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When NASA banned an astronaut from racing in the Daytona 24 Hours
As the Soviet Union kicked off the space race in 1957 with the
launch of the first satellite, Sputnik and then put the first man
in space four years later in Yuri Gagarin, the United States
responded. After Gagarin had plonked himself back into a field,
much to the shock and awe of the local peasants, and indeed the
Americans, who he had beaten into space, President Kennedy decided
set an almost impossible challenge in May 1961. Weeks after the
first US manned flight, he declared that, before the decade was
out, the US would land a man on the Moon and return him safely to
the Earth. As NASA figured out how to do that, with its Mercury,
Gemini, and ultimately Apollo programmes, in Florida, just down the
coast from Daytona International Speedway, if you spent enough time
in the sand dunes by the Kennedy Space Centre, chances are you
would have seen a few Chevrolet Corvettes racing through the dunes
as the throttle-jockeys selected as astronauts played up to type.
1960 Indy 500 winner Jim Rathmann befriended those all hoping to
take that first small step, and set up a deal to provide the
so-called 'Mercury 7' first group of astronauts with 'vettes for
$1, which is where some were introduced to the real world of
racing. One of the first group selected was Air Force Captain
Gordon Cooper, known as 'Gordo.' As the decade passed and Kennedy's
goal loomed, Cooper was an integral part of the Mercury and Gemini
programmes, and received a plum assignment as back-up commander for
the May 1969 Apollo 10 mission - a full dress rehearsal of the
first Moon landing, save the landing itself. If all went well,
Cooper could then expect to command Apollo 13 three flights later
and walk on the Moon. The only trouble, slap-bang in the middle of
training for Apollo 10, Cooper decided to enter himself, and NASA's
head of security at Kennedy, in the Daytona 24 Hours! Cooper the
racer Throughout the 1960s, Cooper had been a familiar face at the
Indy 500, with the likes of Alan Shepard, the first American and
runner-up to Gagarin in the 'first man in space race' tagging
along. Cooper even founded his own race team, Grissom, Cooper,
Rathmann (GRC), with fellow astronaut Gus Grissom and Rathmann and
ran cars at Indy. In 1967, he finally got to drive the IMS oval -
but was firmly kept in check by officials who prevented him from
flooring it, much to his dismay. Come February 1969, Cooper
actually qualified 25th of 67 runners for the 24 hours, but on the
eve of the race, NASA nixed the plan. Coming a few months before
the launch of Apollo 10, NASA was not best enamoured with the idea
of the commander of the back-up crew, who could potentially have to
step in should anything have happened to the prime crew commander,
Tom Stafford, potentially being injured, or worse, at Daytona.
Cooper reluctantly followed orders to withdraw, describing the
decision as NASA wanting astronauts to be "tiddlywinks." Despite
Apollo 10 going flawlessly and paving the way for Apollo 11's giant
leap with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, Cooper never flew on
Apollo 13. Due to this episode and his perceived lax attitude
towards training, he was bumped from commanding Apollo 13, which
suffered the in-flight explosion that ruled out a landing attempt
and became a fight for survival for the crew. Cooper never flew an
Apollo mission, leaving NASA for the engineering and design world,
passing away in 2004 aged 77, having also become a strong believer
in UFOs, having made multiple sightings in his career as a test
pilot. 1128649989805215744 Today in 1963 astronaut Gordon Cooper
launched on Mercury-Atlas 9, the final (and longest) flight of the
Mercury Program. Despite encountering faulty sensors and carbon
dioxide buildup, Cooper manually piloted his Faith 7 capsule to a
safe splashdown. pic.twitter.com/J3r4g2MMRG — NASA History Office
(@NASAhistory) May 15, 2019
