Category Freedom 7

It is always pleasing once a book is in manuscript form to acknowledge in print the assistance and support of all those people whose enthusiasm and kindness helped to shape the end product. This is the case now, in presenting this record of America’s first human-tended flight into space. Brief though that mission was, it emphatically signaled the beginning of a grand enterprise embracing both science and exploration for the United States.

Firstly, I would like to acknowledge the bountiful help of some people who were either there as this historic mission evolved and was carried through to completion, or them­selves witnessed the amazing events of 5 May 1961. Many thanks, therefore, for their information, photographs and memories to Dean Conger, Philip Kempland, Ed Killian, Wayne Koons, Larry Kreitzberg, H. H. (‘Luge’) Luejten, Paul Molinski, Earl Robb, Joe Schmitt, Charles Tynan, Jr., and Frank Yaquiant.

Other assistance was freely given by Susan Alexander, David and Debi Barka, Reuben Barton, Kerry Black (of the Scotsman Publications Library), Lou Chinal, Dr. Bruce Clark, Rory Cook (Science Museums Group, London), Rick DeNatale, Ken Havekotte, Ed Hengeveld, Richard Kaszeta, Tacye Phillipson (National Museums Scotland), J. L. Pickering, Eddie Pugh, Stephane Sebile, Hart Sastrowardoyo, Norma Spencer, Julie Stanton, David Lee Tiller, and Charles Walker.

Special mention must also be made of the wonderfully supportive and ongoing help I received from Robert Pearlman and the space sleuths, experts, and enthusiasts who fre­quent his website, www. collectspace. com, on which no question ever passes unanswered and offers of assistance flow freely from people with a similar passion for all things to do with the history, present, and future of space exploration. For this Australian space enthu­siast, a day never passes without checking at least once – and often more – the latest posts on this truly amazing forum.

As always, I have to thank an old friend and writing collaborator, Francis French, who readily lends an expert eye by reading through my chapter drafts on his daily train com­mute home from San Diego, seeking overlooked typos, grammatical errors, or missed (or misinterpreted) facts. His suggestions for adding extra information or stories are also greatly appreciated.

Thanks yet again to Clive Horwood of the Praxis team in the United Kingdom for his continuing support of my ideas for books. Similar thanks go to Maury Solomon, Editor of Physics and Astronomy, and Assistant Editor Nora Rawn, both at Springer in New York. Thanks to Jim Wilkie for his brilliant cover artwork. And of course to the man who pro­vides that final polish to my work, the incomparable copyeditor and fellow space aficio­nado David M. Harland.

Thank you one and all for helping me to tell this truly amazing and inspiring story from the very beginning of the human space flight era.

Meanwhile the landing ship dock USS Donner (LSD-20), which had previously been involved in Mercury-Redstone recovery trials, was proceeding at flank speed to the reported landing area, together with Task Force destroyers USS Ellison, Borie, and Manley. Twenty-seven minutes after splashdown, airman technician Jerry Bilderback aboard a Navy P2V Neptune patrol plane became the first person to spot the capsule pitching around in white-capped seas. Unfortunately, the overshoot meant that the Donner was still some 60 miles away and it was almost an hour before the helicopter dispatched by the ship with pilots John Hellriegel and George Cox was able to reach the scene.

Once they were hovering overhead, the pilots alarmingly reported that the capsule was tilted on its side in a seven-foot swell, and it appeared to be sitting much deeper than expected in the water. By now, the destroyer USS Ellison had reached the site. With no time to spare, two trained frogmen quickly jumped out of the helicopter and attached cables to fixed points on the wallowing spacecraft to help keep it upright in the water. As the helicopter hovered, Cox reached down from the lower cabin with a shepherd’s hook and attached a towline from the aircraft to a loop on the capsule.

At 2:52 p. m. Hellriegel applied full power and slowly hoisted the MR-2 capsule, streaming seawater, into the air. The precious cargo was flown all the way back to the USS Donner and gently deposited onto the deck at 3:38 p. m., where willing hands soon secured it. This good news was relayed to Cape Canaveral nearly three hours after liftoff.

When it was safe to do so, the spacecraft’s steel hatch was removed, exposing the canister with Ham inside. The sailors involved also noticed a foot and a half of salt water sloshing around inside the capsule. It was later estimated the spacecraft had taken on about 800 pounds of sea water, but was otherwise in good shape. Happily, the water had not infiltrated Ham’s container. He was unaware of how close he had come to sinking ignominiously to the bottom of the Atlantic.

Meanwhile, doctors back at the Cape were deeply concerned that Ham might have been injured during the crushing forces of the flight, or through the hard splashdown. About 35 minutes after reaching the ship, Ham’s container was resting on the deck. One very confused chimpanzee could be heard squealing his discontent from within. The window was fogged over, but it cleared when oxygen was fed in through a small hatch, and Ham came into view.

“He’s alive,” reported a relieved Maj. Richard Benson, an Air Force veterinary doc­tor. “He’s talking to us.” The sailors then opened a small porthole to enable the veteri­narian to insert his hand. Ham cried steadily. “That could mean some anxiety,” Benson told the surrounding sailors. “He’s just vocalizing.”

Ham’s spacecraft (circled at top) with the recovery helicopter overhead. At bottom (also circled) are two men in a raft near the bow of the USS Ellison. Their task was to right the capsule and help to attach a tow line so that it could be hoisted out of the water. (Photo: U. S. Navy)

One sailor who got a glimpse of the animal was asked, “How does he look?” “Fine,” replied the sailor. “He’s smiling at me.”

Ham was turning his head from side to side, watching the onlookers curiously and licking his pink chops. He reached a couple of the fingers of his right hand through the port to grasp the hand of Benson. Then he rubbed his face and eyes and yawned. When the Plexiglas lid had been fully removed from the container, he once again shook hands with Benson, burped, and folded his arms across his chest while the veterinarian checked his heart rate with a stethoscope. Benson then reached down to test the ani­mal’s diapers. “They’re damp,” he said with a smile.

Following the brief checkup, Benson happily announced, “On the basis of this preliminary examination I’d say he looks very good. It is very encouraging.” [10] Ham was carried to the ship’s battle dressing station and placed on a white table, where he was carefully unstrapped from his couch. Once again Benson checked the chimpanzee’s heart rate, as well as his temperature, respiration, and lung conditions, and looked for any evidence of broken bones. Unsurprisingly, Ham did display some signs of fatigue, a little wobbling and trembling of his legs when standing, and he had somehow sustained a slight abrasion to the bridge of his nose.

Apart from the facial abrasion everything was fine, and Ham’s reflexes were also found to be normal. Benson then produced a shiny red apple, at which Ham became excited, jumping and reaching out in anticipation. Benson cut the apple and fed it to him in slices as a post-flight treat, which he eagerly devoured. The flight had clearly

not affected Ham’s appetite. While he ate, Ham stood with his arm around the major, and later consumed half an orange along with a small wedge of lettuce.

Later, with Benson sleeping in an adjoining stateroom, Ham spent the night in the commodore’s quarters as the ship steamed across a moonlit ocean for Grand Bahama Island. It was not exactly a trip of luxury, because he was in a cage on the floor of the bathroom, lashed to the toilet and the safety rail that was designed to prevent one from slipping after a shower aboard a rolling, pitching ship. But these were merely safety precautions aimed at protecting precious government research property [11].

It was a frustrating time for the reporters and photographers, and for the public now deserting the Cape’s sodden beaches. They had all spent a wet and miserable night waiting for the eagerly anticipated launch shortly after sunrise.

But in the midst of the bad news, there was an unexpected revelation: NASA had decided to reveal the name of the first astronaut. The announcement stated that Cdr. Alan Shepard had been selected to pilot the flight that day, and this would probably remain so for the next attempt. “I was relieved when they made the announcement,” Shepard later revealed. “It was getting to be a strain keeping the secret.” [5] Ironically, just thirty minutes after the delay announcement, the Sun broke through the dense cloud layer.

Apart from some maintenance work on the vehicle, everything remained in a ‘go’ situation. However, the cold front that had stationed itself over the Florida peninsula continued to keep launch conditions below the required minimum. Over the next two days, technicians painstakingly purged the Redstone of its corrosive fuel, rechecked its circuitry, and carried out a repair to one of the liquid oxygen lines.

Meanwhile, apart from some simulator work, Shepard was able to relax; taking a nap, answering mail, running at a local beach, and going over the flight plan with his backup and roommate, John Glenn. The weather slowly began to improve, leading Col. Powers to inform a bevy of anxious reporters, “The weather man tells us that it looks like the weather will be clear enough for us to go… the chances are better than 50-50 in our book that we can get off the launching before the weather worsens.” [6] Shepard was a relieved man. “At the scheduled meeting Thursday morning we got pretty fair weather reports. The launch crews were picking up the count again at T minus 390 minutes, and I felt glad that I was going to be able to give it a whirl.” [7]

The three-day delay actually proved beneficial to the waiting astronaut. “To my surprise, I felt the launch delay actually eased the tension that had been building up inside me. Before the May 2 [attempt] I’d been plagued with visions of rockets tum­bling out of control or blowing up in the air – after all, I’d seen this happen – but during those three days I was able to back off, regroup, and hit it again. I recognized I was experiencing normal apprehension and not fear. The entire reasoning process was old hat to a test pilot. I knew how to turn off this kind of stuff, and I felt calm as the new launch date of May 5 neared.” [8]

A pre-flight briefing was conducted at11:00 a. m. on 4 May in order to examine all the operational elements of the flight. “This briefing was helpful since it gave us a chance to look at weather, radar, camera, and recovery force status. We also had the opportunity to review the control procedures to be used during flight emergencies as well as any late inputs of an operational nature. This briefing was extremely valuable to me in correlating all of the details at the last minute.” [9]

That afternoon Shepard and Glenn took a leisurely walk along a nearby beach to catch crabs. They were ready to go.

“The night of May 4, however, the other astronauts and support teams brought their own tension onto the scene,” Shepard reflected. “Everyone but me was walking on eggshells. Despite the strong feelings about weather, rocket reliability, the escape sys­tem, anything and everything, no one dared broach those subjects. It all got so thick that I went into my bedroom and phoned my family in Virginia Beach.” [10]

Louise was delighted to hear from her husband. They discussed the weather and the prospects for a launch the next morning. He spoke briefly with Louise’s parents and his daughters before promising his wife he would take care of himself and that he loved her. Then he went to get some sleep.

George Cox remained on the Sikorsky’s lower deck with Shepard for the short flight back to the carrier. Within seven minutes of retrieving the spacecraft from the water, the helicopter was zeroing in on the USS Lake Champlain.

As Shepard later pointed out, “When we approached the ship, I could see sailors crowding the deck, applauding and cheering and waving their caps. I felt a real lump in my throat.” [32] He waved to the men as the pilots prepared to land.

On board “The Champ,” there was outstanding reason to celebrate, as related by Scott Thompson from Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania. First, there had been the sight of Freedom 7’s splashdown. “We knew about where to watch. We saw this little speck coming down from the sky. Then we saw the parachute open and float down. When the capsule hit the water, there was a lot of steam because it was so hot.” Soon after, an announcement blared out over the ship’s loudspeakers reporting that Shepard was okay, giving rise to loud cheers. “Everybody went crazy because they were so happy. They knew it was an historic event – the first U. S. man in space. They could have heard us a long way off. We made a lot of noise.” [33]

As in rehearsals, Koons carefully lowered Freedom 7 onto the specially prepared platform that had been cushioned with mattresses. On Cox’s command, he released the carrying hook. “The cargo hook could only be released by the pilot,” Koons says. “The basic hook design, installed on all Marine HUS helicopters, had two methods of release. The first method was electrical, actuated by a button on the pilot’s cyclic stick. The second method of release was mechanical, actuated by a foot pedal on the floor near the pilot’s right heel. For Mercury retrievals, the electrical circuitry was discon­nected. A special latch was installed on the cargo hooks for Mercury retrieval work. This latch prevented opening the hook until it was released by a lever on the cyclic. After releasing the latch, the hook could be opened by the foot pedal.” [34]

Once the spacecraft had been safely situated on the platform and released, Koons set the helicopter down on the deck in front of 1,200 raucous sailors.

Freedom 7 had landed four nautical miles from where the USS Lake Champlain was stationed. The recorded departure time for the Marine helicopters that flew out to retrieve Shepard was 0927 (according to the OPNAV Part C record). Splashdown was at 0949, and the helicopter’s arrival back at the carrier was at 1000, a total of 33 minutes.

Koons has a particularly fond memory. “I was busy shutting the helicopter down and here Shepard in his silver suit minus the hard hat comes slithering up… through the space where George would have been if he were going to get up in his seat. He reached over and whacked me on the leg and [said], ‘Good boy.’ Then back down he went.” [35]

Another person on board that day, NASA representative Charles Tynan, also has a serendipitous recollection. Film cameras were able to document the flight of the helicopter which carried Shepard and Freedom 7 to a safe touchdown on the carrier, but “the Movietone News photographer later sent his movie film off the ship in a COD [cargo] aircraft and talked about possibly winning a Pulitzer Prize. I heard that shipboard personnel put a suicide watch on him when he found out his camera had malfunctioned and his film canister contained blank film.” [36] It was later rumored that the hapless fellow had filmed the entire operation but had failed to remove his lens cover.

NASA, meanwhile, had issued an updated press bulletin declaring, “Test No. 108 is terminated. This was the pioneer U. S. man-in-space flight. The Mercury spacecraft is on the deck of the aircraft carrier Lake Champlain and the helicopter is about to land. Shepard is about to come out of helicopter.” [37]

As the chopper was powered down, Navy physician Robert C. Laning and Army physician M. Jerome Strong approached and stood by the closed door. There was a moment or two of suspense before the door was suddenly flung open. George Cox climbed out, ready to assist the astronaut out of the helicopter, but he needn’t have bothered; Shepard jauntily leapt down to the deck. Only eleven minutes had elapsed since splashing into the ocean. Standing on the deck, Shepard shook hands with Cox and gave him a heartfelt, “Thank-you, very much.”

The magnitude of the welcome finally hit Shepard. “Until the moment I stepped out onto the flight deck of the carrier, I hadn’t realized the intensity of the emotions and feelings that so many people had for me, for the other astronauts, and the whole manned

space program. This was the first sense I had of public response, of a public expression of thanks for what we were doing. I was very close to tears.” [38]

According to the tight schedule, it was time for a medical checkup and to record a free-dictation report whilst the flight was still fresh in his mind. The two physi­cians approached, eager to escort Shepard to the admiral’s cabin, but there was one last distraction for America’s first astronaut. “I started for the quarters where the doctors would give me a quick once-over before I flew on to Grand Bahama Island for a full debriefing. But first I went back to the capsule, which had been gently lowered onto a pile of mattresses on the carrier’s deck. I wanted to retrieve the hel­met that I’d left in the cockpit. And I wanted to take one more look at Freedom 7. I was pretty proud of the job that it had done too.” [39]

As the Navy helicopter hovers nearby, and much to the surprise of everyone present, Shepard returned briefly to Freedom 7 to fetch his helmet from the capsule. (Photos courtesy of Ed Killian)

Shepard, helmet in hand, is escorted below deck by Dr. Jerome Strong (partially obscured). (Photo courtesy of Dean Conger/NASA)

Dean Conger (right, with camera) records Shepard departing the flight deck. (Photo courtesy of Howard Skidmore)

Ed Buckbee, who would go on to become the first director of the U. S. Space and Rocket Center and the founder of Space Camp, both located in Huntsville, Alabama, was a public affairs officer for the space agency at the time of Shepard’s space shot. Some years later he asked the astronaut about climbing up and peering around the interior of his spacecraft. “Well, for one thing,” Shepard responded, “a fighter pilot never leaves his helmet in the cockpit, so I reached in to get my helmet. I also looked around the instrument panel to see if I turned everything off.” [40]

Shepard was then taken to the admiral’s in-port cabin, located just forward of the port side deck-edge elevator and accessed by a catwalk running along the edge of the flight deck. It was here that he would disrobe and have his biomedical leads removed prior to medical checks. “I don’t think you’re going to have much to do,” he told Dr. Laning with a wide grin as he consumed a refreshing glass of orange juice.

The priority task was to determine Shepard’s condition immediately after having undergone high acceleration forces at launch, weightlessness, and deceleration loads. It had been feared that even a few minutes of weightlessness might possibly cause a lingering disorientation and perhaps even affect an astronaut’s mind. But Shepard reported that he hardly realized when he had begun experiencing weightlessness, and his five minutes of zero-g proved to have left no trace of physiological or mental impairment. “It was painless,” he pointed out. “Just a pleasant ride.” He said the first real indication of being in a weightless state – he was tightly strapped in – was when a

stray washer floated by his left ear. In his opinion, having taken direct control of his spacecraft, an astronaut was fully capable of functioning freely in a weightless condition.

After this brief examination, the two doctors had to concur with Shepard’s earlier remark that they wouldn’t have much to do. Although he had arrived in the admiral’s cabin perspiring and with a high pulse rate, that had soon settled once he was finally able to relax. He was in his usual superb physical condition. A more detailed medical examination was to be made when he arrived later that day at Grand Bahama Island. With the tests done, Shepard dictated his remaining impressions of the flight into a tape recorder.

Meanwhile, there were mixed feelings of pride, joy and relief for his wife at their ranch-style home in Virginia Beach. Once she had composed herself, Louise went out onto the front porch and the waiting crowd of news reporters and photographers swarmed in to capture her mood in their notebooks and cameras. “I don’t have to tell you how I feel,” she said, with a wide, happy smile on her face. “It’s just wonderful. It’s beautiful… just wonderful.” [41]

In Shepard’s hometown of East Derry, New Hampshire, the whole town exploded into a full-scale holiday. The streets were filled with rapturous people whooping and cheering and shaking hands with everyone they met, whilst church bells pealed out their glad tidings, fire engines wailed, and car horns added to the cacophony. There were calls for the town to be renamed “Spacetown, U. S.A.”

Although his surgery was successful, Shepard had lost his chance to fly on Gemini, and there were serious doubts that he would ever fly into space again. To remain part of the astronaut cadre, he had earlier accepted an interim appointment as Chief of the Astronaut Office, giving him a major influence in the training and assignment of his fellows. Eventually, his never-say-die attitude would see him regain active astronaut status, and he promptly launched a determined campaign for a slot aboard a manned Apollo lunar mission.

Almost a decade after his historic flight aboard Freedom 7, Shepard was launched into space for a second and final time on 31 January 1971 as the commander of the Apollo 14 mission. Aged 47, he became the oldest of the twelve men to place their boot prints in the lunar dust. Along with Edgar Mitchell, he spent 33 hours exploring the Fra Mauro terrain. He freely admits that when he stepped off the Lunar Module Antares for the first time and stood on the lunar surface he shed tears of wonderment and joy.

At the end of their final excursion, Shepard impishly pulled out a club head which he had secretly brought along, and clipped it onto the long handle of a tool. He then dropped a golf ball onto the surface and attempted a modified one-armed back – swing. “Unfortunately, the suit is so stiff I can’t do this with two hands,” he reported back to Earth, “but I’m going to try a little sand trap shot here.” Using only his right hand he whacked the first of two balls for a distance he later said with a broad avia­tor’s grin was “miles and miles.”

On 25 September 1961, President John F. Kennedy gave an impassioned address to the United Nations General Assembly in New York City, during which he presented proposals for a new disarmament program as well as warning of “the smoldering coals of war in Southeast Asia.” He also called for peaceful cooperation in the new frontier of outer space.

“The cold reaches of the universe,” Kennedy implored, “must not become the new arena of an even colder war.” Earlier that year, in both his Inaugural and first State of the Union addresses, he had called for East-West cooperation “to invoke the wonders of sci­ence instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars.”

With a smug arrogance, the hierarchy of the Soviet Union dismissed Kennedy’s sug­gestion of cooperation in space exploration. They had very little incentive to join forces or feed information to an American space program that was then deemed to be lagging well behind theirs. Back then, they possessed an array of powerful boosters – designed to deliver massive nuclear weapons – which could insert huge payloads into orbit. Four years earlier, in October 1957, they had launched the first artificial satellite, followed weeks later by the first living creature to be sent into orbit – a dog named Laika. These would not be the only major “firsts” the Soviet Union achieved in what became universally known as the “Space Race” – a mammoth and incredibly expensive undertaking of resources and technological advances in order to gain the ascendancy in space exploration.

The previous Eisenhower administration, in spite of the best efforts of Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson to incite some measure of positive response, and despite the establish­ment of NASA as the nation’s civilian space agency, had been accused of excessive tardi­ness in getting a viable American space program up and running. Additionally, that administration was accused of treating Soviet space efforts with skepticism and almost disdain. Even Republican officials had admonished Dwight Eisenhower over the Soviet Union’s seemingly superior space program and what it might mean.

During the 1960 presidential campaign, Senator John Kennedy had come down hard on what he perceived to be the mounting “gap” in space technology. To him, Eisenhower’s inaction symbolized the nation’s lack of initiative, ingenuity, and vitality under Republican rule. Furthermore, he was convinced that Americans did not yet grasp the world-wide political and psychological impact of the Space Race, and that the dramatic Soviet efforts were helping to build a dangerous impression of unchallenged global leadership generally, and scientific pre-eminence particularly.

Kennedy narrowly won the election, and during the transition he appointed a task force under Science Advisor Jerome B. Wiesner to advise him on the national space program and recommend policies for the future. On 10 January 1961 the Wiesner Committee submitted its preliminary report, advising that without immediate action the United States could not possibly win a race to place the first human into space, even though the nation’s first astro­nauts had already been selected and were deep into training for the first missions.

Wiesner was himself a strong advocate for utilizing unmanned probes rather than risk­ing human lives in exploring space, but he also realized the imperative for setting immedi­ate goals in space and achieving those goals. The committee’s report stated that the United States was seriously lagging behind the Soviet Union in missile and space technology, attributing this to duplication of effort and a lack of coordination among NASA, the Department of Defense and the three military services, with each of those services com­peting to create its own independent space programs.

Before his first hundred days in the White House were over, President Kennedy’s con­cern was dramatically proven correct. On 12 April 1961, a 27-year-old Soviet Air Force lieutenant named Yuri Gagarin was launched into a single orbit of the planet, becoming history’s first human space explorer. This largely unexpected feat had a profound impact on a nation which had been looking forward with confidence to the imminent first flight of an American astronaut, albeit only a 15-minute ballistic or suborbital mission.

America’s man-in-space program, which came to be called Project Mercury, had its origins during the middle years of the 1950s as a basic research initiative of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). By the late summer of 1958 the momen­tum within NACA for a manned space program had increased to the point where it became a strong and viable discussion topic before various committees in Congress while the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 was under serious consideration.

Prior to the passing of the Space Act on 29 July 1958, it had become evident that NACA would undergo a radical evolutionary change by becoming the nucleus of a proposed civil­ian space agency to be known as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) which would be assigned responsibility for carrying out the nation’s manned space flight program.

When NASA officially came into existence on 1 October 1958, the agency’s first administrator Dr. T. Keith Glennan approved the setting up of Project Mercury and autho­rized the establishment of the Space Task Group (STG) to implement and oversee the project. Created on 5 November 1958, the STG was based at the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. As its director, Dr. Robert R. Gilruth, would later state:

“The methods by which Project Mercury was planned to be implemented were to use the simplest and most reliable approaches known and to depend, to the greatest extent practicable, on existing technology. To this end, existing ballistic missiles (the Atlas and

Redstone) were selected as the primary propulsion systems; it was planned to use a drag reentry vehicle with the entry initiated by retrorockets, with the final descent to be made with parachutes, and to plan on a water landing. As the Atlas and Redstone weren’t designed originally for manned flight operation, it was necessary to provide automatic escape systems which would sense impending launch-vehicle malfunctions and separate the spacecraft from the launch vehicle in the event of such malfunction.

“Man had never before flown in space and thus it was felt desirable to include animal flights in the program to provide early biomedical data and to prove out, realistically, the operation of the life-support systems. It was considered wise to monitor the performance of the spacecraft, its systems, and its occupant, whether animal or man, almost continu­ously. To this end, a world-wide network of tracking, telemetry, and communications sta­tions has been established.

“Since a new era of flight was being approached, it was planned to use a build-up type of flight-test program, in which each component or system would be flown to successively more severe conditions in order first to prove the concept, then to qualify the actual design, and finally to prove, through repeated use, the reliability of the system.”

In the wake of the shock announcement that Yuri Gagarin had completed a single orbit barely weeks before an American astronaut was due to fly a suborbital mission, the real­ization that the Cold War enemy had beaten them onto the “high ground” of space came as a disturbing development to the American people. This was a country that had endured in the previous three-and-a-half weeks not only the Soviet space triumph, but also the fiasco of the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. Deeply troubled, many Americans believed that the Soviet Union had demonstrated a so-far unrivaled ascendancy in breaching and exploring the new domain of space.

On 5 May 1961, at the start of a decade that began the practice of making people famous for fifteen minutes, a renewed sense of confidence arose and national pride was restored across America when a 37-year-old U. S. Navy commander was hurled into space atop a Redstone rocket. To many, this achievement fell somewhat short of a solid response to Gagarin’s circuit of the globe, but that flight, in a tiny spacecraft named Freedom 7, ushered in America’s participation in the gathering thrust of the Space Race.

As a scientific and historical fact, the first venture of an American astronaut into space deservedly stands on its own – it requires no embellishment. In the context of disastrous events troubling the United States, however, it had a special importance for everyday citi­zens with an urgent need of success. The embarrassing misadventure in Cuba, the apparent loss of Laos, and the shattering announcement by the Soviet Union of its own space achieve­ment were wounds that hurt. The flight of Freedom 7 gave America that “can do” sense of success once again, and reinvigorated a much-needed groundswell of national pride.

History will record that while the Soviet Union continued for a time to outdo the United States’ efforts in human space exploration, NASA’s achievements in human space flight and technology would soon outstrip those of the Soviet space chiefs as America pursued a new national goal set by President Kennedy, of landing a man on the Moon by the end of the decade and returning him safely to the Earth.

One of those NASA astronauts who proudly walked on the Moon during Project Apollo was also the man who set America on its audacious path towards that goal. He was U. S. Navy Commander Alan Bartlett Shepard, Jr.

The next day, Ham was loaded back onto the helicopter and transported to a forward medical facility at Grand Bahama Island for further medical checks. Once these were done, he was flown back to Cape Canaveral aboard a U. S Air Force C-131 transport aircraft, touching down at Patrick AFB at 1:11 p. m., where hordes of reporters and photographers were eagerly waiting alongside Hangar S for a glimpse of America’s latest space hero.

Ham was quick to indicate his displeasure at this rowdy intrusion into his living space. He became agitated, bared his teeth, and screeched at the melee of strangers. His handlers finally took the fretting animal back into the familiar surroundings of his van to calm him down. Upon being taken out again a short while later, he threw another tantrum as the news crews surged in close, some popping flashbulbs in his face. The handlers tried hard to get the reluctant chimp to pose next to a Mercury training capsule, but he didn’t want to go anywhere near the darned thing. America’s astrochimp was definitely not impressed by his newfound fame [12].

Several days later, on 3 February, Ham was returned to Holloman AFB in New Mexico. Here, over the next two years, he was kept under scrutiny while performing tasks to determine whether he had suffered any residual effects from his journey into space.

Although he did train for a second mission, Ham never flew into space again. He spent 17 years in “retirement” at the National Zoo in Washington, D. C. In 1980, by now seriously overweight, he was transferred to the North Carolina Zoological Park, where he died as a result of an enlarged heart and liver failure on the afternoon of 17 January 1983, aged 26. His skeleton would be retained for ongoing examination, but his other remains were buried in a place of honor with a carved marker and memorial plaque outside of the International Space Hall of Fame in Alamogordo, New Mexico.

The grave of space pioneer Ham in New Mexico. (Photo: International Space Hall of Fame, New Mexico)

The author stands alongside the MR-2 spacecraft, now on exhibition at the California Science Center, Los Angeles. (Photo: Francis French)

It was 1:10 a. m. when flight surgeon Bill Douglas gently woke Shepard. “Come on, Al,” he said. “They’re filling the tanks.”

Shepard had only been asleep for three hours, but was instantly awake and alert. “I’m ready,” he replied. “Is John awake?” Douglas saw that John Glenn was already clambering out of his bed, ready for whatever the day would bring.

“John’s awake,” Douglas confirmed. “We’re all awake. Did you sleep well?”

Shepard said that he had slept soundly and had no recollection of any dreams. He added that upon awakening around midnight he had peeped out through the window to see if it was still raining. “The stars were out and I went back to sleep,” he pointed out with a slight smile. The weather, he was told, was indeed looking good.

Whistling quietly to himself, Shepard walked to the bathroom where he shaved and showered, then in company with Dr. Douglas and Glenn polished off a breakfast of filet mignon, eggs, orange juice, and tea. “I left the breakfast table to place myself at the mercy of the doctors,” he subsequently recorded, “who did their usual poking, prodding, and measuring, and then attached a battery of sensors to me.” [11] While Douglas and Grissom remained with Shepard, Glenn dressed and went to the launch pad to once again check out the spacecraft.

Altogether, the medical and psychiatric assessments took a little under two hours, but they showed that Shepard was in excellent physical and mental shape for the flight. He had a slight sunburn on his shoulders from staying out in the Sun too long at a swimming pool, and a blackened toenail from Grissom accidentally stepping on his foot a few days before. Most importantly, his respiration and blood pressure were good, while his pulse rate was measured at 75 beats per minute.

The psychiatric examination lasted around an hour, at the end of which the psychiatrist reported, “He realized the dangers he was about to face, but showed no fear. Never seen a man so calm. I tried to get him to talk about other things than the flight, about his family, for example, to see whether this would make him anxious, but I didn’t succeed. All his mind, every nerve, was concentrated on the flight: nothing else interested him. Even while on his way to the suit room he was already a part of the spacecraft.” [12]

Shepard was then assisted in donning his space suit. Dee O’Hara had already been busy that morning assisting Bill Douglas with his medical checks and procedures, and she vividly recalls the suiting-up time for Shepard. “I remember when he walked into the suit room to get suited up, it was just… everything became dead silent, just became very quiet, and Deke was there, and everybody just sort of milled around, and not much was said. There was hardly any conversation. Joe Schmitt did his checks, and

Alan was getting into his boots and, you know, whatever… but it was just dead quiet that day.” [13]

Observing this lengthy process, Bill Douglas was mentally drawing comparisons with an earlier event. “I don’t quite know why,” he reflected, “but it reminded me of the dressing of the matador before the corrida. An astronaut and a matador have noth­ing in common, but once I was in Spain and I was present at the dressing of a matador and the atmosphere was the same: a solemn anxiety, a religious silence, a lot of people around him. And over everything a vague smell of death.” [14]

Once Shepard was clad in his suit and helmet, a pressure check was carried out by technician Joe Schmitt. Once its integrity had been verified, the suit was deflated; it would not be reinflated until just prior to launch.

At 3:55 a. m., carrying his portable air-conditioning unit, Shepard began to make his way downstairs. Footage from the ABC network television coverage shows Dee O’Hara in a window above the exit. She accompanied him as far as the hall, where he turned to her and said, “Well, Dee, here I go.” Then he followed Joe Schmitt out through the hangar door.

“I was very, very frightened,” O’Hara revealed to the author. “Particularly when he left and went downstairs to get to get in the van. I didn’t know if I was going to see him again, and I just… I straightened up the area.” [15]

Immediately that the hangar door was opened, flashbulbs began to pop and TV cameras followed the astronaut in his silvery suit as he walked behind Schmitt to the small transfer van and cautiously stepped in. They were joined by Bill Douglas, Gus Grissom, and several technicians. Joe Schmitt was there to assist Shepard into his restraint harness once he had been inserted into the capsule.

Forty minutes later, the van pulled up alongside the launch gantry, essentially a modified oil derrick. It was the same launch pad from where America’s first satellite, Explorer 1, was launched into orbit some three years earlier. There was still some time to kill before he could enter the capsule. Gordon Cooper entered the van to give Shepard a final update on the weather and on the positions of the recovery ships. “He said the weathermen were predicting three-foot waves and 8-to-10-knot winds in the landing area, which was within our limits,” Shepard later recorded. “We had a device in the van to check on the sensors, and everything was working fine. I rested my weight in a reclining chair while all this was going on.” [16]

In order to ease some of the nervous anticipation felt by all in the van, Al and Gus spontaneously broke into their favorite Bill Dana routine, with Shepard playing the role of the reluctant astronaut, Jose Jimenez. Part of the well-known routine involved Jose listing all of the qualities an astronaut ought to have, such as courage, perfect vision, and low blood pressure. Then he finished with, “And you got to have four legs.” Grissom, playing the straight man, asked, “Why four legs?” Shepard grinned widely, and in his best Jose imitation responded, “They really wanted to send a dog, but they thought that would be too cruel!” It did the job, and Shepard was in a good mood when he was informed that it was time to leave the van [17].

The door was opened, and Shepard carefully climbed down four steps onto solid concrete. Above him the sky was still dark, with a thin sliver of Moon peeping out from small dark clouds. Bright searchlight beams cut back and forth, while arc lights vividly lit the area. But he only had eyes for one thing that morning. He took in the

gleaming Redstone emblazoned in the brilliant glare of the searchlights, rimmed with frost and ice and gently issuing swirling vapors of liquid oxygen. Around the foot of the rocket, moving through the clouds of vapor, dozens of engineers and technicians were engaged in final preparations, wearing construction hard hats of various colors to denote their work.

“I stepped out into a strange world of glaring floodlights and banshee wails from a breeze blowing across supercold fuel lines,” Shepard would later recall. “I looked up, for the moment overwhelmed by the gleaming blue-white lights. Then I began the final walk toward the gantry elevator. ‘Up’ was six stories above me.” [18]

Then Shepard paused at the gantry base, along with Grissom and Dr. Douglas. He shaded his eyes with his left hand and looked up, taking in the sight of the rocket that he would soon ride into the heavens.

“I sort of wanted to kick the tires – the way you do with a new car or an airplane. I real­ized that I would probably never see that missile again. I really enjoy looking at a bird that is ready to go. It’s a lovely sight. The Redstone with the Mercury capsule and escape tower on top of it is a particularly good-looking combination, long and slender. And this one had a decided air of expectancy about it. It stood there full of LOX, venting white clouds and rolling frost down the side. In the glow of the searchlight it was really beautiful.” [19]

After boarding the elevator at 5:15 a. m., Shepard turned and waved at the launch team, who were cheering loudly and applauding. He had meant to stop and express his thanks, but the emotion of the moment got to him. As they ascended the 70 feet to the level known as “Surfside 5” where he would ingress Freedom 7, Bill Douglas unexpect­edly handed Shepard a small gift from a good friend, NASA engineer Sam Beddingfield. It was a box of crayons. They’d once shared a joke about an astronaut about to start a long mission who had taken along a coloring book to help him pass the time, but refused to fly when he found that he had forgotten his Crayolas. “Just so you’ll have something to do up there,” Douglas said with a wide smile. Shepard laughed as he handed the cray­ons back, saying he might just be a little too busy to use them.

They exited the elevator and made their way into the green-colored gantry room (curiously known as the “White Room”) where the spacecraft stood ready for him to climb in through the two-foot square hatchway and prepare to make history. Shepard

walked around a little, talking briefly with Glenn and Grissom, thanking them for all their hard work, especially Glenn – now wearing a pristine white coat and cap – who had served as his backup pilot. As he moved over to the hatch, he looked once again at the unadorned name boldly painted on the side of his spacecraft. “My choice,” he would explain. “Freedom because it was patriotic. Seven because it was the seventh Mercury capsule produced. It also represented the seven Mercury astronauts.” [20]

At 5:18 a. m., after Glenn had made a final visual check of the spacecraft interior, Shepard gripped his hand in a hearty handshake, and then began the delicate task of inserting himself into the cramped confines of the capsule. McDonnell engineers first assisted the astronaut in removing his protective overshoes, then he lowered the visor of his helmet and wormed feet-first in through the hatch.

“My new boots were so slippery on the bottom that my right foot slipped off the right elbow of the couch support and on down into the torso section, causing some superficial damage to the sponge rubber insert – nothing of any great consequence, however. From this point on, insertion proceeded as we had practiced. I was able to get my right leg up over the couch calf support and part way across prior to actually get­ting the upper torso in. The left leg went in with very little difficulty… I think I had a little trouble getting my left arm in, and I’m not quite sure why. I think it’s mainly because I tried to wait too long before putting my left arm in. Outside of that, getting into the capsule and the couch went just about on schedule, and we picked up the count

for the hooking up of the face plate seal, for the hooking up of the biomed connector, com­munications, and placing of the lip mic[rophone]. Everything went normally.” [21]

Joe Schmitt had one final role to play during Shepard’s insertion into Freedom 7, and it all went as planned. “I had been training with him for so long. I mean that’s all we had been doing…. My job was not only to suit them and take care of the suits, but also to put them in the spacecraft and hook up their communications, their hoses, and also their restraint straps.” [22]

Part of the ingress procedure required Schmitt to first remove an instrument panel, allow­ing Shepard enough room to slide in and nestle into his contour couch before Schmitt replaced the panel and attended to the restraint straps and his other pre-flight tasks.

After being physically connected with his capsule, Shepard noticed a stray slip of paper amongst his instruments which read, in the handwriting of John Glenn, “Ball games forbidden in this area.” He laughed at this little bit of levity and handed it out to the smiling Marine, who then set off to the Mercury Control Center.

Already strapped in position on a small ledge inside the spacecraft was something Shepard hoped he would not have to use – a parachute chest pack. It was there in the event of a serious problem with the main parachute prior to landing. If necessary, he

was to clip it on, manually operate and discard the mechanically actuated side hatch, then squeeze out of the rapidly descending capsule. But Shepard knew it would be an extremely difficult task extracting himself from the couch, opening the hatch, and scrambling out in time, so even though he took note of it in his checks, he quickly dismissed its presence and purpose from his mind. Although the bulk of the personal parachute made the interior of the capsule even more cramped than necessary, the planners nevertheless loaded it on this flight and the subsequent MR-4 mission.

“The preparations of the capsule and its interior were indeed excellent,” Shepard would observe in the MR-3 post-launch report. “Switch positions were completely in keeping with the gantry check lists. The gantry crew had prepared the suit circuit purge properly. Everything was ready to go when I arrived, so, as will be noted else­where, there was no time lost in the insertion. Insertion was started as before.

“After suit purge, the suit-pressure check showed no gross leaks; the suit circuit was determined to be intact, and we proceeded with the final inspection of the capsule interior and the removal of the safety pins. I must admit that it was indeed a moving moment to have the individuals with whom I’ve been working so closely shake my hand and wish me bon voyage at this time.”

At 6:10 a. m., the pad technicians began the task of installing the spacecraft hatch, which was held in place by 70 bolts. The ensuing cabin leak check was completed to everyone’s satisfaction. Shepard’s training now kicked in as he began industriously working through his checklists, ensuring once again that everything was exactly as it should be, and that all the switches were at the correct settings.

Shepard later reported, “The point at which the hatch itself was actually put on seemed to cause no concern, but it seemed to me that my metabolic rate increased slightly here. Of course, I didn’t know the quantitative analysis, but it appeared as though my heart beat quickened just a little bit as the hatch went on. I noticed that my heart beat, or pulse rate, came back to normal again shortly thereafter with the execu­tion of normal sequences. The installation of the hatch, the cabin purge, all proceeded very well, I thought. As a matter of fact, there were very few points in the capsule count that caused me any concern.” [23]

Every so often Shepard glanced into the periscope to monitor the outside activity, and would smile to himself whenever the wide-angle-lens-distorted grinning face of Grissom filled the small screen. As the White Room crew went about their business, little did Shepard realize that he would spend the next four hours on his back in the form-fitting couch, as delay after delay threatened the increasingly irritated astronaut with yet another launch scrub.

Then the voice of CapCom Deke Slayton came through. “Jose? Do you read me, Jose?”

“I read you loud and clear, Deke,” Shepard replied.

“Don’t cry too much,” Deke said as part of the Bill Dana routine.

“All right,” came the more sober response.

At 6:34 a. m., some 24 minutes after Shepard had been sealed into Freedom 7, the enclosing service structure slowly began to roll away from the Redstone, leaving the impressive white-and-black painted rocket poised pencil-like on the launch pedestal, pointed ambitiously towards the rapidly lightening dawn sky, ready to lunge free on command.

There was now an air of hope and expectation among the delay-weary hordes of reporters and members of the public who were again on the beaches and every other vantage point, listening to bulletins on their transistor radios. They had endured three frustrating and exhausting days of storms sweeping up and down the coast, thunder and lightning, and the dispiriting announcements of continued postponements. Now, as they assembled beneath a relatively cloudless dawn sky, they began to believe that this might, finally, be the day on which Alan Shepard would make history.

Meanwhile, on the flight deck, Freedom 7 was being fully secured on its platform by the ship’s special work detail personnel. As recalled by Ed Killian, “NASA technical representatives began to examine the capsule and record the final settings of the switches and gauge readings on the control panel and consoles. Marines were posted at the capsule, and the ship’s special work detail and flight deck directors stood by to assist. NASA, Dean Conger and Navy photographers converged on the capsule.”

Charles Tynan, NASA’s Recovery Team Leader, carefully entered Freedom 7 in order to verify settings and the condition of equipment. “Access to the capsule was not severely restricted as long as the NASA personnel were not interfered with in the per­formance of their duties,” notes Killian. “The ship’s crew could get close enough to peer inside and to photograph the Freedom 7 capsule. They gathered nearby as the NASA Tech Rep made his inspection.”

After the other helicopters had landed in their marked positions on the forward flight deck, the platform and its spacecraft cargo were rolled inboard and parked next to the island structure. Once the choppers had left their spots, the deck was clear for the fixed-wing aircraft that were to take off later.

“Once the platform was secured near the island,” Killian continued, “the NASA technician resumed his examination of the capsule. At the top were the two empty quadrants were the parachutes had been housed. We could also see the periscope that the astronaut used to view the Earth on his ascent and descent. A bucket was placed near the capsule and unexpended green dye marker was bled off into the bucket. The capsule was on four-by-four wooden beams in order to prevent the landing bag from being damaged by the weight of the capsule. We could get close enough for an inside view of the capsule and to take pictures of its instrument panel. We could see where Shepard had been seated in the capsule. His head rested evenly with the window in the rear of the capsule.”

At the same time, flight deck personnel were preparing the COD plane that was to fly Shepard and his NASA entourage to Grand Bahama Island, also known as GBI.

In the wake of his Apollo mission Alan Shepard was promoted to the rank of rear admiral, becoming the first astronaut to achieve such status. He resigned from both NASA and the Navy in 1974. After his Mercury flight in 1961 he had been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and NASA’s Distinguished Service Medal, and with his resignation from the Navy he also added with pride the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.

Post-NASA, Shepard followed in his father’s footsteps by venturing into banking, real estate and investments, and other private business, in the process making himself a considerable fortune. He also dabbled on the fringe of politics by joining the board of the right-wing Freedom Forum in 1993.

In 1984, he joined with the other five surviving Mercury astronauts in setting up the Mercury 7 Foundation, a science and engineering scholarship fund for college stu­dents, and served as its founding president. Today, under the revised name of the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation, it pursues the same goals.

Once, in an interview for the Hall of Science and Exploration, Shepard was asked for his proudest accomplishment, which he said was being chosen to make the first manned American flight into space. “That was competition at its best,” he explained, with his usual unapologetic candor. “Not because of the fame or the recognition that went with it, but because of the fact that America’s best test pilots went through this selection process down to seven guys, and of those seven, I was the first one to go. That will always be the most satisfying thing for me.

“During the actual process of flying aircraft, or flying the Spirit of St. Louis, one doesn’t think of oneself as being a hero or historical figure. One does it because the

challenge is there, and one feels reasonably qualified to accomplish it.” After a pause he added, “I must admit, maybe I am a piece of history after all.” [7]

On Tuesday, 21 July 1998, the world lost America’s first astronaut in space to the insidious disease leukemia. He had fought a typically stoic and mostly private two – year battle against this cancer, but it was a fight even he could not win. R/Adm Alan Shepard, an authentic twentieth-century hero, passed away peacefully in his sleep at the Monterey Community Hospital in California. He was 74 years old.

Biographer Neal Thompson says Shepard’s whole life was about competition. “Whether it was in sports as a youth, or competing among other naval aviators when he was a carrier pilot, and then it just sort of ramped up at each stage of his career, becoming a test pilot where he competed with some of the best aviators on the planet and then to be selected among this extremely elite group of Mercury 7 astronauts and then to compete against them for that first ride. But I think he thrived on that and it was fun to explore what that meant in the scope of the space program.” [8]

On 25 August, barely a month after the loss of her husband, Louise Shepard died of a heart attack while on a flight from San Francisco to her home in Monterey. She was returning from Colorado after visiting one of her daughters.

Alan and Louise Shepard were cremated and their ashes committed to the sea in Stillwater Cove near Pebble Beach, California. A small memorial stone for both was placed in the Forest Hill Cemetery in Derry, New Hampshire. They are survived by daughters Alice Wackermann, Julie Jenkins, and Laura Churchley, plus their six grandchildren.

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