Category Liberty Bell 7

The following month the new program had been given a name. On 3 January 1962 NASA announced the two-man spacecraft would be called Gemini, the Latin word for “twins.” This followed a suggestion by Alex P. Nagy from NASA’s Office of Manned Space Flight at the agency’s Washington Headquarters, who not only had the distinc­tion of naming the nation’s new space program but also of receiving the associated prize of a bottle of scotch whiskey. Appropriately enough, Gemini was the name given to the third constellation of the zodiac (the sign in astrology that is controlled by Mercury) and comprised of two stars called Castor and Pollux. The Gemini spacecraft

In preparation for future Apollo lunar missions, all eligible astronauts including Gus Grissom underwent geology training, and he is shown here in the Grand Canyon in 1964. (Photo: NASA)

Part of the fun of astronaut geology training in the Grand Canyon was riding out on mules. (Photo: NASA)

was the same high-drag shape as the Mercury capsule, but with around 50 percent greater interior room.

The first test flight (GLV-1) of a Gemini spacecraft atop a Titan II took place on 8 April 1964, using Launch Complex 19 at Cape Canaveral, and it was a complete suc­cess. The second stage of the Titan II and the attached, uninhabited spacecraft orbited the Earth 64 times, although the official part of the mission ended after only three orbits. As there were no plans to retrieve the spacecraft, the entire assembly of the spacecraft and the upper stage of the booster reentered the atmosphere four days later and burned up over the South Atlantic. All the major mission objectives had been met, principally that of testing the structural integrity of the spacecraft and the modified Titan II booster and proving that the spacecraft was capable of carrying a crew.

As history records, Alan Shepard was actually the original choice to command the first Gemini orbital test flight with co-pilot Tom Stafford, but to his consternation he fell victim to a debilitating inner ear ailment (later diagnosed as Meniere’s disease) which caused him to be medically disqualified from flying in October 1963.

Early in 1964 Missiles and Rockets magazine made a surprise claim. “There are unconfirmed reports that the first Gemini astronaut team will be made up of Virgil (‘Gus’) Grissom and Neal [sic] Armstrong. Grissom is the member of the original Mercury astronaut team who has worked most closely with McDonnell Aircraft Corp. in design and development of the spacecraft. Armstrong has chalked up many flight hours during the X-15 program. Official announcement of the first pilot team is expected around May 1.”2

Grissom had been penciled in to command the fourth manned Gemini flight and the grounding of Shepard caused Deke Slayton (who had himself been grounded before he could make a Mercury flight and, as the newly named deputy director of Flight Crew Operations, was in charge of crew assignments) to promote Gus to the first manned mission, the three-orbit test flight designated Gemini 3. Now a suitable co­pilot was needed to partner him, and Slayton wanted to give flight experience to the nine newly selected astronauts. He subsequently paired them in the first Gemini flights with an experienced astronaut from the Mercury program.

At first the Gemini 3 mission was scheduled for launch in December 1964. Air Force Capt. Frank Borman had recently finished his astronaut training and, like the other eight pilots of the second astronaut group, was wondering when he might be assigned to a Gemini mission and which one it would be. Everyone knew that the Mercury astronauts who would fly as mission commanders on Gemini would have the power to veto any decision that Slayton might make regarding their co-pilot in order to avoid any potential clashes of personality.

It came as an unexpected but welcome surprise when Borman received a phone call one day from Grissom, who told him (although it was yet to be made official) that he, Grissom, had been named by Slayton to command the first manned Gemini mission and Borman had been tentatively assigned as his co-pilot. Grissom wanted to talk over the mission and its requirements before the final crewing decision was made. The two men arranged to meet at his house, and Borman could not get there soon enough. They spent an hour or so deep in conversation and not long after that Borman was informed of a change of crewing that meant Grissom would fly with another member of the Group 2 astronauts.

“I haven’t the slightest idea what went wrong,” Borman later pointed out in his autobiography, “but he apparently wasn’t too impressed with me. The next thing I knew, I had been replaced by John Young, who didn’t try very hard to conceal his delight, for which I couldn’t blame him.”3

To soften Borman’s disappointment at the news, Slayton told him that he would instead be assigned as backup commander of the second mission, with co-pilot Jim Lovell.

(References to the accompanying slide presentation deleted)

INTRODUCTION

The second Mercury manned flight was made on July 21, 1961. The flight plan pro­vided a ballistic trajectory having a maximum altitude of 103 nautical miles, a range of 263 nautical miles, and a five-minute period of weightlessness.

The following is a chronological report on the pilot’s activities prior to, during, and after the flight.

PRE-FLIGHT

The pre-flight period is composed of two distinct areas. The first is the training that has been in progress for the past 2.5 years and which is still in progress. The second area, and the one that assumes the most importance as launch day approaches, is the participation in the day-to-day engineering and testing that applies directly to the spacecraft that is to be flown.

Over the past two years, a great deal of information has been published about the astro­naut training program and the program has been previously described in Reference 1. In the present paper, I intend to comment on only three trainers which I feel have been of the greatest value in preparing me for this flight.

The first trainer that has proven most valuable is the Mercury procedures trainer which is a fixed-base computer-operated flight simulator. There are two of these trainers, one at the NASA-Langley Air Force Base, Virginia, and one at the Mercury Control Center, Cape Canaveral, Florida. These procedures trainers have been used continuously throughout the program to learn the system operations, to learn emergency operating techniques during system malfunctions, to learn control techniques, and to develop operational procedures between pilot and ground personnel.

During the period preceding the launch, the trainers were used to finalize the flight plan and to gain a high degree of proficiency in flying the mission profile. First, the systems to be checked specifically by the pilot were determined. These were to be the manual propor­tional control system; the rate command control system; attitude control with instruments as a reference; attitude control with the Earth-sky horizon as a reference; the UHF, HF, and emergency voice communications systems; and the manual retro-fire override. The proce­dures trainer was then used to establish an orderly sequence of accomplishing these tasks. The pilot functions were tried and modified a great number of times before a satisfactory sequence was determined. After the flight plan was established, it was practiced until each phase and time was memorized. During this phase of training, there was a tendency to add more tasks to the mission flight plan as proficiency was gained. Even though the MR-4 flight plan contained less pilot functions than the MR-3 flight plan, I found that the view out the window, which cannot be simulated, distracted me from the less important tasks and often caused me to fall behind the planned program. The only time this distraction concerned me was prior to retro-fire; at other times, I felt that looking out the window was of greater importance than some of the planned menial tasks. In spite of this pleasant dis­traction, all tasks were accomplished with the exception of visual control of retro-fire.

The second trainer that was of great value and one that I wish had been more readily available prior to launch was the air-lubricated free-attitude (ALFA) trainer at the NASA – Langley Air Force Base, Virginia. This trainer provided the only training in visual control of the spacecraft. I had intended to use the Earth-sky horizon as my primary means of attitude control and had spent a number of hours on the ALFA trainer practicing retro-fire using the horizon as a reference. Because of the rush of events at Cape Canaveral during the two weeks prior to launch, I was unable to use this trainer. I felt this probably had some bearing on my instinctive switch to instruments for retro-fire during the flight, instead of using the horizon as a reference.

The third training device that was of great value was the Johnsville human centrifuge. With this device, we learned to control the spacecraft during the accelerations imposed by launch and reentry and learned muscle control to aid blood circulation and respiration in the acceleration environment. The acceleration buildup during the flight was considerably smoother than that experienced on the centrifuge and probably for this reason and for obvious psychological reasons, the g-forces were much easier to withstand during the flight than during the training missions.

One other phenomenon that was experienced on the centrifuge proved to be of great value during the flight. Quite often, as the centrifuge changed rapidly from a g-level, a false tumbling sensation was encountered. This became a common and expected sensation and when the same thing occurred at launch vehicle cutoff, it was in no way disturbing. A quick glance at my instruments convinced me that I, indeed, was not tumbling.

The pilot’s confidence comes from all the foregoing training methods and many other areas, but the real confidence comes from participation in the day-to-day engineering deci­sions and testing that occur during the pre-flight check-out at Cape Canaveral. It was dur­ing this time that I learned the particular idiosyncrasies of the spacecraft I was to fly. A great deal of time had already been spent in learning both normal and emergency system operations. But during the testing at the pre-flight complex and at the launching pad, I learned all the differences between this spacecraft and the simulator that had been used for training. I learned the various noises and vibrations that are connected with the operation of the systems. This was the time that I really began to feel at home in this cockpit. This training was very beneficial on launch day because I felt that I knew this spacecraft and what it would do, and having spent so much time in the cockpit I felt it was normal to be there.

As a group, we astronauts feel that after the spacecraft arrives at the Cape, our time is best spent in participating in spacecraft activities. This causes some conflict in training, since predicting the time test runs of the pre-flight checkouts will start or end is a mystic art that is understood by few and is unreliable at its best. Quite frequently this causes train­ing sessions to be cancelled or delayed, but it should be of no great concern since most of the training has been accomplished prior to this time. The use of the trainers during this period is primarily to keep performance at a peak and the time required will vary from pilot to pilot.

At the time the spacecraft is moved from the pre-flight complex to the launching pad, practically all training stops. From this time on, I was at the pad full time participating in or observing every test that was made on the spacecraft – launch-vehicle combination. Here, I became familiar with the launch procedure and grew to know and respect the launch crew. I gained confidence in their professional approach to and execution of the pre-launch tests.

On Sunday, 16 July 1939, noted scientist Albert Einstein famously sent a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, urging him to explore nuclear weaponry and, as a result, established the United States on the road to the creation of the first atomic weapons ever used to devastating effect in a military conflict.

That very same day an industrial giant was also created when the McDonnell Aircraft Corporation was founded by James Smith McDonnell. Based in St. Louis, Missouri with a startup work force of just thirteen, including McDonnell, it eventually became a leading American aerospace company best known for developing and build­ing some of the finest and most potent fighter jets ever to take to the skies, including the legendary and long-serving F4 Phantom. To those early workers, the McDonnell Aircraft Corporation became more simply known to them by the acronym MAC, and its founder – understandably, and fondly – as Mr. Mac.

Many years later, when McDonnell Douglas merged with the Boeing Company, a new advertising motto was adopted: “Forever New Frontiers.” Those three words not only envisaged an exciting future in aviation, but reflected back most appropriately to the glory days of the McDonnell organization.

Meanwhile, following completion of the Capsule Systems Test (CST) at St. Louis, Spacecraft No. 2 was shipped to Huntsville, Alabama where it was test-mated with the booster allocated to the MR-1 mission to ensure complete compatibility between the two. After these checks the spacecraft was airlifted to the Cape, being delivered to Hangar S on 24 July. Here it would be installed within a room-sized, protective air – filtered plastic tent. This temporary facility was nowhere near the standard of the McDonnell ‘clean room,’ but it went a long way towards keeping the dust and other unwanted elements at bay.

As McDonnell design engineer Jerry Roberts explains, there was essentially unlim­ited access to the spacecraft at this stage, which allowed a little surreptitious activity for those seeking space-flown souvenirs.

“We had access to the spacecraft all the time in Hangar S. On nights when we worked the night shift we would take advantage of this access to curl up and fold dollar bills that everyone including some astronauts had signed into the spacecraft’s

cabling, and then we’d lace the cabling back up and tape it all up out of sight. It was a pretty big deal to put something in the spacecraft and have it flown in space. The idea was for the bills to fly in space and then we would recover them when we checked out the spacecraft after the flight. Sometimes this happened, but other times we didn’t get access to the spacecraft after the flight, and so to my knowledge those bills are prob­ably still in those spacecraft wherever they are located today.”33

Early September 1960 would prove to be a time for greater optimism in the Mercury program. The testing of Spacecraft No. 2 in the Cape’s Hangar S was progressing well, and Spacecraft No. 6 had been delivered. It would be flown in February the fol­lowing year on the first “bellyband” Atlas (67D) flight, as another unmanned test launch and recovery operation designated MA-2.

The Hangar S work schedule included the installation of parachutes and pyrotech­nics, following which the fully equipped Spacecraft No. 2 was transported to the pad on 26 September. The Redstone booster had arrived earlier, been erected, and was now enclosed in the gantry (or service structure) which – as for all of the Redstone launch complexes – was basically a converted oil well rig. From the time of mating with the booster through to the scheduled launch date of 7 November, everything seemed to progress smoothly and few problems were encountered.

That month, the general training of the seven astronauts also narrowed and became far more concentrated on flying the first Mercury-Redstone missions.

The MR-1 launch did not proceed on 7 November as planned, because the helium pressure in the spacecraft’s control system 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,” Luetjen explained. “The spacecraft was removed from the booster and the heat shield dropped to expose the culprit, a leaky relief valve.”34 The faulty valve was replaced, along with a hydrogen peroxide tank, and a minor wiring change was also made in response to an earlier test at Wallops Island. The fol­lowing day, as the spacecraft was undergoing repairs, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was elected as the 35th President of the United States.

The MR-1 launch was rescheduled for 21 November and the countdown went well, apart from a short hold in order to fix a small leak in the hydrogen peroxide system. Ignition occurred at 9:00 a. m. and a mighty roar ripped across the Cape – but only momentarily. It was replaced by a sudden and unexpected silence. From behind his console in the blockhouse, Luetjen could only wonder what had gone wrong.

“Watching from the windows of the blockhouse, John Glenn and the Mercury dig­nitaries saw the booster wobble slightly on its pedestal and settle back on its fins after an inch or so rise. The booster engine shut down and the escape tower zipped up nearly a mile high and landed some 400 yards from the launch site. Three seconds after the escape rocket blew, the drogue package shot upward, followed in succession by the main and reserve parachutes, all of which fluttered down alongside the booster.

“After John Glenn witnessed the tower take off, he came running back to my con­sole and said, ‘My God, Luge, the tower went!’ I had no appropriate answer, nor was John really expecting one. He was simply frustrated, as we all were.”35

Two days later Robert Gilruth issued a memorandum addressed to all Mercury personnel.

“Today I received the following TWX [teletype writer exchange] from the NASA Administrator: ‘As disappointed as I am in the results of yesterday’s shot, I know how discouraging these troubles are to you and your fine staff. Please try to close your ears to the press comments and know that there is no lack of faith in your ability to succeed in this effort. Now is the time for real driving leadership so grit your teeth and dig in. We are solidly behind you and your outfit. Signed, T. Keith Glennan, Administrator.’ “I should like to express to the NASA and MAC staff my wholehearted agreement with the above sentiment, and my pleasure at the very fine and unstinting effort I have observed in the work here. I have every confidence that the program is sound. The recent occurrence in the MR launch attempt merely emphasizes the importance of the early flight test program in uncovering these problems which can be identified only by bringing together all the various elements of the flight system in a real exercise. [Signed] Robert R. Gilruth, Director of Project Mercury.”36

The rocket was defueled and the remaining pyrotechnics carefully disarmed, but the fins had been damaged during the launch fiasco and the entire Redstone had to be replaced by another. Engineers tracked down the cause of the problem; they found a ‘sneak circuit’ in the booster ground cabling that caused an erroneous cutoff signal. Fortunately Spacecraft No. 2 was found to have come through the incident relatively undamaged and could be easily recycled. Within a week, plans were well under way for a replacement MR-1A mission using a substituted Redstone booster (MRLV-3), originally slated for the MR-3 mission. The spacecraft was fitted with the escape tower from Spacecraft No. 8 and the antenna fairing from Spacecraft No. 10.

Once the MR-1A spacecraft had been worked over at Hangar S and three verifica­tion tests completed, it was mated with the Redstone booster at Pad 5 on 9 December, with the launch set for ten days later. On the morning of 19 December, with all seven Mercury astronauts anxiously looking on, there was a 40-minute delay in the count­down caused by strong winds. And then a hydrogen peroxide solenoid valve had to be replaced, necessitating a 1-hour recycle of the countdown. Finally, at 11:15 a. m., lift­off occurred.

“This time there were no glitches,” Luetjen recalled. The 83-foot Mercury-Redstone assembly was cheered on… as it lifted off and burned brightly for 143 seconds before normal cutoff.”37

The mission was totally successful, with the Mercury spacecraft reaching an alti­tude of 130 miles and a range of 235 miles. The Redstone reached a slightly higher velocity than expected of 4,909 miles per hour, but this had no great impact on the overall mission. Spacecraft No. 2 was recovered from the Atlantic Ocean by recovery helicopters. “The spacecraft performed perfectly and the mission was a complete suc­cess,” Luetjen said in summing up the flight. “Exuberance reigned supreme!”38

The MR-1A test flight had now verified the operation of the Mercury system in the space environment. At a news conference held early in 1961, Robert Gilruth praised the efforts that had gone into the creation of the Mercury spacecraft.

“In October of 1958 the Mercury vehicle was only a concept,” he reported. “In two years this concept has been translated into facilities, trained teams, and flight hard­ware, and it is now, in two-plus years, in the initial phases of production test flights.

“This was an unusual and complex task. It required an integration of missile tech­nology with the manned flight requirements. It involved an unprecedented cooperative effort between the military and civilians, and with foreign countries.

“It involved the building of a new technical know-how; that is, manned vehicle design and flight test methods, aeronautical unknowns, worldwide tracking and communications, and the development of industrial production and operational capability.”39

Most importantly of all, it had involved the tremendous work and dedication of Robert Gilruth.

Three days before the planned MR-4 launch, Grissom participated in a mission dry run on Launch Pad 5. By this time he had moved out of the Holiday Inn in Cocoa Beach and was staying full-time in crew quarters at Hangar S. The simulated flight involved securing the side hatch, purging the crew cabin with oxygen, and rolling the launch gantry away.

“I showed up early at Pad 5 for the simulated flight which would be the final prac­tice mission in the capsule before the launch,” he recalled. “It went fairly well, but I was kept so busy handling communications checks that I fell slightly behind in the count. All of the sequences in the countdown took place in the right order, but some of them came off a little late. Then the second of the three retro-rockets, which are programmed to fire at 5-second intervals, went off two and a half seconds early. So we had to check into that.”19

Apart from these problems, the test was successfully completed and everything seemed to be in order for the actual launch.

On Sunday, 16 July – a day described by Grissom as “a fairly lazy day” – he and Glenn entered the final phase of preparation for Tuesday morning’s expected space shot. For the three days before the planned launch date they both lived in the crew quarters of Hangar S, where they had a comfortable bed, a television set and radio, reading material and complete privacy. It also provided them with isolation from any possible carriers of infectious disease organisms.

The previous day, the two astronauts had begun a low-residue, high-energy diet to reduce the possibility of excretion and provide quick-burning reserve strength during the flight. They ate in a special ready room at the Cape, their meals being made by a personal chef whose sole duty during that time was to prepare their food. According to the astronauts’ flight surgeon Dr. William Douglas, the menu was prepared “by Miss Beatrice Finklestein of the Aeromedical Medical Laboratory, Aeronautical Systems Division, U. S. Air Force Systems Command.” As Dr. Douglas recorded, the chef prepared identical meals at each feeding; two went to the pilot and backup pilot, while several were given to other people “so that an epidemiological study can be facilitated if necessary.” An extra serving was kept in a refrigerator for 24 hours “for study in the event that the pilot develops a gastrointestinal illness during this period or subsequently.” Furthermore, no coffee was permitted during the 24-hour period pre­ceding either suborbital flight because of its tendency to inhibit sleep, and none was permitted for breakfast on launch day because of its diuretic properties.20

For Grissom and Glenn, breakfast consisted of four ounces of strained orange juice, half a cup of cooked Cream of Wheat hot cereal, two or three slices of crisp Canadian bacon, two scrambled or boiled eggs, white toast, butter and strawberry jelly. For lunch they had broiled chicken, baby-food type peas, bread without crust, cottage cheese salad, ice tea, and sugar cookies. Dinner was broiled potato without skin, baby food vegetable and sherbet.

On Sunday afternoon the two astronauts traveled to nearby Patrick AFB to begin their final preflight physical examinations, following which Grissom relaxed with a little surf casting on the beach of the Cape missile center.

On Monday, 17 July, NASA announced that everything – including the weather – appeared to be set for the space shot. Lt. Col. John A. (‘Shorty’) Powers of NASA’s Public Affairs Office informed newsmen, “As of this time all elements are ‘A-OK’ for this mission.” The first use of the term ‘A-OK’ was once mistakenly accredited to Alan Shepard but it was actually Powers who introduced the phrase to the public, using it during his live broadcast of Shepard’s flight. Powers was a decorated former transport pilot who flew in World War II and Korea before serving as an information officer for the Air Research Development Command. He became the public face of NASA and the Mercury program and quickly earned for himself the sobriquet “the voice of the astronauts.” He knew that NASA engineers used the ‘A-OK’ term in radio transmissions tests because the sharper sound of the letter A cut through static better than the letter O. Liking the military snap of the phrase, Powers borrowed it for his mission broadcasts.

Powers also confirmed before an audience of 200 newspaper, radio and television reporters that Grissom remained the prime pilot for the MR-4 flight, with Glenn as his backup. He added that Shepard would be CapCom for the flight, backed up by Scott Carpenter. Slayton would be at the communications post in the blockhouse, maintain­ing radio contact with Grissom in the capsule before the launch. Schirra would be Slayton’s backup for this role. Gordon Cooper would observe the launch while flying high over the Cape in an F-106 jet.

Grissom and Glenn were asked to go to bed early on the evening before launch, but only as a suggestion, not a strict recommendation. As well, and unlike Shepard, Grissom would optimize his launch morning routine by shaving and bathing before retiring. By 5:00 p. m. on Monday afternoon he was fast asleep in crew quarters. At 10:30 he was woken by Bill Douglas and informed that the launch had been called off owing to low-hanging clouds spawned by a Caribbean weather front. Grissom, whose ability to relax under pressure helped him win MR-4, accepted this news with a yawn and went back to sleep.

Fortunately the Redstone rocket had not been loaded with liquid oxygen. This meant officials could reset the shot for the same time Wednesday without having to purge out the rocket. According to a NASA spokesman, it also meant that the first seg­ment of the 12 hour-long countdown, which was completed Monday, would not have to be repeated. “It’s locked up,” the spokesman said, adding that the remaining hours of the countdown procedure would be picked up starting about 11:30 that evening.

Sometime in 1960 the editor of the National Geographic magazine offered to lend a photographer to NASA to document the Mercury program. Dean Conger had a long­time interest in aviation and had already documented the X-15 program, so he was selected. In May 1961 he took many of the iconic shots of Alan Shepard that graced the National Geographic, newspapers, and other publications. He was also onboard the USS Randolph to photograph the recovery of Gus Grissom.

“It was an exciting time,” Conger related, looking back. “On the ship I had very little conversation myself with Grissom. I was there to observe and document. Over the course of many months I had met all of the doctors and debriefers who would be in the sick bay; in fact, we became quite friendly and they knew I wouldn’t take any compromising pictures.”

He did, however, mention that he had two particularly unforgettable memories of photographing Grissom. “One of the first things that happened when he got on the carrier was a phone call from the President… that was the last thing he wanted right then. He still has his space suit on… probably full of sea water. I don’t know how it came about, but I also took a picture of him turning his boot upside-down, pouring water out. It was widely published at the time. There were other shots of him after he got cleaned up and the doctors had checked him out. By the time he was ready to fly to Grand Bahama Island he was all smiles.”30

After the nation’s newest hero had been assisted in stripping off his water-filled space suit in the captain’s cabin, and had dried off, a Navy officer handed Grissom his helmet, which had been retrieved from the Atlantic. To Grissom’s astonishment the officer told him a destroyer crew had plucked it from the sea next to a circling ten-foot shark. He was also presented with a bright orange Navy flight suit to wear. The decorated Air Force test pilot gave a wry smile as he cast his eyes over the suit and could not resist making the wisecrack remark, “I’ve been trying to get one of these things for years!”

Earlier, when Grissom had stepped down from the rescue helicopter, he had seen a familiar face standing alongside the two doctors. Senior NASA Space Task Group representative Charles Tynan was onboard as the Recovery Team Leader, just as he had been on the USS Lake Champlain for the recovery of Alan Shepard two months earlier. And just as on the Shepard recovery, Tynan was wearing his “lucky” yellow patterned shirt.

As Tynan recalled for the author, “I met him at the helicopter with the doctors immediately after the helicopter landed on the carrier, and later approached him in the wardroom. Although we were not supposed to talk with Shepard after his flight, since Grissom’s capsule sank I was instructed from MCC [Mercury Control Center] to talk with Gus and see if I could find out why the hatch had blown prematurely. I remember approaching Gus, dressed in a white terry cloth bathrobe, starting to eat breakfast. When I approached, he was spitting out some bad prunes. He cursed and said ‘Nothing has gone right today’ because the prunes he was starting to eat were no good. Grissom was upset about the capsule sinking but he was adamant about any hint that he blew the hatch, so I didn’t learn much about the blown hatch. He didn’t want to talk about it. He claimed then, and later, that he did not blow the hatch.”31

During his shipboard debriefing, Grissom paid homage to a life-saving device designed by a fellow astronaut. “Before I end this debriefing,” he recorded, “I want to say that I’ll ever be grateful to Wally [Schirra] for the work he did on the neck dam. If I hadn’t had the neck dam up, I think I would have drowned before anyone could have gotten to me. I just can’t get over the fact that the neck dam is what saved me today… So, of course, that’s another recommendation: put the neck dam up right away.

“Also, I would recommend that you get the Mylar raft out [of the survival pack] and keep it in your lap before egress even though the chopper is there. I think I was just a little bit over-confident this morning. I saw the choppers were there and so I thought everything was going to be okay. And I almost didn’t put the neck dam up… I think

we should plan for a few more emergencies along the recovery line and follow proce­dures exactly as we planned, not get hurried and not get over-confident, either.”32 There is little doubt that Gus Grissom would have been in dire trouble had he not already been unbuckled with his neck dam rolled up when the hatch blew, giving him barely seconds to make his hurried way out of the sinking spacecraft. The other saving grace was that he was the smallest of the Mercury astronauts. As space historian Rick

NASA’s Charles Tynan (colored shirt) was on hand to greet the nation’s newest astronaut hero. (Photo: NASA)

Grissom enjoys a hot breakfast despite the presence of some ‘suspect’ prunes. (Photo: Dean Conger/NASA)

Boos commented, “When you consider that they were shoehorned in, the angle of the instrument panel relative to the hatch opening, the limited amount of space to be inserted in or to exit from, it was a wonder that he ever was able to exit, especially considering the sink time.”33

Prior to the first manned Gemini mission, plans were accelerated for the suborbital flight of Gemini 2, which was to test the spacecraft’s heat shield and splash into the South Atlantic carrying two instrument boxes substituting for astronauts. Unlike the GLV-1 mission, this one was jinxed. In addition to a succession delays for technical reasons, it fell prey to severe weather patterns over the Cape. On 20 August 1964 a violent electric storm hit the area and a bolt of lightning struck the Titan II, which had been erected in its gantry the previous month. Many of the delicate instruments were damaged, and the vehicle had to be dismantled in order to check thousands of vital components and revalidate its systems. A second launch attempt was aborted when the rocket had to be removed from the pad again to protect it from the fierce winds of the rapidly developing Hurricane Cleo. Soon after the rocket had returned to the pad, the prospect of a battering by Hurricane Dora caused it to be removed a third time on 11 September. And then on 9 December the Titan II suffered a launch pad shutdown due to a malfunction in the booster’s hydraulic system. The mission was rescheduled for 19 January 1965. This time the launch was successful, and the spacecraft splashed down 25 miles from the recovery force. The spacecraft and heat shield were found to have performed as required, and NASA gave the go-ahead for the first manned launch.

Unlike the cramped Mercury, the Gemini spacecraft was fitted with powerful ejec­tion seats that either astronaut could activate to escape a launch pad explosion. The seats ejected with such a tremendous thrust that the astronauts hoped never to find themselves in situation where they would have to eject. Tests were carried out using mannequins, and one of the final tests occurred on 16 January with Grissom and Young looking on as ground controllers sent the firing signal to the spacecraft. In mil­liseconds, powerful solid rocket motors hurled the dummy astronauts along with their seats and parachutes through the simultaneously opened hatch exits. At least, that was the plan. Both Grissom and Young winced visibly when one of the hatches failed to open and the seated mannequin was propelled straight through it. “That would give you one hell of a headache,” the laconic Young later observed, “but a short one.”

The test served only to reinforce in the astronauts their mistrust of the system, and gave Grissom another reason to dislike the word “hatch.” Although a further test two weeks later worked perfectly, somewhat restoring their faith in the escape apparatus, they still hoped they would never have to use it.

On the day of the flight I followed the following schedule:

Event a. m. e. s.t.

Awakened………………………………………………………. 1.10

Breakfast……………………………………………………….. 1:25

Physical examination……………………………………….. 1:55

Sensors attached……………………………………………… 2:25

Suited up……………………………………………………….. 2:35

Suit pressure check………………………………………….. 3:05

Entered transfer van………………………………………… 3:30

Arrived atpad………………………………………………….. 3:55

Manned the spacecraft……………………………………… 3:58

Launched……………………………………………………….. 7:20

As can be seen, 6 hours and 10 minutes elapsed from the time I was awakened until launch. This time is approximately evenly divided between activities prior to my reaching the pad and time I spent at the pad. In this case, we were planning on a launch at 6:00 a. m., e. s.t., but it will probably always be normal to expect some holds that cannot be predicted. While this time element appears to be excessive, we can find no way to reduce it below this minimum at the present. Efforts are still continuing to reduce the pre-countdown time so that the pilot will not have had an almost full working day prior to liftoff.

After insertion in the spacecraft, the launch countdown proceeded smoothly and on schedule until T-45 minutes when a hold was called to install a misaligned bolt in the egress hatch.

After a hold of 30 minutes, the countdown was resumed and proceeded to T-30 minutes when a brief hold was called to turn off the pad searchlights. By this time, it was daylight; and the lights, which cause interference with launch-vehicle telemetry, were no longer needed.

One more hold was called at T-15 minutes to await better cloud conditions because the long focal length cameras would not have been able to obtain proper coverage through the existing overcast.

After holding for 41 minutes, the count was resumed and proceeded smoothly to liftoff at 7:20 a. m., e. s.t.

The communications and flow of information prior to liftoff were very good. After participating in the pre-launch test and the cancellation two days previously, I was very familiar with the countdown and knew exactly what was going on at all times.

As the Blockhouse Capsule Communicator (Cap Com) called ignition, I felt the launch vehicle start to vibrate and could hear the engines start. Just seconds after this the time – elapsed clock started and the Mercury Control Center Cap Com confirmed liftoff. At that time I punched the Time Zero Override, started the stopwatch function on the spacecraft clock, and reported that the elapsed-time clock had started.

The powered flight portion of the mission was in general very smooth. A low-order vibration started at approximately T+50 seconds, but it did not develop above a low level and was undetectable after about T+70 seconds. This vibration was in no way disturbing and it did not cause interference in either communications or vision. The magnitude of the accelerations corresponds well to the launch simulations on the centrifuge, but the onset was much smoother.

Communications throughout the powered flight were satisfactory. The VOX (voice operated relay) was used for pilot transmissions instead of the push-to-talk button. The noise level was never high enough at any time to key the transmitter. Each standard report was made on time and there was never any requirement for myself or the Cap Com to repeat any transmission.

Vision out the window was good at all times during launch. As viewed from the pad, the sky was its normal light blue; but as the altitude increased, the sky became a darker and darker blue until approximately two minutes after liftoff, which corresponds to an altitude of approximately 100,000 feet, the sky rapidly changed to an absolute black. At this time, I saw what appeared to be one rather faint star in the center of the window. It was about equal in brightness to Polaris. Later, it was determined that this was the planet Venus whose brightness is equal to a star of magnitude of minus three.

Launch-vehicle engine cutoff was sudden and I could not sense any tail-off of the launch vehicle. I did feel, as I described earlier, a very brief tumbling sensation. The firing of the escape-tower clamp ring and escape rocket is quite audible and I could see the escape rocket motor and tower throughout its tail-off burning phase and for what seemed like quite some time after that climbing off to my right. Actually, I think I was still watching the tower at the time the posigrade rockets fired, which occurred ten seconds after cutoff. The tower was still definable as a long, slender object against the black sky at this time.

The posigrade firing is a very audible bang and a definite kick, producing a deceleration of approximately 1g. Prior to this time, the spacecraft was quite stable, with no apparent motion. As the posigrade rockets separated the spacecraft from the launch vehicle, the spacecraft angular motions and angular accelerations were quite apparent. Spacecraft damping which was to begin immediately after separation was apparently satisfactory, although I cannot really report on the magnitude of any angular rates caused by posigrade firing.

The spacecraft turnaround to retro-fire attitude is quite a weird maneuver to ride through. At first, I thought the spacecraft might be tumbling out of control. A quick check of the instruments indicated that turnaround was proceeding much as those experienced on the procedures trainer, with the exception of roll attitude which appeared to be very slow and behind the schedule that I was expecting.

As the turnaround started, I could see a bright shaft of light, similar to the sun shining into a blackened room, start to move from my lower left up across my torso. Even though I knew the window reduces light transmissions equivalent to the Earth’s atmosphere, I was concerned that it might shine directly into my eyes and blind me. The light moved across my torso and disappeared completely.

A quick look through the periscope after it extended did not provide me with any useful information. I was unable to see land, only clouds and the ocean.

The view through the window became quite spectacular as the horizon came into view. The sight was truly breathtaking. The Earth was very bright, the sky was black, and the curvature of the Earth was quite prominent. Beneath the Earth and sky, there was a border which started at the Earth as a light blue and became increasingly darker with altitude. There was a transition region between the dark blue and the black sky that is best described as a fuzzy grey area. This is a very narrow band, but there is no sharp transition from blue to black. The whole border appeared to be uniform in height over the approximately 1,000 miles of horizon that was visible to me.

The Earth itself was very bright. The only landmark I was able to identify during the first portion of the weightlessness period was the Gulf of Mexico coastline between Apalachicola, Florida, and Mobile, Alabama. The cloud coverage was quite extensive and the curvature of this portion of the coast was very difficult to distinguish. The water and land masses were both a hazy blue, with the land being somewhat darker. There was a frontal system south of this area that was clearly defined.

One other section of the Florida coast came into view during the left yaw maneuver, but it was a small section of beach with no identifiable landmarks.

The spacecraft automatic stabilization and control system (ASCS) had made the turn­around maneuver from the position on the launch vehicle to retro-fire attitude. The pitch and yaw axes stabilized with only a moderate amount of overshoot as predicted, but the roll attitude was still being programmed and was off by approximately 15° when I switched from the autopilot to the manual proportional control system. The switchover occurred ten minutes later than planned to give the ASCS more time to stabilize the space­craft. At this point, I realized I would have to hurry my programmed pitch, yaw and roll maneuvers. I tried to hurry the pitch-up maneuver; I controlled the roll attitude back within limits, but the view out the window had distracted me, resulting in an overshoot in pitch. This put me behind in my schedule even more. I hit the planned yaw rate but overshot in yaw attitude again. I realized that my time for control maneuvers was up and I decided at this point to skip the planned roll maneuver, since the roll axis had been exercised during the two previous maneuvers, and go immediately to the next task.

This was the part of the flight to which I had been looking forward. There was a full minute that was programmed for observing the Earth. My observations during this period have already been reported in this paper, but the control task was quite easy when only the horizon was used as a reference. The task was somewhat complicated during this phase, as a result of lack of yaw reference. This lack was not a problem after retrofire when Cape Canaveral came into view. I do not believe yaw attitude will be a problem in orbital flight because there should be ample time to pick adequate checkpoints; even breaks in cloud formations would be sufficient.

The retro-sequence started automatically and at the time it started, I was slightly behind schedule. At this point, I was working quite hard to get into a good retro-fire attitude so that I could fire the retro-rockets manually. I received the countdown to fire from Mercury Control Center Cap Com and fired the retro-rockets manually. The retro-rockets, like the escape rockets and posigrades, could be heard quite clearly. The thrust buildup was rapid and smooth. As the first retro-rocket fired, I was looking out the window and I could see that a definite yaw to the right was starting. I had planned to control the spacecraft attitude during retro-fire by using the horizon as a reference, but as soon as the right yaw started, I switched my reference to the flight instruments. I had been using my instruments during my retro-fire practice for the two weeks prior to the launch in the Cape Canaveral proce­dures training since the activity at the Cape prevented the use of the ALFA trainer located at the NASA-Langley Air Force Base. This probably explains the instinctive switch to the flight instruments.

The retro-fire difficulty was about equal to the more severe cases that have been pre­sented on the procedures trainer.

Immediately after retro-fire, Cape Canaveral came into view. It was quite easy to iden­tify. The Banana and Indian Rivers were easy to distinguish and the white beach all along the coast was quite prominent. The colors that were the most prominent were the blue of the ocean, the brownish-green of the interior, and the white in between, which was obvi­ously the beach and surf. I could see the building area on Cape Canaveral. I do not recall being able to distinguish individual buildings, but it was obvious that it was an area where buildings and structures had been erected.

Immediately after retro-fire, the retro-jettison switch was placed in the armed position, and the control mode was switched to the rate command control system. I made a rapid check to ascertain that the system was working in all axes and then I switched from the UHF transmitter to the HF transmitter.

This one attempt to communicate on HF was unsuccessful. At approximately peak altitude, the HF transmitter was turned on and the UHF transmitter was turned off. All three receivers – UHF, HF, and emergency voice – were on continuously. Immediately after I reported switching to HF, the Mercury Control Center started transmitting to me on HF only. I did not receive any transmission during this period. After allowing the HF transmitter approximately ten seconds to warm up, I transmitted but received no acknowl­edgement that I was being received. Actually, the Atlantic Ship telemetry vessel located in the landing area and the Grand Bahama Island did receive my HF transmissions. Prior to the flight, both stations had been instructed not to transmit on the assigned frequencies unless they were called by the pilot. After switching back to the UHF transmitter, I received a call on the emergency voice that was loud and clear. UHF transmissions were satisfactory throughout the flight. I was in continuous contact with some facility at all times, with the exception of a brief period on HF.

Even though all communications equipment operated properly, I felt that I was hurry­ing all transmissions too much. All of the sights, sounds, and events were of such impor­tance that I felt compelled to talk of everything at once. It was a difficult choice to decide what was the most important to report at any one time. I wanted as much as possible recorded so that I would not have to rely on my memory so much for later reporting.

As previously mentioned, the control mode was switched from manual proportional to rate command immediately after retro-fire. The procedures trainer simulation in this sys­tem seems to be slightly more difficult than the actual case. I found attitudes were easy to maintain and rates were no problem. The rate command system was much easier to fly than the manual proportional system. The reverse is normally true on the trainer. The slug­gish roll system was probably complicating the control task during the manual propor­tional control phase of the flight, while roll accelerations appeared to be normal on the rate command system.

The rate command control system was used after retro-fire and throughout the reentry phase of the flight. At the zero rate command position, the stick was centered. This system had a deadband of plus or minus 3 degrees per second. Our experience on the procedures trainer had indicated that this system was more difficult to fly than the manual proportional control system. This was not the case during this flight. Zero rates and flight attitudes were easy to maintain. The records do indicate that an excessive amount of fuel was expended during this period. Approximately 15 percent of the manual fuel supply was used during the two minutes the system was operating. A major portion of the two-minute period was during the reentry when thrusters were operating almost continuously to dampen the reentry oscillations.

The 0.5 g telelight illuminated on schedule and shortly thereafter I reported g’s starting to build. I checked the accelerometer and the g level was something less than 1 g at this time. The next time I reported, I was at 6 g and I continued to report and function through­out the high-g portion of the flight.

The spacecraft rates increased during the reentry, indicating that the spacecraft was oscillating in both yaw and pitch. I made a few control inputs at this time, but I could not see any effects on the rates, so I decided just to ride out the oscillations. The pitch rate needle was oscillating full scale at a rapid rate of plus or minus 6 degrees per second dur­ing this time and the yaw rate began oscillating full scale slightly later than pitch. At no time were these oscillations noticeable inside the spacecraft.

During this phase of reentry, and until main parachute deployment, there is a noticeable roar and a mild buffeting of the spacecraft. This is probably the noise of a blunt object moving rapidly through the atmosphere and the buffeting is not distracting nor does it interfere with pilot function.

The drogue parachute deployment is quite visible from inside the spacecraft and the firing of the drogue chute mortar is clearly audible. The opening shock of the drogue para­chute is mild; there is a mild pulsation or breathing of the drogue parachute which can be felt inside the spacecraft.

As the drogue parachute is released, the spacecraft starts to drop at a greater rate. The change in g-field is quite noticeable. Main parachute deployment is visible out the window also. A mild shock is felt as the main parachute deploys in its reefed condition. The com­plete parachute is visible at this time. As the reefing cutters fire, the parachute deploys to its fully opened condition. Again, a mild shock is felt. About 80 percent of the parachute is visible at this time and it is quite a comforting sight. The spacecraft rotates and swings slowly under the parachute at first; the rates are mild and hardly noticeable.

The spacecraft landing in the water was a mild jolt; not hard enough to cause discom­fort or disorientation. The spacecraft recovery section went under the water and I had the feeling that I was on my left side and slightly head down. The window was completely covered with water and there was a disconcerting gurgling noise. A quick check showed no water entering the spacecraft. The spacecraft started to slowly right itself; as soon as I was sure the recovery section was out of the water, I ejected the reserve parachute by actu­ating the recovery aids switch. The spacecraft then righted itself rapidly.

I felt that I was in good condition at this point and started to prepare myself for egress. I had previously opened the face plate and had disconnected the visor seal hose while descending on the main parachute. The next moves in order were to disconnect the oxygen outlet hose at the helmet, release the chest strap, release the lap belt and shoulder harness, release the knee straps, disconnect the biomedical sensors, and roll up the neck dam. The neck dam is a rubber diaphragm that is fastened on the exterior of the suit, below the hel­met attaching ring. After the helmet is disconnected, the neck dam is rolled around the ring and up around the neck, similar to a turtle-neck sweater. This left me connected to the spacecraft at two points, the oxygen inlet hose which I needed for cooling and the helmet communications lead.

At this time, I turned my attention to the door. First, I released the restraining wires at both ends and tossed them towards my feet. Then I removed the knife from the door and placed it in the survival pack. The next task was to remove the cover and safety pin from the hatch detonator. I felt at this time that everything had gone nearly perfectly and that I would go ahead and mark the switch position as had been requested.

After about three or four minutes, I instructed the helicopter to come on in and hook onto the spacecraft and confirmed the egress procedures with him. I unhooked my oxygen inlet hose and was lying on the couch, waiting for the helicop­ter’s call to blow the hatch. I was lying flat on my back at this time and I had turned my attention to the knife in the survival pack, wondering if there might be some way I could carry it out with me as a souvenir. I heard the hatch blow – the noise was a dull thud – and looked up to see blue sky out the hatch and water start to spill over the doorsill. Just a few minutes before, I had gone over egress procedures in my mind and I reacted instinctively. I lifted the helmet from my head and dropped it, reached for the right side of the instrument panel, and pulled myself through the hatch.

After I was in the water and away from the spacecraft I noticed a line from the dye marker can over my shoulder. The spacecraft was obviously sinking and I was concerned that I might be pulled down with it. I freed myself from the line and noticed that I was floating with my shoulders above water.

The helicopter was on top of the spacecraft at this time with all three of its landing gear in the water. I thought the copilot was having difficulty hooking onto the spacecraft and I swam the four or five feet to give him some help. Actually, he had cut the antenna and hooked the spacecraft in record time.

The helicopter pulled up and away from me with the spacecraft and I saw the personal sling start down: then the sling was pulled back into the helicopter and it started to move away from me. At this time, I knew that a second helicopter had been assigned to pick me up, so I started to swim away from the primary helicopter. I apparently got caught in the rotor wash between the two helicopters because I could not get close to the second heli­copter, even though I could see the copilot in the door with a horse collar swinging in the water. I finally reached the horse collar and by this time, I was getting quite exhausted. When I first got into the water, I was floating quite high up; I would say my armpits were just about at the water level. But the neck dam was not up tight and I had forgotten to lock the oxygen inlet port; so the air was gradually seeping out of my suit. Probably the most air was going out around the neck dam, but I could see that I was gradually sinking lower and lower in the water and was having a difficult time staying afloat. Before the copilot finally got the horse collar to me, I was going under water quite often. The mild swells we were having were breaking over my head and I was swallowing some salt water. As I reached the horse collar, I slipped into it and I knew that I had it on backwards; but I gave the ‘up’ signal and held on because I knew that I wasn’t likely to slip out of the ring. As soon as I got into the helicopter, my first thought was to get on a life preserver so that if anything happened to the helicopter, I wouldn’t have another ordeal in the water. Shortly after this time, the copilot informed me that the spacecraft had been dropped as a result of an engine malfunction in the primary helicopter.

James McDonnell was someone always looking to the formidable challenges pre­sented by the new frontier of space, as related by former MAC employee Hulen H. (‘Luge’) Luetjen.

C. Burgess, Liberty Bell 7: The Suborbital Mercury Flight of Virgil I. Grissom, Springer Praxis Books, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-04391-3_1, © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014

“Mr. Mac had noted, with passionate interest, what had thus far been done in the space arena and announced that in addition to being the world’s number one producer of fighter aircraft… McDonnell would also become the world’s number one producer of spacecraft – manned spacecraft. He correctly foresaw manned orbital vehicles as being ‘just around the corner.’”1

In making a commencement speech to engineering graduates at the Missouri School of Mines and Metallurgy on 26 May 1957, some five months before the Soviet Union launched the first Sputnik satellite into orbit, McDonnell thoughtfully outlined his expectations for the future of space travel, even giving the students a speculative timetable. Like many others, even though he may have believed that human flight was ‘just around the corner,’ he did not foresee the explosion of interest in human space flight that Sputnik would usher in soon after, and he spoke about the possibility of manned spacecraft orbiting the Earth by 1990. He further predicted that a further 20 years would elapse before there would be a human-tended flight to land on the Moon and return, in about 2010. McDonnell did, however, speak about the escalating threats associated with Cold War tensions, sharing his belief that the United States should instead “wage peace” through the development of dual-use technologies.

“When a chemical rocket motor is developed for a missile, here is a means of propulsion that may be applied in whole or in part to a space vehicle,” he told the graduates. “And, when ways are found for a fighter pilot to survive high gravitational pulls at hypersonic speeds, this will help some future space pilot survive blastoff in a Moon-bound rocket.”2 With this futuristic vision firmly entrenched in his mind, McDonnell had even awarded it the code name of Project 7969.

Early in 1958, following the successful launch and orbiting of the Soviet Sputnik and the massively unsettling impact this achievement had on the American psyche, McDonnell was more eager than ever to explore the possibilities associated with space travel. A substantial start was made when he established a new department similar to the company’s previously established Advanced Design Department (Aircraft), to be headed by L. Michael Weeks, a native of Iowa who had been working on Project 7969 since 1956. Weeks had begun his career teaching mathematics at Iowa State University for three dollars a day before receiving his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering at the university in 1943. He had then gone to work with McDonnell Aircraft in St. Louis, eventually rising to the position of chief engineer. In his time with McDonnell he enjoyed key roles in Projects Mercury and Gemini and would also work on Project Apollo and the Space Shuttle. He was later involved with Rockwell International’s National Aerospace Plane (X-30) and the Orbital Sciences Corporation’s X-34 before retiring after a career spanning 56 years.

The charter for Weeks’s department was highly innovative; it was charged with designing a spacecraft capable of carrying a person through launch and into Earth orbit; sustaining that person in space; safely reentering the atmosphere; landing in the ocean, and remaining afloat until the vehicle could be retrieved.

“Ray Pepping, previously Aircraft Chief of Dynamics, became Weeks’s assistant,” Luetjen recalled, “and John Yardley was named Project Engineer reporting to Weeks and Pepping.”3

John F. Yardley was a veteran of World War II who had completed his undergradu­ate education in aeronautical engineering, also at Iowa State University. After receiv­ing his master’s degree from Washington University he began his professional career as a stress analyst with McDonnell in 1946. Like Weeks, he would enjoy a long and distinguished career in space flight program development with McDonnell, apart from the years 1974 to 1981, when he joined NASA as the agency’s associate admin­istrator in charge of manned space flight. He then rejoined what was by then McDonnell Douglas, serving from 1988 as senior vice president of the merged company.

In March 1958, ‘Luge’ Luetjen was assigned as Supervisor of Technical Integration under John Yardley. “We knew that studies in many disciplines (aerodynamics, ther­modynamics, propulsion, structures, electronics, electrical, design, etc.) would be required,” he observed, “and it was my job to keep all of the disciplines ‘headed down the same path’ and ‘singing from the same sheet of music.’ As I recall, about 50 to 60

full-time people were assigned to the department in short order, with another 20 or so available to be used on a part-time basis as required. Those assigned were the very top people in the various disciplines. What Mr. Mac wanted, Mr. Mac got! Now all we had to do was produce.”4

Ultimately, James McDonnell’s concept of dual-use technology would play a sig­nificant role in his company being awarded a contract to build America’s first space­craft; one intended for human space travel and Earth orbit.

The concepts of Max Faget 5

The Mercury-Redstone 2 (MR-2) ballistic flight profile called for the Mercury space­craft to be boosted to an altitude of approximately 115 statute miles, achieve a period of weightlessness of around 4.5 minutes and a range of approximately 290 statute miles. This time, however, there would be a living creature on board – a freckle-faced, 37-pound chimpanzee that came to be universally known as Ham.

The MR-2 flight was intended to be the final test mission of the Mercury-Redstone launch vehicle, during which a live subject closely related to humans would prove that an astronaut could function without undue difficulty in a weightlessness environment. If successful, the next mission was planned to carry one of the Mercury astronauts. Ham (an acronym drawn from Holloman Aero Medical Research Laboratory, where he got his flight training) was a chimpanzee of normally good nature and alertness, and would be the heaviest animal to be sent into space to that time, either by the Americans or the Soviet Union.

Spacecraft No. 5 had been selected for the mission, and it was fitted with six new systems that had not featured on previous flights: an environmental control system, an attitude stabilization control system, live retrorockets, a voice communications sys­tem, a “closed loop” abort sensing system, and a pneumatic landing bag.

With Ham securely sealed within a special life-support container inside the capsule, Spacecraft No. 5 lifted off from Launch Pad 5 on 31 January 1961, and landed in the Atlantic Ocean 16 minutes 39 seconds later. While essentially successful, several problems had plagued the flight. The Redstone booster over-accelerated, resulting in an earlier than expected depletion of liquid oxygen. This initiated a signal that caused the escape tower to pull the capsule free just a few seconds before it would have released normally. The overall result was that the spacecraft flew higher and over a longer range than anticipated.

Despite these problems, Ham stoically completed his assigned tasks. The space­craft splashed down near the Bahamas, landing out of sight of the waiting recovery forces. Some 12 minutes later the first automatically generated signals were received,

establishing that the spacecraft was about 60 miles from the nearest recovery ship. A search plane sighted the capsule soon after, floating upright in the ocean. When helicopters arrived they reported that the capsule was now tilted on its side, partly submerged, and seemed to be taking on water. It was later found that on impact with the water the lowered beryllium heat shield had bounced up against the bottom of the capsule, punching two holes in the titanium pressure bulkhead before tearing free. An open snorkel valve was also allowing sea water to enter the capsule. Although Ham was secured within his airtight container, it might easily have ended up as his coffin at the bottom of the Atlantic.

A helicopter crew finally latched onto the spacecraft and delivered it to the deck of USS Donner (LSD-20). When the spacecraft was opened, Ham appeared to be in good condition despite a little bewilderment at the attention and some wobbliness in his legs. Apart from that he was quite okay; he passed an onboard examination with flying colors and his appetite was certainly unaffected when he hungrily devoured some fresh fruit.

John King of the space agency’s Public Information Office at the Cape summed up Ham’s 420-mile ride through space. “Ham was going along on a pretty hectic trip, when, just one second before the end of thrust, the Redstone was burning too fast so the automatic abort system functioned. Ham got an immediate jolt of about 17G. We have a movie of it all, and he wasn’t too happy when this occurred, but the amazing thing was that he griped a little, then went right back to work pushing his little levers. It was a tremendous break for the medical people. They got excellent data from this test.”40

With many malfunctions occurring during the flight of chimpanzee Ham, it was pru­dently decided that the Mercury-Redstone combination was still not ready for the human passenger planned for MR-3. Despite the protests of many, the first human-tended flight was postponed pending a final Mercury-Redstone booster development flight, desig­nated MR-BD.

Although the Soviet Union’s space program was a largely unknown factor back then, in all likelihood their space chiefs would have attempted to launch a cosmonaut ahead of the United States, regardless of which Redstone flight was to carry the first American astronaut. Barring a pad explosion, the Soviets would have raced to beat an advertised launch date for the MR-3 mission, even if it meant launching the day before. They took risks, but their rocket was much more reliable as a launcher than its American counterparts. In retrospect, the decision to insert the MR-BD flight into the schedule could have ultimately cost America the prized goal of sending the first man into space, and caused a lot of consternation for the astronauts and other program participants.

Many felt that Wernher von Braun had been a little overcautious in ordering a pri­mate test flight, and then an additional unmanned suborbital test flight prior to com­mitting America to a manned launch. The MR-BD mission introduced after Ham’s troubled ride helped to push the first flight of an astronaut into May – and allowed Soviet space scientists a little extra time to prepare for their own surprise space spectacular.

As a consequence of the problems encountered on the MR-2 mission, steps were taken to correct the problems on the now-added MR-BD flight, which would test the effectiveness of all the modifications that resulted. Carrying a boilerplate Mercury capsule loaded with a mannequin astronaut and an inert escape system, Redstone MRLV-5 roared off Launch Pad 5 at 12:30 a. m. on 24 March. With the spacecraft remaining attached as planned to the Redstone throughout the suborbital flight, the entire assembly followed the desired trajectory, achieving a peak altitude of 113.5 statute miles and a downrange distance of 307 statute miles.

This time there were no plans to recover the booster or spacecraft, which, still attached, plunged into the Atlantic Ocean at the end of a near-perfect mission. The whole operation had gone so well that there was no longer any reason to delay the much-anticipated MR-3 mission early in May.

Everything was now set for an as-yet-unnamed American astronaut to become the first person to fly into space.

However, on 12 April 1961 it was a Russian cosmonaut named Yuri Gagarin who grabbed that honor and glory with a single-orbit flight around the Earth. NASA, and the American people, were stunned and mortified. Perhaps none more so than Navy Cdr. Alan Shepard, who had earlier been secretly chosen to make the first flight of a human being into space.

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In July 1961 all seven astronauts visited the McDonnell plant in St. Louis, Missouri. Back row, from left: Gus Grissom, James S. McDonnell, Alan Shepard and Scott Carpenter. Front row: Walter Burke (Vice President, McDonnell Aircraft), Gordon Cooper, Deke Slayton, Wally Schirra and John Glenn. (Photo: McDonnell Aircraft Corporation)