Cooper's Treasure

It is yet another over-glorified, over-hyped reality TV show. What else would you expect from Discovery network?

As others have mentioned, you could easily condense the content into 1 or 2 episodes. There is so much repetition, that I feel like I'm being taken on an 'idiot ride' and I can't take any of it seriously. Especially the mapping from space, using such old technology to detect underwater objects from very far away, while traveling at high velocity.

Search for written documentation instead of this time-wasting trash and watch something else on NatGeo, for example.

Such a waste of do much time. They show so little real treasure hunting in each episode. The format is go over the content of last episode, talk alot about not much for most of the episode, then show a few minutes to entice you to watch the next episode. There is one episode that is all about bringing up the anchor to the surface. What a joke but that's the format all these production companies are adopting to stretch out content for many series.

Spaceflight historians and program veterans have serious problems with the fundamental premises of this show. They say there never was such a sensor on Mercury-9, there never was the slightest justification of putting such a sensor on it when airplanes could carry the sensor more effectively and cheaply, that Cooper only took a few dozen photos of the surface -- none at all over the Caribbean == that there was no way an astronaut looking out the window could accurately log latitude/longitude of anything he saw, and no way that Cooper could or would keep secret notes from the flight without NASA's knowledge. Otherwise, enjoy the show.

How many times do you have to see the same footage from space, of maps, of his face, repeating and repeating the same things over and over? It's amazing that this is on the air at all. There is no excitement, tension, and most importantly, no pay off at the end of each episode, or even at the end or the season. It really stinks!

I was initially intrigued by the premise of this show, but it quickly became apparent that all was not as it seemed. From the outset something is off about Darrell Miklos, at times he can be quite charismatic but at the same time he's unable to communicate normally with people, he's always trying to force the conversation with stuff like "remember that time me and Gordon Cooper were best friends?" It feels like he's trying to insert himself into Coopers life after the fact.

The problems just continue to get bigger when he explains how Cooper got his information, his explanation requires an astonishing level of technical ignorance to be accepted. They claim he used some camera device designed to detect nuclear installations that somehow managed to pick up underwater wrecks on a craft with less technology than a modern smartphone. At that time a craft moving at 7600 meters per second with the available optics could just about identify an object the size of a city block. Two years after this using better equipment Cooper was unable to take usable pictures or provide data on where the pictures were taken, despite having a 2nd crewman to help this time. These facts are from NASA's own log files from the mission.

If that wasn't problematic enough, Darrell Miklos's father is a known scam artist who cons people into handing over money to fund treasure hunts at which point he disappears with the money. Gordon Cooper himself was involved in several well documented scams and shady business dealings later in his life, he also told a lot of provable lies and fanciful stories.