Richard F. Gordon, Jr., in full Richard Francis Gordon, Jr. (born Oct. 5, 1929, Seattle, Wash., U.S.), American astronaut who accompanied Charles Conrad on the September 1966 flight of Gemini 11. They docked with an Agena target on the first orbit and were propelled together to a record altitude of 850 miles (about 1,370 km). During a 45-minute space walk, Gordon joined the two crafts with a tether. Gordon entered naval aviation training after he graduated from the University of Washington, Seattle, in 1951. Six years later he became a test pilot, and in 1961 he won the Bendix Trophy Race, piloting an … (100 of 259 words)
Richard F. “Dick” Gordon was a NASA astronaut who flew in orbit around the moon during Apollo 12. He was supposed to be the commander of Apollo 18, but lost the chance to walk on the moon himself when the mission was eliminated during budget cuts. Besides doing moon work, Gordon performed a tricky spacewalk during Gemini 11 that paved the way for better spacewalk planning. Additionally, he assisted with designing the Apollo cockpit before and after a fatal fire that claimed three astronauts’ lives. Gordon, a naval aviator and a test pilot, joined NASA in 1963 when the agency was in the thick of planning the Gemini program. As a new astronaut, Gordon was one of the last to fly in that program, receiving a flight slot aboard Gemini 11. Gordon completed two spacewalks during Gemini 11 which, if nothing else, showed NASA and the astronauts that they still had to figure out the best way to conduct a spacewalk. At one point during the first spacewalk, Gordon was supposed to attach a tether between the Gemini spacecraft and a target Agena vehicle, but he struggled to do so. Gordon’s first assignment in Apollo was to monitor the cockpit design for the spacecraft. The agency had switched contractors for the Apollo program, which brought on new ways of thinking and in some cases, a bit of conflict, he acknowledged.