Thomas P. Stafford, an astronaut who pioneered cooperation in space when he commanded the American capsule that docked with a Soviet spacecraft in July 1975, died Monday in Satellite Beach, Florida. He was 93 years old.
His death, in a nursing home, was confirmed by his wife, Linda. He said he had recently been diagnosed with liver cancer.
General Stafford flew four times into space and orbited within nine miles of the lunar surface on the mission that preceded the July 1969 walks by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, fulfilling President John F. Kennedy’s effort to better Soviet Union in the space race. .
But when General Stafford flew with astronauts Donald K. Slayton, known as Deke, and Vance D. Brand in the Apollo capsule tethered to the Soviet Union’s two-man Soyuz some 140 miles above the earth, he looked beyond the rivalries of world powers.
The Cold War would remain 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 Project Mercury in America’s race to put a man on the moon, General Stafford, a lanky, 6-foot-1 Oklahoman who was then a junior Air Force officer, was on the selection. . list. He was a test pilot and instructor, had graduated from a service academy and had a scientific bent. But he was an inch too tall for the Mercury capsules.
He enrolled at what became Harvard Business School in September 1962. But on his 32nd birthday, three days after arriving in Cambridge, he was offered a position on NASA’s Gemini program, since he could fit into the soon-to-be-launched larger capsules. He put Harvard behind him.
He flew twice for the Gemini program and became an expert in rendezvous, the joining of two spacecraft that would be required for a trip to the moon. He orbited the moon in a two-man lunar module in May 1969, searching for a landing site for Apollo 11.
Six years later, when General Stafford’s Apollo capsule met the Soviet-launched Soyuz and the two spacecraft approached adjacent orbits, he radioed the Soviet astronauts and said, in Russian, “We’ve captured.” Colonel Leonoff replied in English: “Well done, Tom, it was a good show.”
More than three hours later, General Stafford and Mr. Slayton were pulled into the Soyuz via a docking module while Mr. Brandt remained in Apollo to monitor his systems. General Stafford presented the Soviets with five small American flags. The Russians responded with gifts that included a sketch of the three Americans drawn by Colonel Leonov, an amateur artist.
Soviet leader Leonid I. Brezhnev sent his best wishes in a message relayed by Soviet space officials, and President Gerald R. Ford spoke to the crews by telephone. Over the next 44 hours, the five astronauts took turns visiting each other, conducting science experiments and holding a joint press conference before parting ways.
After nine days in space, the Apollo spacecraft, which had launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida, blasted off 330 miles northwest of Hawaii, almost right on target. But the astronauts’ mishandling of switches during descent allowed a noxious gas to enter their cabin, affecting the lungs of all three crew members and resulting in their brief hospitalization on landing. Mr Brandt said he was to blame for the accident, but General Stafford said the crew was collectively to blame.
That turned out to be a footnote in a mission that excited 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 in the streets and signed autographs.
Thomas Patten Stafford was born on September 17, 1930 in Weatherford, Okla., west of Oklahoma City. His father, Thomas Sabert Stafford, was a dentist. His mother, Mary Ellen (Patten) Stafford, had moved to Oklahoma as a child in her family’s covered wagon.
He graduated in 1952 from the United States Naval Academy where, he once told Life magazine, “I stood near the top in all engineering subjects and in almost everything except conduct.”
He commissioned in the Air Force, flew fighter jets and then attended experimental flight school at Edwards Air Force Base in California. After graduating in 1959, he became chief of the performance branch of the aerospace research pilot school at Edwards and wrote manuals for Air Force test pilots.
General Stafford’s first space flight was in December 1965 when, as an Air Force major, he piloted Gemini 6, commanded by Captain Walter M. Schirra Jr. of the Navy. Orbiting 185 miles above Earth, Gemini 6 came within striking distance of the Gemini 7 capsule, carrying Cmdr. James A. Lovell Jr. of the Navy and Lt. Col. Frank Borman of the Air Force and launched just hours before Gemini 6 left the landing site.
This mission marked the first rendezvous of two manned spacecraft, the kind of maneuver that had to be perfected to land on the moon from a command module, which remained in orbit, and then docked with it for the journey home.
General Stafford returned to space in June 1966 as commander of Gemini 9, flying with Navy Captain Eugene A. Cernan. Originally assigned as a backup crew, they stepped in when Elliott Seay and Charles Bassett, the astronauts assigned to the mission, were killed in a training aircraft crash. Gemini 9 performed three rendezvous variations with a previously launched unmanned target vehicle.
On the Apollo 10 mission in May 1969, General Stafford flew into lunar orbit with Commander Cernan in their lunar module, named Charlie Brown, while Capt. John W. Young of the Navy remained in orbit in their space capsule, Snoopy, awaiting their return. This flight scouted a potential landing site in the Sea of Tranquility for Apollo 11 and was the first to transmit live color television images from space.
General Stafford, who received his first star in 1972, held senior management positions at NASA after the Apollo 10 flight, then returned for his fourth space mission on the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project and was promoted to lieutenant general.
He left NASA to command the Air Force Flight Test Center at Edwards in 1975, and in 1978 was promoted to lieutenant general and appointed deputy chief of staff for Air Force Research and Development. He retired in November 1979 and became an aviation consultant.
The Smithsonian-affiliated Stafford Air & Space Museum opened in his hometown of Weatherford two years later.
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 to 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.
While the Staffords boys were adjusting 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 pioneering adventure.
“We’ve kept in close touch over the years,” he said he said The Oklahoman newspaper in 2004. “We talk a lot. He was a big communist in the old days. now he’s an investment banker.”
When Colonel Leonov died aged 85 in 2019, General Stafford spoke in Russian at the funeral, held in a suburb of Moscow. He called Colonel Leonov “my colleague and friend” and said: “Alexey, we will never forget you.”
Alex Traub contributed to the report.