the exiles bent on his overthrow. All this was happening a few hundred miles to the south of the Cape. We sat in our hotel rooms, anxiously waiting to recover the resources we needed for the next two missions, our eyes glued to the television sets.
The combination of Gagarin’s flight and the U.S. humiliation at the Bay of Pigs provided a sobering background to our deployment. The press focused on America’s pitiful space record, while touting Russia’s successes. It was reminiscent of what had happened a year earlier, when
I find it difficult today to convey the intense frustration and near despair as we picked ourselves up after each setback, determined to break the jinx on the program. Now we were going for two back-to-back missions— launching an unmanned Atlas downrange and then carrying out our first manned Redstone mission. We tried not to think about the gaps in knowledge, experience, and technology in our program—they were big enough to drive a truck through—and we could never forget that while we were screwing around with baby steps in suborbital missions the Russians had put a man in orbit. So we would continue with our preparations at the Cape, tired of being one step behind. It seemed like no matter what we did, the Russians were always one step ahead.
In those dark days our only thought was, “This time it has to work.”
Testing went smoothly once we regained the test range and network resources. The Mercury network, operational less than a month when we deployed, was working beautifully. NASA, playing catch-up with the Russians, changed the Mercury-Atlas launch (MA-3) from a ballistic mission to an orbital one. We split the Canary Islands team and sent a small group to Nigeria and Zanzibar. We planned two launches in the next ten days: an unmanned Atlas orbital mission and America’s first manned mission on a Redstone.
The simulation team was composed of another small group of controllers. Their task was to create what we now call virtual reality—to replicate, in chillingly convincing detail, every element of the mission, from countdown to completion. The simulation supervisor (SimSup) had five people playing the roles of thirty. They would supply a data stream—telemetry, command, radar tracking, voice reports—and our controllers would have to respond. SimSup’s team would provide the voice calls and responses of the three test conductors, range safety officer, recovery team, and everyone else involved in a launch. One guy might play a dozen different people responding to controllers’ calls. The SimSup’s objective was to test the judgment of each individual and the competence of the total mission team. How quickly would they recognize and solve problems? How well did the mission rules and the procedures used in the various facilities and the network function in real time? Were we ready?
SimSup would prepare and send out magnetic tapes to each of the Mercury facilities. For instance, a single orbit takes ninety minutes. The tapes would be played in sequence, starting at the Mercury Control Center at the Cape. At four minutes after simulated launch, Bermuda would start playing their tape—so for about six minutes MCC and Bermuda could compare data—then MCC would lose data and a few minutes after that the Bermuda tape would end. There would be an eight-minute gap before the tape at the Canary Islands site would start running. Each of the tapes had to contain timing and data replicating what was expected to happen during the actual flight. The simulation team would introduce various malfunctions on the tapes sent out to each site and the controllers there would have to deal with them.
While all this was going on, an astronaut sitting in the capsule simulator had to deal with the same malfunctions thrown at the controllers at the various sites. If either the astronaut or the site controllers wanted to take an action that conflicted with the data on the tape, then the whole simulation would start to fall apart.
Few of the early simulations achieved their objectives. Everything was new and untested—new equipment, new procedures. Attempts to conduct “seconds critical” training often failed. Our final MA-3 training run was no exception. Our novices stumbled from the start, when the wrong tapes were selected. After several restarts, tempers flared as controllers at the separate sites began improvising in an attempt to complete the test. Later in the afternoon, a disgusted Kraft called off the exercise and told me to sort out what had happened.
Three days before the Atlas orbital test launch, I prepared the Teletype daily advisory, critiquing the previous day’s run and offering an apology. The message to all the tracking sites was blunt:
TODAY’S OPERATION WAS A COMEDOWN AND INDICATES WE STILL HAVE PROBLEMS. MISSION CONTROL’S PERFORMANCE WAS SUBSTANDARD. WE APOLOGIZE FOR THE WAY WE CLOSED DOWN THE VOICE NETWORK. OUR DISCOURAGEMENT WITH THE DRILL LED US TO WALK AWAY UNCOMPLETED.
LAUNCH FORECAST—NO DELAYS ANTICIPATED. BOOSTER, CAPSULE AND RECOVERY GO. FLIGHT CONTROL IS GO ASSUMING ADEQUATE TRAINING.
It was customary to add the latest news headlines, which included these:
U.S. WILL ACT AGAINST CUBA TO GUARD ITS SECURITY.
KENNEDY’S ANTI-CASTRO INVASION STAMPED OUT.
REPORTS CLAIM CASTRO SUFFERING FROM MENTAL COLLAPSE.
MARILYN MONROE SAYS NO TO REMARRIAGE TO JOE DIMAGGIO.
ALLISON AND MANTLE HIT THREE HOME RUNS.
AT&T 126-?, DOWN 3/8 BECAUSE OF PROJECT MERCURY SLIP.
We could only hope now that our training would prove sufficient. It was time to launch.
The Atlas rocket, shedding ice formed by condensation on the sides of the liquid oxygen tanks, lurched skyward on three shafts of liquid fire, steam billowing from the flame bucket that channeled the fiery exhaust away from the blockhouse, support tower, cables, and pad. Inside the control room, I could not hear the engines roar, but the sense of my first Atlas launch seeped from my fingertips as I scribbled the liftoff time in the Teletype message and handed it to a waiting runner.
Without pausing, I picked up the running Teletype dialogue over the order wire, advising Bermuda of the launch time and status. Seconds after the launch, a note of anxiety crept into the Welsh accent of Tec Roberts, the flight dynamics officer (FIDO) responsible for launch and orbital trajectory control, as he reported, “Flight, negative roll-and-pitch program.”
A collective shudder went through everyone in the control room as the controllers absorbed the chilling significance of Roberts’s terse report. The roll-and-pitch program normally changed the initial vertical trajectory of the launch into a more horizontal one that would take the Atlas out over the Atlantic. This Atlas was still inexplicably flying straight up, threatening the Cape and the surrounding communities. The worst-case scenario would be for it to pitch back toward land or explode. The higher it flew before it exploded, the wider the “footprint” of debris scattered all over the Cape and surrounding area would be.
The RSO (range safety officer) monitoring the launch confirmed the lack of a roll-and-pitch program, then continued to give the Atlas an opportunity to recover and start its track across the Atlantic. The RSO lifted the cover on the command button and watched as the Atlas raced to a fatal convergence with the limits on his plot board.
At forty-three seconds after liftoff, Roberts reported, “The range safety officer has transmitted the destruct command.” Seconds later, Kraft’s TV glowed a vivid black and white with the explosion. (We did not have color monitors.) We waited, not speaking, counting the seconds, listening for the telltale, muffled
We sat by the consoles, not talking for several seconds. Then, one by one, the controllers closed their countdown books and started to pack their documents.
My message to the remote site teams was succinct: “MA-3 WAS TERMINATED BY RANGE SAFETY AT 43 SECONDS INTO FLIGHT. STAND BY FOR DEBRIEFING.”
The destruction of the Mercury-Atlas 3 left us dazed and disheartened. We had gone to launch feeling that with three successful unmanned suborbital missions the jinx seemed broken, the odds were turning in our favor.
