PETE CONRAD

'Charles "Pete" Conrad, Jr.' (June 2, 1930 – July 8, 1999), was an American astronaut and the third man to walk on the moon. He served on Gemini 5 and 11, Apollo 12, and Skylab 2 missions, and may have been scheduled for the Apollo 20 mission, which was cancelled.

Contents

Early career

NASA career

Post-NASA

Death

In Television and Film

Quotes

Facts

Pete Conrad Spirit Award

External links

Notes

Early career

After attending The Haverford School, the Darrow School, and receiving a bachelor's degree in Aeronautical Engineering from Princeton University in 1953 he entered the United States Navy, where he became a test pilot and later an instructor. He was one of the second group of astronauts selected by NASA in 1962 - he had previously been considered and turned down for the Mercury Seven, with the notation "not suitable for long-duration flight."^[1]

NASA career

Regarded as one of the best pilots in the group he was one of the first of his group to be assigned a Gemini mission. As pilot of Gemini 5 he set a new space endurance record of 8 days - the time it would take to get to the moon and back - and tested many spacecraft systems essential to the Apollo program. Conrad was also one of the smallest of the astronauts in height (1.69 metres (5 feet 6.5 inches^[2])) and build so he found the confinement of the Gemini capsule less onerous. He was then back-up Commander for Gemini 8 and commander of Gemini 11, which docked with an Agena target immediately after achieving orbit, as would have to be done by Apollo lunar landing missions.

Conrad was due to be back-up commander of the first flight of the full Saturn V/Apollo into high earth orbit. When NASA created the Apollo 8 mission both prime and back-up crews were switched. But for this Conrad would have been in-line to command Apollo 11.
After stepping onto the lunar surface, Conrad joked about his own small stature by remarking:
:''Whoopee! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me.''
He later revealed that this was in order to win a bet he had made with the Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci for $500 to prove that NASA did not script astronaut comments. ^[3]
His last mission was commander of Skylab 2, the first crew aboard the space station. This crew had to repair damage caused by a mishap on launch of the station. On a spacewalk, Conrad managed to pull free the stuck solar panel by sheer brute force, which saved the rest of the mission, an action he was particularly proud of.

Post-NASA

He retired from NASA and the Navy in 1973, and went to work for American Television and Communications Company. He worked for McDonnell Douglas from 1976, and during the 1990s he was the ground-based pilot for several test flights of the Delta Clipper experimental single stage to orbit launch vehicle.
Conrad had a cameo role in the 1991 TV movie ''Plymouth''.
On Valentine's Day, in 1996, Conrad was part of the crew on a record breaking around the world flight in a Learjet owned by cable TV pioneer, Bill Daniels. The flight lasted 49 hours, 26 minutes and 8 seconds. Today the jet is on permanent static display at Denver International Airport's Terminal C.
In 2006, NASA posthumously awarded him the Ambassador of Exploration Award for his work for the agency and science.

Death

Less than three weeks before the celebrations of the 30th anniversary of the first moon landing, while motorcycling in Ojai, California with friends, he ran off the road and crashed. His injuries were first thought to be minor, but he died from internal bleeding about six hours later. He was buried with full honors at Arlington National Cemetery, with many former Apollo-era astronauts in attendance.

In Television and Film

In the 1995 film ''Apollo 13'', Conrad was played by David Andrews. In the 1998 HBO miniseries ''From the Earth to the Moon'', he was played by Peter Scolari (in episode 1, "Can We Do This?") and by Paul McCrane (in episode 7, "That's All There Is").

Quotes

''"Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me."'' — as he stepped onto the lunar surface for the first time.
A month before he died, Conrad appeared on ABC News Nightline and said, "I think the Space Shuttle is worth one billion dollars a launch. I think that it is worth two billion dollars for what it does. I think the Shuttle is worth it for the work it does."

Facts

Conrad was a member of the First Troop Philadelphia City Cavalry, started in 1774, the oldest Cavalry unit in continuous existence in the United States.

Pete Conrad Spirit Award

On May 24th 2007 the XPRIZE Foundation announced the creation of the Pete Conrad Spirit Award, which "...will be presented to the high school team that develops the most creative, new space concept to benefit the emerging personal spaceflight industry."
This award will be presented at the Wirefly X PRIZE Cup in 2007 at Holloman Air Force Base.
The press announcement can be found HERE
The official X PRIZE page for the prize can be found HERE
See also Pete Conrad Spirit Award.

External links

★ NASA Bio of Pete Conrad

★ Spacefacts biography of Pete Conrad

Notes

1. Wolfe, Tom. ''The Right Stuff''. Page 108 (hardcover). Farrar-Straus-Giroux, New York. 1979. ISBN 0374250332.
2. Conrad Profile
3. Fallaci is believed never to have paid off. NASA Honor site