The other [Mercury] astronaut [besides Grissom and Slayton] who fell on hard times was Scott Carpenter. Scott followed John Glenn's flight with an orbital flight of his own. Scott was overloaded with scientific experiments, and he tried to do as many as he could. He was very enthusiastic about it, but he did not realize that he was wasting his fuel. His reentry was off and he missed his splash-down target by several hundred miles. There was concern that he had died (which might have crushed the program and the USA's chance at a moonshot). In fact, Scott did just fine and he waited patiently to be found. Once he was retrieved, he was eager to report the results of all of the scientific experiments he had conducted. (For one thing, Scott had solved the riddle of John Glenn's "fireflies," as depicted in the film ["The Right Stuff"]. The film does not solve this riddle at all, and suggests that these may have indeed been living creatures in space.)
Behind Scott's back, however, it was said that he had panicked (he hadn't, and his medical data and demeanor backed that up), and that he was unqualified to pilot a craft or fly in space. Whether the stain on his reputation was deserved or not, Scott never flew in space again.
Alan Shepard went to the Moon. Gus Grissom was elected to fly the first Gemini and Apollo missions. John Glenn was a national hero who made his second flight into space at advanced age. Wally Schirra and Gordo Cooper flew with Gemini and Apollo. Deke Slayton helped take men to the Moon and flew into space on Apollo-Soyuz. But Scott Carpenter made one trip into space, for just under five hours, and never went again.
