5 Astronauts More Badass Than Any Action Movie Hero
When Cooper realized that a building full of rocket scientists had become about as useful as a chocolate heat shield, he did it himself. Fellow astronaut John Glenn helped him work out a new procedure. Cooper calculated a spacecraft re-entry with fewer tools than you have access to right now — because you have atmosphere, and the last thing Cooper’s dead instruments told him was that the cabin was filling up with deadly carbon dioxide.
Whereas most of us might use our last minutes to tell everyone exactly what we thought of them (especially electricians), Cooper just got on with personally landing the spacecraft, using a plan that would have been considered too unrealistic for most movies. Consider the dilemma presented by Apollo 13, in which the crew had to jury-rig an air-filtration system out of spare parts, and then consider this: Gordon Cooper created an entire steering and re-entry mechanism. He made marks on the window to steer the spaceship by angling it against the stars, and took manual control of the boosters, physically leaning over, pushing and pulling the fuel valves, and timing the bursts with his wristwatch.
I had never heard this story before. It is truly, truly badass.
So are the other 4 stories.
Check ‘em out.