The Mammoth Book of Space Exploration and Disasters

“Texas will give you that message. Over.”

Wally and I kept chatting like a couple of tourists ex changing travel notes. “This is Friendship Seven. Can see El Centro and the Imperial Valley, Salton Sea very clear.”

“It should be pretty green. We’ve had a lot of rain down here.”

The automatic yaw control kept banging the capsule back and forth, so I switched back to manual in all three axes. The capcom at Corpus Christi, Texas, came on and said, “We are recommending that you leave the retro package on through the entire reentry. This means you will have to override the point-zero-five-G switch [this sensed atmospheric resistance and started the capsule’s reentry program], which is expected to occur at oh four forty-three fifty-eight. This also means that you will have to manually retract the scope. Do you read?”

The mission clock read 4:38:47. My suspicions flamed back into life. There was only one reason to leave the retro pack on, and that was because they still thought the heat shield could be loose. But still, nobody would say so.

“This is Friendship Seven. What is the reason for this? Do you have any reason? Over.”

“Not at this time. This is the judgment of Cape flight.”

“Roger. Say again your instructions, please. Over.”

The capcom ran it through again.

“Roger, understand. I will have to make a manual zero-five-G entry when it occurs, and bring the scope in manually.”

Metal straps hugged the retro pack against the heat shield. Without jettisoning the pack, the straps and then the pack would burn up as the capsule plunged into the friction the atmosphere. I guessed they thought that by the time that happened, the force of the thickening air would hold the heat shield against the capsule. If it didn’t, Friendship and I would burn to nothing. I knew this without anybody’s telling me, but I was irritated by the cat-and-mouse game they were playing with the information. There was nothing to do but line up the capsule for reentry.

I picked up Al’s voice from the Cape. He said, “Recommend you go to reentry attitude and retract the scope manually at this time.”

“Roger.” I started winding in the periscope.

“While you’re doing that, we are not sure whether or not your landing bag has deployed. We feel it is possible to reenter with the retro package on. We see no difficulty this time in that type of reentry. Over.”

“Roger, understand.”

I was now at the upper limits of the atmosphere as I went to full manual control, in addition to the autopilot so I could use both sets of jets for attitude control. “This is Friendship Seven. Going to fly-by-wire. I’m down to about fifteen percent [fuel] on manual.”

“Roger. You’re going to use fly-by-wire for reentry and we recommend that you do the best you can to keep a zero angle during reentry. Over.”

I entered the last set of hurdles at an altitude of about fifty-five miles. All the attitude indicators were good. I moved the controller to roll the capsule into a slow spin of ten degrees a second that, like a rifle bullet, would hold it on its flight path. Heat began to build up at the leading edge of a shock wave created by the capsule’s rush into the thickening air. The heat shield would ablate, or melt, as it carried heat away, at temperatures of three thousand degrees Fahrenheit, but at the point of the shock wave, four feet from my back, the heat would reach ninety-five hundred degrees, a little less than the surface of the sun. And the ionized envelope of heat would black out communications as I passed into the atmosphere.

Al said, “We recommend that you…” That was the last I heard.

There was a thump as the retro pack straps gave way. I thought the pack had jettisoned. A piece of steel strap fell against the window, clung for a moment, and burned away.

“This, Friendship Seven. I think the pack just let go.”

An orange glow built up and grew brighter. I anticipated the heat at my back. I felt it the same way you feel it when somebody comes up behind you and starts to tap you on the shoulder; but then doesn’t. Flaming pieces of something started streaming past the window. I feared it was the heat shield.

Every nerve fiber was attuned to heat along my spine; I kept wondering, “Is that it? Do I feel it?” But just sitting there wouldn’t do any good. I kept moving the hand controller to damp out the capsule’s oscillations. The rapid slowing brought a buildup of G forces. I strained against almost eight Gs to keep moving the controller. Through the window I saw the glow intensify to a bright orange. Overhead, the sky was black. The fiery glow wrapped around the capsule, with a circle the color, of a lemon drop in the center of its wake.

“This Friendship Seven. A real fireball outside.”

I knew I was in the communications blackout zone. Nobody could hear me, and I couldn’t hear anything the Cape was saying. I actually welcomed the silence for a change. Nobody was chipping at me. There was nothing they could do from the ground anyway. Every half minute or so, I checked to see if I was through it.

“Hello, Cape. Friendship Seven. Over.”

“Hello, Cape. Friendship Seven. Do you receive? Over.”

I was working hard to damp out the control motions, with one eye outside all the time. The orange glow started to fade, and I knew I was through the worst of the heat. Al’s voice came back into my headset. “How do you read? Over”

“Loud and clear. How me?”

“Roger; reading you loud and clear. How are you doing?”

“Oh, pretty good.”

The Gs fell off as my rate of descent slowed. I heard Al again. “Seven, this is Cape. What’s your general condition? Are you feeling pretty well?”

“My condition is good, but that was a real fireball, boy. I had great chunks of that retro pack breaking off all the way through.”

At twelve miles of altitude I had slowed to near subsonic speed. Now, as I passed from fifty-five thousand to forty-five thousand feet, the capsule was rocking and oscillating wildly and the hand controller had no effect. I was out of fuel. Above me through the window I saw the twisting corkscrew contrail of my path. I was ready to trigger the drogue parachute to stabilize the capsule, but it came out on its own at twenty-eight thousand feet. I opened snorkels to bring air into the cabin. The huge main chute blossomed above me at ten thousand feet. It was a beautiful sight. I descended at forty feet a second toward the Atlantic.

I flipped the landing bag deploy switch. The red light glowed green, just the way it was supposed to.

The capsule hit the water with a good solid thump, plunged down, submerging the window and periscope, and bobbed back up. I heard gurgling but found no trace of leaks. I shed my harness, unstowed the survival kit, and got ready to make an emergency exit just in case.

But I had landed within six miles of the USS Noa, and the destroyer was alongside in a matter of minutes. Even so, I got hotter waiting in the capsule for the recovery ship than I had coming through reentry. I felt the bump of the ship’s hull, then the capsule being lifted, swung, and lowered onto the deck. I radioed the ship’s bridge to clear the area around the side hatch, and when I got the all-clear, I hit the firing pin and blasted the hatch open. Hands reached to help me out. “It was hot in there,” I said as I stepped out onto the deck. Somebody handed me a glass of iced tea.

It was the afternoon of the same day. My flight had lasted just four hours and fifty-six minutes. But I had seen three sunsets and three dawns, flying from one day into the next and back again. Nothing felt the same.

I looked back at Friendship 7. The heat of reentry had discolored the capsule and scorched the stenciled flag and the lettering of United States and Friendship 7 on its sides. A dim film of some kind covered the window. Friendship 7 had passed a test as severe as any combat, and I felt an affection for the cramped and tiny spacecraft, as any pilot would for a warplane that had brought him safely through enemy fire.

The Noa like all ships in the recovery zone, had a kit that included a change of clothes and toiletries. I was taken to the captain’s quarters, where two flight surgeons helped me struggle out of the pressure suit and its underlining, and remove the biosensors and urine collection device. I didn’t know until I got the suit off that the hatch’s firing ring had kicked back and barked my knuckles, my only injury from the trip. My urine bag was full. A NASA photographer was taking pictures. After a shower, I stepped on a scale; I had lost five pounds since liftoff. President Kennedy called via radio-telephone with congratulations. He had already made a statement to the nation, in which he created a new analogy for the exploration of space: “This is the new ocean,