If it sounds like I’m underwater, I am: world’s first call from ocean floor to space
Have you ever tried to telephone a loved one who lives far away, and the call kept dropping? Or it sounds like they’re talking to you from the opposite side of the world?
Well that was actually the case in 1965, when astronauts Gordon Cooper and Pete Conrad (USA) phoned up their friend aquanaut Scott Carpenter. Instead of living down the street from one another, they were in space while he was hundreds of miles below the ocean. But if Cooper and Conrad wanted to see their friend’s office, all they had to do was look down.
Carpenter was 205 miles beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean on Sealab II, working as an astronaut-turned-aquanaut off the coast of La Jolla, California (USA). On August 29, 1965 – almost 60 years ago – he received a radiotelephone call from his buddies Cooper and Conrad as they orbited the earth on Gemini V, thereby making the first telephone call from the ocean floor to space.
A scuba diver in the water
Cooper and Carpenter had been friends for years, when in 1959 they both became one of seven astronauts chosen by NASA to take part in Project Mercury. While we don’t know exactly what they talked about (besides the incredible circumstances of their call), it’s likely the pair both discussed space travel. Carpenter was a retired Navy pilot who had also already travelled to the stars before joining the Navy’s Sealab II as a training officer.
His friends above, however, were on their last day of an eight-day orbit to test human endurance in space. At this time, only the Soviets had travelled more than five days in spaceflight, but by the end of the year, Americans would complete a 14-day mission, in part thanks to this research.
After their call with Cooper, the pair directed Gemini V towards earth and splashed down in the same Pacific Ocean that very day.
While the purpose of the phone call was mainly just to say they could do it, the exploit also helped raise awareness for both projects in the sea and the stars. It also allowed researchers onboard the Sealab II to test the effectiveness of their underwater electronics lab.
The call proved successful, and the aquanauts later used the same technology to call American President Lyndon B. Johnson at the White House and Jacques Cousteau’s Conshelf III team working in the Mediterranean.
Apparently hooked on the experience, Carpenter also recreated his ocean-to-space call 30 years later in 1995, by chatting with astronauts aboard the Endeavour space shuttle while he was resting below the waves at the Jules Undersea Lodge off Key Largo, Florida.
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