The Mammoth Book of Space Exploration and Disasters

The morning of July 29 was dark and rainy. The countdown proceeded anyway. NASA had assembled an audience that included the astronauts, its own officials, and executives and engineers from General Dynamics. The Atlas sat on the launch pad, topped with a simulated Mercury capsule, the package looking exactly as it would look on the day an astronaut was aboard ready to be lifted into orbit. We listened on the squawk box as the count went down. The stage was set for the debut of Mercury-Atlas 1.

The launch went perfectly. The rocket rose on a column of flame and disappeared into an orange halo in the clouds. A minute later the squawk box erupted with hurried, cryptic messages indicating that flight telemetry – the signals from the rocket to the ground – had been lost and the rocket had disappeared from radar. Another half a minute, and some people on the ground thought they heard an explosion.

The investigation that followed determined the rocket had failed structurally and blown up going through high Q at thirty-two thousand feet. The debris fell into the Atlantic. The only good news was that capsule telemetry had continued until it hit the water; and all of its shattered pieces were recovered.

I didn’t know what to think. We were much closer now to a manned flight than when we had witnessed the earlier explosion. The first flights were going to be on top of the more proven, smaller Redstone rockets, but sooner or later an astronaut was going to be riding an Atlas because only the Atlas had the power to put a spacecraft into orbit. The failure of MA-1 set NASA’s launch schedule back by months.

A test of the smaller Redstone rocket proved to be an additional discouragement. Glenn:

This time it was the test flight of Mercury-Redstone 1, the supposedly well tested Redstone rocket, topped with a Mercury capsule just as it would be for the first manned suborbital flight. Once again NASA assembled an audience of several hundred dignitaries and politicians at the Cape for the November 21 launch. The Redstone fired, rose four inches, then cut off and settled back on the pad. The three small rockets of the capsule’s escape tower worked perfectly, however. They lifted the tower – without the capsule – four thousand feet. The capsule stayed atop the rocket, but the parachutes that were supposed to bring it down activated. The drogue chute popped out and floated down, carrying the capsule’s antenna canister. Then the main and reserve chutes billowed out, settled down over the capsule and booster, and floated gently in the breeze.

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.

The first US manned space flight

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: