- Thomas P. Stafford, a career astronaut, commander of the Apollo 10 space flight, and a central figure in the first U.S.-Soviet space partnership, died Monday. He was 93 years old.
- Mr. Stafford also led the “dress rehearsal” flight for Apollo 11’s moon landing, served on two Gemini flights, and was one of 20 people to fly to the moon.
- “Today, General Tom Stafford will commemorate the eternity he bravely explored as a Gemini and Apollo astronaut and as a peace negotiator on the Apollo-Soyuz,” said Bill Nelson, NASA administrator and former Florida senator. I went to heaven,” said Bill Nelson, NASA administrator and former Florida senator, on X. “It’s very sad for those of us who had the privilege of knowing him, but he was grateful to have known a giant.”
Thomas P. Stafford, the astronaut who led the 1969 moon landing and the rehearsal flight for the first U.S.-Soviet space partnership, died Monday. He was 93 years old.
Stafford is a retired three-star Air Force general who participated in four space missions. Before Apollo 10, he flew on his two Gemini flights, including the first rendezvous of his two US capsules in orbit. He died at a hospital near his home on Florida’s Space Coast, said Max Alley, director of the Stafford Air and Space Museum in Weatherford, Oklahoma.
Stafford was one of 24 people to fly to the moon, but he did not land on the moon. Only seven of them remain alive.
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“Today, General Tom Stafford went to the eternal heaven he so courageously explored as a Gemini and Apollo astronaut and as an Apollo-Soyuz peace negotiator,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. ” said via X, formerly known as Twitter. “It’s very sad for those of us who had the privilege of knowing him, but he was grateful to have known a giant.”
After putting away his flight suit, Stafford became NASA’s go-to person for independent advice on everything from manned Mars missions to safety issues to returning to flight after the 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia disaster. It became. He chaired a monitoring group that considered ways to repair the then-defective Hubble Space Telescope, which won NASA’s Public Interest Award.
“Tom was involved in so much more than most people realize, including being known as the ‘Father of Stealth,'” Allie said in an email. Stafford was in charge of the famous “Area 51” desert base, the setting for many UFO theories, but also the base for the Air Force’s experiments in stealth technology.
The Apollo 10 mission in May 1969 set the stage for the historic Apollo 11 mission two months later. Stafford and Gene Cernan, aboard a lunar module nicknamed Snoopy, came within nine miles of the moon’s surface. Astronaut John Young remained on the main spacecraft, named Charlie Brown.
“I think the most memorable sight that really changed the way I saw things was the first time I saw Earth,” Stafford said of the view from lunar orbit in a 1997 oral history.
Next, the far side of the moon appeared. “The Earth will disappear. There will be this big black void.”
Apollo 10’s return to Earth set a world record for the fastest speed by a manned vehicle at 24,791 miles per hour.
After the lunar landing, NASA and the Soviet Union decided on a joint docking mission, and Stafford, then a one-star general, was chosen to lead the American side. That meant intensive language training with the KGB during his time in the Soviet Union, and lifelong friendships with cosmonauts. His two teams of space travelers went to Disney World and rode together on Space His Mountain before going into orbit and joining the spacecraft.
Once the Apollo and Soyuz spacecraft connected, Stafford radioed in Russian: “Captured.” Russian Alexei Leonov responded in English: “Well done, Tom, it was a good show. I vote for you.”
Thomas P. Stafford, commander of the Apollo 10 lunar orbit mission, pictured May 8, 1969 at Kennedy Space Center, Merritt Island, Florida. (Bettman/Contributor via Getty Images)
The 1975 mission included two days of five people working together on experiments. The two teams then toured the world together, meeting with President Gerald Ford and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev.
“It helped prove to the world that two diametrically opposed political systems can work together,” Stafford recalled at the 30th anniversary rally in 2005.
The two crew members became so close that a few years later, when Stafford was in his 70s, Leonov arranged for him to adopt two Russian boys.
“We were too old to adopt, but they were too old to adopt,” Stafford told The Oklahoman in 2004. There’s nothing left to give. ”
Mr. Stafford then became a central figure in discussions in the 1990s to involve Russia in building and operating the International Space Station.
Stafford, who grew up in Weatherford, Oklahoma, said he would look up at the sky and see the huge DC-3 planes flying overhead on early transcontinental routes.
“Ever since I was 5 or 6 years old, I saw airplanes and wanted to fly them,” he told NASA historians.
Stafford attended the U.S. Naval Academy, graduated in the top 1% of his class, rode in the back seat of several airplanes, and loved it. He enlisted in 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 attended the Air Force’s Experimental Test Pilot School, graduating at the top of his class and remaining as an instructor.
In 1962, NASA selected Stafford to join the second set of astronauts that included Neil Armstrong, Frank Borman, and Pete Conrad.
Stafford was assigned to Gemini 6 along with Wally Schiller. Their original mission was to rendezvous with spaceships in the sky. However, the 1965 launch was aborted when the spacecraft exploded shortly after liftoff. NASA improvised and in December Gemini 6 rendezvoused with the two astronauts aboard Gemini 7, but never docked.
Stafford’s next flight in 1966 was with Cernan on Gemini 9. Cernan’s spacewalk, which was attached to a jetpack-like device, went awry. Cernan complained that the sun and machines made him extra hot and hurt his back. Then the visor fogged up and he couldn’t see.
“No more, Gene. Get out of there,” Commander Stafford told Cernan. Stafford persuaded him to “move his hand, start floating…stick his hand up…just walk hand in hand.”
Stafford spent a total of 507 hours in space, flying four 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 as a three-star general in 1979.
Stafford’s Air Force duties included running the military’s premier flight school and experimental airplane test base, as well as being the commander of Area 51. According to his museum biography, Stafford was responsible for post-Area 51 development. As the Pentagon’s procurement director, he “wrote the specifications and established the program that led to the development of the F-117 stealth fighter and, later, the B-2 stealth bomber.”
Mr. Stafford became an executive with a transportation company based in Oklahoma before moving to Florida near Cape Canaveral.
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He is survived by his wife, Linda, two sons, two daughters and two stepchildren, according to the museum.
