Richard F. Gordon Jr. walked in space on Gemini XI and orbited the Moon on Apollo XII.
He was born October 5, 1929, in Seattle, Washington, and received a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Washington in 1951.
Naval aviator and test pilot
Gordon received his wings as a Naval Aviator in 1953. He attended All-Weather Flight School and Jet Transitional Training and was assigned to an All-Weather Fighter Squadron at Naval Air Station Jacksonville, Florida. He then attended the Navy’s Test Pilot School at Patuxent River, Maryland, and was a flight test pilot there until 1960.
He later served with Fighter Squadron 121 at Naval Air Station Miramar, California, as a flight instructor in the F4H, and helped introduce that aircraft to the Atlantic and Pacific fleets. He was also Flight Safety Officer, Assistant Operations Officer and Ground Training Officer for Fighter Squadron 96 at Miramar.
In May 1961 he won the Bendix Trophy Race from Los Angeles to New York, setting a speed record of 869.74 miles per hour and a transcontinental record of 2 hours and 47 minutes.
Astronaut
NASA selected Gordon as an astronaut in 1963. He made his first space flight as Pilot of the three-day Gemini XI mission, launched September 12, 1966. He and Command Pilot Charles “Pete” Conrad Jr. tracked down and docked with an Agena target on their first orbit. Gordon left the spacecraft for a planned 115-minute spacewalk, but had to cut it short after 44 minutes because there was nothing to hold him in position in weightlessness, a lesson that shaped every spacewalk that followed. Using the Agena’s engine, the crew then climbed to a record altitude of 853 miles.
Gordon and Conrad flew together again on Apollo XII, launched November 14, 1969, with Alan Bean. While Gordon circled the Moon 60 nautical miles up in the Command Module, Yankee Clipper, Conrad and Bean made a pinpoint landing in the Ocean of Storms, near the unmanned Surveyor III probe that had touched down there two years earlier, and made two moonwalks.
He also served on the backup crews for Gemini 8, Apollo 9 and Apollo 15. In 1971 he became Chief of Advanced Programs in the Astronaut Office, working on the design and testing of the Space Shuttle.
After NASA
In 1972 he retired from NASA and the Navy to become Executive Vice President of the New Orleans Saints professional football team. He was inducted into the Astronaut Hall of Fame on March 19, 1993.
Richard F. Gordon Jr. died on November 6, 2017.