Thomas Stafford, 93, commander of the first US-Soviet space mission, dies

Thomas P. Stafford, an astronaut who pioneered space cooperation when he commanded the American capsule that connected with a Soviet spaceship in July 1975, died Monday in Satellite Beach, Florida. He was 93.

His death, in a retirement home, was confirmed by his wife Linda. She said he had recently been diagnosed with liver cancer.

General Stafford flew into space four times and orbited within nine miles of the moon’s surface during the mission that preceded Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s moonwalks in July 1969, fulfilling President John F. Kennedy’s quest to defeat the Soviet Union in the space race.

But when General Stafford flew with civilian astronauts Donald K. Slayton, better known as Deke, and Vance D. Brand into the Apollo capsule docked with the Soviet Union’s two-man Soyuz, some 140 miles above Earth, he watched. he goes beyond the rivalry between world powers.

The Cold War would continue until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, but as General Stafford suggested, the future of space lay in missions with international crews.

In 1959, when NASA selected the first group of seven astronauts for its Project Mercury in America’s race to put a man on the moon, General Stafford, a lanky, 6-foot-2 Oklahoman who was then a junior Air Force officer , in the selection. list. He had been a test pilot and instructor, he was a graduate of a service academy and had a scientific bent. But it was an inch too long for the Mercury capsules.

He enrolled in what would become Harvard Business School in September 1962. But on his 32nd birthday, three days after arriving in Cambridge, he was offered a place in NASA’s Gemini program because he could fit into the larger capsules that would soon be launched. He left Harvard behind.

He flew twice for the Gemini program and became an expert in rendezvous, the pairing of two spacecraft that would be needed for a trip to the moon. In May 1969, he orbited the moon in a two-man lunar module in search of a landing site for Apollo 11.

Six years later, when General Stafford’s Apollo capsule overtook the Soviet-launched Soyuz and the two spacecraft came close to each other in adjacent orbits, he radioed the Soviet astronauts, saying in Russian: “We have capture.” Colonel Leonov replied in English: “Well done, Tom, it was a good show.”

More than three hours later, General Stafford and Mr. Slayton entered the Soyuz via a communications module, while Mr. Brand remained in the Apollo to monitor the systems. General Stafford presented the Soviets with five small American flags. The Russians responded with gifts, including a sketch of the three Americans drawn by Colonel Leonov, an amateur artist.

Soviet leader Leonid I. Brezhnev sent well wishes in a message from Soviet space officials, and President Gerald R. Ford spoke to crews by phone. Over the next 44 hours, the five astronauts took turns visiting each other, conducting scientific experiments and holding a joint press conference before parting ways.

After nine days in space, the Apollo spacecraft, which had launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, crashed 330 miles northwest of Hawaii, almost right on target. But the astronauts’ mishandling of the switches during descent allowed a noxious gas to enter their room, affecting the lungs of all three crew members and resulting in their brief hospitalization upon landing. Mr Brand said he was responsible for the accident, but General Stafford said the crew bore collective responsibility.

That turned out to be a footnote to a mission that excited both Americans and Russians. When General Stafford and his fellow astronauts visited the Soviet Union in September 1975 as guests of their Russian counterparts, they were greeted with cheers and signed autographs in the streets.

Thomas Patten Stafford was born on September 17, 1930 in Weatherford, Oklahoma, west of Oklahoma City. His father, Thomas Sabert Stafford, was a dentist. His mother, Mary Ellen (Patten) Stafford, had moved to Oklahoma in her family’s covered wagon as a child.

He graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1952, where he once told Life magazine, “I was at the top in all the technical subjects, and in almost everything except behavior.”

He was commissioned in the Air Force, flew fighter planes and then attended the experimental flight test school at Edwards Air Force Base in California. After graduating in 1959, he became head of the performance department at the aerospace research pilot school at Edwards and wrote manuals for Air Force test pilots.

General Stafford’s first space flight took place in December 1965, when, as an Air Force major, he piloted Gemini 6, commanded by Captain Walter M. Schirra Jr. of the Navy. Gemini 6 orbited 200 miles above Earth and came within a foot of the Gemini 7 capsule, carrying Cmdr. James A. Lovell Jr. of the Navy and Lt. Col. Frank Borman of the Air Force, launching a few hours before Gemini 6 left its landing pad.

That mission marked the first encounter of two manned spacecraft, the kind of maneuver that had to be perfected before a lunar module would descend to the moon from a command module, which remained in orbit, and then connect with it for the journey to house.

General Stafford was back in space in June 1966 as commander of Gemini 9, flying with Navy Captain Eugene A. Cernan. Initially assigned as a backup crew, they intervened when Elliot See and Charles Bassett, the astronauts assigned to the mission, were killed in a training aircraft crash. Gemini 9 conducted three variants of encounters with a previously launched unmanned target vehicle.

During the Apollo 10 mission in May 1969, General Stafford flew into orbit around the moon with Commander Cernan in their lunar module, named Charlie Brown, while Captain John W. Young of the Navy orbited in their space capsule, Snoopy remained awaiting their return. That flight explored a potential landing site in the Sea of ​​Tranquility for Apollo 11 and was the first to broadcast live color television images from space.

General Stafford, who received his first star in 1972, served in key administrative positions at NASA after the Apollo 10 flight, then returned for his fourth space mission in the Apollo-Soyuz test project and was promoted to major general.

He left NASA to command the Air Force Flight Test Center at Edwards in 1975, and in 1978 he was promoted to lieutenant general and appointed Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff for Research and Development. He retired in November 1979 and became an aviation consultant.

Stafford Air & Space Museum, affiliated with the Smithsonian, opened two years later in his hometown of Weatherford.

General Stafford and his wife, Linda Ann (Dishman) Stafford, adopted two boys, Michael and Stas, from a Russian orphanage in 2004 with the help of Colonel Leonov, who was a character witness for the couple.

In addition to his wife, Mr. Stafford is survived by Michael and Stas; his daughters, Dionne and Karin Stafford, both from his first marriage to Faye Shoemaker, which ended in divorce; a stepdaughter, Kassie Pierce; a stepson, Mark Hill; two grandsons; four step-grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren.

As the Stafford boys adjusted to life in the United States during their first months in Oklahoma, when they were 13 and 9, General Stafford reflected on his continued friendship with Colonel Leonov and how the world had changed since their groundbreaking adventure.

“We have kept in close contact over the years,” he says told The Oklahoman newspaper in 2004. “We talk quite a bit. He used to be a great communist; now he is an investment banker.”

When Colonel Leonov died in 2019 at the age of 85, General Stafford spoke in Russian at the funeral, which was held in a Moscow suburb. He called Colonel Leonov “my colleague and friend” and said: “Alexei, we will never forget you.”

Alex Traub reporting contributed.