US Mercury Astronaut Scott Carpenter Has Died At 88

I always liked Scott Carpenter, he was a bit of a fool.

"You're looking out at a totally black sky, seeing an altimeter reading of 90,000ft and realise you are going straight up. And the thought crosses your mind:  

What am I doing?"

Like him, I'm shaking my head. 

Not only the second American to orbit Earth, Carpenter exemplified what became known as The Right Stuff after his capsule overshot the landing point by almost 300 fucking miles. 

He left our still-new-to-space-travel nation without communication and frantic with worry he was alive. 

But the Navy eventually found their astronaut, chillin' in the Caribbean, floating on his raft with his feet propped up.

He went around the globe three times in 1962. 

And as the backup pilot for the first Mercury mission, his was the  voice that famously said, "Godspeed, John Glenn." 

Carpenter was born in Boulder, Colorado, commissioned in the Navy in 1949, and served as a pilot in the Korean War. 

In 1959 he was selected as one of seven Mercury astronauts, training with NASA and specializing in communications and navigation. 

After retiring in 1969 he took up oceanography. As part of the Navy's (now famous and trendy) SeaLab program, in 1965 Carpenter went to California and spent 30 days under the sea.

He lived in Vail, Colorado and upon retiring founded Sea Sciences with the famous French researcher, Jacques Cousteau.

His second wife, Patty Barrett, said he suffered a stroke in September, and died not long after in hospice care.

Let it be known:

Scott Carpenter was easily the most badass #2 in history.

And John Glenn is the Mercury team's last surviving member.