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.
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.
The first US manned space flight
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.
At a little after 1 a.m. I got up, shaved and showered and had breakfast with John Glenn and Bill Douglas. John was most kind. He asked me if there was anything he could do, wished me well and went on down to the capsule to get it ready for me. The medical exam and the dressing went according to schedule. There were butterflies in my stomach again, but I did not feel that I was coming apart or that things were getting ahead of me. The adrenalin was pumping, but my blood pressure and pulse rate were not unusually high. A little after 4 a.m., we left the hangar and got started for the pad. Gus and Bill Douglas were with me.
They appeared to be a little behind in the count when we reached the pad. Apparently the crews were taking all the time they could and being extra careful with the preparations. Gordon Cooper, who was stationed in the blockhouse that morning, came in to give me a final weather briefing and to tell me about the exact position of the recovery ships. He said the weathermen were predicting three-foot waves and 8–10 knot winds in the landing area, which was within our limits. Everything was working fine.
Shortly after 5 a.m., some two hours before lift-off was scheduled, I asked if I could leave the transfer van. I wanted some extra time to have a word with the launch crews and to check over the Redstone and the capsule, to sort of kick the tyres – the way you do with a new car or an airplane. I realized that I would probably never see that missile again. I really enjoy looking at a bird that is getting ready to go. It’s a lovely sight. The Redstone with the Mercury capsule and escape tower on top of it is a particularly good-looking combination, long and slender. And this one had a decided air of expectancy about it. It stood there full of lox, venting white clouds and rolling frost down the side. In the glow of the searchlight it was really beautiful.
After admiring the bird, I went up the elevator and walked across the narrow platform to the capsule. On the way up, Bill Douglas solemnly handed me a box of crayons. They came from Sam Beddingfield, he said. Sam is a NASA engineer who has developed a real knack for helping us to relax, and I appreciated the joke. It had to do with another, fictional, astronaut, who discovered just before he was about to be launched on a long and harrowing mission that he had brought along his colouring book to kill time but had forgotten his crayons. The guy refused to get into the capsule until someone went back to the hangar and got him some.
I walked around a bit, talking briefly with Gus again and with John Glenn. I especially wanted to thank John for all the hard work he had done as my backup pilot. Some of the crew looked a little tense up there, but none of the astronauts showed it.
At 5:20 I disconnected the hose which led to my portable air-conditioner, slipped off the protective galoshes that had covered my boots and squeezed through the hatch. I linked the suit up with the capsule oxygen system, checked the straps which held me tight in the couch, removed the safety pins which kept some of the switches from being pushed or pulled inadvertently and passed them outside.
John had left a little note on the instrument panel, where no one else could see it but me. It read, NO HAND BALL PLAYING IN THIS AREA. I was going to leave it there, but when John saw me laugh behind the visor he grinned and reached in to retrieve it. I guess he remembered that the capsule cameras might pick up that message, and he lost his nerve. No one could speak to me now, face-to-face. I had closed the visor and was hooked up with the intercom system. Several people stuck their heads in to take a last-minute look around, and hands kept reaching in to make little adjustments. Then, at 6:10, the hatch went on and I was alone. I watched as the latches turned to make sure they were tight.
This was the big moment, and I had thought about it a lot. The butterflies were pretty strong now. “OK, Buster,” I said to myself, “you volunteered for this thing. Now it’s up to you to do it.” There was no question in my
