Category Freedom 7

Back on the USS Lake Champlain the spacecraft had been transferred below to the hangar bay, where Capt. Weymouth and his Executive Officer Cdr. Doner conferred briefly with Charles Tynan, NASA’s senior representative. Weymouth then climbed into Freedom 7 to get a feel for the cockpit, which he found was a little too small for him. He exited the hatch with the assistance of Cdr. Doner, who then took his turn to squeeze himself into the spacecraft.

After the ship had closed to within about eight miles of Florida during the night, Wayne Koons lifted off in Marine Corps helicopter #44 and as he hovered directly over Freedom 7 George Cox attached the harness to the spacecraft so that it could be ferried back to Cape Canaveral.

“The helicopter had to get very close to the capsule to connect the harness with the shepherd’s hook,” Ed Killian recalled. “Although that day one should really have renamed that apparatus a ‘Shepard’s hook.’ Anyway, the helo hovered, while the ten­sion on the sling was taken up. The helo then moved to starboard over the capsule and lifted it clear of the platform. Helo and capsule were vectored toward the beach, accom­panied by an escort. The platform that had held the capsule was then moved below as the helo and its package swung off into the distance. The capsule would be displayed for a period of time at Cape Canaveral.”

Capt. Weymouth exits the spacecraft with the assistance of Cdr. Landis Doner while Charles Tynan busies himself at left. (Photo courtesy of Ed Killian)

Pilot Wayne Koons eases Freedom 7 off the landing pad ahead of the delivery flight across to Cape Canaveral. (Photo courtesy of Ed Killian)

As Wayne Koons points out, “I don’t remember exactly where we set it down, but that’s when the news coverage came in earnest. There were print reporters and TV crews. At that time they did everything on sixteen-millimeter cameras. So they’d get us out with these cameras, and we did lots of interviews. It was a heady time.” [52] Despite Freedom 7 being the most celebrated piece of hardware in the world that day, its arrival at the Cape passed almost unheralded. Millions of television viewers had watched it ride atop the Redstone booster carrying Alan Shepard into space, but only 35 people – newsmen, engineers, guards – were on hand for its return. Set down just two miles from the launch pad that it had left the previous morning, Freedom 7 was given a brief examination and then hauled off to a hangar where, in the weeks to come, the engineers and technicians would go over it inch by inch.

For Ed Killian and the USS Lake Champlain, things quickly returned to normal. “That ended our participation in the first U. S. manned space flight and we headed home. It had been a long cruise, but we’d been a part of something truly historic.”

Frank Yaquiant of Baltimore, Maryland agrees. He joined the carrier in May 1960 as a member of the V-4 division, responsible for the aviation fuel the planes used. “I was very happy to have been on ‘The Champ’ that day. My shipmates and I were witnesses to something truly special. It’s been almost 52 years since that memorable day, and the science of space travel has advanced far beyond that available during the flight of Freedom 7. The achievements of those past 50-plus years may make the events of May 5, 1961 seem rather modest to the uninformed [today]. But this was America’s first venture into manned space travel, and those of us aboard the USS Lake Champlain that day have the pride and satisfaction of knowing we were there at the beginning.” [53]

As a footnote to the story, about ten years after Shepard’s flight, Ed Killian was dining with his family at Vargo’s restaurant in Houston when he became aware that Alan Shepard had just walked in. As Shepard was talking to a party of people who had greeted him at the door, Killian decided to introduce himself and strolled over. “As I drew near, the crowd began to break up. I offered my hand and said, ‘Admiral, I’m Ed Killian, and we haven’t met, but you may remember ‘Mercury, Mercury, this is Nighthawk. Do you read?’ He smiled and said ‘How could I forget?’ Then his eyes narrowed as if remembering more of the details. ‘That was you?’ I nodded, smiling. ‘Hmmm,’ he said, ‘I was pretty excited, wasn’t I?’ He tilted his head and raised his eye­brows, as if to ask a further question. I sensed that he was making an oblique reference to the private conversation we had had. ‘You had a right to be excited. So did we all,’ I observed. Satisfied with my response, he said, ‘Well, very nice to meet you,’ nodding and shaking my hand. He then turned back to his party and they were ushered to his table. I knew there was a wild world of differences between us, but I also knew the two of us shared a secret.”

Mercury Spacecraft #7, which became known as Freedom 7, was delivered from the McDonnell Aircraft Corporation plant in St. Louis, Missouri to Hangar S at Cape Canaveral on 9 December 1960. Upon delivery, the instrumentation system and selected items of the communication system were removed from the capsule to be bench treated. During this bench-test period, the capsule underwent rework which included the cleaning up of dis­crepancy items deferred from St. Louis and making changes to the capsule that were required to be made prior to beginning systems tests.

Systems test were begun as soon as all instrumentation and communications compo­nents were reinstalled in the capsule. These tests required a total of 46 days. During this period the electrical, sequential, instrumentation, communication, environmental, reaction control, and stabilization and control systems were individually tested. Included in the test of the environmental system were two runs in an altitude chamber with an astronaut installed in the capsule.

At the completion of systems tests, another work period was scheduled in which the landing bag system was installed on the capsule. Following this work period, a simulated flight test was performed, followed by the installation of pyrotechnics and parachutes. The capsule was then weighed, balanced, and delivered to the launching pad to be mated with the Redstone booster. Nineteen days were spent on the launching pad, prior to launch, test­ing the booster and capsule systems, both separately, and as a unit. Also, practice inser­tions of an astronaut into the capsule were performed during this period.

Simulated flight 1 with the booster was accomplished at the completion of systems tests on the launching pad. A change was then required in the booster circuitry which necessi­tated another simulated flight test (simulated flight 2). The capsule-booster combination was then ready for flight. The flight was postponed several days due to weather; however, this allowed time for replacing instrumentation components which were malfunctioning. A final simulated flight was then run (simulated flight 3). The capsule was launched two days after this final test.

MODIFICATIONS MADE

During capsule systems tests and work periods, both in Hangar S and on the launching pad, modifications were made to the capsule as a result of either a capsule malfunction or an additional requirement placed on the capsule. The most significant modifications made to Spacecraft 7 while at Cape Canaveral were as follows:

(a) Manual sensitivity control and a power cut-off switch were added to the VOX (Voice – Operated Transmitter) relay.

(b) A check valve was installed between the vacuum relief valve and the snorkel inflow valve.

(c) The cabin pressure relief valve was replaced with one which would not open until it experienced an equivalent head of 15 inches of water.

(d) Screens were added at the heat barriers upstream of the thrust chambers (downstream of the solenoid valves).

(e) The high-thrust pitch and yaw thrusters were welded at the juncture between the thrust chambers and the heat barriers.

(f) The cables to the horizon scanners in the antenna canister were wrapped with reflective tape to minimize radio-frequency (RF) interference from capsule commu­nications components.

(g) The retro-interlock circuit was bypassed by installing a jumper plug in the amplifier-calibrator.

(h) Permission relays were installed to both the capsule-adapter ring limit switches and the capsule-tower ring limit switches.

(i) Capacitors were installed in the circuits to the orbit attitude, retro-jettison, and impact inertia arm time delay relays.

(j) Capsule wiring was changed to extend the periscope at 21,000 feet.

(k) The potting on the capsule adapter umbilical connectors was extended 0.75 inches from both connector ends and the connector was wrapped with asbestos and heat reflective tape. Also, the fairings over these connectors were cut away and a cover was added which provided more clearance between the fairings and the connectors.

(l) The lower pressure bulkhead was protected from puncture damage that might result from heat sink recontact. Aluminum honeycomb was added, bolts reversed, and brackets with sharp protrusions were potted solidly with RTV-90 and plates between the brackets and the bulkhead.

(m) Pitch indicator markings were changed from -43 to -34 degrees for retro-attitude indication

Mercury-Redstone 1 (MR-1) was to be the first qualifying flight of an unmanned Mercury capsule mated with a Redstone rocket. The launch, set to take place from Pad 5 of Cape Canaveral’s Air Force Launch Complex 56, was to be a full test of the spacecraft’s automated flight controls, as well as the launch, tracking and recovery operations on the ground. It was also intended to provide a test of the Mercury – Redstone’s automatic in-flight abort sensing system, which would be operating in an “open loop” mode. Basically, this meant that because it was an unmanned test of the system and there were no real safety issues, an abort signal would simply be ignored in order to prevent a false signal from terminating the flight needlessly.

On 22 July 1960, after the capsule systems tests in St. Louis, Missouri, Mercury Capsule No. 2 was shipped to Huntsville, where the one-ton capsule was mated with its Redstone. Both then underwent a series of checks to ensure their compatibility. Next, the total assembly, now some 83 feet long, was shipped to Cape Canaveral, arriving on 24 July. The escape tower was then prepared, and hangar activities such as the installation of parachutes and pyrotechnics were completed in time to transport the spacecraft to the launch pad on 26 September, where the rocket, enclosed by the ser­vice structure gantry, was waiting.

The first launch attempt was set for 7 November, with the intent of hurling the cap­sule about 220 miles over the Atlantic into a target area northwest of Grand Bahama Island. Things went smoothly until a problem caused the test to be canceled 22 minutes prior to the planned time of liftoff. According to ‘Luge’ Luetjen from the McDonnell Aircraft Corporation, who was then serving as the company’s Redstone Mission Capsule Controller, “It was noted that the helium pressure in the spacecraft control systems had dropped below the acceptable level. A leak in the system, unfortunately under the heat shield, was obvious, and as a result the launch was scrubbed. The spacecraft was removed from the booster and the heat shield dropped to expose the culprit, a leaky relief valve. It, and a toroidal hydrogen peroxide tank were replaced, plus a minor wiring change was made as the result of an earlier test at Wallops Island, Virginia. The spacecraft was reassembled, remated to the booster, and appropriate tests rerun in order to confirm the spacecraft’s integrity and that the problem had indeed been fixed.” [5]

A second launch attempt was scheduled for 21 November. Two days after the 7 November launch scrub, Senator John F. Kennedy narrowly beat Richard M. Nixon, the incumbent vice president, in the election to become the 35th President of the United States. It would prove a momentous victory in terms of space flight history.

On hand to observe the second attempt to launch MR-1 – as indeed for the first – were the seven Mercury astronauts. That morning there was only a minor one-hour delay to enable technicians to fix a leak in the capsule’s hydrogen peroxide system, which slipped the time of liftoff to 9.00 a. m. (EST). There were no further delays. Right on the hour the firing command was issued from the Mercury Control Center. The booster ignited, then one second later the Rocketdyne A-7 engine unexpectedly shut down. During that interval, the booster had actually lifted a little less than four inches off its pedestal. After the engine cut off, the vehicle settled back down onto its

The “clean room” at the McDonnell Aircraft plant in St. Louis, Missouri, where the Mercury capsules took shape. Extreme precautions were taken to prevent dust and metal particles infiltrating sensitive areas. In the upper photo, Spacecraft No. 2 is to the fore; it would be utilized on two Mercury-Redstone flights. (Photo: McDonnell Aircraft Corporation).

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On 21 November 1960 preparations continue for launching the MR-1 mission from Cape Canaveral. (Photo: NASA)
fins, slightly deforming their frames. Incredulous controllers in the blockhouse could only watch as the Redstone wobbled after the set-down impact, still venting liquid oxygen. Fortunately the 66,000-pound assembly managed to remain upright and did not explode.

Compounding the problem, the engine cutoff had initiated the emergency escape system, which activated the escape tower and recovery sequence. The escape tower’s engine suddenly ignited, releasing it from the Mercury capsule and sending it soaring over 4,000 feet into the air. Eventually, it crashed down on a beach 400 yards from the pad. As stated by NASA in This New Ocean: A History of Project Mercury, three seconds after the escape rocket separated, “the drogue parachute shot upward, and then the main chute spurted out of the top of the capsule, followed by the reserve, and both fluttered down alongside the Redstone.” [6] The radio antenna fairing was also ejected in the process.

Clearly, the only thing that would launch that day was the escape tower. One can only imagine the feelings of the astronauts as they witnessed the entire mishap.

Securing the slightly wrinkled booster and the still firmly attached capsule had to be carried out with the utmost caution, as the booster’s destruct system could not be disarmed until the battery that powered it had fully depleted, which was not until the next morning. Also, the spacecraft was still on internal power and its pyrotechnics – including the posigrade and retrograde rockets – were still armed. Furthermore, it was not possible to open the vent valves and undertake the defueling process. It was there­fore necessary to wait until the Redstone’s liquid oxygen had fully evaporated, which would take 24 hours. The other worrying safety issue was the main parachute, which was dangling from the top of the capsule. Any strong gust of wind could cause the canopy to billow and topple the vehicle off its pedestal. Fortunately, the weather remained calm.

The following day, Walter F. Burke of McDonnell volunteered to lead a squad of men to disarm the pyrotechnics and other immediate problems [7]. The liquid oxygen tank was vented, as were the high-pressure nitrogen spheres in the pneumatic system of the engine. The fuel and hydrogen peroxide tanks were then emptied. All circuits were deactivated, the service structure was rolled back in, and finally the booster and capsule disarming was finished. The next afternoon NASA’s Chief of Manned Space Flight, George M. Low, said that the MR-1 failure was believed to have been caused by the premature disconnection of a booster tail plug.

According to The Mercury-Redstone Project issued by the Marshall Space Flight Center in September 1961:

The investigation which followed found the cause of the engine shutdown to be due to a “sneak” circuit created when the two electrical connectors in Fin II disconnected in the reverse order. Normally the 60-pin control connector separates before the 4-pin power connector. However, during vehicle erection and alignment on the launch pedestal, a tactical Redstone control cable was substituted for the specially shortened Mercury cable. The cable clamping block was then adjusted, but apparently not enough to fully compensate for the longer Redstone cable.

Because of the improper mechanical adjustments, the power plug disconnected 29 milliseconds prior to the control plug. This permitted part of a three-amp current, which would have normally returned to ground through the power plug, to pass through the “normal cutoff’ relay and its ground diode. The cutoff terminated thrust and jettisoned the escape tower [8].

Project Mercury Director Robert R. Gilruth added that a faulty electrical circuit between the ground apparatus and the booster had simulated a normal booster cutoff signal. Ordinarily, this would be given in flight, after the booster had been taken to its designed speed and altitude of about 40 miles. The normal sequence was then for the escape-rocket tower to separate; the recovery devices such as parachutes to be armed ready for deployment; and, when the booster’s thrust tailed off, the booster/capsule securing ring to be released. The separation of the escape tower took place normally, but the sea level atmospheric pressure led to the deployment of the drogue and main parachutes, and the weight of the capsule on the booster prevented its separation [9].

The late Guenter Wendt was a German-American engineer who had emigrated to the United States in 1949. He found ready employment with the McDonnell Aircraft

Corporation, and later became well known for his work in America’s space program. As the man in charge of the spacecraft close-out crew on the pad, he soon gained the respect of the astronauts. To the company his title was Pad Leader, but the astronauts jokingly (and affectionately) enjoyed referring to him as their “Pad Fuhrer,” and he fell in with their humor. Wendt had been at the Cape for the failed MR-1 launch, and described the follow-on events as he saw them during a 2001 interview with Francis French.

“When we started off, we had one Redstone that lifted off about four inches and set back down. It had a little kink in it, and we could not depressurize the tank – the tank was building up pressure. I go back to the blockhouse, and the next thing I hear are [Kurt] Debus and John Yardley discussing it. Debus tells the pad safety officer to call the base and get some guns, [because] he is going to shoot holes in the oxygen tank to relieve the pressure! John Yardley says, ‘Like hell you do! I have a perfect, safe spacecraft out there, it’s the only one I have right now. If you shoot holes, the thing is going to blow up and I’ll have no spacecraft!’

“So, what do we do? We get our engineers together to see what we could do to disarm the rocket. The first thing is, we have to get rid of the pressure in the oxygen tank. How can we do that? One of the ways is to send a mechanic out there, into the tail end of the rocket, to hook up a quarter-inch nitrogen line, then open up a hand valve. However, we don’t know what will happen, so when we open it, we run like hell back to the blockhouse! A guy by the name of Sonny came, he went out, opened it, ran like hell, and just about hit the blockhouse when a big stream of gas, tens of feet long, came out. But nothing blew up.

“Next, Yardley called me and said, ‘We’ve determined that, due to the sequencing – the main chute came out, the tower had left – the sequencer is looking at a half-G switch. When that thing activates, it will fire the retrorockets into the oxygen tank!’ So now, we are looking for someone to go out there and deactivate the circuitry. However, since the periscope had retracted, you have to drill out a bunch of rivets and open the periscope door, because the electrical umbilical plug is under it. Then four jumper wires have to be plugged in. So we were looking for people with no dependents to volunteer. If the retrorocket had fired, that would be it.

“After a long discussion, some of us volunteered to go out and do it. Before we did, we had Pad Safety set up a movie camera next to the blockhouse. If it blew, at least we’d know where the pieces went! We went up there. On the Mercury capsule, the hatch was bolted down with screws – you could move the washer, but the screws had to be tight. They had to be just matched. They needed to expand on the outside, because of the heat. I had a guy who had meticulously matched each screw to a perfect hole, and stored them on foam. We got up there, got the screws out and pitched them behind us. I will never forget that. We thought, he will kill us when he finds out what happened to his matched screws! We got the hatch open, found the two switches: click, click, and we were safe. We saved the spacecraft, though we needed a new booster.

“The people who made the decisions were right there, and they made the decisions. That’s what we got paid for!” [10]

The man who would become the first American to venture into space was born on the upper floor of the family home in East Derry, on what he described many years later as the “bright autumn day” of 18 November 1923.

Alan Bartlett Shepard, Jr., was the first child born to Renza and Alan Shepard, Sr. While his mother had been born in Mobile, Alabama as Pauline Renza Emerson, she always preferred to be known by her middle name. Similarly, two years later, they named their new baby daughter Pauline, although everyone called her Polly.

Alan grew up on what was then a sprawling, picturesque small-town family farm. Even at an early age he knew the meaning of discipline. He and his sister had certain chores to perform, and their parents insisted that they be done at the prescribed time, ahead of any leisure time. Renza Shepard would later state that pursuing an orderly schedule of work and play helped Alan to develop a sense of duty.

“Our family did so much together that one member of the family could always depend on the cooperation of the rest,” Renza stressed. “A sense of patriotism was also important in our family, and it was instilled in our children at early ages. Our house was always full of Alan’s friends,” she added. “He was a happy-go-lucky boy, very easy to explain things to, and very cooperative. Oh, he got in the usual amount of mischief, I suppose, but never anything serious. But my, how active he was!” [5]

His father had been commissioned a first lieutenant in the Army and was based at Fort Devens, Massachusetts, later serving in France during the First World War. He was recalled to active duty in the Army during 1940, and became a colonel in the Army Reserves. Alan Shepard Sr. was a treasurer of the Derry Savings Bank, owned the Bartlett and Shepard Insurance Company, and served as an incorporator at the Amoskeag Savings Bank in nearby Manchester. For many years, he was a treasurer and trustee for the Pinkerton Academy and a member of the First Parish Church of Derry, where for many years he fulfilled the role of treasurer as well as being their long-time organist. Having begun playing the original pump organ there at the age of fourteen, he served as church organist for the next 60 years.

Young Alan obtained his early education at the nearby Adams public elementary school, formerly the Adams Female Academy, where even as a small boy he began to excel in mathematics. In an interview with the Academy of Achievement in 1991 he spoke with fondness about his first teacher, Bertha Wiggins, and the influence she had on him.

“She was about nine feet tall as I recall, and a very tough disciplinarian. Always had the ruler ready to whack the knuckles if somebody got out of hand. She ran a well – disciplined group. I think most of the youngsters responded to that. There were one or two that couldn’t handle it, and obviously they dropped by the wayside. But that still sticks in my mind. That’s the lady that taught me how to study, and really provided that kind of discipline, which is essentially still with me.” [6]

Shepard once skipped a grade because he was doing so well and Bertha Wiggins decided he needed to have more of a scholastic challenge. Although he often found it difficult, he rose to that challenge. “He was a little less bouncy in the classroom after that,” his mother reflected. After completing five years of study at Adams School, Shepard attended junior high at Derry’s Oak Street School.

At 230,000 feet, as Freedom 7 began to penetrate the fringes of the atmosphere, a relay was actuated in response to the onset of 0.05 g. As Shepard later explained, this indicated that the reentry phase had truly begun:

I had planned to be on manual control when this happened and run off a few more tests with my hand controls before we penetrated too deeply into the atmo­sphere. But the g-forces had built up before I was ready for them, and I was a