Meet The Man We Should All Aspire To Be Like

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Sage advice can be gleaned indirectly from the words of men who've done amazingthings. In this interview series by Jim Clash called "The RightStuff," we share nuggets of wisdom from great men who've taken big risks in life --boxers, balloonists, testpilots, astronauts,mountainclimbers, ocean divers, scientists, Olympians, race car drivers -- and made the worlda better place for it.What exactly is the right stuff? Other than thename of a famous movie and book about the space race, it’s a state of mind. The termis a throwback to a time when character really counted -- when men routinely risked theirlives not to get rich, bloviate or self-aggrandize, but for their country, science andexploration.Clash, a fellow and director at The Explorers Club, is aseasoned adventurer himself. In reporting for Forbes and other publications overthe last two decades, he has skied to the South Pole; driven the Bugatti Veyron at its topspeed of 253 mph; flown in a MiG-25 at Mach 2.6 to the edge of space; visited the NorthPole twice; and climbed the Matterhorn, 23,000-foot Aconcagua and virgin peaks inAntarctica and Greenland. He has also purchased a ticket from Virgin Galactic Airways tofly into suborbital space in 2013.A half-century ago, on May 24, 1962,astronaut Scott Carpenter blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in his Mercury Auroraspacecraft en route for three orbits of the Earth.That trip is pretty tame bytoday's space standards, but back then it was real cutting-edge exploration. Carpenter wasonly the second American to orbit the Earth. John Glenn had been first, just a few months earlier.Carpenter's flight didn't come off without some drama. Because of a mechanical glitch,he landed 250 miles off course in the Atlantic Ocean, and it took nearly an hour for theUSS Intrepid aircraft carrier to find him.Carpenter, now 87, never flew inspace again. A broken arm and an intense passion for the oceans led him to pursue a careerin aquatics.I caught up with the maverick -- a retired U.S. Navy captain andone of only two original Mercury Seven "right stuff" astronauts still alive (the other isGlenn) -- on the half-century anniversary of his flight.Appropriately enough,we met at a watch store in New York. Carpenter had worn a Breitling Cosmonaute on hishistoric mission. The watch has now been recreated in a limited Cosmonaute line.Note: Carpenter is celebrating his milestone at The Explorers Club Texas Chapter June22-23 in Houston.What sticks most vividly in your mind 50 years after your 1962 Mercuryflight?Scott Carpenter: My Breitling watch [laughs].No, liftoff is the most fun. In the days I flew, we had computers that could calculate aninsertion that would last for only a few orbits. So when I heard from the ground after thebooster shut down, "You've got a go for orbits," that was the high point for me.You overshot your landing area by 250 miles, and were alone floating in theAtlantic while they looked for you. Were you worried?SC: I am criticized sometimes for this answer. I wasn't concernedbecause I knew exactly where I was. And I didn't know that other people didn't know. Ienjoyed the quiet silence that would precede a lot of answers to a lot of questions in mydebriefing. It was a fun time.Talk about competition in the 1960swith the former Soviet Union's space program.SC: Itwas an interesting thing. The competition arose because of the Cold War. In those days, itwas felt both by the Soviets and the Americans that preeminence in space was a conditionof our national survivals. The competition was heated, but it was very respectful, each ofthe other. And I have to tell you I was very pleased in the early days to see that theSoviets had done what they had done. They were doing everything first -- and better thanwe were! So we used that competition to do our jobs better. And the competition alsoinspired the cosmonauts to do better work.Do you see any ironynow, with the retirement of the Shuttle, that we are flying to the International SpaceStation aboard Soyuz rockets?SC: I am so overjoyed bythe fact that the competition has now transposed itself to cooperation. Space is not anenterprise that belongs to the U.S. or to Russia or to China -- it is a human endeavor andexperience. And that's as it should be. Continue Reading

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