Gordon Cooper, the last Mercury astronaut and STS-80 veteran, recounts his 1963 mission’s manual reentry after electronic failure and Cold War sightings of metallic saucer-like objects over Germany—later dismissed as weather balloons despite Area 51 footage. His Leap of Faith book argues NASA underplays human exploration’s potential, criticizing stagnation by 1999 despite early Mars ambitions. Cooper denies suppression but insists modern tech could reveal far more, like the STS-80 high-speed launch anomaly, and hopes to return for a Mars mission to study aging in space. The conversation underscores lingering questions about UFOs and NASA’s transparency amid technological advancements. [Automatically generated summary]
Attended the University of Hawaii, graduated USAF Institute of Technology with a BS in Aeronautical Engineering.
He has eleven years of graduate level training in space technology, space mechanics, lunar geology, spacecraft design, and flight testing with NASA.
Also a graduate of USAF Jet Pilot School, USAF Experimental Test Pilot School, USAF Jet Engine Rebuilding School, United States Navy Underwater Demolition Team, and USN Helicopter School.
That's a lot of school.
Served as experimental flight test project manager and test pilot at Edwards Air Force Base 1956 through 1959, selected as a Mercury astronaut in 1959, one of four surviving space pioneers from the days when there was indeed a pretty good possibility of cataclysmic booster failure or even being stranded in space.
Today, Gordon Cooper lives in Ventura, California.
He's president of Galaxy Group Inc., a highly experienced engineering design group and engaged generally in modification of existing aircraft and design and manufacture of new aircraft on the drawing board based partly on his own experience with UFOs is a design for Fantex two thousand,
a vertical lift craft with saucer shaped wings attached to a fuselage.
Gordon thinks the saucer shape is the way we should have been going with aircraft design for a long time and plans to build this vehicle complete with four vertical lift fans.
He flew the last Mercury mission in 1963 twenty two times around the Earth, thirty two hours, still, by the way, the US record for longest solo spaceflight.
On this flight, at one point, you may recall if you're old enough, he lost all electronics and then, therefore, was the first man to manually control reentry from space.
But, I mean, many times during your career, you must have thought, you know, I'm going to roll the dice, I'm going to roll the dice, and I'm going to roll the dice, and one of these times is going to come up the wrong way.
unidentified
Well, I think most, particularly fighter pilots and test pilots, have become kind of fatalists.
You know, they figure when it's your time to go, you're going to go.
No sense in jumping out in front of the truck.
But on the other hand, when it's your time, why you'll go.
You were on some of the on top, as a matter of fact, in the right stuff, I think toward the end, right at the end of the right stuff, it showed you on top of the booster, this booster in it.
This booster.
And running through your mind at a moment like that, I mean, what does run through your mind at a moment like that?
You're sitting on a virtual bomb if it decides to go that way.
unidentified
Well, you just hope that all those people that built all those little parts and tested them out so carefully did a good job on them.
I forget, I think it might have been in some recent space movie I saw just before launch, one of the astronauts commented that do you realize how many moving parts this thing has, and they were all built by the lowest bidder?
And at other times, Gordon, you, I know, saw some of our rockets blow up.
And I guess when you stand there and you're fairly close and you see one blow up, that has to be imprinted very heavily on your mind when you're seeing it.
It is, yeah.
That's what I thought.
unidentified
You just hope the one you're riding doesn't blow up like that.
Gordon, there have been a million rumors over the years that have flown around about you with regard to a UFO that you supposedly saw on a Mercury mission.
Now, that rumor isn't true, is it?
You didn't see one, did you?
unidentified
No, somebody made a lot of money selling a bunch of lies on that one.
Well, it looked just like they were at fairly high altitude, and it looked like flights of fighters flying over, flying the same basic kind of formation that we fly, in fighters.
They were going in general from east to west.
And when we got scrambled off of some of our airplanes and tried to get up closer to them to see what they were, they were very just like saucers.
They're metallic looking, but we couldn't get any close enough to get any more detail on that.
In other words, you saw something that obviously was not one of ours.
unidentified
Well, it was not one of ours, but of course, it was during the height of the Cold War with Russia at that point in time, and we really had no way of knowing what Russia might have designed and might be building.
So we really couldn't rule out that it might be some kind of new Russian aircraft.
Well, looking back on it now, I don't think they had anything like that, or at least history presently doesn't tell us they do, so I guess it wasn't one of theirs, and I guess it must make you wonder a lot today.
unidentified
Yeah, but looking back now, I suspect it was some kind of extra-traustial vehicle.
I understand that some of your film following a Gemini-5, the Gemini 5 mission was confiscated.
They came and they confiscated your film.
You had apparently been taking shots from orbit, I guess.
And, you know, it says here in the material that was sent to me, Gordon, that you were able, now bear in mind, folks, how long ago this is, you were able to get photographs good enough to show license plates on cars on the ground.
Well, you might, but, you know, years and years and years ago, we were boasting that the very best satellite spy satellites we had were capable of getting perhaps a license plate or something like that.
So if you could do that then, one has to wonder What they can do today.
unidentified
Yeah, I would assume that we've improved over that considerably.
Looking back on it now, I understand you were really angry when they confiscated your film.
Looking back on it, do you think it was...
unidentified
Well, I think I only found out fairly recently, in just recent years, from one of the men who was involved in the confiscation that the reason it got confiscated was that I had inadvertently made that we were asked to make pictures of airfields and pictures of ships at sea and pictures of cars in parking lots so they could measure resolution.
And one of these airfields that I had come over and snapped unknowingly turned out to be some little area they called Area 51.
And you see, just over the mountain from me, Gordon, is Area 51.
It's just over a mountain range here.
And I'm telling you, Gordon, we see things from time to time in this town, and just about everybody in this town can tell a story that absolutely cannot be accounted for.
They simply can't be accounted for.
In my own case, I saw a large, triangular, silent craft pass directly over my head.
I was standing there with my wife, silently, not making a sound, floating, not flying, doing, I don't know, 30 miles an hour, perhaps not enough to support aerodynamic flight of any sort that I know.
I was in the Air Force, and I used to get to fly in C-130s a lot, Gordon, and so I know what a C-130 is.
And two weeks after I saw what I saw, a report came out in our local newspaper which said, yes, indeed, on that night there had been a secret mission that may have overflown the Purump Valley, that's where I live, and that it was a C-130 aircraft.
And I had never been so insulted in my entire life.
So we see these things, and they probably come and go from Area 51.
As a test pilot, Gordon, what do you imagine?
I probably shouldn't even ask this.
What do you imagine, I mean, after all, the stealth now is why it's old news.
And this is a unique opportunity to ask him just about every question I can think of about what it's like to be in space, what it's like to sit on top of one of those rockets, and yes, what may be out there that we don't know about.
Or maybe we simply don't admit it.
So we'll try and cover as much of that ground as we can.
But, you know, maybe it's your publisher, Harper Collins, putting words in your mouth, but these are pretty strong words.
It says here, Leap of Faith is Gordon's first person story told in his own words with his co-author, Bruce Henderson, though it is part memoir and part adventure.
Its underpinning from beginning to end is his strong and unshakable belief in extraterrestrial intelligence.
That's an incredible statement.
Is that true?
unidentified
Well, I certainly believe that God created a tremendous big universe for us.
Everyone who's gone into space, you know, it's a very great humbler because you realize what a big, monstrous place this universe is.
And when you think about possibly 400 other planets that we know of right now that could have atmospheres similar to ours, it makes you wonder if we aren't being kind of vain if we think that God populated only this one planet.
When you were in orbit, you were there for quite a while, 22 orbits, 32 hours, that's a long time.
You would have time, I would presume, during that time, to look out from your spacecraft and yourself contemplate everything that you're seeing, which is a lot more than we see down here.
And did those kinds of thoughts and wonderings cross your mind then, Gordon?
unidentified
Oh, I suppose so, yes.
And you're right.
And the interesting thing that when you're up in orbit out of all the atmosphere and everything, you see about a hundred times the amount of stars that you see here on Earth.
It's really amazing.
You know, you realize that there are just millions and millions And millions of them out there.
And many, many, many of those stars you're looking at are the suns of another solar system.
In fact, it is likely that at one time, or at least possible, there was life on Mars.
We know there was an atmosphere.
We know there was water once on Mars.
All of that's true.
I guess I can't resist, Gordon, so I'll ask you there's been a lot of controversy about the face, the so-called face on Mars.
And they have gone back and they have re-photographed the face on Mars in what many people consider to be an angle that did not do service to the first photograph that we saw.
In other words, it was at such a terrible angle that, frankly, it looked like a filled cat box or something rather than a face.
What do you think about the face on Mars?
unidentified
I just don't know.
It could either be something that someone made, like some of the big symbols that were done down in Central and South America, or it could be just a natural erosion of some kind, possibly.
But I just don't know really what to make of it.
And I guess that's one of the reasons we need to send some manned missions to Mars and check some of those things out a little closer.
And you can say politics or you can say all kinds of reasons.
I just think we have not had an administration in that really had the courage and the wisdom to really put things together and really get going on it again.
And certainly a lot of it has been NASA's fault, too.
NASA has not had the courage or the wisdom that the NASA years ago had.
NASA, when they are asked about the possibility of extraterrestrial life, or even more directly to the point, the possibility that there are things in our skies that cannot be explained, NASA does get a bit defensive on the issue aboard, and they don't like talking about that sort of thing.
We had a great big investigation in this country called Project Blue Book, as you well know, that ended with the statement that whatever these are, and they certainly could not explain everything they investigated, they are not a threat to national security.
Can you buy that statement?
unidentified
No, of course, Blue Book was owned by the Air Force, not by NASA.
Gordon, in your opinion, should there be a modern-day version of Project Blue Book or whatever it is they would like to call it today that would investigate what is in our skies, is there sufficient evidence to warrant Reopening all of this legitimately this time.
unidentified
Well, I suppose if you could have a centralized, I had recommended several years ago that we use the United Nations as a repository for all the information and all the investigative teams' data to come into one central location that was sort of a neutral ground.
I don't know where it's, you know, I don't really care where it's done, but you do need somewhere to kind of correlate all these sightings and all the data that's brought in to see whether it's good, bad, or indifferent.
Some recent surveys of the American people, Gordon, have been very revealing, and a majority of the American people now believe that these things do fly in our skies.
They believe they are real.
And if you have that kind of consensus, you would think that would give some of the politicians enough backbone to call for such an investigation.
unidentified
Yeah, you would think so.
It certainly would have a good chance of getting a very favorable reception from the public.
Well, as per Air Force RAG number, da-da-da-da-da.
I can't remember the numbers of them now, but if an unusual sighting is made of any kind of unidentified flying object, you will call this particular number and report.
But I mean, as you pointed out, it's been all those years, and you rose in the ranks, and you did a lot of things that got you a lot of public exposure, and you might imagine that the general might have called you back some years later, but no, huh?
How many people, Gordon, do you think in high positions are retiring with knowledge of the kinds of things that you and I are talking about right now, taking it to their grave?
Over the years, Gordon, a lot of astronauts, Neil Armstrong, for example, at the White House, and many other occasions, a lot of astronauts have made very, very provocative statements that don't quite say that we are being visited, that the things in our skies are real.
They don't quite say that, Gordon, but they almost say it.
Neil Armstrong particularly alluded to just some incredible things that will be coming down the line.
And do you think that other astronauts are afraid to really tackle this issue straight on?
unidentified
Well, I think most people in government, whether it's in NASA or in the Department of Defense are a little cautious about what they say because there have been so many lies made up about UFOs and so many lies have been made up about all the uh space flights and and all the um you know,
the various things to do with mass and with space that I think everybody's a little skeptical about saying anything to anybody.
There's so much noise on the subject that, of course, coming from somebody like yourself or Neil Armstrong or anybody who's been in our space program, the words that you're saying tonight carry a lot of weight with the American people.
Could you have spoken out in the way you're speaking out now when your career was active, when you were still in the space program, and if you had, what would have happened?
unidentified
Well, I don't think anything would have happened.
I always have spoken out pretty loud and clear on it.
I've never had any warnings from anybody in either Department of Defense or NASA against speaking out or saying anything.
Contrary to what some news media are always saying, that we're always warned not to say anything.
I've never had any suppression of all of my speaking out.
Would it be your opinion, Gordon, that our government is very well aware of these things doing tremendous speeds and maneuvers in and just above our atmosphere?
But is there any way with the technology that you know and I know they have that they could not be aware of it?
unidentified
No, I think there's just too many, you know, too many solid-sensitive people who have seen things to totally disregard it.
And certainly, you know, we even have had the skeptics who have always said that the speed of light is definitely by far the greatest limitation in any kind of speed we move at, and yet every physicist in the block is now amazing neutrinos zipping around at many times the speed of light all over space.
And so you don't imagine that a violation of Einstein's theory about not being able to exceed the speed of light.
You rather imagine that sometime in our distant future or somebody else's present it's already been achieved?
unidentified
Well, even Einstein was modifying all his formulas when he was using time, when he went back and started using time as a variable rather than a constant.
And so before he died, he was opening up his theories to greater and greater speed.
Gordon, going back again to 1957 at Edwards, we did talk about the photographs that were taken, and it's my understanding that before you sent off these photographs as ordered, you got to see them.
Apparently, the cameramen were told that what was in the negative was a balloon.
unidentified
Several years later, when things came out on it, that was my understanding that someone had interviewed them, and they were told that that's what the pictures were.
Yeah, the only balloon I've ever seen with landing gear.
Although, you know, it's funny, one time I was two T-38 fellows, Pete Conrad and I, and Neil Armstrong, Liet C, were heading up to St. Louis to do some work on Gemini 5 spacecraft.
And we were cruising along around 40-something thousand feet in two T-38s, just loose formation.
I looked out about 10 o'clock high and said, what do you see out there about 10 o'clock high?
And Neil came back with, I don't know that I really want to say what it looks like.
Now, was that because of the I presume you guys went through a lot of testing with what they called the vomit comet or something or another that would produce temporary states of weightlessness in a dive, right?
unidentified
Yeah.
And then you climb and then as you climb over the top, you know, as you're going across the top, you're in a situation of weightlessness.
One of the mandates, Gordon, that NASA has is to begin to privatize space.
And it's really one of the things that has not come to fruition.
They were mandated by Congress to begin to privatize space.
And if it could ever get in the private sector, then maybe some people could literally go to space on vacation someday, I'm sure.
Do you believe that that process should be hurried?
unidentified
Well, I think that it is coming along a little slower than everyone has hoped, but there are a number of companies that are building spacecraft of different kinds and building boosters, several different companies building boosters and the private sector.
And I think we will see space begin to have quite a bit of privatization occurring fairly shortly.
You are in the middle of apparently this galaxy group, which is producing, among many other things, something called the Fantex 2000, a vertical lift craft with saucer-shaped wings.
Why do you think, it says here that you think the saucer shape is the way we should have been going with aircraft design for a long time.
Why?
unidentified
Well, one of the reasons we did not in years back is that we had no artificial stability system.
And a saucer is inherently neutrally or slightly unstable.
And with the old advent of mechanical control systems, you perhaps could have some trouble controlling it.
But now with artificial stability, there's no reason why you can't take advantage of all the aerodynamics that you get off a saucer.
And a saucer certainly has very interesting aerodynamics compared to a wing.
Actually, I don't even understand the aerodynamics of a saucer.
I understand a wing, and I understand lift, and I understand aerodynamic flight, and I don't understand how to relate that to something in a saucer shape.
unidentified
Well, a saucer really is just like a wing.
It's just like the whole vehicle really is a lifting body or lifting wing.
Well, if you are heading a company that is doing this, then is it too much of a leap of faith to imagine that they've got saucer-shaped flying things out at Area 51?
unidentified
Well, as I said earlier, I certainly hope they do.
I hope they're really a few generations ahead of the aircraft that we all see around.
All right, well, thank you very, very much for that.
Gordon, I don't know if you can answer this or not, or maybe you can just say you can't answer it, which will tell us as much as really, I guess, an answer would, or nearly as much.
And that is this question.
Are there many things that occurred to you during the time you were in the space program or during all the years that you were connected to NASA and experimental aircraft?
Are there many things that even today you can't talk about?
Then there was another more recent shuttle flight, and I'm not sure if it was 50, I think it was 50, Gordon, in which the outboard camera on the shuttle appeared to come down and focus on a specific piece of land.
Whoever was controlling the camera from the ground focused on a specific piece of land and zoomed in and waited.
And without question, there was something that appeared to come up from the ground at an incredible speed.
Perhaps some sort of experiment, perhaps something leaving the atmosphere at a tremendous speed.
I really have no idea.
Maybe some sort of laser or plasma weapon or who knows.
If you, back then, were able to take photographs of license plates, then they should by now very nearly be able to count the hairs on our head if they wanted to.
Is that too much of a leap of faith, or do you agree?
One more wild question, and that is, obviously, I mean, I think all Americans know that the astronauts had an awful lot of camaraderie.
You guys were very close, very competitive, but very close.
And there must have been a lot of times when you got to sit in a bar somewhere, knocking back a few with some of the other guys.
Were you ever told anything by any of the other astronauts about anything that was seen on the moon or elsewhere that they didn't really particularly want to talk about in public?
unidentified
No, I never have, and I certainly would have been, you know, had they seen anything of that kind.
I interviewed Edgar Mitchell, who got to walk on the moon, and he made some comments that to this day I wonder about, Gordon, and they were.
He said, you know, it's kind of strange, but when I try to think back and remember my emotions and my feelings as I was walking on the moon, I can't.
And that always puzzled me.
You would think that would be such a high point in your life that there would be almost nothing that you would forget about it or that you didn't notice.
But he did make that comment on the air with me, and I thought that was very strange.
unidentified
Well, one of the things that people don't realize is that all through every space flight is so well planned and every little detail and practically every second of the whole flight is planned out because the time is so valuable, you know.
I've long said that people don't, many times they don't see things in our skies because, you know, we're driving our cars or we're doing our tasks and we're not spending a lot of time looking up at the sky.
unidentified
That's right.
You can't very well look up at the sky when you're running down a freeway somewhere.
My main question to you, sir, was during the early parts of the space project, since we really didn't know what was out in space, near-Earth orbit objects, what was the concern on them?
Actually, I'll expand it, but was there a lot of concern about near-Earth objects, things that might be orbiting our planet that you might run into accidentally?
unidentified
Yeah, but actually, even in fairly early days we had a pretty good hand on where all these uh pieces of space junk or spare parts and everything were.
We knew where most of them were.
Uh you just hope that uh you know you didn't run into some that you didn't know were there.
I had a member of the clergy on, Gordon, down in Florida who actually I can only reveal so much about what he does, but he has some connections at the Air Force Base there.
And there was something that came into our atmosphere over Florida, over Tampa, the Tampa area, moving west, that zigged and zagged in ways that anything that you would imagine would be entering the atmosphere could not possibly do.
Not possibly do.
And he claims that three, actually four, I think, F-16s were scrambled in the direction this object had come from, and that three of the F-16s lost control, all power for a very short period, but all at once.
Is there any way that you could calculate the odds of that occurring?
unidentified
Well, if you had a large electromagnetic anomaly of some type, the F-16 is a digital flight control airplane.
And I can remember an instance several years ago where an F-16 flew by a very large radio transmitting tower and lost all control for a short period of several seconds.
You're familiar with Story Musgrave, is that right?
Oh, yes.
Well, Art, I believe on one of your programs, someone had called in and said that at a convention that was held in Hawaii not too long ago, towards the first of the year, or sometime around then, and Story had given a presentation.
And he closed his presentation by pointing to like a depiction of the graves.
And he said, gentlemen, something to the effect that these guys are real.
In other words, two photographers at Edwards Air Force Base took photographs of this object, and Gordon got to see the negatives of the pictures that were taken before they were spirited off to Washington, never to be heard from again.
I was wondering, now, did you imagine, this is kind of a two-part question, did you imagine that we would not be further along by the year 2000, this is 99 now, than we are?
And what direction now do you think the space program should really concentrate on, you know, like planetary exploration and in what sort?
When you were making your space flights, did you imagine that when thinking about the year 2000, that we'd be a lot further along, maybe by now to Mars or beyond?
unidentified
I thought we'd be long beyond Mars by now.
I think we have not progressed.
It's pitiful how poorly we've progressed really compared to what we should have.
Do you agree that we've stagnated?
Yes.
And I think where we need to concentrate is manned planetary exploration.
No, because we had calculated how many we'd be pulling, and we'd done a lot of practicing on the centrifuge with a profile that was a very similar profile.
So the actual launch profile was very close to what we had worked out on the centrifuge.
What a great honor to be able to speak with a man like that.
You're listening to Coast to Coast AM, and we're going to take a break here at the top of the hour.
When we come back, I'm going to do something I very, very rarely do because not all radio stations get to hear the first hour of the program.
We had a member of the clergy on, brought to us by Peter Davenport of the National UFO Reporting Center in Seattle, Washington.
So I'm going to come back after the top of the hour, and I'm going to do the commercial work I have to do, and then I am going to, as best we're able, replay that for you.
And I've done this perhaps two or three times in my career on radio.