was 24,791 mph (39,897 kph).
When the moon landings ended, NASA and the Soviet Union decided on a joint docking mission and Stafford, then a one-star general, was chosen to command the American side. This meant intensive language training, being followed by the KGB while in the Soviet Union, and lifelong friendships with cosmonauts. The two sets of space travelers even went to Disney World and rode Space Mountain together before going into orbit and boarding ships.
“We have a capture,” Stafford radioed in Russian as the Apollo and Soyuz spacecraft docked. His Russian colleague, Alexei Leonov, responded in English: “Well done, Tom, it was a good show. I vote for you.”
The 1975 mission included two days in which the five men worked together on experiments. Afterwards, the two teams toured the world together, meeting with President Gerald Ford and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev.
“He helped prove to the rest of the world that two diametrically opposed political systems could work together,” Stafford recalled at a 30-year reunion in 2005.
The two crews became so close that years later Leonov arranged for Stafford to adopt two Russian boys when Stafford was in his 70s.
“We’re too old to adopt, but they were too old to be adopted,” Stafford told The Oklahoman in 2004. “They’ve added so much meaning to our lives, and just because you’re retiring doesn’t mean it you are retiring. there is nothing left to give.”
Later, Stafford was an integral part of negotiations in the 1990s that brought Russia into partnership building and operating the International Space Station.
Growing up in Weatherford, Oklahoma, Stafford said he would look up and see giant DC-3 planes flying overhead on early transcontinental routes.
“I wanted to fly since I was 5 or 6 years old looking at those airplanes,” he told NASA historians.
Stafford went to the United States Naval Academy where he graduated in the top 1% of his class and flew in the back seat of several planes and loved it. He volunteered for the Air Force and hoped to fly combat in the Korean War. But by the time he got his wings, the war was over. He went to the Air Force experimental test pilot school, graduated first in his class there and remained an instructor.
In 1962, NASA selected Stafford for its second set of astronauts, including Neil Armstrong, Frank Borman and Pete Conrad.
Stafford along with Wally Schirra were assigned to Gemini 6. Their original mission was to rendezvous with an empty spacecraft. But her launch was scrutinized in 1965 when the spaceship exploded shortly after liftoff. NASA improvised and in December, Gemini 6 rendezvoused with two astronauts aboard Gemini 7 but did not dock with two astronauts.
Stafford’s next flight was in 1966 with Cernan on Gemini 9. Cernan’s spacewalk, attached to a jetpack as a device, did not go well. Cernan complained that the sun and the machine made him extra hot and hurt his back. Then his visor fogged up and he couldn’t see.
“Call it quits, Gene. Get out of there,” Stafford, the commander, told Cernan. Stafford spoke back in, saying “move your hand over, start floating up … stick your hand up … just walk hand in hand.”
In total, Stafford logged 507 hours in space and flew four different types of spacecraft and 127 types of aircraft and helicopters.
After the Apollo-Soyuz mission, Stafford returned to the Air Force and worked in research and commanded the Air Force Flight Test Center before retiring in 1979 as a three-star general.
Not only did Stafford’s Air Force duties include running the military’s top flight school and experimental airplane test base, but he was in general command of Area 51. A biography from his museum said that while Stafford was in command of Area 51 and later as development. and chief acquisition executive at the Pentagon “wrote the specs and established the program that led to the development of the F-117 Stealth Fighter, and later, the B-2 Stealth Bomber.”
Stafford became an executive for a transportation company based in Oklahoma and later moved to Florida, near Cape Canaveral.
He is survived by his wife. Linda, two sons, two daughters and two stepchildren, according to the museum.
