To many UFO enthusiasts, Gordon
Cooper is a legend.
An original
Mercury astronaut, he was one of
those clear-eyed,
ambitious,
optimistic, straight-arrow Americans
with "the right
stuff," as Tom
Wolfe put it -- men who made the U.S. space program
synonymous
with success and national pride. But
unlike many of
his fellow astro-
nauts, Gordon Cooper has said for
decades that he believes
at least
some UFOs are alien spacecraft.
With the assistance of a mutual friend, I met Gordon
Cooper at his
office in Van Nuys, California on February 8.
He isn't as big as I expected, neither in height nor
build. (In retrospect,
it occurs to me that large size would be no asset in
the space program.)
At 68, he is balding. He still has the signature grin,
toothy and slightly
cock-eyed. He has sharp blue eyes. He speaks quietly,
clearly and
concisely. We simply pulled up a few chairs around
his desk and started
talking.
I said I had enjoyed Dennis Quaid's film portrayal of
Cooper in "The
Right Stuff," and asked how he had liked it. "I liked
it. He did a pretty
good job," he said. "So did you think of yourself as
a hotdog back then?"
I asked. "Yes, I guess so."
We talked about the space
program. He had gone up in
Mercury 9 in
May, 1963
and completed 22 orbits, an
American record
at the time.
Then in August, 1965, he went
up again in Gemini 5 with
Charles
"Pete"
Conrad and stayed aloft
eight days, going 122 orbits,
a
world record.
They had purposely
set out to get ahead of the Soviets
in at least a symbolic way. It was
a turning point in the space
race.
We were already headed for
the moon. We got there. The
Soviets never did.
Cooper was going to go to the moon, but Alan Shepherd
went instead,
and then the Apollo program was cancelled.
Cooper was going to go
to Mars, too. Few Americans even know
that NASA was well along
on plans for a manned Mars mission, with a landing
projected for 1981.
Cooper was in line for commander of the mission.
It would have been a
nuclear powered spacecraft, assembled in
earth orbit after parts were
sent aloft on a series of Saturn 1-Bs. The nuclear
engines were ready,
Cooper said. A lot of the spacecraft was ready.
They were still working
on the lander and then that program was cancelled,
too.
"By Senator Proxmire. The worst enemy America ever
had."
I asked about his famous UFO sighting. It was in 1951
over
Germany. He and several other pilots were
flying F-86 jets --
"We were super-sonic, barely," he said
-- when they looked up
and saw what appeared to be a large group of
"double lenticular
shaped" aircraft, classic flying saucers, flying
in formation.
He said these craft were much higher than his plane
could go,
though he couldn't tell how high. They were going faster
too,
but he couldn't tell how much faster. Over the
next two or three
days, he and other pilots saw "several hundred"
of these craft.
Cooper said they flew formation maneuvers very
much like his own
squadron would fly. He and the other witnesses
were uniformly
convinced they were seeing a technology that wasn't
human.
Cooper and his fellow pilots reported the sightings
to their superiors.
In due course, the official explanation was
relayed back down.
"High flying seed pods."
Though the UFO subject frequently must endure strange
episodes
of official denial and obfuscation, this offering
of "seed pods" in
answer to Cooper's sighting struck me as one
of the wackiest I've
heard. "You knew this was crazy," I said to
him. "How could you
put up with it?"
His answer was simple. "I was in the Air Force. I wanted to fly."
But Cooper had already made up his own mind that UFOs
represented visitations from elsewhere,
and in time he made his
position clear. He wrote a letter to the United
Nations in 1978.
It said, in part, "I do believe UFOs exist and
that the truly
unexplained ones are from some other technically advanced
civilization... I believe that these extraterrestrial
vehicles and
their crews are visiting this planet from other
planets, which are
obviously a little more advanced than we are
here on earth... I
feel that we need to have a top-level,
coordinated program to
scientifically collect and analyze data from
all over the earth
concerning any type of encounter, and to determine
how best to
interface with these visitors in a friendly fashion."
Cooper was convinced by 1978 that these visitors, most
of
them at least, were friendly. He holds
to that view today.
