Category Freedom 7

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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of the Mercury-Redstone program

They called the sleek, tubular rocket “Old Reliable,” due to its dependability and an unsurpassed record of successfully completed launch and flight operations. Through these qualities, as history records, the Redstone rocket became the perfect choice for launching the first American into space.

Prior to being used as the booster vehicle for the early Project Mercury missions, the Redstone had undergone several years of development and testing as a medium – range, tactical surface-to-surface ballistic missile for the U. S. Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) located at the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, northern Alabama. Over time, the rocket had proved itself, as the nickname suggests, to be one of the most reliable large rockets ever produced in the United States.

Following an extensive evaluation of the MR-2 Redstone’s over-acceleration and har­monic vibration problems, it was reported that the reliability factor of the booster was well below the level required for NASA to confidently launch an astronaut into space.

Although the first manned flight with Alan Shepard as the prime pilot had already been scheduled for launch on 24 March 1961, there was a distinct feeling of unease in Washington, D. C. The president’s technical advisor on science issues, Jerome B. Wiesner, had recently been appointed to head the Science Advisory Committee and was advocating a far more cautious approach in what he perceived as something of a rush for NASA to launch an astronaut into space. Wiesner bluntly warned Kennedy that a dead astronaut would not do a lot for the young president’s administration, and he argued for several more chimpanzee launches to iron out any possible problems prior to committing to a manned flight. The new NASA Administrator, James Webb, and the head of the STG, Robert Gilruth, were brought into the discussion, holding consultations early in February with key Mercury personnel. Owing to some minor technical issues with Ham’s flight, and under pressure from the White House to be cautious, Wernher von Braun was advised there should be a delay in the first

human-tended mission. Instead, an unmanned proving flight of the booster would take place on the date previously allocated to MR-3.

As eager as he was to proceed with the manned flight, von Braun readily agreed with Webb and Gilruth – in fact, he had already been actively pressing for a further test flight, a “booster development launch” as he called it, although he was aware that it would not be possible to completely eliminate all risk. It was agreed that if this test proved successful, the manned MR-3 mission could proceed and the launch date was set for 25 April. It was a delay that arguably cost America the historical prestige of launching the first human being into space.

The new mission became known as the Mercury-Redstone Booster Development (MR-BD) flight. Its primary purpose was to verify the modifications made to prevent a recurrence of the flaws that afflicted the MR-2 flight. To prevent over-acceleration, the thrust regulator and velocity integrator were tweaked, and the vibration induced by aerodynamic stress in the upper part of the booster was remedied by adding four stiff­eners to the ballast section and 210 pounds of insulation to the inner skin of the upper, instrument compartment section of the Redstone [13].

The MR-BD test would use an inert, expendable boilerplate Mercury spacecraft, and it was decided to reuse the one that had been retrieved after the Little Joe LJ-1B abort test mission on 21 January of that year. This capsule had been built at NASA’s Langley Research Center, ballasted and configured to match the production capsule that was to be used on the first manned flight. However, it was not equipped with a retrorocket package or posigrade rockets because these would not be required. It was

to be attached to the Redstone booster in the normal manner, but there would be no separation in flight. The escape rocket system, which was also inert, was a standard Mercury configuration utilizing spent rocket motors that were balanced to the correct weight for the MR-BD flight [14].

The LJ-1B flight had successfully carried Rhesus monkey Miss Sam on an eight – and-a-half minute test of the capsule’s escape sequence and landing systems. The boilerplate capsule had splashed down smoothly 12 miles from the Wallops Island launch site on the Atlantic coast, whereupon it was plucked from the sea by a waiting helicopter and returned to the launch site. Forty-five minutes after liftoff, an excited but otherwise healthy Miss Sam was extracted from the capsule.

As dawn broke over the New Hampshire hills, the first pale rays of the Sun fell on a crisp new American flag that had been proudly raised earlier that morning by Renza Shepard on the front lawn of their home in East Derry.

Aboard the aircraft carrier USS Lake Champlain (CVS-39), the prime recovery ship, the crew stood silently in the dawn light as Rev. Henry Faville Maxwell, their chaplain, intoned a heartfelt prayer for the success of Shepard’s mission over the ship’s loudspeakers.

“Dear Lord who hears us, now that a precious life is about to be flung into the heavens, we are filled with fear; we are afraid of imminent danger. Dear Lord who hears us, we thank Thee for giving us men ready to sacrifice their existence to open up for us the doors of space. May he succeed without losing his life. May success crown his endeavors to explore the paths of knowledge; not only that we may expand into the universe, but that it will be a peaceful universe where we live with each other and with Thee. Amen.” [24]

In the Pad 5 blockhouse, fellow astronaut Gordon Cooper communicated with the capsule until this task transferred to Deke Slayton in the Mercury Control Center. By then, Slayton had been joined by Flight Director Chris Kraft and Operations Director Walt Williams.

As Williams later recalled of that day, “You can say that intuition means nothing, but there are days when you feel things are right and days when you feel things are wrong. On the previous Tuesday, the weather was a problem – but that was only one factor. We were having small problems – no serious ones, but things weren’t going well. That is why I scrubbed quite early.

“On Friday, even though we had problems, I felt that we could handle each one as it came up. I was in the Mercury Control Center – at the back of the room. Before that, I had been roaming around to the pad, the blockhouse, up the gantry, in to see how Al was coming along. Once I put on my ‘Operations Director hat,’ I am in total charge. I don’t mean that in an autocratic way, but someone has to call the shots. In essence, I answer to no one except the President. Once we are under way with the countdown, it is a minute-by-minute decision whether we go or not.” [25]

Once the gantry had rolled on its tracks clear of the Redstone, Shepard began to feel more confident by the minute. “The periscope gave me a view of clouds lit by the morning Sun. Far below, I watched the launch crew finishing last-minute details at the base of the rocket. I glanced at my capsule timer. Only fifteen minutes to go. The view outside dimmed. Cloud cover rolling in. Damn!”

Now the brightness of the Sun was intruding into the cabin through the periscope, so Shepard cranked a couple of filters over the screen to diminish the glare.

The countdown clock stopped during the delay, and everyone began scanning the skies, eager for the clouds to depart. “Everyone hated countdown delays,” Shepard later observed. “They just allowed more time for something to go wrong.” [26]

And something did go wrong. An inverter, a small electrical part in the rocket that changed DC current to AC, developed a fault. It may have been a relatively minor thing, but it had to be fixed. Everything had to be fully operational for the mission to proceed. To everyone’s disappointment, the launch director ordered the gantry rolled back in.

As Shepard observed later, “There was a time during the countdown when there was a problem with the inverter in the Redstone. Gordon Cooper was the voice com­municator in the blockhouse. So he called and said, ‘This inverter is not working in the Redstone. They’re going to pull the gantry back in, and we’re going to change invert­ers. It’s probably going to take about an hour, an hour-and-a-half.’ And I said, ‘Well, if that’s the case then I would like to get out and relieve myself.’

“We had been working with a device to collect urine during the flight that worked pretty well in zero-gravity but really didn’t work very well when you were lying on your back with your feet up in the air, like you were on the Redstone. And I thought my bladder was getting a little full and, if I had some time, I’d like to relieve myself. So I said…

“Gordo?”

“Go, Alan?”

“Man, I got to pee!”

“You what?”

“You heard me. I’ve got to pee. I’ve been in here forever. The gantry is still right here, so why don’t you guys let me out of here for a quick stretch?”

“Hold on,” came Cooper’s response. He consulted with Wernher von Braun and a few minutes later came back. “No way, Alan. Wernher says we don’t have the time to reassemble the White Room. He says you’re in there to stay.”

“Gordo, I could be in here a couple more hours, and by that time my bladder’s gonna burst!”

“Wernher says no.”

“Well, shit, Gordo, we’ve got to do something. Dammit, tell ’em I’m going to let it go in my suit!”

“No! No, good God, you can’t do that,” Cooper called back. “The medics say you’ll short-circuit all their medical leads.”

“Tell ’em to turn the power off!”

The solution was that simple. “Gordo had a chuckle in his voice when he told me, ‘Okay, Alan. Power’s off. Go to it.’ It was as if they’d designed the suit for such an emergency. In that semi-supine position the liquid pooled in the small of my back and my heavy undergarment soaked it up. With 100 percent oxygen flowing through the suit, I was soon dry. The countdown resumed. The gantry was gone.” [27]

Knowing that his family was watching a live television transmission from the Cape, Shepard called Cooper in the blockhouse once again and requested that he get Shorty Powers to ring Louise and let her know he was fine despite the delay, which had extended to 1 hour 26 minutes and pushed back the projected time of liftoff.

Then, with 2 minutes 40 seconds remaining on the clock, technicians noticed that the fuel pressure in the Redstone was running a little high, and Shepard was warned there might be another short delay. Having heard enough of what he felt was a severe case of over-caution, there was a brittle snap to his voice when he responded. “Shit! I’ve been here more than three hours. I’m a hell of a lot cooler than you guys are. Why don’t you just fix your little problem and light this candle!” [28]

Without being unkind towards Alan Shepard, and the way in which this incident is portrayed in the movie The Right Stuff, his words didn’t galvanize the firing team into action – in fact, the blockhouse technician most involved, Andy Pickett, was not even in the capsule-blockhouse voice loop. He had noticed and reported an irregular read­ing on the propulsion regulator, which indicated a slight pressure increase. He then flicked a switch a couple of times to open and close a vent valve. This rectified the problem, and the pressure returned to normal within one minute of the anomaly being noticed. The countdown was resumed.

On hearing that the technical glitch had been fixed, Shepard gave a sigh of relief, then called Slayton, who had taken over direct communications from Gordon Cooper in the blockhouse.

“Are we ready, Deke?” he asked, and got the answer he wanted.

“Ready, Al.”

The spindly “cherry picker” swung to its standby position by the Redstone, ready to move in and retrieve the astronaut in the event of a looming disaster.

The rocket was ready, the spacecraft was ready, the range was ready, and Shepard was most definitely ready; it was time to light the candle.

Marine PFC Paul Molnoski was on guard duty on the USS Lake Champlain during the entire recovery operation, and his account recalls the contingency procedures that people were to follow in the event that the astronaut was found dead or badly injured after splashdown. This was similar in some ways to the sorrowful speech President Richard Nixon would record in case the two Apollo 11 moonwalkers were stranded on the lunar surface.

As Molnoski explains, “I was assigned to the forward port-side of the flight deck, and was walking my post when I heard over the loudspeaker that the countdown was held at minus-15, just fifteen minutes before the scheduled time of the launching at 7.30 a. m. At about 9.30 it was reported that the rocket had been fired and, a minute later, that the Redstone Mercury missile was airborne. We were instructed that when the capsule hit, if he didn’t get out, Shepard would be presumed to be either dead or wounded. [The capsule] would be picked up by a Marine helicopter, brought aboard ship and taken down elevator number three. It would be opened and [Shepard] taken to sick bay. Only three persons beside the admiral would be allowed to speak to him; two doctors and one corps – man appointed by Washington. It would have been my job to clear the flight deck.

“No one was to cheer or try to talk with him when he came aboard ship. We heard his voice when he started reporting from the capsule. The first thing we heard was, ‘feel fine; nothing unusual has happened.’ I felt better then [because] I felt he would make it safely.

“I first spotted the capsule when it was about 4,000 feet up, descending under its para­chute. He was six miles dead ahead of the ship. Three Marine and two Navy helicopters saw him. He hit the water about five or ten minutes later, surrounded by the ’copters. They had their hooks down and were ready to take him. When he hit the water, we waited for him to get out of the capsule. When he climbed out [and was hoisted] into the helicop­ter everyone was cheering. We felt great that he had made it. No one applauded or said anything when he came aboard, but everyone seemed to be taking pictures. He went right to the admiral’s cabin. I was just about ten feet from him. Our job continued until 5.00 a. m. the next morning. We stood guard over the capsule.” [42]

Anthony Vitulli was also on the ship that day. A 22-year-old graduate of the New York Institute of Photography, he was one of seven Navy photographers selected to document Shepard’s recovery and recalls the day with fondness. “I was standing on the 07 level [the seventh deck of the island] with a 4-by-5 camera and photographed the capsule as it came out of the sky. We could see it clearly – the landing was that accurate.” In addition to photographing the recovery, Vitulli also took pictures of the interior of Freedom 7 once it had been secured on deck. “It was cramped,” he said. “You look at that [capsule] and then you look at the [Space Shuttle] Enterprise and you say, ‘Oh! How can that be?’ The instruments were crude. You just can’t believe someone went up in space in something like that.” [43]

Prior to being assigned to the USS Lake Champlain, Michael Richmond had Navy recruit training at the Great Lakes Training Center on the shores of Lake Michigan, Illinois. He was part of the arresting gear handling crew – the cables and hardware used to arrest and rapidly slow the forward motion of a landing aircraft. When they

knew they were going to recover the Freedom 7 spacecraft he and his crewmates had their cameras at the ready. “We went on the flight deck when they started bring­ing her in,” he recalls. They watched the sequence of events with interest until Shepard headed below for his health checkup, leaving his spacecraft behind. “That’s when we started taking pictures. They really didn’t make a big issue about security or guards. We just walked up to it and took pictures.” Like many other sailors, Richmond had a picture taken of himself proudly standing beside the history-making spacecraft [44].

Larry Kreitzberg from New York was a Navy photographer PH3 on board ship the day Shepard made his epic space flight. Several of his fine photographs appear in this book. As he explains, “I was assigned for this historic event to the 07 level of ‘The Champ’ along with several other ship’s photographers who were positioned in various parts of the ship as well as in two helicopters. With my aerial camera I was waiting anxiously to see Alan Shepard and his Mercury capsule, Freedom 7. This I consider to be the most exciting time I spent in the Navy.”

As the helicopter bearing its precious cargo approached the ship, “I looked down on the flight deck and observed the crew pointing upwards and watching the capsule being [lowered] on a frame covered with mattresses for cushioning. You could hear yelling and screaming as everyone was overcome with joy. I know I had tears in my eyes (which I’m not ashamed to say) along with everyone else. Watching Shepard depart the helicopter in his silver flight suit, smiling and waving, was one hell of a proud moment for all. I can say with pride that I was there for the first historic U. S. manned space flight with Commander Alan Shepard at the controls. That day is part of me and my life which I will never forget. A proud sailor, I was.” [45]

Taken from the NASA paper (in conjunction with the National Institutes of Health and the National Academy of Sciences): Proceedings of a Conference on Results of the First U. S. Manned Suborbital Flight, 6 June 1961, Washington, D. C.

(Most references by Shepard to images screened during his presentation deleted)

INTRODUCTION

My intention is to present my flight report in narrative form and to include three phases. These phases shall be: (1) the period prior to launch, (2) the flight itself, and (3) the post­flight debriefing period. I intend to describe my feelings and reactions and to make com­ments pertinent to these three areas. I also have an onboard film of the flight to show at the end of my presentation.

PRE-FLIGHT PERIOD

Astronaut D. K. Slayton in a previous paper described the program followed by the Project Mercury astronauts during a two-year training period with descriptions of the various devices used. All of these devices provided one thing in common: namely, the feeling of confidence that the astronauts achieved from their use. Some devices, of course, produced more confidence than others but all were very well received by the group. There are three machines or training devices which provided the most assistance. The first of these is the human centrifuge. We used the facilities of the U. S. Naval Air Development Center in Johnsville, Pennsylvania, which provided the centrifuge itself and a computer to control its inputs. This computer, through an instrument display, provided a control task similar to that of the Mercury spacecraft, with inputs of the proper aerodynamic and moment-of – inertia equations. Thus, we were able to experience the acceleration environment while

C. Burgess, Freedom 7: The Historic Flight of Alan B. Shepard, Jr., Springer Praxis Books, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-01156-1, © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014

simultaneously controlling the spacecraft on a simulated manual system. This experience gave us the feeling of muscle control for circulation and breathing, transmitting, and general control of the spacecraft. I found that the flight environment was very close to the environment provided by the centrifuge. The flight accelerations were smooth, of the same magnitude used during training, and certainly in no way disturbing.

The second training device that proved of great value was the procedures trainer. This device will be recognized as an advanced type of the Link trainer, which was used for instrument training during the last war. We were able to use it to correlate pre-flight plan­ning, to practice simulated control maneuvers, and to practice operational techniques. The Space Task Group has two such trainers, one at Langley Field, Virginia, the other at Cape Canaveral, Florida, and both are capable of the simultaneous training of pilots and ground crews. As a result of the cross-training between pilots and the ground crews at the Project Mercury Control Center, we experienced no major difficulties during the flight. We had learned each other’s problems and terminology, and I feel that we have a valuable training system in use for present and for future flights.

The third area of pre-flight training, which is considered as one of importance, concerns working with the spacecraft itself. The Mercury spacecraft is tested at Cape Canaveral before being attached to the Redstone launch vehicle. These tests provide an excellent opportunity for pilots to learn the idiosyncrasies of the various systems. After the space­craft has been placed on the launch vehicle, more tests are made just prior to launch day. The pilots have a chance to participate in these tests and to work out operational proce­dures with the blockhouse crew.

These three areas then, the centrifuge, the procedures trainer, and spacecraft testing at the launching area, provided the most valuable aids during the training period. We spent two years in training, doing many things, following many avenues in our desire to be sure that we had not overlooked anything of importance. As a general comment concerning future training programs, these experiences will undoubtedly permit us to shorten this training period.

During the days immediately preceding the launch, the pre-flight physicals were given. These examinations do not involve more than the usual profiling, listening, and other med­ical tests, but I hope that fewer body fluid examples are required in the future. I felt as though an unusual number of medics were used.

Pre-flight briefing was held at11 a. m. on the day before launch to correlate all opera­tional elements. 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.