contact remaining between Hawaii and the spacecraft, and five minutes left to complete the retrofire checklist, it was a horse race to get into deorbiting attitude if we were to land anywhere near the planned splashdown point.
Each of the Mercury astronauts was made of the right stuff, but all were vastly different. While others would be making last compulsively detailed checks on the spacecraft, Scott might be found sitting on the beach, strumming a guitar. What I knew for sure at this point was that we had an astronaut in trouble, who was way behind the power curve, and if he wasn’t careful he was going to die. Whatever the problem, the real-time California tracking station pass would determine if Scotty lived or died.
(“Real time” is a term used when the capsule is electronically in view of a tracking station. It generally stretches from horizon to horizon as the station antennas track the capsule orbit. The initial contact is called acquisition [ACQ] and real time ends at loss of signal [LOS]. At the low orbital altitudes [between 100 and 200 miles] of the Mercury capsule, the real-time period could range from seconds up to eight minutes. To many controllers it seemed a lifetime.)
As Hawaii was losing the signal from the spacecraft, acting on sheer hope (and maybe a bit of prayer) they continued to read out the checklist. Their hope was rewarded when, well after Scott had passed over the horizon, he contacted Hawaii and told them that he had copied all of their message on the deorbit checklist.
For the first time in what seemed like hours, the controllers at the Cape took a deep breath, wondering what the hell was going to happen next.
Kraft leaned over and punched up the loop to California. “California CapCom, have you been tracking this?” Alan Shepard responded tersely, “Rog, Chris.” Shepard and Ted White had been listening to the Hawaii pass and knew what they needed to do. There was nothing we could say or do at the control center; it was now up to the California team to get him down.
Sixty seconds after Hawaii lost the signal, Shepard made his first call from the California site. “Seven, this is CapCom, are you in retro attitude?” Carpenter replied, “Yes, but I don’t have agreement with the window, Al. I think I’m going to have to do it manually, with the window and the scope.”
Ted White, the systems monitor, scanned the console meters for the attitude indications and exclaimed to Shepard, “Dammit, Al, if he is in retro attitude his gyros are way off. I don’t think he ever did a gyro alignment. His pitch gyro is off by at least 25 degrees.”
Reaching forward, Ted picked up a grease pencil and slashed a line on each of his meters at the current indication he believed represented the retro pitch attitude of minus 34 degrees, zero yaw. Leaning toward Shepard, he pointed at his meters, saying, “He’s about out of manual fuel, automatic is about 35 percent. Attitude is okay in pitch… okay, but he’s still moving in yaw.”
Knowing he had to get Carpenter down, Shepard nodded, gave a thirty-second mark, and then began the countdown to retro sequence, “… six, five, four, three, two, one, MARK!” Carpenter confirmed, “Retro sequence Green.” Scott made the final attitude check by looking out his window. White checked his meters;
Shepard had to pack all his verbal instructions to Carpenter into the next half minute to hit the planned retrofire time: “Try the automatic system, quickly. If your gyros are off, you will have to bypass the attitude interlock.” After hearing Scott confirm, “Gyros off,” Alan continued, “Bypass attitude and use manual.”
At the Cape we heard Carpenter indicate he had fired all three rockets. “I had to punch them off manually,” he said, “and I have a bit of smoke in the capsule.” Ted White confirmed that the retros were firing, but the capsule was well out of attitude in yaw. Seconds later, it seemed to tumble.
Retrofire was only three seconds late, but Llewellyn’s concern was the attitude. If Carpenter was far enough out in yaw or pitch, he would be stuck in orbit with no way home. One way or another, the die was now cast. Carpenter reported, “I think the attitudes held well, Al. I think they were good. I can’t tell you what was wrong about them since the gyros were not quite right.”
Shepard glanced at the fuel quantity meters on White’s console; the manual fuel was reading zero. Less than 20 percent of the fuel remained in the malfunctioning automatic system. Al knew it was going to be close.
Carpenter said, “I’m using fly-by-wire to stop tumbling. I’m out of manual fuel, Al.” Shepard, speaking with deliberate calmness, pronouncing each word slowly and distinctly, responded, “You’ve got plenty of time. Take your time on fly-by-wire to get into reentry attitude.” If the capsule ran out of fuel before getting into the correct attitude, it could enter the atmosphere nose forward and burn up during entry.
Whatever difficulty Scott was in, he could hardly have found himself in better hands. Shepard, in the opinion of just about everyone, was the most unflappable of all the astronauts. The man at his side, Ted White, was one of the pioneering group of Philco technical reps who had been hired as monitors for the Mercury system. He had no peer. He had dedicated himself to acquiring experience in remote site operation, even if it required him to volunteer for the ships and spend weeks at sea.
Llewellyn, now faced with his first emergency as a retro controller, continued to talk to White to get the specific attitude. “It looked like he was okay in pitch,” White explained, “but he was all over the sky in yaw. I thought we lost him when he started to tumble. I’ll get you more data after the pass.”
Llewellyn alerted the recovery teams that the capsule would land long, and searched for data that would give him a better estimate. Shepard continued coaching Carpenter: “You have plenty of time, about seven minutes until .05G, so take it slow and easy.”
At Mercury Control, we heard Carpenter’s response, “Roger. Okay, I can make out very, very small farmland… pastureland below. I see individual fields, rivers, lakes, roads, I think. I’ll get back to reentry attitude now.”
Shepard’s response was all business. “Recommend you get as close to reentry attitude as you can, using as little fuel as possible, and stand by on fly-by-wire until rates [capsule motions] develop, over.”
Every controller knew it was going to be damn close. If Scotty had not fired the retros in the correct attitude, instead of coming down in the landing zone he’d be stuck in a slowly decaying orbit, circling for a few hours until his power and oxygen ran out.
With the second critical reentry facing him, Kraft was a study in controlled fury. The mission had been close to perfect until these last few minutes and now everything was going to hell. Yelling over to Grissom, the Cape CapCom, Kraft said: “Dammit, Gus, keep his [Carpenter’s] mind on the job. I think he’s delirious.”
I was standing at the console next to Kraft. There was not much we could do except try to keep Scotty focused on the very few remaining things that would keep him alive, nursing the last few drops of attitude control fuel and maintaining reentry attitude. In the years to come I would often feel the absolute frustration at being helpless during the blackout that concludes every mission. It is like watching your wife in labor… there is nothing you can do except hold her hand and pray that all goes well.
Llewellyn looked like a guy juggling raw eggs, trying to interpret Ted White’s report and coordinate the recovery forces and radar trackers.
For his first mission he had drawn a big one. Using high school geometry, and after consulting a plot under the plexiglass cover on his console, John said: “Chris, with the California data I think we’re going to be a couple hundred miles long. We’ll get a good hack when we see what time he enters blackout.”
Shepard chimed in: “This is California. We’re losing you now. Stand by for the Cape.”
After contact three minutes later, Grissom’s dialogue with Scott centered on the fuel status and the few remaining checklist items. Aldrich said quietly, “Chris, he’s down to 15 percent on auto fuel, the manual tank is empty.” After relaying the recovery area weather, Grissom reminded Scott of the impending blackout. The voice loop exchanges were crisp, but the overall mood in Mercury Control was somber as Scotty entered blackout. In the next few minutes, America might lose an astronaut.
At the Mercury Control loss of signal, Llewellyn called Kraft, “Flight, we were about thirty seconds late going into the blackout. We’re long. I’ll give you a better hack in a few minutes.”
Within minutes, Llewellyn had the first landing prediction: “Flight, I’ve got an impact point 250 miles downrange from the predicted target. I have good agreement with all of my tracking radars. This is the best impact point we will get. I’m passing it on to Recovery.”
Bob Thompson, the recovery operations chief, called, indicating that an Air Rescue Service twin engine amphibious aircraft had been launched from Puerto Rico and was flying to the new landing point north of the Virgin Islands.
