Richard Francis "Dick" Gordon Jr. (October 5, 1929 – November 6, 2017) was an American naval officer and aviator, test pilot, and NASA astronaut, and a football executive.

[4] After graduating from college, Gordon joined the United States Navy and received his wings as a Naval Aviator in 1953.

He served with Fighter Squadron 121 (VF-121) at the Naval Air Station Miramar, California, as a flight instructor in the F4H-1 and participated in the introduction of that aircraft to the Atlantic and Pacific Fleets.

At the time, the flight set an altitude record of 1,369 kilometres (851 miles), which still stands as the highest-apogee Earth orbit.

On the flight, Gordon performed two spacewalks, which included attaching a tether to the Agena and retrieving a nuclear emulsion experiment package.

In November 1969, he flew as command module pilot of Apollo 12, the second crewed mission to land on the Moon.

While his crewmates, Pete Conrad and Alan Bean, landed in the Ocean of Storms, Gordon remained in lunar orbit aboard the command module Yankee Clipper, photographing tentative landing sites for future missions.

[4] After leaving NASA, Gordon served as executive vice president of the New Orleans Saints Professional Football Club in the National Football League (1972–1976);[2] was general manager of Energy Developers, Limited (EDL), a Texas partnership involved in a joint venture with Rocket Research Corporation for the development of a liquid chemical explosive for use in the oil and gas industry (1977); president of Resolution Engineering and Development Company (REDCO), which provided design and operational requirements for wild oil well control and fire fighting equipment on board large semisubmersible utility vessels (1978); following REDCO merger with Amarco Resources, Gordon assumed the additional duties of vice president of marketing, Westdale, an oil well servicing subsidiary of AMARCO operating in North Central Texas and Oklahoma, and also served as vice president for operations, Texas Division (1980); served as director, Scott Science and Technology, Inc., Los Angeles Division (1981–1983).

In the summer of 1984, Gordon was a technical advisor for and played the part of "Capcom" in the CBS miniseries Space by James A.

[19] Gordon wrote the foreword for astronaut Al Worden's 2011 book, Falling to Earth: An Apollo 15 Astronaut's Journey to the Moon,[20] as well as the foreword to the 2010 book Footprints in the Dust: The Epic Voyages of Apollo, 1969–1975, edited by Colin Burgess.