Project Mercury
From Pilots Almanac
This monologue is excerpted from "Relics of the Space Race".
Contents |
Birth of Project Mercury
Project Mercury was the United States effort to deliver a human into earth orbit, test his ability to function in spaceflight, and to return him safely to earth. It was a precursor program, designed to create the technologies needed to put an American on the moon. The impetus for such a program was largely political, a response to fears that the Soviet Union would demonate the world from space.
As a result of earlier tests with X-1 and X-2, initial proposals called for boosting a winged craft into orbit. However, by 1958, Langley engineers had concluded that man's entry into space should be via a wingless module carried aloft on a rocket.
On October 7, the goal of putting a man into space was officially born. The 55th anniversary of the Wright brothers' first flight, December 17, 1958, saw the announcement of Project Mercury and 25 flights were scheduled. During its lifespan of just over four-and-a-half years, six manned flights were accomplished. Abe Silverstein, creator of the Office of Manned Spaceflight, is credited with naming the project.
The earliest designs of the Mercury spacecraft assumed that the occupant would be more of a passenger than a pilot. The decision requiring astronauts to be experienced test pilots allowed the passenger to take a more active role in the flight. Reaction thrusters were added to provide 3-axis (yaw, pitch, and roll) control of the spacecraft by the astronaut/pilot.
Selection of the Astronauts
Eisenhower's decision that astronaut candidates be selected only from the military services simplified the selection procedure considerably. From an initial list of 508 men, 110 were found to meet the minimum requirements. The evaluation committee, lead by the Asst. Director of the Space Task Group, Charles Donlan, chose to arbitrarily divide the list into three smaller groups. After interviewing the first two groups, the high rate of volunteering preempted the need to even interview members from the third group. After further cuts from the first two groups, 56 pilots took a battery of tests and interviews. Subsequent eliminations cut the number down to 36 who were invited to undergo physical examinations at the Lovelace Clinic in Albuquerque. Thirty-two accepted and became the first astronaut candidates.
During an ensuing week of some of the most elaborate physical evaluations ever designed, the candidates were subjected to over 30 different laboratory tests. As Wally Schirra put it, "We were well patients being looked at by a bunch of sick doctors."
Each man's body was probed and thoroughly mapped by X-rays. After these and a series of other exhaustive tests, only one man in the group was found medically unfit to continue. He was a Navy test pilot named Jim Lovell. The evaluation committee made another round of cuts from the 31 remaining candidates leaving eighteen finalists.
The final selection of six candidates to be chosen as astronauts was so difficult that the committee ultimately recommended seven. Each man was telephoned by Donlan with the official offer. All seven enthusiastically accepted.
On April 9, 1959, NASA announced the seven Mercury astronauts. Although NASA Headquarters did not intend that these men should become national idols, publicity and political competition quickly elevated them to celebrity status. To help manage public information and press relations, another military officer and pilot joined the Space Task Group. Lieutenant Colonel John A. Powers, known better by his nickname, Shorty, became the popular front man for the astronauts. He, along with flight director Chris Kraft, became the most widely recognized NASA representatives outside of the astronaut corps.
Cape Canaveral
The Mercury-Redstone program was conducted from Cape Canaveral's Launch Complex 5/6. The small complex, located near the southern end of the launch area contained two flat concrete pads, serviced by a small, rectangular blockhouse just a few hundred feet away. Walt Williams supervised the missions as the Mercury Operations Director. Max Faget was its chief engineer and designer of the blunt-body "capsule" that was lofted into space upon booster rockets.
The first two manned Mercury flights were suborbital lobs into space. The capsules were lifted by relatively small Redstone rockets, developed by Wernher von Braun's team at the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama.
Alan Shepard became the first American in space on May 5, 1961. He was beaten into flight by Russian Yuri Gagarin by a scant three weeks. Shepard's flight was suborbital; Gagarin orbited the earth.
On July 21, 1961, Gus Grissom piloted the second Mercury-Redstone suborbital flight. It was unfortunately most notable for a hatch malfunction that caused the capsule to sink after its splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean.
Numerous scrubs and delays forced the third Mercury flight behind schedule. But on February 20, 1962, John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth. Lofted by an Atlas booster from Launch Complex 14, his mission was cut short after three orbits because of a potential heatshield malfunction. The titanium heatshield was all that protected an astronaut reentering the atmosphere from orbit. Without the ablative shield, the spacecraft and astronaut would be incinerated from air friction.
The End of Project Mercury
Subsequent orbital flights by Scott Carpenter (May 24, 1962), Wally Schirra (October 3, 1962) and Gordon "Gordo" Cooper (May 15, 1963) completed the program, proving that Americans could create and implement the technology needed to put an astronaut into space, where he could function and work productively. NASA's next goal would be to orbit pairs of astronauts and develop the rendezvous, docking, and extravehicular (EVA) technologies needed on a flight to the moon.
