ROOM WITH A (BETTER) VIEW

Grissom’s efforts during his first two years as an astronaut proved pivotal in securing him his seat on Mercury-Redstone 4, planned as a virtual duplication of Freedom 7, in July 1961. It, too, would last barely 15 minutes, arcing high above the Atlantic Ocean and splashing down a few hundred kilometres east of Cape Canaveral. However, Grissom’s spacecraft – which he had nicknamed ‘Liberty Bell 7’ – would differ, visibly, from that of Shepard in an important way: it was the first to boast a large trapezoidal window, instead of two, 25.4 cm portholes. This window provided a field of view of 30 degrees in the horizontal plane and 33 degrees in the vertical, allowing him to look ‘upward’ and see directly outside, and had actually been one of the Mercury Seven’s earliest recommendations when they visited the capsules in production at McDonnell’s St Louis plant in Missouri. Manufactured by the Corning Glass Works of Corning, New York, the window comprised an outer pane of 8.9 mm-thick Vycor glass and a dual-layered inner pane. Its strength closely paralleled that of the capsule’s hull and during re-entry it was capable of withstanding temperatures as high as 980°C. To reduce glare, it was also treated with a magnesium fluoride coating.

Additional improvements implemented since Shepard’s flight included a make­shift urine collector, pieced together by the astronauts themselves the day before Liberty Bell 7 launched, which Grissom would later nonchalantly remark “worked as advertised”. More importantly, however, the second suborbital mission would feature an explosively-actuated side hatch. Early plans had called for the astronauts to exit their capsules through an antenna compartment in the nose, but the awkwardness of this exercise, coupled with the need to remove a small pressure bulkhead to do it, led the Space Task Group and McDonnell engineers to develop two hatches: one activated manually, the other explosively. The hatch itself was held in place by 70 titanium bolts, each measuring 6.35 mm in diameter, and the mechanical version was employed on both Ham’s and Shepard’s missions. However, it weighed 31 kg – three times as much as its explosive counterpart – and was deemed too heavy for the orbital Mercury flights. Thus, to put it through its paces, an explosively-actuated hatch was installed on Grissom’s capsule.

Built by Honeywell’s ordnance division of Hopkins, Minnesota, it contained a mild detonating fuse, installed in a channel between an inner and outer seal around the periphery of the hatch. When fired, the gas pressure between the two seals fractured each of the 70 screws and blew off the hatch. Small holes, drilled into each bolt, provided weak points and aided the fracturing process. The fuse could be triggered manually by the astronaut himself, using a knobbed plunger close to his right arm, or from outside the capsule by means of an external lanyard. The performance of the hatch on the Liberty Bell 7 mission would, in some eyes, tarnish Grissom’s reputation for the rest of his life and even today continues to arouse fierce debate.

The manual controls he would use during his 15-minute flight, too, had been extensively modified. A new rate stabilisation control system enabled him to manage the spacecraft’s attitude movements by small twists of the hand controller, rather than by simply jockeying the device into the desired position. It provided a kind of ‘power steering’, offering finer control and easier handling qualities. The instrument panel, moreover, had been upgraded with a new Earth-path indicator, showing Liberty Bell 7’s precise position. A redesigned fairing for the spacecraft adaptor clamp ring, a rearrangement of the instruments and more foam padding to the headrest of Grissom’s couch, it was hoped, would prevent a recurrence of the vibrations and blurred vision experienced by Shepard.

Other changes to the flight plan included adjusting the sequencing of retrofire to ensure that the Redstone and capsule would be at least 1.2 km apart on their suborbital paths as they neared the end of their mission. A new life raft, weighing less than 2 kg, had been provided by NASA’s Langley Research Center and the Space Task Group, and Grissom’s pressure suit featured a better wrist fitting for improved movement and a convex, chest-mounted mirror – the ‘Hero’s Medal’ – which would allow the spacecraft’s camera to record both the astronaut and the instrument panel readings.

During training and throughout the production of Liberty Bell 7, Grissom established his reputation as a ‘hands-on’ pilot, attending meetings, supervising some of the engineering work and, he said, ‘‘fretting a little over whether all of the critical parts would arrive from the subcontractors on time and get put together’’. Among his concerns were mistakenly-switched instruments, which caused the spacecraft to yaw to the left instead of the right, and the failure of the attitude controls, which did not properly centre themselves after manoeuvres. The capsule itself arrived at Cape Canaveral on 7 March 1961, followed by its Redstone three months later. On 22 June, the rocket was erected on Pad 5 and Liberty Bell 7 installed a few days thereafter. Throughout June, however, nagging problems were encountered whilst testing Grissom’s pressure suit and the need to replace the spacecraft’s rusted on­board clock. As for Grissom, to ensure that he did not inadvertently take himself out of the running for the flight, he gave up water-skiing and even calmed down some of his raucous exploits in his General Motors-provided Corvette. As souvenirs for the flight, he took two rolls of Mercury dimes – a hundred in all – which he stuffed into the pocket of his pressure suit. He would regret this decision later.

The Liberty Bell 7 mission would, in many ways, be substantially different from Freedom 7. Al Shepard’s flight had been literally overloaded with activities during barely five minutes of weightlessness. Grissom’s plan would ‘weed out’ a number of communications obstacles and allow him more time to use the new trapezoid window to learn about an astronaut’s visual abilities in space. Shepard had controlled his spacecraft by one axis at a time; Grissom would assume full manual control, taking over all three axes simultaneously. ‘‘I also planned to fire the retrorockets manually,’’ he said, ‘‘instead of automatically, as they had been fired on Freedom 7.’’

Grissom’s selection as the prime pilot for Liberty Bell 7, with John Glenn again serving as backup, was ratified by Bob Gilruth on 15 July 1961 and launch was scheduled for three days later. Part of what was becoming traditional was naming the capsule. Grissom’s choice honoured the famous Liberty Bell, today housed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and considered one of the most important symbols of the American War of Independence, epitomising freedom, nationhood and the abolition of slavery. Cast in 1751, its most famous ringing, supposedly, occurred a quarter of a century later to summon Philadelphia’s citizenry for a reading of the Declaration of Independence. When questioned about the name, Grissom explained that the bell’s message of freedom and, indeed, its similarity of shape with the spacecraft had influenced his decision. To further honour the original bell – which had cracked during its first ringing, was repaired, cracked again in 1846 and was eventually rendered unusable – it was decided to paint a large white fracture along the side of the spacegoing Liberty Bell. ‘‘No one seemed quite sure what the crack looked like,’’ said Grissom, ‘‘so we copied it from the tails side of a 50-cent piece.’’

On 17 July, the day before the planned launch, Grissom and Glenn relaxed in the crew quarters at Hangar S. During this time, they set to work on their urine – collection device. They took a pair of condoms, snipped off the ends and secured some rubber tubing which ran to a plastic bag taped to Grissom’s leg. Flight surgeon Bill Douglas even asked the astronauts’ nurse, Dee O’Hara, to buy a panty girdle for Grissom to wear in order to hold the hastily-made contraption in place.

Late that same night, the launch was scrubbed by low cloud cover. Fortunately, the decision was taken before the lengthy procedure of loading the Redstone with liquid oxygen had begun. This meant that only a 24-hour delay, as opposed to a 48- hour stand-down, would be necessary. Bill Douglas duly woke Grissom at 1:10 am on 19 July and informed him that the scheduled launch time had been moved up by an hour, to 7:00 am, in the hope that the mission could be underway before an anticipated spell of bad weather settled over the Cape. The plan was for Grissom to eat breakfast and undergo his pre-flight physical examination. Unfortunately, the astronaut recalled later, “someone forgot to pass the word about the earlier launch time, because breakfast was not ready at 1:45 as it was supposed to be”. As a result, Douglas and psychologist George Ruff checked Grissom and, for breakfast, he was joined by Glenn, Scott Carpenter and Walt Williams.

After the now-customary procedure of gluing sensors to his body, Grissom was helped into his pressure suit and, at 4:15 am, clambered into the white transfer van. Inside, technicians had helpfully stencilled a sign which read ‘Shepard and Grissom Express’. Despite the presence of cloudy skies along the entire Atlantic coast, ‘‘from Canaveral on north’’, the astronaut was given the go-ahead at 5:00 am to board his spacecraft. To alleviate any boredom, should a lengthy, Shepard-like situation materialise, Douglas handed Grissom a crossword book. The countdown, though, proceeded normally, albeit with a keen eye on the weather, until T-10 minutes and 30 seconds, when the clock was stopped in the hope that conditions might improve. They didn’t. The launch was scrubbed and, since the Redstone had been fully loaded with liquid oxygen, a 48-hour turnaround was now unavoidable.

Early on 21 July, Grissom again suited-up and headed out to Pad 5. Delay after delay hit the countdown: firstly, one of the 70 titanium bolts around the rim of the hatch became cross-threaded, then the pad’s searchlights had to be switched off to prevent them from affecting telemetry from the rocket and, all the while, cloud cover was given the opportunity to move away from the launch area. The astronaut, meanwhile, spoke briefly to his wife, did deep-breathing exercises and flexed his arms and legs so as not to become too stiff. At length, at 7:20:36 am, Liberty Bell 7 lifted- off. Again paying tribute to Bill Dana’s reluctant Mexican spaceman character, Jose Jimenez, Capcom Al Shepard radioed ‘‘Loud and clear, Jose. Don’t cry too much!’’ as Grissom headed for space. Passing through the sound barrier at an altitude of 11 km, he experienced none of the vibrations that had affected Freedom 7 and the Redstone’s engine shut down, as planned, 142 seconds after liftoff. The astronaut felt a ‘‘brief tumbling sensation’’ at this stage and would later describe the clear sound of the LES tower jettisoning. ‘‘Actually,’’ he wrote in his post-flight report, ‘‘I think I was still watching the tower at the time the posigrade rockets [which separated Liberty Bell 7 from the Redstone] fired… the tower was still definable as a long, slender object against the sky.’’

Two minutes after launch, at an altitude of 30 km, Grissom noticed the sky turn rapidly from dark blue to black. He also noticed what he believed to be a faint star, roughly equivalent in brightness to Polaris, but which actually turned out to be the planet Venus; this won him a steak dinner from John Glenn, who had bet him that he would not be able to see any stars or planets. Observing Earth proved somewhat more problematic. Cloud cover over the Gulf of Mexico coastline between Apalachiocola, Florida, and Mobile, Alabama, made it virtually impossible for him to discern any land masses. Still, unlike Shepard’s grey-tinted view, Grissom was granted a fascinating glimpse through the trapezoid window. “I could make out brilliant gradations of colour,’’ he remembered later, “the blue of the water, the white of the beaches and the brown of the land.’’

His attempts to manoeuvre Liberty Bell 7 through all three axes were hampered when the yaw and pitch controls overshot their marks; overall, he judged the system as “sticky and sluggish’’. These problems, together with Grissom’s observations through the window, put the mission behind schedule and the planned roll manoeuvres had to be abandoned. He did, however, successfully execute a manual retrofire five minutes into the flight and, as the retrorocket pack fell away, Cape Canaveral came clearly into view. “The Banana and Indian Rivers were easy to distinguish,” he said later, “and the white beach all along the coast was quite prominent. 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.’’

Re-entry posed no significant problems, with the exception that it gave Grissom the peculiar sensation that he had reversed his backward flight through space and was actually moving face-forward. Plummeting towards the Atlantic, he saw what appeared to be the spent retrorockets passing the periscope view. Nine minutes and 41 seconds after launch, the drogue chute deployed, slowing Liberty Bell 7, before the descent was arrested by the jolt of the main canopy. “The capsule started to rotate and swing slowly under the chute as it descended,’’ he said later. “I could feel a slight jar as the landing bag dropped down to take up some of the shock.’’ In spite of a small, L-shaped tear in the main canopy, it did its job and the spacecraft impacted the Atlantic at 7:35 am, completing a mission of 15 minutes and 37 seconds – barely nine seconds longer than Shepard’s flight – with what Grissom described as “a good bump’’. After splashdown, it nosed underwater, with the astronaut lying on his left side with his head down, but slowly righted itself as the landing bag filled with water and acted as a sea anchor.

Shortly thereafter, he disconnected his oxygen inlet hose, unfastened his helmet from his suit, released the chest strap, lap belt and shoulder harness and detached his biosensors. At first, he considered not bothering to unroll a rubber neck dam to keep air in and water out of his suit. “It’s a chore to secure the dam,’’ he said of the device, which had been designed by fellow astronaut Wally Schirra, “and I didn’t think I’d need it. Fortunately, I reconsidered.’’