Why did Thomas Stafford die? Here is the cause of death

Thomas Stafford, 93, Commander of First U.S.-Soviet Space Mission, Dies
The Apollo-Soyuz mission, amid the Cold War, broke new ground in space cooperation when an American capsule docked with a Soviet craft 140 miles above the earth.

Thomas P. Stafford, an astronaut who pioneered cooperation in space when he commanded the American capsule that linked up with a Soviet spaceship in July 1975, died on Monday in Satellite Beach, Fla. He was 93.

His death, in a retirement home, was confirmed by his wife, Linda. She said he had recently been diagnosed with liver cancer.

General Stafford flew four times in space and orbited within nine miles of the moon’s surface on the mission that preceded the moon walks of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in July 1969, fulfilling President John F. Kennedy’s quest to best the Soviet Union in the space race.

But when General Stafford flew with the civilian astronauts Donald K. Slayton, known as Deke, and Vance D. Brand in the Apollo capsule that docked with the Soviet Union’s two-man Soyuz some 140 miles above the earth, he looked beyond the rivalries of world powers.

“I’m sure we have opened up a new era in the history of man,” he told the two Soviet astronauts, Lt. Col. Aleksei A. Leonov and Valery N. Kubasov.

The Cold War would linger 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 chose the first group of seven astronauts for its Project Mercury in America’s race to put a man on the moon, General Stafford, a lanky, 6-foot Oklahoman who was then a junior Air Force officer, was on the selection list. He had been a test pilot and an instructor, he had graduated from a service academy, and he 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 his arrival in Cambridge, he was offered a spot in NASA’s Gemini program, since he could fit into the larger capsules that would soon be launched. He put Harvard behind him.

He flew twice for the Gemini program and became an expert in rendezvous, the linkup of two spacecraft that would be required for a moon voyage. He orbited the moon in a two-man lunar module in May 1969, scouting a landing site for Apollo 11.

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Six years later, when General Stafford’s Apollo capsule caught up with the Soyuz launched by the Soviet Union, and the two spacecraft drew close in adjoining orbits, he radioed the Soviet astronauts and said, in Russian, “We have capture.” Colonel Leonov replied in English, “Well done, Tom, it was a good show.”

More than three hours later, General Stafford and Mr. Slayton crawled into the Soyuz through a connecting module while Mr. Brand remained in the Apollo to monitor its 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.

The Soviet leader, Leonid I. Brezhnev, sent good wishes in a message transmitted by Soviet space officials, and President Gerald R. Ford spoke to the crews by telephone. Over the next 44 hours, the five spacemen took turns visiting with one another, conducting scientific experiments and holding a joint news conference before separating.

After nine days in space, the Apollo spacecraft, which had been launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida, splashed down 330 miles northwest of Hawaii, almost precisely on target. But the astronauts’ mishandling of switches during descent allowed a noxious gas to enter their chamber, affecting the lungs of all three crewmen and resulting in their brief hospitalization upon landing. Mr. Brand said he was to blame for the mishap, but General Stafford said the crew bore a collective responsibility.

That proved a footnote to a mission that thrilled Americans and Russians alike. 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 on the streets and they signed autographs.

Thomas Patten Stafford was born on Sept. 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 the engineering subjects, and in just about everything but conduct.”

He was commissioned in the Air Force, flew fighter planes and then attended the experimental flight test 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.