For Spacious Skies: The Uncommon Journey of a Mercury Astronaut

The last two chapters of this peculiar book contain a great account of Scott Carpenter's three orbit mission that he wrote. His words are written in bold face. Everything else seems to have been written by Mr. Carpenter's daughter, Kris Stoever. The rest of the book is a biography that has a

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distracting style with frequent odd sidelights about things that appear to have crossed the author's mind, and concentrating mostly on Scott Carpenter's father's shortcomings, his mother's illness and various slights imagined or real. More interesting is the authors' view of Chris Kraft who famously is reported to have said that Scott Carpenter "would never again fly in space". Kraft comes across as disturbed in more than one way. Most interesting to me, because, of course, of my own peculiarities, are the seemingly honest accounts of all the technical and human screw-ups. Apparently, the Air Force could have picked Carpenter up from his raft after he overshot his landing zone by 200 miles, but the Navy insisted that he wait until their ship-borne helicopter got there - after all, Carpenter was a Navy pilot.

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