Category Freedom 7

In 1986, Shepard reflected back on that auspicious day. “After the ceremony in the Rose Garden, the president invited the astronauts into the Oval Office to talk about the future of the space program. Kennedy and Vice President Lyndon Johnson had great political instincts. They knew the country needed a lift, and they saw space flight as a rallying point. We talked at great length about it. The president said he knew I had a parade up Pennsylvania Avenue, but first he wanted me to go with him to a meeting of the National Association of Broadcasters. He just grabbed me, and we got in his car and drove to the meeting. ‘I want you to say a few words to these guys,’ Kennedy said. I forget what I said; it was something like it was nice to be back. Everybody jumped to their feet and cheered. I couldn’t believe the reception there.” [15]

According to the 1994 book, Moon Shot, based on interviews with the astronaut, “Shepard did not like what was happening. His patience was evaporating swiftly. He disliked, intensely, being used. Walking in on the broadcasters’ convention with the president would be showing off a war trophy named Shepard, and it smelled. He mol­lified himself somewhat by remembering that no matter who he was, Kennedy was also his commander in chief, and you can excuse almost anything if you’re obeying orders. The fact that he and Louise received a standing ovation did diminish his objec­tions to some degree.” [16]

Further cheers went up as Alan and Louise Shepard, with Vice President Johnson between them, climbed into a limousine which then left the White House for a slow ride along the traditional parade route of American heroes, from the White House out onto Pennsylvania and Constitution Avenues to the Capitol, where he was to receive a reception by Congress.

A massive, cheering crowd estimated at around a quarter of a million people lined the sidewalks. There were no military bands playing, no troops, and no spectacular displays of the nation’s might. Government officials had earlier decided that it would be inappropriate to give their official blessing to a star-spangled military parade and organized welcome, so the citizens of Washington took matters into their own hands and by their tumultuous welcome gave the nation’s first spacemen and his fellows in the following limousines a cacophony of unrehearsed affection that made the day’s proceedings all the more memorable.

“I’ll never forget riding to the Capitol in an open convertible with Johnson and Louise,” Shepard later pointed out. “Johnson kept saying, ‘Look at all these people… Shepard, you and Louise get up on top of this thing.’ So we sat up on the back. When we got to the Capitol, Johnson said, ‘Well, Shepard, now that you’re a famous man, let me give you some advice. Never pass up an opportunity for a free lunch or a chance to go to the men’s room.’” [17]

On arrival at the east portico of the Capitol, Shepard alighted along with the other astronauts in front of a massive crowd. All seven would have been stunned by the thousands of excited people who had gathered in the plaza hoping to catch a glimpse of them but held back by police lines and ropes. Led by Vice President Johnson, the party ascended the broad steps of the Capitol to meet House Speaker Sam Rayburn, House Majority Leader John McCormack, and other dignitaries. Shepard expressed his sincere appreciation for the warm welcome by the lawmakers, and indicated he would have far more to say at his later press conference. He seemed quite composed in front of the noisy, jostling crowd, speaking seldom, smiling often, and watching the scene before him with amazement.

After waving at the crowds and saying a few words, Shepard moved on to the more formal part of the occasion, which was held in the old Supreme Court chamber, just a few steps down from the Senate. Then it was off to the State Department for his press conference, chaired and introduced by NASA Administrator James Webb. As Shepard entered the auditorium, 500 news reporters rose and gave him a standing ovation, something reporters seldom do. With his six fellow astronauts flanking him on his right and James Webb, Robert Gilruth and other NASA officials on his left he gave an account of the flight “we made” the previous Friday. He acknowledged the acclaim, but refused to accept it all for himself.

To the President, to the Congress, and to the reporters, Shepard stressed over and over that it was not “he” but “we” who did the thing that they were praising him for. “I am acutely aware,” he said, “of the hundreds of individuals who made this flight possible.” But as Robert Gilruth, director of the Mercury program pointed out at the conference, it was Alan Shepard “who really broke the ice for all of us” and showed America the way into the great new frontier of space [18].

That night, after the glare of the public spotlight, Shepard and his wife and family spent a quiet evening together in the seclusion of Langley Air Force Base, Virginia, talking over recent events.

Even as the nation celebrated the successful first American space flight by Alan Shepard, most of the attention at NASA had turned to the future and was focused on the second Mercury flight and those which would follow it. Soon 40-year-old Virgil Grissom, better known as Gus, would step up to the plate to deliver the all-important second suborbital test in the spacecraft he had patriotically named Liberty Bell 7.

Three days prior to the launch of MR-2, newspaper reports across the United States were abuzz with a mounting air of excitement and expectation, as the flight of the chimpanzee was rightly being viewed as a prelude to the first flight of a human into space. An Associated Press report on Friday, 28 January 1961, described the build-up to the mission at Cape Canaveral, stressing that good visibility at the launch site and crucial points down the Atlantic test range was an essential requirement for the liftoff to proceed:

In another 24 hours, if there are no delays, scientists will take a final look at six chimpanzees in their quarters here and pick one for the honor of being the nation’s first animal astronaut to check out a Mercury spacecraft like those human astronauts will ride in later launchings. Then, six hours before launch time, the chimp will be packed into its own special space couch in a pressure chamber inside the nine – foot-high Mercury capsule.

If the shot goes, this chimp – a mild-looking member of a specially trained team of four females and two males – will discover for science in a space of 16 minutes whether an animal, much like man in many ways, can tolerate the fantastic stresses of rocket flight under conditions of weightlessness in airless space.

The launching vehicle will be a special Redstone missile which will hurl the chimp 115 miles up and 290 miles downrange at a speed hitting a peak of 4,000 miles an hour.

If chimp and spacecraft make the flight okay, a human astronaut will try it in the next three months. Then, if a host of other trials go well, another chimp will be fired into orbit, and another astronaut will follow his trail, late this year or early next [7].

At 8:00 p. m. (EST) on Monday night, James Henry and John Mosely were on hand to select the prime and backup candidates. According to Ed Dittmer, “We didn’t know which chimp would be going until the day before launch. There were six of them that were selected and they were all good, but Ham easily stood out as the best of the bunch.” [8] Henry and Mosely agreed with Dittmer’s judgment, selecting Ham because of his solid work under test conditions, as well as his general good nature, physical well-being, and alertness at the time. He was also declared to be the best prepared of the six finalists, having amassed 219 hours of training over a 15-month period, including being subjected to simulated Redstone launch profiles on the centrifuge at the Air Force Aerospace Medical Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio. The preferred backup chimpanzee, one of the four females, was Subject 46, known to her handlers as Minnie. She would be prepared to replace Ham at short notice should he develop any late abnormalities.

At 11:55 on the morning of 31 January 1961, chimpanzee Ham was launched on the suborbital MR-2 flight. The Redstone climbed steeply and then headed downrange over the Atlantic Missile Range to where a fleet of Navy vessels was stationed in the target zone some 290 miles from the Cape. Due to the spacecraft overshooting its intended splashdown area and Ham experiencing a rough reentry that exposed him to a hefty load of 18 g’s, there were fears that the chimpanzee might not have survived. However, after the capsule was recovered, the attending veterinarian, Maj. Richard Benson, pronounced Ham to be “healthy and happy.”

While there was relief that Ham’s flight had ended well, Shepard was unshakable in his belief that a human astronaut should have occupied that capsule.

“I reviewed the telemetry tapes and records of the Great Chimp Adventure. I knew I could’ve survived that trip, but I also knew immediately that my own planned flight was in deep trouble. If only the damn chimp’s ride had been on the mark, I’d have launched in March.

“But Ham’s flight had not been on the mark, and in Huntsville, Alabama, Dr. Wernher von Braun, developer of the Redstone and director of the Marshall Space Flight Center, was showing signs of a new conservatism as responsibility for men’s lives was factored into his decisions. ‘We require another unmanned Mercury-Redstone flight,’ he said. Working with the engineers, I confirmed that the problem with Ham’s Redstone had been nothing more than a minor electrical relay. The fix was quick and easy, and the Redstone was back in perfect shape. ‘For God’s sake, let’s fly. Now!’ I begged NASA officials, but Dr. von Braun stood fast: ‘Another test flight.’ I stalked off

steaming to the office of Flight Director Chris Kraft. ‘Look, Chris, we’re pilots,’ I said. ‘When there’s a failure, dammit, we fix it.’

“‘I know, Alan,’ he said.

“‘Well, what about it? It’s an established fact that the relay was the problem, and it’s fixed.’

“‘Right.’

“‘So why don’t we go ahead? Why don’t we man the next one?’

“‘Why waste time, right?’ Kraft smiled.

“‘Right.’

‘“Because when it comes to rockets’ – the flight director shook his head – ‘Wernher is king.’

“‘King?’

“‘King.’

“‘Forget it, right?’

“‘Right.’

“So I walked away, brooding. The March 24 Redstone flight was an absolute beauty. I could’ve killed. I should’ve been on that flight. I could’ve led the world into space. I should’ve been floating up there, while the Russians were still wrestling with a balky rocket booster.”

By the time Shepard’s flight was ready to go, Yuri Gagarin had already been there and back.

“So that was that,” Shepard pointed out ruefully. “Nearly four years after Sputnik started the Space Race and two years after I and my six colleagues – Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Virgil (‘Gus’) Grissom, Wally Schirra, and Deke Slayton – were presented in a Washington, D. C., ceremony as the Mercury Project team that would represent America in space, we’d been beaten to the punch. We had them by the short hairs, and we gave it away.” [34]

As Guenter Wendt reflected, “As we busied ourselves incorporating the latest changes into the spacecraft, Glenn, Grissom and Shepard stayed busy in the simula­tor in Hangar S. The three prime candidates for the first Mercury flight spent 50 to 60 hours a week working on procedures in the simulator. During that period, Shepard made about 120 simulated flights, some in the sim[ulator] and some in the altitude chamber. In spite of the fact that Gagarin had orbited the Earth, and our first flight would only be suborbital, our Mercury was much more sophisticated than their Vostok. Of course we didn’t know it at the time, but the lead we had in spacecraft systems was one that we would never relinquish.” [35]

At long last the 1MC on the USS Lake Champlain announced that Freedom 7 had been launched successfully, and the sailors were told that if they looked to the west in several minutes they should be able to witness the spacecraft’s return.

At about the nine-minute point in the flight, Capt. Weymouth called Pri-Fly, and Ed Killian’s personal involvement in the MR-3 mission started. Weymouth said the NASA people on board the ship had not been able to reach the astronaut by radio. As Killian recalled, “The capsule carried both UHF and VHF radio units, but the VHF did not seem to be working. It was suspected that reentry ionization had screwed up radio communications such that NASA was unable to contact Shepard, but there was a scary possibility that something had gone seriously wrong. The Captain asked the Air Boss to see if Pri-Fly could raise the capsule on their UHF radio. We hadn’t been informed as to the capsule’s call sign, since we weren’t expected to be involved in communicat­ing with Shepard, so we didn’t know that his call sign was ‘Freedom 7.’ The Air Boss called ‘Mercury’ several times on the VHF radio without success, and then asked me to try the AR-15. This UHF aircraft radio was not standard equipment for Pri-Fly; it had been added several months earlier as a backup to the VHS system routinely used to contact the aircraft under control of Pri-Fly. As senior controller on my shift, I gen­erally wore the mike and headset, and operated the AR-15. It was not connected to any loudspeaker in Pri-Fly, so those communications were more or less private. Having failed to reach Shepard on VHF, the Air Boss turned and told me to call Shepard.”

Killian then began his attempt to reach the spacecraft. “Mercury, Mercury, this is Nighthawk. Do you read? Over.” There was no response. He repeated the entire call several times without success, and then told Air Boss Howard Skidmore he’d had no luck. Told to keep trying, he repeated the call several times more. He could see the concern on Skidmore’s face, and when he glanced up at the bridge he could also see Capt. Weymouth looking down at him with an equally worried expression.

Seconds later, an urgent call came over the intercom. “Pri-Fly, this is the Captain. Have you been able to raise Mercury?” Replying in the negative, Skidmore motioned for Killian to keep trying. As he repeated the call, the AR-15 sputtered and crackled, then cleared up and an exuberant voice responded with, “Roger, Nighthawk, this is Mercury. Boy, what a f.. .ing ride! Ho-lee s…! Goddam, that was something!” It was Alan Shepard himself.

“His excited reply startled me,” Killian says, “and such language wasn’t common in the radio traffic monitored in Pri-Fly. I was a little embarrassed, but pretty sure no one else had heard his outburst.” Happily for newspaper editors the following day, Shepard repeated his excited catch-cry of “Boy, what a ride!” to Capt. Weymouth on arriving on the ship – minus the profanity – which became the headline tag on many a global newspaper that day.

As Killian continued, “Shepard’s voice was at a high pitch in his excitement and it was obvious that he was glad to have made contact with someone on Earth after his short, but explosive, sojourn into space. We all knew that several previous launch attempts had exploded on the pad or shortly thereafter; he must have felt exhilarated just to be alive. His excited and happy response told me all we had wanted to know. I turned to my right and looked up to Capt. Weymouth on the bridge, and with a big smile on my face I gave him the thumb-and-forefinger ‘OK’ sign. Alan Shepard, America’s first astronaut, was A-OK. I made contact with him again, confirming that we’d received his transmission. ‘Roger, ride, Mercury,’ I said, ‘Nighthawk has a visual on you now, four miles off our port bow. We are making for your location and the choppers are airborne for your recovery. Do you read? Over.’

“I could tell from the tone of his voice when he responded that he was relieved to know that we were so close by. He regained some composure and acknowledged my trans­mission, thanking me for the information. I was watching the capsule swinging gently below the parachute just a few points off our port bow as I spoke to Shepard on the AR-15. Finally, NASA’s VHF radio finally broke in and I dropped out of the communications loop.”

These days Ed Killian is still amused at the blue language used by Shepard after his fiery reentry, and coyly wonders whether it ought perhaps to have been reported cor­rectly. “It was truly memorable,” he notes, “but the language was not scripted and it was just not acceptable for public audiences. Later, the astronauts would become more adept with ‘politically correct’ language. For now, Shepard had been honest in his reaction to the historic, and patently dangerous, personal experience.”

Whereas nowadays nearly every word of an American space mission is generally broadcast live, back then NASA was far less inclined to allow members of the public to listen to uncensored recordings of the Mercury astronauts under stress or even in danger. Only those who were fully involved in the missions had a “need to know” insight into the actual spacecraft-to-ground transmissions. Every word between the astronauts and the ground was filtered through Lt. Col. John (‘Shorty’) Powers, the space agency’s Public Affairs Officer, who then released a sanitized version of what had been said to the public. Even post-flight films had an edited voice track of the astronaut involved in that mission, which became the “official” NASA version of the flight. It is therefore hardly surprising that Shepard’s excited expletives, normally quite unremarkable for test pilots, were censored and never made public.

From the outset, the Freedom 7 spacecraft was never intended to serve any practical purpose after its history-making flight, let alone fly into space again. Instead, it was gifted to the American people by NASA, to be preserved in a museum environment and openly exhibited for everyone to visit.

Sadly, the Soviet Union was not quite as kind to its flown manned spacecraft. In one instance the Vostok 2 capsule, flown by Gherman Titov in making history’s first day-long space flight, was converted and used as a training vessel for the upcoming Voskhod human space flight program. During a failed test for a new soft-landing para­chute system, the capsule struck the ground so hard that it was crushed beyond repair. There would appear to be no indication of what happened to the remains, but there are lingering fears that it may have been unceremoniously scrapped.

Unlike his pioneering spacecraft, Alan Shepard would eventually fly into space a second time. In 1971 he commanded the Apollo 14 mission, fulfilling his long-held dream of walking on the surface of the Moon.

More than five decades on, the smaller spacecraft and the man who flew in it have both entered the history books for what they accomplished on 5 May 1961.

THE SPACECRAFT

Following its return by helicopter to Cape Canaveral, the Freedom 7 spacecraft was subjected to several days of minute examination by engineers and technicians. It was then released for a pre-scheduled tour abroad, ahead of being placed on permanent display in the United States. On 25 May, just three weeks after it had been recovered from the Atlantic, Freedom 7 went on display at the 24th International Aeronautical Show in Paris, France. By the end of the show on 4 June, some 650,000 fascinated attendees had taken the opportunity to view the spacecraft up close.

C. Burgess, Freedom 7: The Historic Flight of Alan B. Shepard, Jr., Springer Praxis Books, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-01156-1_8, © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014

From Paris Freedom 7 was shipped to Italy, where it was on display from 13-25 June at the Rassegna International Electronic and Nuclear Fair in Rome. Amazingly, it drew more visitors than in Paris, with around 750,000 people lining up to inspect it. The spacecraft was then returned to the United States to undergo intensive study at the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. After that it was returned to its maker, the McDonnell Aircraft Company in St. Louis, Missouri, to be taken apart, inspected, reconstructed, and prepared for public exhibition in the National Air and Space Museum (NASM) of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D. C.

Four months later, on 23 October 1961, Freedom 7 was officially presented to the Smithsonian by NASA Administrator James Webb. In his presentation speech, Webb declared, “To Americans seeking answers, proof that man can survive in the hostile realms of space is not enough. A solid and meaningful foundation for public support and the basis for our Apollo man-in-space effort is that U. S. astronauts are going into space to do useful work in the cause of all their fellow men.” [1] Freedom 7 was placed on public display in the Quonset Hut – or Air Museum Building – in the South Yard Restrictions of the National Air and Space Museum.

East met West in May 1962 when Vostok 2 cosmonaut Gherman Titov paid an offi­cial visit to the United States. Accompanied by Mercury astronaut John Glenn, who had by then accomplished America’s first manned orbital flight, and a veritable caval­cade of official vehicles and press photographers, Titov was shown some of the sights around the nation’s capital, one highlight being a brief visit to the National Air and Space Museum where the cosmonaut inspected the Freedom 7 spacecraft.

In 1965, due to keen interest abroad and through the courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution, the Freedom 7 spacecraft was temporarily loaned to the Science Museum in Kensington, London, for a five-month exhibition. It was shipped from New York to London on the Cunard-Anchor liner Sidonia and delivered amid great fanfare on 17 September. The exhibition (which was advertised as lasting from 5 October 1965 to 28 February 1966) proved to be extremely popular. By the end of February it had been visited by 110,000 people. Among the visitors were Her Majesty the Queen and H. R.H. the Duke of Edinburgh, who viewed Freedom 7 on 10 November [2].

Within the spacecraft was a lifelike model of Alan Shepard lying on his back as if preparing for liftoff, his left hand grasping the abort handle ready to fire the escape tower in the event of a mishap.

Due to great public interest, the Smithsonian agreed to an extension of the loan, allowing the exhibition to remain open until 1 May 1966. Eventually, the spacecraft was viewed by 356,000 visitors. On 18 May it was transferred to the Royal Scottish Museum in Edinburgh, where it was exhibited for several weeks in conjunction with a public talk by John Glenn on 3 June. After the exhibit was closed on 11 September, the spacecraft remained in the museum out of public view for a further three weeks to accommodate a visiting Smithsonian dignitary. Overall, the Edinburgh exhibition was seen by in excess of 200,000 visitors, this number having been collected by the “elec­tric eye” of the museum [3].

Following its overseas sojourn, Freedom 7 was returned to the United States and placed back on public display at the Smithsonian, where it would remain for the next 32 years.

In December 1998 the spacecraft was out on lengthy loan once again, this time to the U. S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. The exhibition had been mounted

to honor the memory of pilot Alan Shepard, who died earlier that year. Shepard had graduated from the Academy in 1945. Freedom 7 would remain on public display at the Armel-Leftwich Visitor Center for 14 years, honored with a place in the rotunda leading to the exhibit area. During this time, it was encased in acrylic Plexiglas and had its periscope deployed.

On 18 January 2012 the Naval Academy announced that Freedom 7 would soon be moved from Maryland to Massachusetts and placed on temporary exhibition until December 2015 in a space gallery at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Columbus Point, Boston. The spacecraft’s public debut on 12 September 2012 was to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the “We choose to go to the Moon” speech that Kennedy famously delivered at Rice University in Houston in 1962.

Prior to the spacecraft taking up temporary residence in Boston, there was a major problem to resolve. This fell to experts at the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center in Hutchinson, Kansas, which, in consultation with the Smithsonian, developed and

built a special cradle for exhibiting Freedom 7 in Boston. The cradle was constructed using steel that had been washed and sandblasted in order to remove any corrosion. It was then covered with a clear protectant and painted with rubber padding where it would support the spacecraft. Jim Remar, president and chief operating officer at the Cosmosphere, said the discarded acrylic cover had been a less than ideal means of preserving the historic artifact. “The acrylic prevented the spacecraft from breathing. As materials deteriorate, they emit gas. The acrylic trapped the off-gassing in the spacecraft and [this] could accelerate or increase the rate of deterioration. With the removal of the acrylic, it is now able to breathe and the off-gas is exhausted out.” [4] However, Freedom 7’sjourney will not end there. In 2016 the Smithsonian plans to display it as part of a major, brand new Apollo-themed gallery that tells through dis­plays the monumental story of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs.