The Mammoth Book of Space Exploration and Disasters

We had a few problems with the countdown. One of the explosive bolts that held the hatch in place was misaligned, and at T-45 minutes they declared a hold to replace it. This took thirty minutes. Then the count was resumed and proceeded to T-30 minutes where it was stopped so the technicians could turn off the pad searchlights. It was daylight by this time, anyway, and the lights were causing some interference with the booster telemetry. There was another hold at T-15 minutes to let some clouds drift out of the way of the tracking cameras. This one lasted forty-one minutes. I spent some of this time relaxing with deep breathing exercises and tensing my arms and legs to keep from getting too stiff. We finally got to the final act and I heard Deke Slayton count down to 5-4-3-2-1.

I felt the booster start to vibrate and I could hear the engines start. Seconds later, the elapsed time clock started on the instrument panel. I punched the Time Zero Override to make sure that everything was synchronized, started the stopwatch on the clock and reported over the radio that the clock had started. I could feel a low vibration at about T+50 seconds, but it lasted only about twenty seconds. There was nothing violent about it. It was nice and easy, just as Al had predicted. I looked for a little buffeting as I climbed to 36,000 feet and moved through Mach 1, the speed of sound. Al had experienced some difficulty here; his vehicle shook quite a lot and his vision was slightly blurred by the vibrations. But we had made some good fixes. We had improved the aerodynamic fairings between the capsule and the Redstone, and had put some extra padding around my head. I had no trouble at all, and I could see the instruments very clearly.

I did experience a slight tumbling sensation when the Redstone engine shut off at T+142 seconds and when the escape tower went ten seconds later. There was a definite feeling of disorientation. But I knew what it was, and it did not bother me. I could hear the escape rocket fire and the bolts blow that held the tower to the capsule. And I could see the escape rocket zooming off to my right. I saw the tower climb away, and it still showed up as a long slender object against the black sky when I heard the posigrade rockets that separated the capsule from the Redstone fire off. I could hear them bang and could definitely feel them kick. I never did see the booster, though. Neither had Al.

Now, I was on my own. Shortly after lift-off I went through a layer of cirrus clouds and broke out into the sun. The sky became blue, then a deeper blue, and then – quite suddenly and abruptly – it turned black. Al had described it as dark blue. It seemed jet black to me. There was a narrow transition band between the blue and the black – a sort of fuzzy grey area. But it was very thin, and the change from blue to black was extremely vivid. The earth itself was bright. I had a little trouble identifying land masses because of an extensive layer of clouds that hung over them. Even so, the view back down through the window was fascinating. I could make out brilliant gradations of colour – the blue of the water, the white of the beaches, and the brown of the land. Later on, when I was weightless and about a hundred miles up – almost at the apogee of the flight – I could look down and see Cape Canaveral, sharp and clear. I could even see the buildings. This was the best reference I had for determining my position. I could pick out the Banana River and see the peninsula which runs farther south. Then I spotted the south coast of Florida. I saw what must have been West Palm Beach. I never did see Cuba. The high cirrus blotted out everything except the area from about Daytona Beach back inland to Orlando and Lakeland, to Lake Okeechobee and down to the tip of Florida. It was quite a panorama.

At one point, through the centre of the window, I saw a faint star. At least I thought it was a star, and I reported that it was. It seemed about as bright as Polaris. John Glenn had bet me a steak dinner that I would see stars in the daytime, and I had bet him I would not. I knew that without atmospheric particles in space to defract the light, we should be able to see stars, at least theoretically. But I did not think I would be able to accommodate my eyes to the darkness fast enough to spot them. As it turned out, John lost his bet. It was Venus that I saw, and Venus is a planet. John had to pay me off, after all.

The flight itself went almost exactly according to plan. I had a really weird sensation when the capsule turned around to assume retro-fire attitude. I thought at first that I might be tumbling out of control. But I did not feel in the least bit nauseous. When I checked the instruments, I could see that everything was normal and that the manoeuvre was taking place just as I had experienced it on the trainer.