The Polytechnic Lodge

 

On this day in 1927, Freemason and NASA astronaut Gordon Cooper was born. Cooper was one of the seven original crew members of Project Mercury, the first manned space program of the United States of America.

Worshipful Brother Gordon Cooper, 33°, on his Gemini 5orbital mission in space in 1965 was the command pilot of Gemini 5, along with fellow astronaut Pete Conrad. He flew an eight-day, 120-orbit mission travelling a distance of 3,312,993 miles and establishing a new space endurance record of 190 hours and 56 minutes, breaking the Soviet Union’s Vostok 5 record.

During the Gemini 5 orbital mission, he took a Scottish Rite Freemasonry banner along with him for the ride

Towards the end of his return flight, there were mission-threatening technical problems he had to overcome: the capsule suffered a power failure, carbon dioxide levels began rising and the cabin temperature jumped to over 38°C.

Cooper turned to his understanding of star patterns, took manual control and successfully estimated correct re-entry into the atmosphere. He drew lines on the capsule window to help him check his orientation before firing re-entry rockets.

“So I used my wrist watch for time,” he later recalled. “My eyeballs out the window for attitude. Then I fired my retrorockets at the right time and landed right by the carrier.”

Prior to his Gemini 5 mission, Cooper set several new milestones for the space program. He flew 22 solo orbits and another 122 orbits as a Command Pilot. He was the first astronaut to complete a pilot-control re-entry and the first to track a typhoon from space. Also, in 1963, Cooper gave one of the opening addresses to the first meeting of the League of African Nations using the first television camera in space.

The Americanism Museum at the House of the Temple is now the home the banner.