Scott Carpenter’s personally-owned olive drab fatigues that he wore during the U.S. Navy's SEALAB project in the mid-1960s, which includes: a collared button-up shirt, no size, with canvas patches to both sides of the chest, “Carpenter” and “Sealab,” and the shoulders bearing embroidered patches for “U.S. Navy Sealab” and “U.S. Naval Ord. Test Sta., Sea Lab II”; and the matching trousers with 13-star buttons and pinned tag marked “7 / 974.” In overall fine condition, with a few small holes and scuffs. Accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Stephen Hankow of Farthest Reaches, which states that these fatigues were obtained “via special arrangement with the Carpenter Family.”
Carpenter's interest in underwater research led to obtaining a leave of absence from NASA and joining the U.S. Navy's SEALAB project. After training in Bermuda in July 1964, he became a member of the SEALAB II team in 1965, spending 28 days living on the ocean floor off the coast of California; Carpenter and Gordon Cooper held the first conversation between a craft in outer space and one on the ocean floor while the latter completed his Gemini 5 mission. Carpenter returned to NASA and later joined the Navy's Deep Submergence Systems Project based in Bethesda, Maryland, as a Director of Aquanaut Operations for SEALAB III in 1967, but two surgeries in 1964 and 1967 for injuries sustained from a motorcycle accident left Carpenter unable to regain full mobility in his arm, and he was ruled ineligible for spaceflight and further deep-sea missions.
