pulled loose. That was my last connection with Earth. It took the two boosters and the sustainer engine three seconds of fire and thunder to lift the thing that far. From where I sat the rise seemed ponderous and stately, as if the rocket were an elephant trying to become a ballerina. Then the mission elapsed-time clock on the cockpit panel ticked into life and I could report, “The clock is operating. We’re under way.”
I could hardly believe it. Finally!
The rocket rolled and headed slightly north of east. At thirteen seconds I felt a little shudder. “A little bumpy along about here,” I reported. The G forces started to build up. The engines burned fuel at an enormous rate, one ton a second, more in the first minute than a jet airliner flying coast to coast, and as the fuel was consumed the rocket grew lighter and rose faster. At forty-eight seconds I began to feel the vibration associated with high Q, the worst seconds of aerodynamic stress, when the capsule was pushing through air resistance amounting to almost a thousand pounds per square foot. The shaking got worse, then smoothed out at 1:12, and I felt the relief of knowing that I was through max Q, the part of the launch where the rocket was most likely to blow.
At 2:09 the booster engines cut off and fell away. I was miles high and forty-five miles from the Cape. The rocket pitched forward for the few seconds it took for the escape tower’s jettison rocket to fire, taking the half-ton tower away from the capsule. The G forces fell to just over one. Then the Atlas pitched up again and, driven by the sustainer engine and the two smaller vernier engines, made course corrections, resumed its acceleration toward a top speed of 17,545 miles per hour in the ever-thinning air. Another hurdle passed. Another instant of relief.
Pilots gear their moments of greatest attention to the times when flight conditions change. When you get through them, you’re glad for a fraction of a second, and then you think about the next thing you have to do.
The Gs built again, pushing me back into the couch. The sky looked dark outside the window. Following the flight plan, I repeated the fuel, oxygen, cabin pressure, and battery readings from the dials in front of me in the tiny cabin. The arc of the flight was taking me out over Bermuda. “Cape is go and I am go. Capsule is in good shape,” I reported.
“Roger. Twenty seconds to SECO.” That was Al Shephard on the capsule communicator’s microphone at mission control, warning me that the next crucial moment – sustainer engine cutoff – was seconds away.
Five minutes into the flight, if all went well, I would achieve orbital speed, hit zero G, and, if the angle of ascent was right, be inserted into orbit at a height of about a hundred miles. The sustainer and vernier engines would cut off, the capsule-to-rocket clamp would release, the posigrade rockets would fire to separate Friendship 7 from the Atlas.
It happened as programmed. The weight and fuel tolerances were so tight that the engines had less than three seconds’ worth of fuel remaining when I hit that keyhole in the sky. Suddenly I was no longer pushed back against the seat but had a momentary sensation of tumbling forward.
“Zero G and I feel fine,” I said exultantly. “Capsule turning around.” Through the window I could see the curve of Earth and its thin film of atmosphere. “Oh,” I exclaimed, “that view is tremendous!”
The capsule continued to turn until it reached its normal orbital attitude, blunt end forward. It was flying east and I looked back to the west. There was the spent tube of the Atlas making slow pirouettes behind me, sunlight glinting from its metal skin. It was beautiful, too.
Al’s voice came in my earphones. “Roger, Seven. You have a go, at least seven orbits.”
That was the best possible news. I was higher than space flight when I heard that. The mission was planned for three orbits, but it meant that I could go for at least seven if I had to. The first set of hurdles was behind me. I loosened the shoulder straps and seat belt that held me to the couch, and prepared to go to work.
The capsule was pitched thirty-four degrees from horizontal in its normal orbital attitude, so I could see back across the ocean to the western horizon. The periscope had automatically deployed and gave me a view to the east in the direction of the capsule’s flight. The worldwide tracking network switched into gear. I talked to Gus, who was the capsule communicator, or capcom, at the Bermuda station. “This is very comfortable at zero G. I have nothing but a very fine feeling. It just feels very normal and very good.”
Over the Canary Islands, almost to the west coast of America, I could still see the Atlas turning behind me. It was a mile away now, and slightly below me, losing ground because I was in a slightly higher orbit. I did a quick check of the capsule’s attitude controls in case I had to make an emergency reentry. Pitch, roll, and yaw were primarily governed by an automatic system in which gyroscopes and sensors sent electrical signals to eighteen one-and five-pound hydrogen peroxide thrusters arrayed around the capsule. In “fly-by-wire” mode, I could use the three-axis control stick to override the automatic system using its same electrical connections. A fully manual system provided redundancy in a variety of attitude control modes. All three systems worked perfectly.
Friendship 7 crossed the African coast twelve minutes after liftoff, a fast transatlantic flight. I reached for the equipment pouch fixed just under the hatch. It used a new invention, a system of nylon hooks and loops called Velcro. I opened the pouch and a toy mouse floated into my vision. It was gray felt, with pink ears and a long tail that was tied to keep it from floating out of reach. I laughed at the mouse which was Al’s joke, a reference to one of comedian Bill Dana’s characters, who always felt sorry for the experimental mice that had gone into space in rocket nose cones.
I reached around the mouse and took out the Minolta camera. Floating under my loosened straps, I found that I had adapted to weightlessness immediately. When I needed both hands, I just let go of the camera and it floated there in front of me. I didn’t have to think about it. It felt natural.
Telemetry was sending signals to the ground about my condition and the condition of the capsule. The capcom at the Canary Islands station asked for a blood pressure check, and I pumped the cuff on my left arm. The EKG and biosensors were sending signals about my heart pulse, and respiration, and the ever-present rectal thermometer was reporting my body temperature. At 18:41 I reported, (“Have a beautiful view of the African coast, both in the scope and out the window. Out the window is the best view by far.”
“Your medical status is green,” Canary capcom reported. I asked for my blood pressure. The capcom reported back that it was 120 over 80, normal.
I took pictures of clouds over the Canaries. At twenty-one minutes, over the Sahara Desert, I aimed the camera at massive dust storms swirling the desert sand.
The tracking station at Kano, Nigeria, came on. I was forty seconds behind on my checklist of tasks, and went to fly-by-wire to check the capsule’s yaw control again. The thrusters moved the capsule easily, and I reported at 26.34, “Attitudes all well within limits. I have no problem holding attitude with fly-by-wire at all. Very easy.”
Over Zanzibar off the East African coast, the site of the fourth tracking station, I pulled thirty times on the bungee cord attached below the control panel. I had done this on the ground, and my reaction was the same: it made me tired and increased my heart rate temporarily – I pumped the blood pressure cuff again for the flight surgeon on the ground. I read the vision chart over the instrument panel with no problem, countering the doctors’ fear that the eyeballs would change shape in weightlessness and impair vision. Head movements caused no sensation, indicating that zero G didn’t attack the balance mechanism of the inner ear. I could reach and easily touch any spot I wanted to, another test of the response to weightlessness. The ease of the adjustment continued to surprise me.
The Zanzibar flight surgeon reported that my blood pressure and pulse had returned to normal after my exertion with the bungee cord. “Everything on the dials indicates excellent aeromedical status,” he said. This was what we had expected from doing similar tests on the procedures trainer.
Flying backward over the Indian Ocean, I began to fly out of daylight. I was now about forty minutes into the flight nearing the 150-mile apogee, the highest point, of my orbital track. Moving away from the sun at 17,500 miles an hour – almost eighteen times Earth’s rotational speed – sped the sunset.
This was something I had been looking forward to, a sunset in space. All my life I have remembered particularly beautiful sunrises or sunsets in the Padfic islands in World War II; the glow in the haze layer in northern China; the two thunderheads out over the Atlantic with the sun silhouetting them the morning of Gus’s launch. I’ve mentally collected them, as an art collector remembers visits to a gallery full of Picassos, Michelangelos, or Rembrandts. Wonderful as man-made art may be, it cannot compare in my mind to sunsets and sunrises, God’s masterpieces. Here on Earth we see the beautiful reds, oranges, and yellows with a luminous quality that no film can fully capture. What would it be like in space?
It was even more spectacular than I imagined, and different in that the sunlight coming through the prism
