For Spacious Skies: The Uncommon Journey of a Mercury Astronaut

by Kristen Stoever and Scott Carpenter

Book Overview

During the early years of the space program, each mission helped determine NASA's research progress, the efficiency of its design, and its place in the race to the moon; when Aurora 7 began to... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0151004676
• ISBN13: 9780151004676
• Release Date: January 2002
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 1.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Worth Reading

If you're interested in the early days of NASA and the story behind the original seven astronauts, then you'll want to read this book. Told only as an insider can do, For Spacious Skies is a worthy addition to the books written by the other original astronauts.Scott Carpenter and his daughter Kris Stoever do a masterful job of pulling together a story much larger than the book that tells the story. From Scott's early days growing up in a home situation not considered normal for the time, to his early days in the Navy and then his application and acceptance into the astronaut program, the book is filled with insights and eye opening stories.Balanced in the picture it paints of NASA and the other astronauts, this is a must read. It is certain to take its place with the other books about this era and stand as an equal to them.

A Star in the Sky

Scott Carpenter's autobiography, written with his daughter, Kris Stoever, is the last, long awaited testament from the Mercury astronauts. Along with Deke Slayton's and Mike Cassutt's "Deke!", it is possibly the most informative of these rememberances. The book is more accurately detailed than "Schirra's Space", better grounded in facts than Shepard's "Moon Shot", more interactive than John Glenn's memoir, and ...uh...let's say, far surpasses Cooper's "Keeping Faith".Carpenter's book is footnoted throughout, and the authors have made many references to other credible manuscripts to support their recollections of the time. Personal recollections from Gene Kranz are referenced at least once, and both John Glenn and Wally Schirra proofread the manuscript prior to publication. Scott Carpenter's life has been overall, a great experience tinged with personal losses. His parents lived apart, his mother suffered from t.b., his father's approval always needed to be earned. Marriage's have brought the promise of secure relationships, but have not lasted over time. One senses the deepest loss in his relationship with Rene, who documented much of his personal history and the contemporary truths of the Mercury years. The overall sense is that two sharply intellectual adults somehow outgrew each other, when they still complimented the other so well. Rene's journals, it is revealed, provided Tom Wolfe with a great deal of his impressions for "The Right Stuff", some of which was re-written as "the wrong stuff" according to Carpenter and Stoever.Of course, the real meat of the book is Scott's recollection of the mission of "Aurora 7", and the keen disappointment in having to displace Deke Slayton in what should have been his moment of glory. How does one enjoy his own great moment in the gloomy pallor of a friend's defeat? Nobody liked what happened to Deke, nobody, including Scott and back up pilot Schirra, liked the reassignments. Management was blindsided by John Glenn's super-celebrity power, fresh and wieldy. Scott Carpenter was thrust into a crammed flight plan, a management team which was waiting to pounce upon any perceived "screw ups", and a spacecraft with serious mechanical flaws, which began to appear at launch. Did Scott Carpenter "malfunction", as Chris Kraft contends in an entire chapter of his own book? Scott readily admits trying to squeeze every science minute he could from the flight, and making that his priority. Voice recordings and bio-med data show that the pilot was aware of the situation he was in during re-entry. The fact that he brought his spacecraft back intact is cited as evidence of a pilot in control. Kraft gets his well-earned respect too, but the feisty nature of the flight controller is referred to again and again. And while Carpenter did not fly again, the choice appears to have been his own, and not one imposed upon him. Readers will have to divine that truth for themselves. Overall the authors have attem

An amazing story by an amazing man

I come predisposed to liking this book, having worked closely with Scott Carpenter in 1990 as an editor/book doctor on his first book, a novel entitled STEEL ALBATROSS. Scott is charming, down-to-earth, and endlessly fascinated by the way things work, and what is possible in the future, never dwelling on past successes, and without the tiniest bit of an inflated ego. In short, he was a great guy to know and to work with. But having just finished FOR SPACIOUS SKIES, I have a new measure of respect for him. What a childhood he endured--from his family situation to financial hardships. It is enough to make you cry. But perhaps that is where his immense strength of character was formed, and his ability to overcome virtually any obstacle. Every part of Scott's personal story is fascinating--from the tales of his pioneer forebears to the incredible selection process for the first seven astronauts, to his famous (or infamous) flight in Aurora 7--and readers will come away with an appreciation for the difficulties not only of the early days of the space program, but of just what it took to get there. An integral part of the story are the two main women featured--Scott's brave and determined mother, Toye, and his smart, funny, and strong first wife, Rene. Without their presence, FOR SPACIOUS SKIES would not be as powerful a book as it is. Congratulations, Scott. I've waited a long time for you to write this book. You have the Write Stuff, indeed.

Great book

This is an excellent book about a true American hero. The story of Carpenter's early years in Boulder, Colorado would be worth reading even if he had not gone on to become an astronaut. Very well written.

Worth the Long Wait

My interest in manned spacecraft was first piqued by the much-delayed Mercury flight of John Glenn, and I followed the subsequent 1962 mission of Scott Carpenter aboard his Aurora 7 spacecraft with even greater enthusiasm. As the decades passed and other Mercury astronauts wrote their autobiographies, I began to wonder if Scott Carpenter was ever going to tell his story, which I have always found to be far more exciting and multi-dimensional than those told by most of his colleagues. I was certainly not disappointed. "For Spacious Skies" is a truly wonderful and well written book, and gives an enjoyable background to a man about whom there has often been much speculation and interest - particularly in recent years when a certain NASA flight controller decided to vent his spleen on Carpenter and his Mercury mission in his own memoirs. This book is, in part, an obvious response to this criticism, and certainly clears the decks in many ways. Better written and far more readable than most of the other Mercury Seven astronaut biographies, this is a touching and often dramatic account of the life of a man who is regarded as one of the true pioneers and adventurers of spaceflight. Dealt many poor hands in life, he nevertheless seized his opportunities when they came along, and his resolve comes through loud and clear in this book. While many space enthusiasts and historians know that Scott Carpenter's story will, sadly, never be free of the controversies that attend his life and his single Mercury orbital mission, his flight should nevertheless be remembered as a very important and major contribution to the state of spaceflight knowledge in those early days, when brave men rode rockets that had a worrying reputation for blowing up. He and his co-author daughter Kris have now set the record straight on those controversies with the same intensity, determination and focus that characterized his time as an astronaut, and later as an aquanaut researcher in the service of his nation. No collection of astronaut autobiographies and biographies could ever be considered complete without this wonderful, evocative and powerful book.