The Mammoth Book of Space Exploration and Disasters

The Coastal Sentry, in the Indian Ocean, relayed a strange message from mission control. “Keep your landing bag switch in off position. Landing bag switch in off position. Over.”

I glanced at the switch. It was off.

I returned to ASCS to see if the system was working. But now the capsule began to have pitch and roll as well as yaw problems in its automatic setting. The gyroscope-governed instruments showed the capsule was flying in its proper attitude, but what my eyes told me disagreed. The Indian Ocean capcom asked if I had noticed any constellations yet.

“This is Friendship Seven. Negative. I have some problems here with ASCS. My attitudes are not matching what I see out the window. I’ve been paying pretty close attention to that. I’ve not been identifying stars.”

The ASCS fuel supply was down to 60 percent, so I cut it off and started flying manually. Gordo, in Muchea, asked me to confirm that the landing bag switch was off.

“That is affirmative. Landing bag switch is in the center off position.”

“You haven’t had any banging noises or anything of this type at higher rates?” He meant the rate of movement in roll, pitch, or yaw.

“Negative.”

“They wanted this answer.”

I flew on, feeling no vertigo or nausea or other ill effects from weightlessness, being able to read the same lines on the eye chart I could at the beginning. I pumped the blood pressure cuff for another check and gave the readings in the regular half-hour reports. Flying the capsule with the one-stick hand controller was taking most of my attention. The second dawn produced another flurry of the luminescent partides. “They’re all over the sky,” I reported. “Way out I can see them, as far as I can see in each direction, almost.”

The Canton Island capcom ignored the particles and asked me to report any sensations I was feeling from weightlessness. Then came an unprompted transmission.

“We also have no indication that your landing bag might be deployed. Over.”

I had a prickle of suspicion. “Roger. Did someone report landing bag could be down? Over.”

“Negative. We have a request to monitor this and ask if you heard any flapping when you had high capsule rates.”

It suddenly made sense. They were trying to figure out where the particles had come from. I was convinced they weren’t coming from the capsule. They were all over the sky.

Daylight again. I had caged and reset the gyros during the night, and did it again in the light, but they were still off. I reported to the capcom in Hawaii that the instruments indicated a twenty-degree right roll when I was lined up with the horizon.

“Do you consider yourself go for the next orbit?”

“That is affirmative. I am go for the next orbit.” There was no question in my mind about that. I could control the capsule easily, and I was confident that even with faulty gyroscopes I could align the capsule for its proper retrofire angle by using the stars and the horizon.

I flew over the Cape into the third orbit. The gyros seemed to have corrected themselves. Al radioed a recommendation that I allow the capsule to drift on manual control to conserve fuel.

The sky was clear over the Atlantic. Gus came on from Bermuda and I radioed, “I have the Cape in sight down there. It looks real fine from up here.”

“Rog. Rog.”

“As you know.”

“Yea, verily, Sonny.”

I could see not only the Cape, but the entire state of Florida. The eastern seaboard was bathed in sunshine, and I could see as far back as the Mississippi Delta. It was also clear over the recovery area to the south. “Looks like we’ll have no problem on recovery,” I said.

“Very good. We’ll see you in Grand Turk.”

Gus faded as I let the capsule drift around again 180 degrees, so that I was facing forward for the second time. It was more satisfying, and felt more like real flying. I still felt good physically, with none of the suspected ill effects. When I turned the capsule back to orbit attitude, the problem with the gyros reappeared, indicating more pitch, roll, and yaw than my view of the horizon indicated. The Zanzibar capcom asked why.

“That’s a good question. I wish I knew, too.”

I saw my third sunset of the day, and flew over clouds with lightning pulsing and rippling inside them. The lightning flashes looked like lightbulbs pulsing inside a veil of cotton gauze. Over the Indian Ocean, I went back to full manual control because the automatic with manual backup was using too much of the thrusters’ supply of fuel. There had to be enough left when the time came to achieve the proper reentry attitude. I pitched the capsule up for a look at the night stars. The constellation Orion was right in the middle of the window, and I could hold my attitude by watching it.

Over Muchea, approaching four hours since liftoff, I told Gordo, “I want you to send a message to the commandant, U.S. Marine Corps, Washington. Tell him I have my four hours required flight time in for the month and request flight chit be established for me. Over.”

“Roger. Will do. Think they’ll pay it?”