Talk:Gordon Cooper/Archive 1

UFO allegations edited out, NASA bios in
I'm editing this entry pretty heavily to incorporate the NASA biographies, including redacting much of the UFO sighting content. The material I took out looks to me like it was intended to convince the reader that Cooper saw UFOs instead of simply saying that Cooper claimed to have seen UFOs. I left in the reference links for those who want more about Cooper's UFO exploits. Cooper was best known as a Mercury astronaut, yet when I started the edit there was more content here about two UFO "sightings" than about his entire astronaut career. Also, the whole entry was clearly written by a fan – calling him "Gordon" or "Gordo" instead of "Cooper" along with lots of personal anecdotes – so I took it in a more NPOV direction. Finally, although the NASA biography states he received an honorary doctorate from Oklahoma City University, it was actually from Oklahoma State University. OCU doesn't have an engineering or department to give such an award, but OSU does. - BaseballBaby 10:27, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Cleanup
Also some re-factoring. Gwen Gale (talk) 17:45, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Last to orbit solo
The article reads that Cooper was the last American astronaut "to fly alone in orbit". That should perhaps readl last "to fly alone in Eartyh orbit", since the command module commander on Apollos 11, 12 and 14-17 flew solo in lunar orbit. Grutness...wha?  04:06, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

UFO Claims
I amended the sentence As he was instructed to NOT look at the negatives before sending them, he did. to As he hadn't been instructed to NOT look at the negatives before sending them, he did.

which I believe was the intended meaning i.e. he was explicitly told not to run prints but wasn't told to NOT look at the negatives. I think the entire sentence could probably be rewritten in a clearer fashion. MarrsAttax (talk) 19:53, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Gordon Cooper Birthplace
There is a home in Tecumseh, Oklahoma with a monument in front of it that states "Birthplace of Gordon Cooper". All Bios indicate his birthplace as Shawnee. Was he born in the house in Tecumseh, which wasn't all that uncommon in that era, or was he born in a hospital on Shawnee and his family live in Tecumseh? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.117.93.52 (talk) 15:42, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Possible error of fact in section of article titled UFO sightings
Re. the following passage in the section 'UFO sightings' : ". . .They explained how the saucer hovered over them, landed 50 yards away from them using three extended landing gears and then took off as they approached for a closer look. . . ."

On the website www.abovetopsecret.com one of the commentators quotes the noted ufologist Dr. James E. McDonald as saying that he had interviewed the two men who had reportedly filmed the unknown object, and McDonald claimed that the closest the two men estimated themselves to be from the object was 500 yards.

An obvious important discrepancy of distance here, from two separate sources.

˜˜˜˜ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lindsay Gray (talk • contribs) 14:27, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Relevance to Cooper of Alan Shepard's Apollo mission swap
please explain why you insist that the fact Alan Shepard's crew was switched from Apollo 13 to Apollo 14 is relevant in any way to the fact that Cooper was bumped from the crew and replaced with Shepard, or to Cooper's bio page at all? What am I missing? Just because your NASA source page mentions it, does not obligate us to include it here on Cooper's page. Are you trying to make the point that Cooper might have commanded Apollo 14? I think that predicting alternate history falls under WP:NOTCRYSTAL just as much as predicting future events.

Shepard's mission swap was obviously made after Cooper was bumped, and was in no way caused by or related to it. We don't need to clutter Cooper's page with irrelevant trivia. It is relevant to Shepard's bio page and the Apollo 14 page, and is already covered in both places. If you want to add your sources there to help verify, you are welcome to. JustinTime55 (talk) 17:14, 28 August 2015 (UTC)


 * The reason why it should be mentioned that Shepard went from Apollo 13 to Apollo 14 is relevant to Cooper because if Cooper did not take himself out of the rotation he could have been reinstated as commander of Apollo 13 (even if his chances were very slim) or could have flown on later flights. If you take out "although Shepard was soon reassigned to the Apollo 14 mission to give him more time to train" the reader will come to the conclusion that Shepard eventually commanded Apollo 13 which is not how history went.


 * ICE77 (talk) 18:25, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Death and SpaceShipOne
It's not clear what significance the SpaceShipOne has in regards to Copper's death (Gordon Cooper). I removed the mention, but an admin has added it back. Could someone add to the article what exactly it is that ties these two events together? Thanks :) -- Quiddity (talk) 21:24, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
 * The winning of the Ansari X-Prize was a highly notable event in the history of human spaceflight so the happenstance will have ironic/poetic meaning for some readers and either way, it's helpful because it puts his life (and the length of it) in further context. Moreover, until the SpaceShipOne flights, Cooper had been the last American to fly in space alone (he's still the last to orbit the earth alone). Gwen Gale (talk) 21:33, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
 * My concern is that the way it is written makes it sound like there is a causation between the two, i.e. he heard about it and had a heart attack he was so excited!
 * I agree with the notion that the events could be considered to have a poetic timing, and I'll leave it to you to make any other changes that I've tried to clarify the non-correlation of these events. Thanks again. -- Quiddity (talk) 17:46, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
 * No need for changes at all. Gwen Gale (talk) 17:53, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
 * It's using a comma splice between two independent topics:
 * 1. Cooper's illness, and the cause and date of Cooper's death
 * 2. things that also occurred on that date in history
 * Please try your own rewrite, as you didn't like my attempt. This one-sentence paragraph is currently confusing. -- Quiddity (talk) 19:11, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
 * You're wholly mistaken but I have further tweaked the language with an un-needed pronoun and verb to make these into separate clauses. Gwen Gale (talk) 19:26, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

"Moreover, until the SpaceShipOne flights, Cooper had been the last American to fly in space alone (he's still the last to orbit the earth alone)." Has this garbage been posted to this Wikipedia article uncorrected since 2008?! Does no one bother to factcheck? I just now finally deleted it. Sadly, more than 7 years later. The statement in the lede is solid ("the last American to be launched alone to conduct an entirely solo orbital mission").--Tdadamemd (talk) 21:31, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

I decided to look into the history of how this article could carry such a messed up statement for so long and found this correction from Sep 2008, with the editor saying "Please do not add incorrect info." That version had the bogus statement in the Death section removed, but someone put it back in.--Tdadamemd (talk) 21:50, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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Cooper "last American to fly solo" since SpaceShip One?
The NBC news article about Brian Binnie's solo flight does not mention Cooper at all, making this a citation failure, and it is synthesis (making the source say something it doesn't by comparing it to other "known" facts) to draw this conclusion. We've had this debate about solo astronauts before; the Apollo Command Module pilots on Apollo 9-12 and 14-17 also flew solo (separate from the rest of their crews in the Lunar Module) for significant periods of time. We can't do this. JustinTime55 (talk) 15:24, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 2 external links on Gordon Cooper. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20100727041953/http://www.space.com/news/spaceagencies/gordon_ufos_000728.html to http://www.space.com/news/spaceagencies/gordon_ufos_000728.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20100727041953/http://www.space.com/news/spaceagencies/gordon_ufos_000728.html to http://www.space.com/news/spaceagencies/gordon_ufos_000728.html

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