Commander Scott Carpenter

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/10/11/us/scott-carpenter-mercury-astronaut-who-orbited-earth-dies-at-88.html?_r=0&

I didn't have sports idols as a kid, those guys were my heroes.

Farewell good sir.

(to paraphrase Tom Wolfe)

"He went higher, farther, and faster than any other American ... for a brief moment, [he] became the greatest pilot anyone had ever seen...."

Sad to say, in not to many years, the last humans to leave earths gravity will die... of old age...

Godspeed to the man that coined the phrase. A true American hero.

Yeah, remember when we used to have a space program? Kids would look up to these guys and want to be astronauts or engineers or physicists when they grew up.

Now they just want to be celebrities.

Yeah, I followed the Mercury program avidly when I was a kid, really wanted to be an astronaut. Mr. Carpenter, thank you for your contribution to the space program.

The Right Stuff... Hero indeed.