Richard Lawrence - The Mammoth Book of Space Exploration and Disaster

The astronauts, NASA officials, and Wernher von Braun and members of his Redstone team watched in consternation from the blockhouse. Then we couldn’t leave. Von Braun was afraid that if a gust caught one of the parachutes, it would pull the rocket over, and it would blow up with its entire fuel load. It was several hours before we could scramble out.

The press again derided NASA. Reports said the sight of the escape tower popping from the top of the rocket looked for all the world like a champagne cork popping from a bottle.

On 12 April 1961 Major Yury A.Gagarin of the Soviet Union made the first space flight by a man in Vostok 1. It was a full orbital flight lasting one hour forty-eight minutes.

NASA was cautious about the unknown effect of space flight and was considering additional tests using monkeys, but Yuri Gagarin’s manned orbital flight changed that. Al Shepard had been chosen for the first US manned orbital flight, with Glenn as back-up. The flight was scheduled for 2 May but was delayed. Glenn:

A weather postponement moved his flight to May 5. I woke up ahead of him in the crew quarters at Hanger S where we both were sleeping, and went to the launch pad to check out the capsule. All the systems were go.

The astronauts had decided that each astronaut would name his own capsule, with a seven added to signify that they were a team no matter who was in the cockpit. Al Shepard named his capsule Freedom 7. Shepard:

At a little after 1 a.m. I got up, shaved and showered and had breakfast with John Glenn and Bill Douglas. John was most kind. He asked me if there was anything he could do, wished me well and went on down to the capsule to get it ready for me. The medical exam and the dressing went according to schedule. There were butterflies in my stomach again, but I did not feel that I was coming apart or that things were getting ahead of me. The adrenalin was pumping, but my blood pressure and pulse rate were not unusually high. A little after 4 a.m., we left the hangar and got started for the pad. Gus and Bill Douglas were with me.

They appeared to be a little behind in the count when we reached the pad. Apparently the crews were taking all the time they could and being extra careful with the preparations. Gordon Cooper, who was stationed in the blockhouse that morning, came in to give me a final weather briefing and to tell me about the exact position of the recovery ships. He said the weathermen were predicting three-foot waves and 8–10 knot winds in the landing area, which was within our limits. Everything was working fine.

Shortly after 5 a.m., some two hours before lift-off was scheduled, I asked if I could leave the transfer van. I wanted some extra time to have a word with the launch crews and to check over the Redstone and the capsule, to sort of kick the tyres – the way you do with a new car or an airplane. I realized that I would probably never see that missile again. I really enjoy looking at a bird that is getting ready to go. It’s a lovely sight. The Redstone with the Mercury capsule and escape tower on top of it is a particularly good-looking combination, long and slender. And this one had a decided air of expectancy about it. It stood there full of lox, venting white clouds and rolling frost down the side. In the glow of the searchlight it was really beautiful.

After admiring the bird, I went up the elevator and walked across the narrow platform to the capsule. On the way up, Bill Douglas solemnly handed me a box of crayons. They came from Sam Beddingfield, he said. Sam is a NASA engineer who has developed a real knack for helping us to relax, and I appreciated the joke. It had to do with another, fictional, astronaut, who discovered just before he was about to be launched on a long and harrowing mission that he had brought along his colouring book to kill time but had forgotten his crayons. The guy refused to get into the capsule until someone went back to the hangar and got him some.

I walked around a bit, talking briefly with Gus again and with John Glenn. I especially wanted to thank John for all the hard work he had done as my backup pilot. Some of the crew looked a little tense up there, but none of the astronauts showed it.

At 5:20 I disconnected the hose which led to my portable air-conditioner, slipped off the protective galoshes that had covered my boots and squeezed through the hatch. I linked the suit up with the capsule oxygen system, checked the straps which held me tight in the couch, removed the safety pins which kept some of the switches from being pushed or pulled inadvertently and passed them outside.

John had left a little note on the instrument panel, where no one else could see it but me. It read, NO HAND BALL PLAYING IN THIS AREA. I was going to leave it there, but when John saw me laugh behind the visor he grinned and reached in to retrieve it. I guess he remembered that the capsule cameras might pick up that message, and he lost his nerve. No one could speak to me now, face-to-face. I had closed the visor and was hooked up with the intercom system. Several people stuck their heads in to take a last-minute look around, and hands kept reaching in to make little adjustments. Then, at 6:10, the hatch went on and I was alone. I watched as the latches turned to make sure they were tight.

This was the big moment, and I had thought about it a lot. The butterflies were pretty strong now. “OK, Buster,” I said to myself, “you volunteered for this thing. Now it’s up to you to do it.” There was no question in my mind now that we were going – unless some serious malfunction occurred. I had anticipated the nervousness I felt, and I had made plans to counteract it by plunging into my pilot preparations. There were plenty of things to do to keep me busy, and the tension slackened off immediately. I went through all the checklists, checked the radio systems and the gyro switches.

At other places around the Cape at this point, the other astronauts were taking up their positions to back me up in any way they could. Deke Slayton sat at the Capsule Communicator desk in Mercury Control Centre. He would do most of the talking with me during the countdown and flight so that both the lingo and the spirit behind it would be clear and familiar. John and Gus joined Deke as soon as I was firmly locked in and there was nothing more they could do at the pad. Wally and Scott stood by at Patrick Air Force Base, ready to take off in two F-106jets to chase the Redstone and capsule as far as they could and observe the flight. Gordon stayed in the blockhouse, monitoring the weather and standing by to help put into effect the rescue operations he had worked on which would get me out of the capsule in a hurry if we had an emergency while we were still on the pad. Inside the Mercury Control Centre itself, all the lights were green. All conditions were “Go”. The gantry rolled back at 6:34, and I lay on my back seventy feet above the ground checking the straps and switches and waiting for the countdown to proceed.

I passed some of the time looking through the periscope. I could see clouds up above and people far beneath me on the ground. The view was fascinating – and I had a long, long time to admire it. There were four holds in all, the first at 7:14 when the count stood at T-15 minutes. A thick, muggy layer of clouds had begun to drift in over the launch site, and a hold was called to give the Control Centre an opportunity to check on the weather. Cape Canaveral sits on a narrow spit of land with the Gulf Stream close by to the east and the Gulf of Mexico only 130 miles to the west. The weather is likely to change rapidly between these two bodies of water. The day can be bright and sunny one minute, cloudy and breezy the next. It is fickle and difficult to keep track of, and in order to follow the capsule and the booster closely, photograph their performance and watch for possible emergencies, the men in the Control Centre require a clear view of the first part of a flight.