Richard Lawrence - The Mammoth Book of Space Exploration and Disaster

About three seconds after reporting to Al the depletion of my manual fuel, I inquired about the next key event during reentry, called “.05g.” That’s when you feel that first gentle deceleration signaling the loss of weightlessness.

Carpenter asked: “.05 should be when?”

Capcom replied: “Oh, you have plenty of time. Take your time on fly-by-wire to get into reentry attitude.”

Capcom added: “I was just looking over your reentry checklist. Looks like you’re in pretty good shape. You’ll have to manually retract the scope.”

No, the scope had come in during a retrosequence check over Hawaii.

Capcom continued: “Roger. I didn’t get that. Very good.”

Carpenter commented: “Going to be tight on fuel.”

Capcom replied: “Roger. You have plenty of time. You have about 7 minutes before .05 g so take—”

Now I was literally dropping out of the sky and had a beautiful view of the earth below. On his own way down Al had strained for a similar view through the tiny portholes of Freedom 7. He hadn’t been able to see anything on his way down, so I treated him to a vicarious thrill – my newer version of the Mercury capsule offered a panoramic view of the earth below.

Carpenter described: “Okay. I can make out very small farmland, pastureland below. I see individual fields, rivers, lakes, roads, I think. I’ll get back to reentry attitude.”

Kris Stoever:

“Roger,” Al concurred. “Recommend you get close to reentry attitude.” Listening to Scott, Al may have recalled that his own attempts at reentry sightseeing had left him behind in his work. Coming up on LOS, he reminded Scott for the last time to use “as little fuel as possible and stand by on fly-by-wire until rates develop. Over.”

Carpenter replied: “Roger, will do.”

With Scott now in range over Cape Canaveral, Gus read off the final stowage checklist items – reminders in case the pilot had been busy with other things. Was the glove compartment “latched and closed?” “Roger, it is,” Scott replied. He read off the face-plate check. “Negative. It is now. Thank you.” Everything else was done. Gus transmitted a weather report for the expected impact point:

“The weather in the recovery point is good – you’ve got overcast cloud, 3 foot waves, 8 knots of wind, 10 miles visibility, and the cloud bases are at 1,000 feet.”

Scott reported matter-of-factly on “the orange glow,” using the definite article because the glow, in that particular blazing color, had been reported by his predecessors in these fiery precincts. He also saw burning particles from the heat shield form an immense orange wake behind him and struggled against increasing G loads to switch on the auxiliary damping mode. G forces would peak in a few minutes at eleven times the normal gravitational load. The capsule steadied. Auxiliary damping worked!

“I assume we’re in blackout now,” Scott transmitted to Gus, referring to the expected loss of voice contact that sets in at about 75,000 feet.

“Give me a try.” Nothing. “There goes something tearing away,” Scott said, now for the voice recorder. Atmospheric drag was creating temperatures outside of close to 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit – incinerating trivial bits of the spacecraft, as expected.

Scott continued talking, for the voice recorder, using the old Carpenter grunt perfected at Johnsville to force the words out. It took all his strength. Aurora 7 was reaching peak deceleration rates. Telemetered cardiac readings coming in at Mercury Control registered the physical effort required to produce words, observations, status reports. He never stopped, every three to five seconds bringing a new, concise transmission. The capsule was now oscillating badly.

Faget recalls that back in 1958 they decided that 60 degrees of oscillation was “good enough” when they worked on prototypes in the wind tunnels. But he laughed rather sadistically at the memory – “oscillations of 60 degrees would have produced a wild ride.” By 1962, more circumspect human-factors engineers had settled on the oscillations of a mere 10 degrees. And Scott was right at the edge of “tolerable.” He tried to find reassurance in the evenness of the oscillations, which signaled good aerodynamic stability.

But then, something new: the orange glow gave way to green flashes, and then to a distinctly greenish gleam, unreported by his predecessors. Must be the ionizing beryllium shingles, Scott thought. Again at fifty thousand feet, the oscillations returned.

The Cape should be able to hear him by now, he thought. His transmissions became more expectant.

Carpenter reported: “And I’m standing by for altimeter off the peg. Cape, do you read yet?”

Scott’s rate of descent was slowing to only one hundred feet per second. Cabin pressure was “holding okay.” He was at forty-five thousand feet, already arming the drogue parachute, the first of two chutes designed to steady and slow the capsule on its descent toward splashdown. Then he heard a voice, maybe Gus, and replied, “Roger, Aurora 7 reading okay.”

Carpenter reported: “Getting some pretty good oscillations now and we’re out of fuel.”

His “pretty good” oscillations were actually pretty bad, registering now outside the “tolerable range” of 10 percent, the worst so far. Not yet. Not yet. He was waiting for twenty-five thousand feet, the upper limit for a drogue-chute release, performed entirely at the astronaut’s discretion. His heart rate, which had averaged about seventy beats per minute throughout the flight, hit a peak of 104. Not unexpected.

Carpenter reported: “Drogue out manually at 25. It’s holding and it was just in time.”

The drogue chute did its job steadying the capsule. “Just in time” was a reference to its welcome effect on the oscillations. Still falling. Still reporting at thirteen thousand feet. Scott was “standing by” for the main chute at “mark 10” – the altimeter mark of ten thousand feet:

“Mark 10. I see the main is out and reefed and it looks good to me. The main chute is out. Landing bag is auto now. The drogue has fallen away. I see a perfect chute. Visor open. Cabin temperature is only 110 at this point. Helmet hose is off.”

Carpenter asked: “Does anybody read – does anybody read Aurora 7? Over.”

Then Cape Capcom (Gus Grissom): “Aurora 7, Aurora 7, Cape Capcom. Over.”

Carpenter reported: “Roger, I’m reading you. I’m on the main chute at 5,000, status is good.”

Some back and forth. Aurora 7 was beneath the clouds now: “Hello.” “How do you read?” “Loud and clear, Gus. How me?” But Gus heard not a single transmission from Scott. Transmitting blind, Gus announced:

“Aurora 7… your landing point is 200 miles long. We will jump the Air Rescue people to you.”

Carpenter replied: “Roger. Understand. I’m reading.”

Gus repeated: “Be advised your landing point is long. We will jump Air Rescue people to you in about one hour.”

Carpenter acknowledged: “Roger. Understand 1 hour.”

Scott could see the water now and prepared for the landing. The impact was not at all hard, but the capsule went completely underwater, only to pop back up and list sharply to one side. He was dismayed to see a good bit of water splash down on to the voice recorder.

All things considered – the unexpected amount of water; the sharp listing of the capsule (sixty degrees, although it would soon recover to a more reasonable forty-five degrees as the landing bag filled with water and began to act like a sea anchor), and the growing heat in the cabin – Scott thought it sensible to get out quickly. With a pararescue team an hour away, this meant egress through the nose of the capsule, a procedure practiced many times in preparation for just such situations. Al and John had orderly side-hatch exits, John’s aboard a destroyer, the USS Noa . An appalling side-hatch explosion had sent Gus scrambling out, against an incoming tide of seawater, into the ocean where he nearly drowned – recovery helicopters focused on the task of keeping his waterlogged capsule from sinking sixteen thousand feet to the ocean floor. Scott’s top-hatch egress would be Project Mercury’s first and, as it turned out, only one. It took him four minutes.