Celebrity Graveland

March 6, 1927 – October 4, 2004

One common denominator amongst pilots – test pilots, in particular – is a love for speed. The need to go faster. To push limits. This desire is ideal when you are piloting prototype jets that have never been piloted before. It’s essential if you want to be crazy enough to strap yourself to a 260,000 pound rocket and launch into the unknown vastness of space.

Leroy Gordon Cooper Jr. loved speed. Thanks to his parents’ love for planes and his father’s service as a military pilot, Gordon learned to fly at a young age. He earned his first certification at the age of just 16. He enlisted in the United States Marines after high school, but World War II ended before he could be deployed. He was eventually discharged from the Marines and joined the Army ROTC (Reserve Officers’ Training Corp) in college. He entered flight school for the U.S. Air Force and earned a degree in Aerospace Engineering. He naturally became a test pilot alongside friend and classmate, Gus Grissom, and logged more than 2,000 hours as an experimental pilot. 

In 1959, Cooper received orders to report to Washington D.C. It was there he found out he was on the short list for a new manned space program called Project Mercury.
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March 12, 1923 – May 3, 2007

Walter “Wally” Schirra was a naval test pilot and one of the Mercury 7 astronauts. Schirra served aboard the USS Alaska during World War II and became a pilot for the Navy in 1948. He flew 90 missions during the Korean war and began test piloting aircraft in the years that followed. In 1959, Schirra was selected for Project Mercury and the first American manned-spaceflight program. He flew the Mercury-Atlas 8 mission onboard the Sigma 7 space capsule. MA-8 orbited the earth six times and allowed Schirra to manually pilot the capsule successfully.
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