Climax of Project Mercury

WALTER M. Schirra, a naval aviator who had won the Distinguished Flying Cross for his combat missions over Korea, received his most important assignment to date on July 27, 1962. It was the flight plan for Mercury-Atlas 8, a six-orbit flight that was to qualify the spacecraft and man's endurance for an extended spatial mission. A new plan, revised slightly for yaw-reference experiments using the periscope, was delivered on August 8. This was almost 60 days before the mission, allowing the period for training that Scott Carpenter had recommended. Carpenter had received his MA-7 document late, and major revisions had been inserted almost until launch day. Although Schirra's flight plan was altered in September, it did escape a thorough last-minute rewrite.

MA-8 was to be an engineering flight, in contrast with the exploratory nature of Glenn's flight in MA-6 and the developmental and scientific nature of MA-7. Schirra was expected to concern himself largely with the management and operation of the spacecraft's systems to conserve hydrogen peroxide attitude control fuel and electrical power. The MSC planners had examined the minute-by-minute details from launch to recovery in the interest of spacecraft endurance and had programmed only a few experiments that would require fuel or electrical power. The pilot was to try to observe a ground xenon light of 140-million candlepower at Durban, South Africa, and four flares of 1-million candlepower each that would be launched near Woomera, Australia. The only other experiment requiring astronaut participation included some weather and terrestrial photography as the pilot sighted targets of opportunity. Besides these experiments, several passive test devices were superimposed on the spacecraft's exterior. Eight ablation panels, consisting of several types of material, were fused onto the afterbody's beryllium shingles, and a white paint patch was brushed on the capsule's side for still more evaluations of spatial thermal effects on various materials.¹

Early in August, Schirra trained energetically for a targeted September launch; spacecraft No. 16 was almost ready for a simulated flight in Hangar S; and Atlas No. 113-D had arrived at the Cape. Then on August 11, the Soviet Union, without prior announcement, launched Vostok III. NASA leaders, who had endured much needling on the space gap since Gherman S. Titov's 17-orbit flight, a little more than a year earlier, grimly read the press reports. The five-ton Vostok spacecraft, with Major Andrian G. Nikolayev aboard, was in an orbit with a 156-mile apogee and a 113-mile perigee, inclined (as usual for Vostoks) at 65 degrees.

The "gap" seemed to become a "gulf" the following day, when Vostok IV, carrying Lieutenant Colonel Pavel R. Popovich, shot into an orbit with an apogee of 157 miles and a perigee of 112 miles. Soon after the second launch, Nikolayev reported that he had sighted Popovich's spacecraft. Western tracking stations variously reported that the two craft were as close as 3 and as far as 300 miles apart. Intercepted communications between Nikolayev (code-named Falcon) and Popovich (Golden Eagle) caused serious speculation that the Vostoks might try to rendezvous, but apparently no such attempt was made.

On August 15, Nikolayev landed after 64 orbits and more than 95 hours in space. Popovich touched down six minutes later, after 48 orbits and more than 70 hours' flight.² The U.S. decision to accelerate the space program called for by President Kennedy in May 1961 seemed more than validated to most critical observers. Meanwhile engineers who were designing what became the Gemini vehicle for rendezvous with an orbiting Agena rocket studied the possibility of adding a space-maneuvering capability to Mercury. On August 24, Kenneth S. Kleinknecht, the Project Office chief, reported that such an innovation would require at least 400 pounds of additional spacecraft hardware and fuel. Upon hearing this, Christopher C. Kraft, Jr., the Mercury flight director, dourly observed that this added weight might dangerously degrade the capsule's chances of reaching orbit, but Robert R. Gilruth asked Kleinknecht to continue his studies. A few days later the Mercury Project Office and the Flight Crew Operations Division handed the MSC director a joint proposal for maneuvering an orbiting Mercury spacecraft close to a passive Echo-type satellite. But because of time, weight, and safety considerations, Gilruth and his management lieutenants rejected the proposal, abandoned the idea of a maneuverable Mercury spacecraft for the time being, and turned back to the more prosaic but essential business of preparing for the modest doubled-distance, six-orbit flight slated for Walter Schirra.³

Preparations for MA-8

While the long-duration mission studies were in progress and the mission rules and directives were being prepared and issued, other personnel of the NASA military-industry complex were readying the spacecraft, booster, and recovery forces. The astronaut and alternate pilot were in intensive training.

The Manned Spacecraft Center allocated spacecraft Nos. 16 and 19 for the six-orbit mission, with No. 16 as the preferred vehicle. No. 16 had arrived at Cape Canaveral in January 1962, while No. 19 had followed two months later. Rework to incorporate a six-orbit capability was done at the Cape by the MSC Preflight Operations Division with the help of McDonnell technicians. The work and testing began slowly but were well underway in April. In that month temperature surveys at the critical points on the capsule were completed, the environmental control system passed its altitude-chamber tests, and the reaction control system was exercised satisfactorily. Minor troubles cropped up, as usual. Emergency oxygen rate valves stuck. Water coolant flowed too freely. The cabin's oxygen leakage rate was too high. Each difficulty slowly was overcome, but it became evident that a hoped-for August launching might slip at least a month.⁷

The Mercury Project Office had pronounced 5.4 pounds of lithium hydroxide sufficient for oxygen purification for the MA-8 mission, but the MSC Life Systems Division personnel checking this theory found the absorbers unsatisfactory. Canisters containing 4.6 pounds of the mixture had been used in the three-orbit spacecraft and tests showed that this amount of the chemical functioned to keep the air breathable for 34.5 hours before carbon-dioxide levels rose too high. Then canisters supposedly containing 5.4 pounds of absorbent were tested, with both fixed and variable inputs of heat, water vapor, and carbon dioxide, and with a human subject breathing the oxygen. To the amazement of the testers, the lifetimes of these canisters averaged only slightly higher than those that were partly filled.

Then it occurred to somebody in the division to weigh the canisters. Each proved to have been packed about half a pound short. Finally the completely filled canisters were tested for as long as 71 hours before breaking down, demonstrating that the original design met the development demands, after all. Well filled absorbers would qualify for a day-long mission as well as for six orbits.⁸

As the work continued at the Cape on spacecraft No. 16, Scott Carpenter made his fuel-thirsty, three-orbit flight on May 24. During Aurora 7's postflight analysis MSC engineers, including G. Merritt Preston's checkout crew, took new and closer looks at the attitude and reaction control systems. They decided that attitude thrusters slightly different in design would have to be installed in the MA-8 spacecraft. While Preston's men were implementing this decision, they also managed to get No. 16's cabin oxygen leakage rate down to a highly satisfactory 460 cubic centimeters per minute, although in the weeks ahead this rate would rise slightly.⁹

Other results from MA-7, as recorded from telemetry data, as reported by Carpenter, and as revealed by examination of flight-tested Aurora 7, had intensified the flurry of activity all along the line to prepare No. 16 for its flight. Carpenter had many suggestions regarding spacecraft configuration. The heavy periscope, he said, was useless on Earth's nightside; the window alone could be used to find the spacecraft's attitude. The determined workers for spacecraft weight reduction were delighted to hear this assessment. But the MA-7 postflight inspection team reported that Carpenter's landing error had been caused by a faulty yaw attitude, largely because Carpenter had performed a final control systems check just prior to retrofire and had used the window mainly as his chief yaw reference. Could the window and the pilot be trusted? the Mercury team wondered. Would the periscope have assisted in correcting the attitude and the resultant overshoot? The only way to find out the answers was to fly the periscope again.¹⁰

So for MA-8 the periscope became, in a sense, an experimental instrument. Using both the periscope and the window for spacecraft attitude reference, Schirra would check the position of his capsule carefully on Earth's day and night sides. Then he would check his visual judgment to gauge attitude, comparing his ability against the scope and instrument readings.

Having decided to retain the periscope, the mission planners and Cape preparations team for MA-8 butted into fresh difficulties. The experiment schedule had called for an ultraviolet airglow spectrograph to be put in the periscope's well. This spectrograph had been developed through the intensive work of Albert Boggess, III, at the Goddard Space Flight Center upon the request of the NASA Headquarters Ad Hoc Committee on Scientific Tasks and Training for Man-in-Space. Now the decision to carry the periscope forced the withdrawal of the experiment, creating some disappointment among NASA's scientifically interested personnel. Even the implementation of this decision turned out to be somewhat of a problem. Preston's men tried to use the periscope from the alternate spacecraft (No. 19) but found it to be defective. By the end of August they managed to install a standard periscope, "cannibalized" from spacecraft No. 15.¹¹

Carpenter, the second astronaut to land with empty fuel tanks in the manned orbital program, also suggested that a control-mode selector switch be integrated with the control system to seal off the high thrusters until they were needed for fast reaction maneuvers. The Project Office approved, and this fuel-saving switch was installed in the MA-8 spacecraft.¹²

Aside from these and other minor modifications spacecraft No. 16 was a duplicate of Aurora 7. Many of the technical changes were aimed at weight reduction, fuel conservation, and adding extra supplies for a longer mission. Deletions included the astronaut-observer camera, one of two redundant command receiver-decoders, and the high-frequency voice transceiver. To increase pilot comfort and save weight, the preflight preparations crew extracted the lower leg section of the couch and substituted toe, heel, and knee restraints. During the orbital phase of the mission, the knee restraints could be loosened. An extra 15 pounds of coolant water and an improved fastening technique for the heatshield center plug completed the list of additions.¹³

While the engineers were working, Astronaut Schirra proceeded through the most efficient flight training program yet undertaken. Except for added yaw recognition displays, he used the same procedures trainers that his predecessors had used; having a definite flight plan, he could practice on his own specific mission profile. He was able to work through his simulated retrofire and reentry tasks in the Langley procedures trainer before the device was dismantled for shipment to Houston. And for personal physical conditioning, he often went swimming and water skiing.¹⁴

Late in July, Preston reported that the work schedule for spacecraft No. 16 was aimed at a September 18 launch date. When the flight preparation crews added a sixth day to their work week to compensate for various delays, the MSC managers remained optimistic.¹⁵

Some worry among the mission planners had been injected in July when Project Dominic, an Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) high-atmosphere nuclear test over the Pacific, had created a new zone of radiation, lower than the Van Allen belts. In the face of this possible threat to an orbiting man, AEC, NASA, and McDonnell carefully studied a number of satellite and probe launchings in August designed to explore the belt. After the solar batteries of several satellites failed - including Ariel I, the world's first international satellite project, which developed operational difficulties probably attributable to Dominic - the investigators reported that the new radiation circled Earth at the geomagnetic equator and was about 400 miles wide and 4000 miles deep. Sounding rockets by telemetry data indicated rapid and continuing decay of radioactivity in the corridors of the next Mercury mission. By the end of August the radiation hazards seemed negligible. The MSC engineers, distrusting the reports that all danger had disappeared, installed a radiation dosimeter on the spacecraft hatch, provided the pilot with a hand-held model, and attached four more to Schirra's pressure suit.¹⁶ The hand-held model could provide real-time indications during the flight.

Besides some labor-management difficulties that momentarily hampered the activities of the aerospace industry at this time, the booster for MA-8 contributed its share of troubles. Atlas 113-D was to have been delivered to Cape Canaveral toward the end of July, but it failed its initial composite test at the San Diego factory. Finally it was shipped on August 8. Then the Air Force, revealing that its Atlas program had suffered four recent turbopump failures, advised the Manned Spacecraft Center that No. 113-D would be put through a flight-readiness static firing. Since the MA-8 launch vehicle would be the first one in the Mercury program not having the two-second post-ignition hold-down time, the Air Force felt the static firing to be an important requirement.

A one-week slippage was now added. But before the test could be made, the Air Force and Convair inspectors found a fuel leak in a seam weld on the booster. Calculating the time required for work to be done, on September 6 the Mercury-Atlas launch operations committee rescheduled the mechanical an electrical matings of spacecraft and booster and three planned simulated flights. These tests would continue through September 24, making October 3 the most likely day for the MA-8 launch.

MA-8
Preflight

Atlas 113-D actually differed little from its predecessors in the manned flight program. It incorporated a dozen or so technical changes from the 107-D configuration that had propelled Carpenter into orbit. The fuel tank insulation had been removed as a solution to some of the difficulties that had beset John Glenn's booster (Carpenter's launch vehicle had retained the insulation). More important, baffled fuel injectors (which had been found in static firing tests to virtually eliminate the possibility of combustion instability) and the accompanying hyperbolic ignition (in which fuel and oxidizer ignite on contact) were added to 113-D. These innovations, therefore, eliminated the two-second hold-down at ignition, saved fuel, made for smoother initial combustion, and provided a safer liftoff.¹⁷

The tracking network for MA-8 was augmented by five airborne relay stations, in the form of five Air Force C-130s, to cover areas that otherwise would have been out of communications range of the ground sites. The C-130s, each equipped with ultra-high-frequency and very-high-frequency equipment for voice relay, were based at Patrick Air Force Base, Florida; Ramey Air Force Base, Puerto Rico; and Midway Island.¹⁸ The mixed recovery force, deployed by the Department of Defense, included 19 ships in the Atlantic and nine in the Pacific. Aircraft numbering 134 of various types covered primary and secondary spacecraft landing areas. In all, about 17,000 men, including over 100 aeromedical monitors and specialists, made up the global MA-8 recovery forces.

Recovery commanders in the Pacific directed a training course in spacecraft and astronaut retrieval for appropriate teams, using boilerplate capsules, flotation collars, and other gear provided by MSC. Major General Leighton I. Davis and Walter C. Williams made an inspection tour to the Pacific to evaluate the training program and the overall recovery readiness picture. Later Kraft, reading their findings, reported that preparations and materials seemed "reasonably well" developed. But he was disappointed that NASA had been unable to enlist the support of another Navy radar ship equipped with FPS-16 equipment for C-band operation and thus had to rely on two S-band ships instead. Kraft felt that S-band radar, called "Verlort" for its 700-mile "very long range tracking" ability, was less reliable than the C-band.¹⁹

If recovery was to go smoothly, interservice misunderstandings like the one that had developed during Carpenter's rescue would have to be avoided. General Davis, the DOD military representative for Mercury support operations, had reported to Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara that the delay at Mercury Control in the decision to pick up Carpenter had stemmed partially from a lack of direct communication with the astronaut. To overcome this breakdown, the recovery room in the Control Center was modified to permit almost instantaneous communication between tracking stations and recovery forces; and Schirra's spacecraft was equipped with a long extension line, which would permit him to maintain voice contact even in the life raft. The extended period of suspense that climaxed Carpenter's mission should never happen again in Project Mercury.²⁰

At this juncture, President Kennedy set out on a tour of the space centers of the South to inspect and show his interest not only in the preparations for MA-8 but also in the vast array of technological talents being mobilized for the accelerated space program, including the first lunar voyage. Kennedy flew down to Cape Canaveral to see the Merritt Island Launch Area that was being built for the huge Saturn V rockets. Then he went on to Houston to see the site for the management and control center on the Texas coastal prairie. Before a sweltering crowd half-filling the 72,000-seat Rice University stadium, the President spoke on September 12, 1962, in earnest defense of his proclaimed program for manned exploration of the Moon. "No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come," said Kennedy. "The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join it or not… . It is one of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in the race for space… . We intend to be first… . to become the world's leading space-faring nation." The youthful President then addressed one of his memorable statements to those who had asked, "Why send a man to the Moon?"

We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on us, and only if the United States occupies a position of preeminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new, terrifying theater of war… . Space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistake that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours.²¹

If President Kennedy's remarks in Houston, later at the McDonnell factory in St. Louis, and elsewhere, proved an accurate reflection of most Americans' sentiments about the space program, his words persuaded few of the vocal economic, political, and scientific conservatives who were watching costs soar along with the engineering effort. The NASA space budget alone for this fiscal year was over $5 billion, which represented a tax of about 40 cents on each American per week; but the Nation was prosperous, the economy seemed sound, and critics of the "space circus" were seldom heard.

Toward the end of September, all mission preparations, the astronaut, the spacecraft, and the launch vehicle reached a high state of readiness. The spacecraft and the booster mated well; the simulated tests before mission ticked off without further hitches; and October 3 thus remained a promising launch date.

Schirra, viewing the elaborate preparation effort, studying his flight plan, and knowing that his mission involved the evaluation of the capsule's ability to accomplish a day-long flight, recognized the immensity of the engineering effort behind him. In honor of these labors, he selected the name Sigma 7 for his spacecraft. "Since this was to be an engineering evaluation," he explained, the name chosen for capsule No. 16 was that of an engineering symbol for summation, Sigma, with the number seven added to it for the seven-member Mercury astronaut team. "Thus," he said, "was derived the name and symbol that was painted on the spacecraft, Sigma 7."²²

On the final lap toward launch day, Schirra began a controlled diet on September 21; nine days later physician Howard A. Minners placed him on his low-residue diet. Schirra complained mildly while adjusting to the low-residue food, but in every other respect he was primed and ready, mentally and physically.

As always when flight day neared, the Mercury operations team through the Weather Bureau support group kept a watchful eye on existing weather disturbances in both the Atlantic and Pacific areas. About 400 miles north by northeast of Puerto Rico, tropical storm Daisy churned the waters of the Atlantic, while three typhoons, Dinah, Emma, and Frieda, whipped Pacific waves. On October 1, Walter Williams told the news corps covering the flight at the Cape that except for the weather "all elements of the MA-8 flight are in a go condition as of this time." By 5 p.m. the following day, Williams was satisfied with the chances for success and decided to launch as planned.²³

Notified by Williams that he had a 7 o'clock liftoff "appointment" the next morning, Schirra dined leisurely and retired early. Without any sleep-inducing medications, the pilot drifted into slumber shortly after 8 p.m. and got about five hours of sound rest. Minners roused Schirra at 1:40 a.m. to begin the precise readiness routine. The astronaut showered, shaved, and met with Gilruth, Williams, Slayton, and Minners for breakfast. He ate heartily the "astronaut launching breakfast," consisting of eggs, filet, dry toast, orange juice, and coffee, plus a portion of a bluefish that he had speared the day before. The major preflight physical having taken place two days earlier, Minners checked Schirra briefly, pronouncing him in excellent physical condition. After Minners applied the physiological sensors to the astronaut's body, Schirra signaled to Joe W. Schmitt to assist him in donning the silvery pressure suit. At a little past 4 o'clock, Schirra and his attending retinue emerged from Hangar S.

As Schirra headed for the transfer van, Alvin B. Webb, a veteran space-newsman assigned by the press pool to report activities in that area, observed that the astronaut seemed to be unusually relaxed and smiling, as compared to previous astronauts on their way to the launch pad. Seconds later, Schirra, carrying his portable air conditioner, climbed aboard the van for a leisurely ride toward the flood-lit spire in the distance. As the van reached the blockhouse and gantry complex, Byron G. MacNabb, representing the Convair-Atlas team, greeted Schirra and said: "On behalf of the crew of Pad 14, I wish you a successful flight and a happy landing." Acknowledging this salutation, Schirra boarded the elevator and moved up the gantry. At 4:41 a.m. the astronaut slid inside Sigma 7.²⁴

Longer Legs for Mercury

Specific planning for MA-8 had begun back in February during the technical debriefing of John Glenn following the MA-6 mission. While attending the Grand Turk Island meetings, Kleinknecht and Donald K. Slayton had agreed that a flight of six or seven orbits seemed to be a logical intermediate step from the three-pass flight of Glenn toward an ultimate 18-orbit goal then under study. When Kleinknecht returned to his office (then at Langley) he put his staff to work in conjunction with John F. Yardley's group of McDonnell engineers on the changes necessary to accomplish a seven-orbit Mercury flight.⁴

The staff's problem was to appraise the spacecraft components' lifetime in terms of the ability of each system to perform two or three times longer than the operating limits originally built into them. Flight rules so far had specified an almost continuous operation of the automatic stabilization and control system, which caused a heavy drain on the spacecraft's electrical power supply. Also critical were oxygen reserves, reaction control fuel supplies, and increased recovery requirements. The tracking and communications network, built for three-orbit coverage, would require extensive modification if the tracking criteria applied to three orbits should apply to six or seven.

The three-orbit Mercury spacecraft, with all its electrically powered systems in action, consumed about 7,080 watt-hours of battery power from a total of about 13,500 watt-hours available. Thus a seven-orbit mission, obeying previous flight rules, would consume about 11,190 watt-hours, leaving a reserve supply of only 6.7 percent. Mercury Project Office engineers insisted there should be at least a 10 percent postlanding reserve as a safety factor and suggested at least two conservation methods to attain and surpass this amount. One was drawn from an earlier recommendation presented by McDonnell designers and planners; they had outlined possibilities for an 18-orbit mission, proposing that some of the systems be turned off during a substantial portion of the flight. In addition to this, the MSC engineers recommended switching telemetry transmitter and radar beacon operations to ground command. These measures, they felt, would raise the reserve power levels to about 15 percent.

After studying the spacecraft's environmental control system, the project engineers at MSC concluded that about 4.4 pounds of oxygen would be consumed during a seven-orbit flight, taking pilot usage and cabin leakage rates into consideration. By prevailing mission rules, this would leave an insufficient supply to meet possible contingencies of abnormal recovery. A supply of 8.6 pounds would meet the requirement, but the system carried only two 4-pound capacity bottles. So, either the rules had to be relaxed or the system had to be modified. The MSC study group recommended the modification possibility, adding that a strenuous program to reduce cabin leakage rates to 600 cubic centimeters per minute should be started. Formerly up to 1,000 cubic centimeters had been within design specifications. To cover the increase in carbon dioxide production from the longer flight, the project office planners pointed out that the canister carried in the three-orbit spacecraft could be filled with lithium hydroxide to its 5.4 pound capacity. This amount represented an increase from the 4.6 pounds that had been carried on the three-pass flights and should be sufficient extension of the C0₂ removal capability.

At the same time that these efforts were being made to provide the spacecraft systems with all the power they needed and the astronaut with enough breathable oxygen, some NASA and McDonnell engineers were wrestling with more advanced problems of tripling, quadrupling, and even raising by factors of six and eight the capabilities of the Mercury spacecraft to orbit Earth. But at this stage, planning for the day-long, 18-orbit mission depended heavily on some positive proof from MA-8 that man and machines could tolerate, over a longer period and with larger margins for pilot safety and mission success, the vacuous, weightless, hot-cold extremes of space.

The most critical problem in preparations for the extended mission was providing enough hydrogen peroxide fuel to power the capsule's reaction control system. A seven-orbit mission operating in the fully automatic control mode would consume about 28 pounds of fuel, providing the systems were functioning normally. The Mercury Project Office suggested alternating a combination of automatic and manual modes to provide safer fuel reserves at the end of the flight. Such a procedure would expend 23 pounds of automatic and 18 pounds of manual fuel, leaving reserves of 12 and 15 pounds, respectively. Then, in case of malfunction in one of the control modes, the astronaut would be assured of an adequate fuel supply in the other mode.

Recovery procedures changed considerably for the proposed seven-orbit mission. The fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh sinusoidal curves of the orbital ground trace passed over geographical points that almost intersected, while the fifth and sixth orbits did intersect in the northern Pacific about 275 miles northeast of Midway Island. This pattern shifted to the Pacific Ocean the optimum recovery area that had been in the Atlantic for MA-4 through MA-7. Kleinknecht's staff pointed out that a once-an-orbit primary recovery capability could be maintained with only a slight increase in the recovery forces. The primary landing area during the seventh orbit could be covered easily by Navy vessels moving to the zone from their base at Pearl Harbor, but some of the aircraft staging bases for past contingency landing areas would have to be relocated.

Then Sigurd A. Sjoberg, Robert F. Thompson, and other mission and recovery planners discovered a slight flaw in the seven-orbit flight profile. A hard mission rule required a contingency recovery capability within 18 hours after landing. This requirement could be easily met for a six-orbit mission, but adding a seventh orbit required additional recovery forces to satisfy that mission rule. So NASA decided to make MA-8 a six-orbit flight.⁵

During August 1962 the MA-8 mission planners continued to wrestle with many other operational considerations. But within the month they were able to issue the mission rules, data acquisition plan, a slight revision to the flight plan, recovery requirements and procedures, and the mission directive, only to find on some occasions that closer study of engineering preparations revealed new constraints, requiring minor changes to most of their guidebooks.⁶

The Textbook Flight

As October 3, 1962, dawned, television viewers and radio listeners in the United States faced the day with a spectacular doubleheader in store: in the new "world series" in space, the orbiting of a third American; in the older World Series on Earth, the opening baseball game between the New York Yankees and the San Francisco Giants. Many dials switched later in the day to the traditional nine-inning sports event, but two of the three major networks continued to compete for the attention of Americans with minute-by-minute coverage of Sigma 7's six orbits.²⁵

Schirra slipped into his capsule, buckled himself comfortably in the couch, and smiled when he saw an automobile ignition key hanging from the handcontroller safety latch. This represented a tension breaker provided by the ground crew. Then he began to inventory his gear inside the cabin - flight-plan bar charts neatly placed in a slot just below the instrument panel, star charts arranged in a rack to his side, cameras in place, and accessories stowed in his ditty bag. When he stuck his hand in the glove compartment, he found some crinkly plastic wrapped around a soft object that turned out to be a steak sandwich. Otherwise, everything was as it should be, and Schirra began his prelaunch checkout tests.²⁶

Outside the spacecraft, technicians busily bolted on the side hatch, and every bolt sank neatly in its threads. From there on, the countdown proceeded rapidly until about 6:15 (T minus 45 minutes), when the Canary Island station reported a malfunction in one of its radar sets. Since this equipment would be critical in ascertaining the orbital parameters, Williams quickly called a hold in the countdown. The Canary radar required only 15 minutes to be fixed and for the next 45 minutes the countdown ticked off with precision.

At 7:15 a.m., the engines of Atlas 113-D roared and the big booster rose from the pad to rocket Schirra and Sigma 7 on their journey through space. "I have the lift-off," Schirra shouted into his microphone to Slayton in the Mercury Control Center, "and she feels real nice." Ten seconds above the pad, however, No. 113-D telemetered signals showing an unexpected clockwise roll. Both primary and secondary sensors inside the launch vehicle, monitoring such movements to determine the seriousness of the situation, registered a rifling roll only 20 percent short of an abort condition. Then, to the relief of the capsule and booster monitors in the control center, the threatening twist suddenly smoothed out. Schirra began transmitting the status of his supplies and systems' operation. After a little more than a minute, he realized that he seemed to be talking to himself. Glancing around the cockpit, he noted that evidently the noise associated with max q had incorrectly operated the sound-activated radio microphone, and so he pushed the button to talk to Slayton. Surely something should be done to obviate this problem, he thought, because he needed to keep his hand on the abort handle, or "chicken switch," rather than having to press the "talk" button manually.

Schirra listened for booster engine cutoff; it came two seconds earlier than programmed. He saw a flash of light and smoke reflected from the booster engines at the time the aft section parted from the sustainer. Seconds later the escape tower jerked away from the top of Sigma 7, its rocket blast spreading a spotty film on the window. Sustainer engine acceleration seemed slow, Schirra mused, but since his escape tower had "really said 'sayonara,' " he could only wait and see if the sustainer would burn long enough to accelerate him into orbit. Acceleration seemed to drive on and on, the pilot said, and finally the sustainer engine cut off, about 10 seconds late. Data registered on the control panels at the Cape indicated a 15-foot-per-second overspeed that would send Schirra higher - 176 miles - and faster - 17,557 miles per hour - than any other astronaut had gone or would go during Project Mercury.²⁷

When Sigma 7 parted from its Atlas rocket, Schirra turned on the auxiliary damping controls to eliminate the spacecraft quivers produced by the blast of the posigrade rockets. Although he dearly wanted to look out the spacecraft window at the scene below, Schirra fixed his eyes on the instrument panel, flipped his attitude control to the fly-by-wire mode, and started a leisurely four-degree-per-second cartwheel movement to obtain his correct orbital attitude position. Turnaround, which was deliberately slow to conserve fuel, used only three-tenths of a pound from a total supply of almost 59 pounds of hydrogen peroxide. To Schirra the thruster jets operated as if they had been programmed by a computer, providing tiny single pulse spurts to obtain exactly the position he desired.²⁸

Now he could look out the window to track the sustainer tankage. Peering at a prescribed spot, Schirra saw the spent vehicle come into view in the upper left corner of his "picture" window, just as his predecessors had said it should. Glenn and Carpenter had mentioned that their tankage appeared to be silvery in color; to Schirra, his looked almost black, "with a white belly band of frost." The spent launch vehicle seemed to have completed the same turnaround maneuver as the spacecraft, because Schirra looked down its nozzle. The Sigma 7 pilot saw none of the ice crystals or contrails streaming from the tankage reported by Carpenter.

Schirra said that the fly-by-wire system that had been redesigned to use only the low thrusters, if desired, served well to adjust his attitude to track the spent sustainer. The thrusters responded crisply and cut off without residual reactions. Tracking the booster seemed even easier than following a target in an aircraft on an air-to-air gunnery problem. Schirra nevertheless knew that he had neither the attitude control and maneuvering thrust nor the computational ability to perform a rendezvous. There were simply too many conditions to be judged if he were to solve the orbital mechanics task so shortly after launching. Schirra later expressed the opinion that rendezvous with another vehicle in space appeared to be possible, but that he believed a pilot would have to have very precise attitude data to effect a coupling. He confirmed what students of celestial mechanics already knew, while providing them with a feel for the problems of perceiving relative motion. Differences in velocity of only 20 to 30 feet per second between two objects in space could be disastrous, he said.

As Schirra neared the Canary Islands, he turned aside from tracking the booster to check out the manual-proportional mode of spacecraft control. The pitching-up maneuver matched well with his experience on the procedures trainer. As Grissom had done before him in Mercury-Redstone 4, Schirra noted that he tended to overshoot his desired attitude position and that the manual mode of control seemed "sloppy" compared with the semi-automatic modes. Manual-proportional control clearly was not the best way to "park" the spacecraft in one attitude. A far better method, he learned, was to rely on fly-by-wire with low thrusters only.

Passing over Nigeria, Schirra transferred spacecraft control to the automatic stabilization and control system and busily monitored his panel dials. Minutes later he had traversed the African continent without yielding more than once to the temptation to watch the panorama passing beneath him. Moving toward Zanzibar, Schirra began to feel warm. He decided to devote full attention to this before somebody, as he said later in the postflight debriefing, started "jumping up and down in the control center" and yanked him out of orbit. Frank H. Samonski, the environmental control system monitor in the Mercury Control Center, had also watched the temperature rise. At Mercury Control the suit heat signal, creeping steadily upward, had indeed caused the ground controllers to think about terminating the mission after the first circuit. Samonski conferred with Charles A. Berry, who had relieved Stanley C. White as flight surgeon in the Control Center. Berry believed that the astronaut was in good condition. He advised trying a second orbit to see if the suit and its occupant could settle their temperature differences. Kraft, the flight director, listened to the two men and decided to give the go-ahead to Schirra for a second orbit. Wrestling with communications checks and with his suit temperature, he found himself halfway around the world before the Guaymas station relayed the official green light for his second orbit.

When the temperature problem first appeared, the control knob setting was at Position 4. Prior to the flight, Schirra had established a procedure for just this situation. Rather than rushing to a high setting, he slowly advanced the knob by half a mark at a time, then waited about 10 minutes to evaluate the change. Had the valve been advanced too quickly, the heat exchanger might have frozen and reduced its effectiveness even more. By the time Position 7 was reached, Schirra was much cooler and felt sure that his temperature problem was nearing resolution, but for good measure he turned to Position 8. Shortly he became a little cool, and Samonski recommended that he return to Position 3.5. Schirra, thinking that some kind of analysis had been performed in the Mercury Control Center, complied. Immediately noting that the temperature was rising again, he quickly returned the setting to 7.5 and left it alone for a while.

Rounding Muchea, Australia, on his first pass, Schirra had nosed the small end of Sigma 7 down to watch for the first ground flare launch. He said that he saw the flare before realizing the flash was only lightning. Shortly thereafter, Woomera reported flare ignition; the pilot still saw lightning - but only as a big blob of light, never like the jagged streaks seen nearer Earth. Again, as on past missions, the flare launching area was cloaked by clouds. Minutes later, however, he reported seeing the outline of a city, which he guessed to be Brisbane, Australia.

With careful adjustments, Schirra peered into the periscope on his first night trip through space, endeavoring to prove its optical advantages. Very graphically, he finally reported, "I couldn't see schmatze through it. Schmatze translated means nothing." He, like Carpenter, found the periscope was excess baggage during the daytime and nearly useless at night. Reaching the morning side of Earth near Hawaii, he recoiled when the Sun, glaring through the scope, almost blinded him. Placing a chart over the scope, he commented that it "helps no end to cover up that blasted periscope."

Though he did not feel rushed in his few tasks, Schirra did notice a remarkable "speeding up of time" as distance flew by so rapidly. After crossing the Pacific, he reported to Scott Carpenter at Guaymas, Mexico, "I'm in chimp configuration," meaning that the capsule systems were all on automatic and working beautifully. Even the temperature range had now become more comfortable, and one more adjustment of the knob would end that problem. He then told Carpenter that he would soon start his first daytime yaw maneuver, using the window as a reference. Schirra said to Slayton, while sailing over the Cape, that the "reticle is working well for yaw, as well as for almost any other attitude." Any object that could be seen on Earth could be centered on the window reticle long enough to judge yaw misalignment. Always the most difficult of the three axes to judge precisely, as demonstrated during MA-7, yaw alignment with the flight path was a major control task to be tested by the MA-8 mission. Over areas of extreme cloudiness, there was no worry so long as rifts or thunderheads provided breaks in the blanket of cloud cover. By the end of his first circuit, Schirra felt he had become so adept in determining yaw attitude that he could estimate any yaw angle his ship happened to take away from the flight path.

The pilot for a second time carefully compared his visual ability, both with and without the periscope, to position the capsule's attitude correctly. He felt satisfied with the results. He conceded that by using the periscope on high magnification he could obtain the yaw attitude faster than with the window, but speed was unnecessary in most cases.

Schirra had to devote much of his time during the first orbit and a good portion of the second to correcting his suit temperature settings. Perspiration salted around his mouth as a result of suit inlet temperature reaching 82 degrees F; he became quite thirsty, but he resisted opening the visor so the suit could have every opportunity to settle in a more comfortable range. Despite the heat - which he described as comparable to what he had endured mowing his lawn in Texas on a summer's day - all other aspects of the flight were going well. Sigma 7 had consumed 1.4 pounds of fuel on the first orbit, Schirra noted as he reported the status of the spacecraft systems. He saw the exterior particles first reported by Glenn and tapped the cabin wall to obtain the same shower effect Carpenter reported. Much of his conversation with the tracking sites involved the status of his suit circuit. He seemed to enjoy talking with the communicators during his first orbit, but later he would complain that this became a chore, especially when he was trying to concentrate on his work.

On Earth's nightside, Schirra reported that the Moon made an excellent yaw reference; after completing and reporting on the yaw maneuver, Schirra told Slayton in the Mercury Control Center that he had shifted back to the automatic system. By now the temperature had subsided enough to permit a quick drink of water. He took the opportunity during this respite to report that all systems were performing very well. So far he had felt only one unwanted spurt from a 24-pound thruster when he returned to fly-by-wire for a yaw-maneuver exercise. Becoming a little bored with automatic flight halfway around the world, Schirra shifted to the manual- proportional system and produced a similar moment of double authority. About two percent of the manual supply spat out in a pitchdown motion of the spacecraft. "It was my boo-boo," he confessed.

Over Muchea, Australia, on his second pass, Schirra began a more serious and considerably more difficult night-yaw experiment. He was to test his ability to use celestial navigation to align the spacecraft properly. Using star-finder charts, Schirra was supposed to orient himself by positioning Sigma 7 in relation to known stars or planets and the Moon. Then he was to test his sense of facing to the right or left of his flight path by watching the apparent motions of heavenly bodies. The pilot found that the airglow layer was an excellent reference for pitch and roll. This belt, which appeared very thick above the horizon, could provide reference for these attitudes quite accurately. For experimentation with the airglow layer, he positioned Sigma 7 so that it appeared to aim at the upper layer of the belt. The panel indicators then showed a zero reference in pitch.

Schirra conceded that night-yaw reference could be a bit of a problem. The field of view from the window did not make it easy to identify the constellations and find a known star. Preferring to obtain the correct yaw reference on the daylight side, Schirra seemed to lack confidence in his ability to effect the night maneuver. To some degree his difficulty stemmed from his star-finder charts, which had been fixed in their relationship to Earth for a period up to about 7:16 a.m. on October 3. Schirra, now deep into the second orbit, knew that his launch time had been 7:15. The difference in time, plus his restricted field of view, reduced the value of this night-yaw exercise; but as it turned out, telemetry data received at the Muchea tracking station showed his error to be only four degrees.

During the night-yaw maneuver, Schirra happened to notice one excellent celestial pattern that he could use to align the spacecraft in the retrofire position when it was time to reenter the atmosphere. Checking the panel indicators against his own observations, he determined that the correct retrofire attitude would place the planet Jupiter in the upper right-hand corner of the window, the double-star constellation Grus tracking in from the left side of the window, and the star Fomalhaut at the top of the window, near the center.

Across the Pacific, Schirra again placed the controls in the automatic, or "chimp configuration," mode. He chatted with Grissom at the Hawaiian site about how well the spacecraft's systems were working. Grissom had made some rather strong points concerning the manual-proportional control operation during his suborbital flight, and the two astronauts, in a space-to-Earth conversation, compared notes. Just as Hawaii lost his signal and California picked it up, Schirra called that the "fireflies" were coming into view. "I have a delightful report for one John Glenn," he told the California communicator. "I do see fireflies." Impressed by the view out of the window, even though much of the California coast was covered with clouds, Schirra remarked to Glenn, "It's kind of hard to describe all this, isn't it, John?" Suddenly, through rifts in the clouds, he could see San Clemente Island, off the coastline. Then, looking northeastward, he saw more of the coastal area come into view, followed by the Salton Sea, an excellent view of lower California, the ridges of Mount Whitney, and several roads in the Mojave Desert area.

Although Schirra flew higher than either Glenn or Carpenter, he was rather unimpressed by the height of his voyage. Psychologically he had prepared himself for space flight, knowing that he would be flying 10 times higher than he had ever flown before. But once in space, the number, size, and detail of the objects he could see with the unaided eye, such as roads and terrain changes, made him actually feel no higher than he had climbed in an aircraft. "Same old deal, nothing new," he remarked in debriefing, "might as well be in an airplane at 40- to 50-thousand feet altitude."

According to his flight plan, if the yaw-reference checks had been satisfactory Sigma 7 would be phased into drifting flight during the third orbit. After giving Slayton a systems status report, Schirra proceeded to cage the spacecraft's gyros, cut off its electrical power, and allow Sigma 7 to drift through space. Schirra took this opportunity to make an old psychomotor experiment that Robert B. Voas a year earlier had asked to be performed. Choosing three dials on the control panel, he closed his eyes and attempted to touch the target points. In a total of nine trials, he made only three errors, the largest being a displacement of some two inches. The weightless state, he concluded, created no disorientation or new problems in blindly reaching for his controls.

After that test, Schirra drifted along, reporting his status again to the Canary station and enjoying a brief period of looking out the window. He mentioned that his outer pane was streaked with a pinkish-orange film and surmised that this had emanated from the exhaust gases of the launch escape rocket. According to his flight plan, he was supposed to eat and drink now; although he said, "I'm having a ball up here drifting," eat and drink he did - peaches and ground beef mush from squeeze tubes.

Out over the Indian Ocean, he informed the tracking ship in that vicinity that he had switched the electrical power back on and gone into fly-by-wire control to check systems operations after the "powered down," or free-flight, period. Excitedly, the Indian Ocean ship communicator told Schirra that some of the crew topside had actually caught sight of Sigma 7 for five minutes and through nine degrees of tracking. Schirra, quite pleased, said, "I'll have to go by and say hello." The pilot then reported that powering up again presented no difficulty; all systems worked beautifully, with absolutely no responses from the high thrusters. Smoothly transferring into the automatic stabilization and control system, he began to look toward the heavens for familiar stars. When the Moon failed to show, he went to the fly-by-wire, low-thruster control to bring it into sight. He identified Cassiopeia during the process, then said, "There's our friend the Moon." Over Muchea again by this time, he told the communicator that he had locked the automatic system onto the disk of the Moon. Mercury Control had alerted the ground stations to pay particular attention to fuel usage by the thrusters. Canton Island and Kauai, Hawaii, rolled by underneath with everything working so well that Grissom, at the Hawaiian station, gave Schirra the official good news that he had a "go" for the full six orbits.

As Sigma 7 came near the California tracking site on its third pass, Schirra told Glenn, "I'm going to shove off for a relaxation period," meaning he would cut his electrical power, cage his gyros, and start drifting again. Schirra's flight schedule now called for experimental observations and photography. He had to struggle getting the camera out of the ditty bag, but once out it was weightless, and Schirra easily snapped pictures from Baja, California to Cuba as Sigma 7 drifted along beautifully. Nearing the Cape, Slayton asked for a radiation reading from the hand-held dosimeter. Schirra replied that the value was so small that it was nearly unreadable. Then Kraft himself came on the air to compliment Schirra, to urge him to look for the giant Echo balloon-shaped satellite on his next pass over Zanzibar, and to notify him that his voice would be broadcast live for two minutes during his next flight across North America. The enthusiastic pilot then exclaimed that he had just drifted into an inverted position (head to Earth) and "for some reason or another, you can tell that the bowl [spacecraft] is upside down." He saw the whole eastern coastline of the United States, took a picture of that, and then another of an interesting cloud formation. Still complaining that the camera was difficult to extract, he decided not to stow it in the case for a while. As for Echo, he never saw that (or any other) man-made satellite while in orbit.

Floating through space around the world on his fourth orbit, Schirra took pictures that struck his fancy, watched the nightfall, recognized several stars as they appeared, and looked at lightning in the thunderstorms covering portions of the Australian continent. As he came over the Pacific command ship, he facetiously reported to Shepard that his hydrogen peroxide had not evaporated and suggested that they should make some plans, the next time around, about retrofire countdown. Schirra then tuned on the radar ships Huntsville and Watertown for a communications check. As Hawaii was sliding by, he told Grissom that he was in inverted flight and that the impression was similar to "looking out a railroad train window. You see the terrain going by you." The yaw attitude of the spacecraft was clearly discernible against this background.

As he approached, head down and looking toward California on his fourth pass, Schirra joked with Glenn about his "real weird attitude" and transmitted another short status report. Then at 6 hours, 8 minutes, and 4 seconds elapsed time from launch, Schirra and Glenn began a dialogue heard by much of the Western world via radio and television:

GLENN: Okay, Sigma 7. This is Cal Cap Com. You're at 6:08. Two minutes on live TV. Go ahead, Wally.

SCHIRRA: Roger, John. Just came out of a powered-down configuration where we had the ASCS inverter off. It came up in good shape and will stay on now for the rest of the flight. The amps and volts are reading properly.... I'm coming toward you inverted this time, which is an unusual way for any of us to approach California, I'll admit.

GLENN: Roger, Wally. You got anything to say to everyone watching you across the country on this thing? We're going out live on this.

SCHIRRA: That sounds like great sport. I can see why you and Scott like it. I'm having a trick now. I'm looking at the United States and starting to pitch up slightly with this drifting rate. And I see the moon, which I'm sure no one in the United States can see as well as I right now.

GLENN: I think you're probably right

SCHIRRA: Ha-ha, I suppose an old song, "Drifting and Dreaming," would be apropos at this point, but at this point I don't have a chance to dream. I'm enjoying it too much.

GLENN: Things are looking real good from here, Wally.

SCHIRRA: Thank you, John. I guess that what I'm doing right now is sort of a couple of Immelmanns across the United States.

And here ended Schirra's epistle from space. Glenn continued the conversation in relative privacy, asking whether Schirra had noticed anything surprising about the haze layer. Schirra replied with another understatement - "It's quite fascinating" - but later he recalled that this phenomenon had been his biggest spatial surprise. Both Glenn and Carpenter had briefed him on the night view of the horizon from the heavens, but "it just never did sink in to me that it was as large in magnitude as it really was." Schirra remarked that the airglow layer covered about a quarter of his view out the window. When first sighted, he said, "I thought it was clouds, until stars appeared below."²⁹

Halfway through the fourth orbit, liquid collected over the inner surface of his helmet faceplate, evidently from the water coolant circuit. Although Schirra was annoyed by this problem for the next two hours, he was thankful that the suit temperature remained reasonably comfortable. So long as his visor was sealed, he had to crane his head about inside the helmet to find a clear view out of the faceplate. He was still reluctant to disturb his suit temperature by opening his visor to wipe it clean.

Going into his fifth orbit, Schirra told Slayton by radio relay that the flight had been his first opportunity to relax since the previous December. His life had suddenly become so sedentary that he gladly used the bungee cord exerciser to tone up his muscles a bit. "Not exactly walking around," he said, "but a little bit of stretching." Because Sigma 7 was now over the Yucatan Peninsula, communications with the Cape were a little strained, causing Slayton to quiz Schirra, "Did you say you'd like to get up and walk around?" The ground controllers cleared the matter by switching circuits to a relay communications aircraft.

Schirra now began another check of the manual-proportional attitude controls, recording a third brief instance of double authority control. Regarding this latest spew of fuel, he complained that he "really flotched it. It's much too easy to get into double authority, even with the tremendous logic you have working on all these systems." His check of all the axes of movement proved that the manual-proportional system was still in good working order. After this trial he returned to observing and photographing targets of opportunity.

As he prepared to look for the 140-million candlepower light near Durban, South Africa, Schirra reported "getting some lighted areas over the southern tip of Africa… . I definitely have a city in sight." Betting that this was Port Elizabeth, a city a little more than 300 miles to the southwest of Durban, Schirra did not seem surprised that Durban was being drenched with rain and its brilliant light was not visible on this pass.

Passing into its fifth revolution of Earth, Sigma 7 still performed beautifully in all respects. Astronaut Schirra had little to tell the ground tracking station except to repeat how well the systems were working and how gorgeous were the sights. With each orbit, he was now moving farther from the beaten track nominal to a three-pass flight, and the periods of silence were longer. A lighted area appearing much like an airport showed up in what he surmised were the Philippine Islands. "Possibly it's at Zamboanga," he guessed, a city on the southwest coast of Mindanao. Minutes later he talked with Alan B. Shepard aboard the Pacific command ship, reporting with pleasure that his fuel supply stood at 81 and 80 percent in the automatic and manual tanks, respectively. His oxygen supply was properly pressurized, and his suit temperature was at a comfortable 62 degrees. Shepard replied, "Well, I could say that you were definitely go." Quickly he checked in with the Huntsville and Watertown, presenting, as he put it, a "hunky dory" report. As the pilot came over the Kauai station, Grissom fed him the correct retrosequence time that he should use on his next, and final, pass. Checks with Glenn at Point Arguello and with Carpenter at Guaymas showed that communications should be good for checkoff and reentry during the sixth orbit. Schirra then bade farewell to South America with a "Buenos dias, you-all," to the Quito, Ecuador, communications relay station.

Going into the sixth orbit, Schirra almost regretfully began his preparations to return to Earth. On his last pass over South America, heavy cloud coverage obscured most of the hemisphere but he did catch sight of a large winding river. He reached for the slow-scan camera and pointed it downward at the surface of the window to capture the view, making a panoramic shot of the continent that he thought would aid the Weather Bureau in continental cloud analyses. Then he stowed the camera, rearranged the contents of the ditty bag and glove compartment, and began going down the checklist of actions to be accomplished before retrofire and reentry.

He shifted the control mode from the automatic system to the fly- by-wire, low-thrusters, and found his command of the system still worked well. He looked briefly out the window for the lights of Durban, but clouds still hid the glow of that huge lamp from sight. He closed the faceplate, found it fogging again, and opened it briefly to wipe the visor clean. The instrument panel showed that the inverter temperatures were in a good range, that the battery voltage checked out high, and that the oxygen pressure was holding its mark. Although quite comfortable, he decided to advance the suit-circuit knob "just a tad to increase the cooling for reentry," to Position 8. The checkoff proceeded so methodically that he had time to try another eyes-closed orientation test. He reached for the manual handle and felt it in his grasp. Then he reached for the emergency handle but brushed an adjacent radio box before touching it.

Down below, the Indian Ocean ship communicator asked if he needed any help in completing the pre-retrosequence checklist. "Negative," he replied. All was in readiness for the last-minute arming of the retrorocket squibs. He waited and watched until he came in range of Shepard aboard the Pacific command ship. In the darkness, he viewed a moonset, saw the proper star and planet pattern for his correctly aligned attitude swing into view, and noticed that one of his fingertip lights had burned out. Musing out loud for whoever could listen, he likened his situation once again to riding a train on celestial tracks leading back toward Earth. Listening to the humming of the systems, he was reminded also of a ship underway at sea. As a pilot, Schirra curiously refused to compare his limited control of the spacecraft with his freedom of maneuver in aircraft.

When he came into range of the Pacific command ship, he glanced at the fuel levels: 78 percent in both the automatic and manual tanks, the meters read. Shepard asked him how he stood on the checklist. Completed, with the exception of arming the rocket squibs, Schirra replied. He told Shepard that his ship was holding well in the retroattitude mode on the automatic system, that the high thrusters were in good working order, and that he had the manual-proportional system in a standby position. With everything set, Shepard gave the countdown to arm the squibs on the "Mark!" Next came the retrosequence countdown. Eight hours and 52 minutes after Sigma 7 lifted off from the Cape, the first retrorocket fired. When Schirra punched the button for this action, the tiny instant of time before the firing "seemed agonizingly long." As each retrorocket fired crisply at five-second intervals, Schirra was pleasantly amazed that the spacecraft appeared to hold as steady as a rock. Quickly he checked this impression with a glance out of the window; the star pattern he could see did not even appear to quiver. After retrofire he checked the automatic fuel gauge and found the needle hovering between 52 and 53 percent.

Then Schirra shifted gears to his favorite fly-by-wire, low-thruster mode of control. He armed the retropack jettison switch and the spent unit spun away. Shortly after retrofire his attitude control felt "a little bit sloppy," and he felt himself wobble toward reentry. Although this could have been corrected by using the low thrusters, he intentionally cut in the high thrusters to get into position quickly. Schirra pitched Sigma 7 up to the 14-degree reentry attitude with no difficulty and cut in the automatic control mode to damp away undesirable motions. Then, as the engineers had asked him to do, he turned on the fuel-gulping rate stabilization control system (RSCS). His return to the atmosphere was "thrilling" to the astronaut. He said the sky and Earth's surface really began to brighten, but, most surprisingly, the "bear" he rode felt "as stable as an airplane."

Schirra realized that he had heard none of the hissing noises reported by Glenn and Carpenter. Possibly, he thought, his concentration on the rate control system caused him to miss the sounds. Having conserved his hydrogen peroxide so well thus far, Schirra was quite perturbed with the rate system because he could see the fuel supply being dumped like water being flushed. Resisting the temptation to switch to a more economical mode of control because the engineers wanted to evaluate this system once and for all, he pulled his eyes away from the gauge and looked out the window. He could see the green glow from air friction that Carpenter had reported. To him it looked limeade in color, almost chartreuse. Suddenly, as a three-foot strap flopped past the window, he exclaimed, "My gosh!" Then he remembered, "That's the same thing John saw."

Soon the barometric altimeter dial came into operation, and Schirra calmly waited for the needle to edge toward the 40,000-foot reading. He punched the drogue button, heard a "strong thrumming," and then felt the drogue parachute pop open. What had felt like a smooth highway now seemed like turning off on "a bumpy road." As long as he could, the astronaut strained to watch "the drogue up there pounding away," but the window became virtually occluded by smoky deposits from reentry. Schirra then turned back and flipped on the fuel jettison switch.

At the 15,000-foot mark he ejected the main parachute and saw it stream and blossom at 10,500 feet. This event, as Schirra quipped, "sort of put the cap on the whole thing." As he started his descent to Earth, Schirra remarked to Shepard, "I think they're gonna put me on the number 3 elevator" of the carrier Kearsarge. Sigma 7 missed this mark by a scant 4.5 miles downrange from the planned landing point, but the recovery force had the spacecraft well within its sights electronically and visually. The carrier made radar contact with Sigma 7 at a slant-range of 202 miles; 90 miles uprange from the carrier, sailors of the destroyer Renshaw reported hearing a sonic boom. Men on the deck of the Kearsarge then saw a contrail, while a few of its crew claimed to see the drogue and others heard two successive sonic booms and saw the main chute unfurl. After nine hours and 13 minutes in flight, Sigma 7 settled on the water, in full view of the ship's crew and the cameras of newsmen.

Sigma 7 hit the surface with a "plop," as Schirra described it, and "went way down" before it surfaced and floated. He waited patiently for 45 seconds and then broke off the main parachute and switched on the recovery aids. Inside, the spacecraft remained dry and the temperature range was very comfortable as Sigma 7 rode the lazy ocean swells. This condition prompted the pilot to exaggerate in debriefing that he "could stay in there forever, if necessary." Through the window he could see the green dye permeating the water in a widening perimeter, and he knew that the whip antenna had telescoped out fully. Seeing the antenna pole deploy while Sigma 7 was still submerged, Schirra later joked that he thought he might spear another bluefish. All was well, and so far as this test pilot could judge, the Mercury spacecraft "had gone to the top of the list," even over the F8F aircraft he liked so well.

Long before Schirra's splashdown, the Kearsarge had launched helicopters with swimmer teams, and soon three swimmers jumped into the dye beside the floating capsule. During the 30 seconds while he was keeled over in the water, Schirra had had some trepidation about his watertight integrity. He momentarily wished for the pressure regulator handle that had been deleted from Sigma 7 to save another pound of weight. As the capsule righted itself and remained shipshape, he noticed that communications had been better with Hawaii than they were with the Kearsarge. The pararescue men then cut the whip antenna and attached the flotation collar around the heatshield. Since he was comfortable, he radioed a request to the helicopter pilot that he "would prefer to stay in and have a small boat come alongside" and tow him to the carrier's cranes. Five men piled into a motor whaleboat and within minutes had covered the half-mile to the bobbing Sigma 7 and attached a tow line to it.

Some nine hours and 54 minutes after launch, the small space ship was hoisted aboard the huge carrier. Five minutes later Schirra whacked the plunger to blow the explosive hatch, incurring the same kind of superficial hand injury as Glenn before him. He stepped out onto the deck of the Kearsarge and paused to acknowledge the jubilant shouts and applause of the ship's crew. As he walked down to the ship's sick bay, Schirra looked tired and hot but happy. When reporters called out, "How do you feel, Wally?" he replied, "Fine," with a flip of the hand.

For the next three days, the Kearsarge was to be his home during the medical examinations and technical debriefings. While still in his space suit and sitting on a cot in the officers' sickroom, he received successive congratulatory telephone calls from President Kennedy, his wife Josephine Schirra, and Vice President Johnson.³⁰

Richard A. Pollard of MSC, Commander Max Trummer of the Navy, and several other physicians began to check Schirra in every medical way possible. When his phone calls were completed, about 45 minutes after he came on board, the systematic examinations began. At first appearance, the spaceman showed no evidence that he was dizzy or required walking assistance. He told the physicians, "I feel fine. It was a textbook flight. The flight went just the way I wanted it to." Contrary to the impression of some newsmen, the physicians did not find Schirra overly fatigued. He talked easily and actively assisted in his postflight physical. Only after he had been strapped on a tilt table did several unusual symptoms begin to appear. For example, when lying supine his heartbeat averaged 70 a minute; standing, it rose to 100. Blood pressure readings, although not so pronounced in range, registered differently in standing, sitting, and prone positions. His legs and feet assumed a dusky, reddish-purple color when Schirra stood up, connoting that his veins were engorged. This condition persisted for about six hours, and then the astronaut was permitted to retire for the night. The next morning Schirra's heart and blood pressure readings were near normal, and there was no evidence of pooling of blood in his legs when he stood.

Other than this minor anomaly, and the small lesion on his hand, Schirra seemed none the worse for his lengthy weightless sojourn in space. Life-systems specialists in NASA, at McDonnell, and at AiResearch, however, had another question: What caused the elevated suit temperatures during the first two orbits? Postflight inspectors dug into the matter promptly. The technical ills of the spacecraft's systems were more easily determined than the subtleties of man's physiological system; as it turned out, the flow in the suit coolant circuit had been impeded by the silicone lubricant on a needle valve's having dried out and flaked.

Flight of Sigma 7

Flight of Sigma 7
Oct. 3, 1962

Postflight inspection of Sigma 7 found little else that seemed out of the ordinary. Circular cracks on the ablation shield were moderately larger than on Glenn's and Carpenter's spacecraft; also it appeared that the shield had banged into the fiber-glass protective bulkhead upon impact, causing several small holes. Once again the heatshield showed some delamination from the center, but it still appeared, as in past flights, that this occurred after reentry. Char depth on the shield, about a third of an inch, was quite nominal. The shield's center plug, which had been loose or missing after previous missions, stayed tightly in place. All in all, the inspectors found very few problems to analyze or to correct. The quality of the mission, of the hardware, of the software, of procedures, and of the pilot were all superb. In terminology the engineers agreed with Schirra that MA-8 was a "text book flight" - the bes so far.

Walter Williams was especially jubilant over the MA-8 success; now he could confidently turn his operations team to the task of the day-long mission. Schirra's conservation of fuel and the excellent manner in which the spacecraft had performed, he said, made planning for MA-9, if not routine, at least considerably easier.³¹

Upon leaving the Kearsarge, Schirra received the leis of Hawaii and a tumultuous aloha. Then he flew back to Houston. In a press conference at Rice University, he reported about his spatial voyage to an American public that now was more conversant with the terminology of space technology. Thereafter, the hamlet of Oradell, New Jersey, greeted its most famous son, and from there Schirra went to Washington to receive the NASA Distinguished Service Medal from the President and, from the Chief of Naval Operations, the Navy's anchored version of the coveted astronaut's wings. Throughout the national hurrahs, however, the thoughts and words of participants in Project Mercury turned toward the advent of the day-long mission, another step toward reaching the lunar landing goal in the decade of the sixties.³²

In mid-October 1962 the frightening Cuban missile crisis raised the spectre of nuclear holocaust. This dampened some of the postflight celebrations for Schirra. When President Kennedy appeared on nationwide television to explain his actions in blockading Cuba to force the Soviets to withdraw their ballistic missiles from Fidel Castro's island, Americans perhaps for the first time became acutely aware of the differences between medium-range (200-500-mile) "defensive" missiles and intermediate-range (1,000-1,500-mile) "offensive" rocket weapons. Neither the ICBM deterrent (defined as having an operational range of about 6,000 miles) nor the success of Kennedy's confrontation of Khrushchev over Soviet IRBMs in Cuba could entirely relax the tension built up by this crisis. But it probably did more than any manned space flight had to educate the public on relative thrust capacities of rockets.

Redevelopment for MA-9

The flight of Sigma 7 had been so nearly idyllic that some observers, whether from cynicism or a kind of parental possessiveness, believed Project Mercury should be concluded on Schirra's positive note. Any further attempt at manned satellite flight with this first-generation hardware might press the program's luck too far and end sourly, if not calamitously. To cancel Mercury now would ensure the reputation of the project. Others argued it would sacrifice the living potential, as well as the intense desire, of the Mercury team to test man in space for one full day.³³

Among Manned Spacecraft Center officials, there was no real decision to be made here; Mercury had begun in earnest in 1959 with a vision of an ultimate 18-orbit mission. But by October 1959, the inexorable growth in capsule weight and power requirements and the limitations of the network had forced the Space Task Group to erase that vision. The 18-orbit mission for Mercury had been revived by the summer of 1961, in conjunction with serious planning for Project Apollo and for a "Mark II" ballistic capsule design. And when Project Gemini was publicly named on January 3, 1962, as an interim program to fill the void before Apollo could be developed, Mercury engineers were already diving headlong toward the revived 18-orbit, 27-hour mission.³⁴

During the period from September 1961 to January 1962, the word "capsule" had been erased from Mercury vocabulary in favor of the word "spacecraft." It was then that the Space Task Group (STG) became Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC), and NASA Headquarters reorganized Abe Silverstein's Office of Space Flight Programs into an Office of Manned Space Flight under a new director, D. Brainerd Holmes. In the midst of all this confusion, one thing had been clear: a Mercury spacecraft would have to fill the gaps in space, time, and knowledge before a Project Gemini two-man capsule could be developed and qualified. Although the physiological effects of extended exposure to weightlessness were still of primary interest, the only local policy issue was whether to adopt another change in nomenclature. Should the day-long sustained space flight be called MA-9 or Manned One-Day Mission (MODM)?³⁵

Throughout the spring and summer of 1962, Mercury engineers, both at NASA centers and in St. Louis, had studied various design proposals for advanced versions of the ballistic spacecraft. The first Gemini capsule mockup review had been held at the factory on March 29, about the same time that Lewis R. Fisher, James E. Bost, William M. Bland, Jr., Robert T. Everline, and others had completed the specifications for a Mercury spacecraft for the manned one-day flight. Not until September, however, were negotiations settled with McDonnell over configuration changes to the four capsules set aside for this purpose (Nos. 12, 15, 17, and 20). A week before the Schirra flight, NASA Headquarters announced a new plan to phase Mercury into Gemini more quickly, if MA-8 and MA-9 met all expectations.³⁶

After Schirra, Atlas 113-D, and Sigma 7 excelled those expectations in nearly every respect, the Manned Spacecraft Center forwarded its sixteenth quarterly status report to NASA Headquarters, claiming:

This report will be the final in the series of Project MERCURY, as such, since the MA-8 flight was the last mission of Project MERCURY. Future reports, although they will continue with the following number (17), will be on the status of the Manned One-Day Mission (MODM) Project (MERCURY Spacecraft).

Sigma 7
Aftermath

Robert Gilruth's team, now located in temporary quarters at 13 buildings scattered over southeast Houston, was planning on an April 1963 launch date for MA-9, using spacecraft No. 20. On November 9, 1962, MSC's senior staff decided to aim for 22 rather than 18 orbits (or 34 rather than 27 hours), if all went normally.³⁷

Walter Williams, Christopher Kraft, and Kenneth Kleinknecht proceeded to coordinate the mission planning with the Defense Department. This flight would involve vastly expanded support, because MA-9 was to criss-cross virtually all of Earth's surface between latitudes 33 degrees north and south of the equator. L. Gordon Cooper was officially announced as the pilot and Alan Shepard was named alternate in mid-November. McDonnell had estimated that this mission alone would cost $17,879,834 to complete, but as yet the Air Force, Navy, and Army participants had not conferred with NASA about new needs for the recovery network and medical support.³⁸ Clearly the MA-9 operation would not be able to challenge the 64-orbit feat of Nikolayev in Vostok III nor the 48 orbits of Popovich in the tandem Vostok IV, but MA-9 should go well beyond Titov's 17 orbits in Vostok II.

Meanwhile NASA and the Manned Spacecraft Center took their cues from President Kennedy and Administrator James E. Webb to mobilize greater effort toward the longer-range goals symbolized by Project Apollo. Only 55 persons staffed Kleinknecht's Mercury Project Office specifically to coordinate the diverse preparations for MA-9. Of the 2500 people employed by MSC in January 1963, only 500 were working directly on Mercury. The Gemini and Apollo teams were rapidly taking shape. NASA had just honored a group of nine old-time engineers from the Space Task Group as the "Mercury Spacecraft Inventors." The list of innovators was headed by Maxime A. Faget, and included Andre J. Meyer, Jr., William Bland, Alan B. Kehlet, Willard S. Blanchard, Robert G. Chilton, Jerome B. Hammack, Caldwell C. Johnson, and Jack C. Heberlig. But of that group of designers and developers, only Bland still remained employed in the Mercury Project Office. The rest had gone to work on Gemini and Apollo.³⁹

One of the more significant New Year's resolutions enacted by NASA in 1963 was the appointment of a Manned Space Science Planning Group and of a Panel on Inflight Scientific Experiments, known informally as POISE, chaired respectively by Eugene M. Shoemaker and John A. O'Keefe. These two new groups were established to replace the Ad Hoc Committee on Scientific Tasks and Training for Man-in-Space and to ensure closer coordination between the Manned Spacecraft Center and the NASA Office of Space Sciences. They were only temporary expedients, staffed by most of the same people who had served earlier as consultants, but at least the manned space science programs for Gemini would be born more respectably than those for Mercury.⁴⁰

At the first MSC senior staff meeting in 1963, Walter Williams warned his colleagues that two recent failures in Atlas-F launchings by the Air Force were inexplicable, or so far, at least, unexplained. Unless investigating committees could clear up these failures soon, absolving the Atlas-D from any guilt by association, the MA-9 schedule might suffer. After five years of developmental experience, the Atlas ICBM had approached but still not attained a reliability high enough for comfort. The Atlas, even as modified and "gold-plated" by the "man-rating" tests and procedures, was still basically a ballistic missile, only converted and not designed to launch men into space. After five consecutive Mercury-Atlas launches without a failure, it was all too easy to forget this fact.⁴¹ When the 130-D, Cooper's "bird," was first rolled out of the factory in San Diego on January 30, it failed to pass inspection and was returned for some rewiring.

Amid some charges from impatient newsmen that NASA had "muzzled" Cooper, the prime pilot took time out on February 8 to hold a press conference in Houston that refuted such public speculation. Cooper forthrightly admitted what little he knew about the booster problem and answered in picturesque detail a host of questions about new developments for his space suit, his spacecraft, his mission. "This is going to practically be a flying camera," he said, explaining the new slow-scan television monitor, the 70-millimeter Hasselblad and it different film packs, the special zodiacal-light 35-millimeter camera, and a 16-millimeter, all-purpose moving-picture camera. Cooper had difficulty convincing some reporters that the duration of the MA-9 mission would depend on how well it went - for "as many as 22 orbits" - and that he was still "struggling" to find a suitable name for spacecraft No. 20. But otherwise he talked freely about the most significant differences between the MA-8 and MA-9 spacecraft, although obviously he could not name all 183 of the changes then underway at McDonnell's Canaveral shop.⁴²

Weight growth had been the primary nemesis in preparing for every Mercury mission, and this was especially true for the day-long mission. As is characteristic perhaps of all American technology, and especially of advanced modifications to military aircraft, overweight accessories tended to compromise the vehicles' performance. In the case of the MODM spacecraft, heavier batteries for more electrical power, another 4-pound bottle of oxygen, 9 pounds of cooling and 4.5 pounds of drinking water, plus 15 more pounds of peroxide fuel were imperative additions. Experimental gear, a full load of consumables for life support systems, and various modified components were also judged necessary, though heavier, installations. In an effort to compensate for these added weights, the 12-pound Rate Stabilization Control System (RSCS), a 3-pound UHF and a 2-pound telemetry transmitter, both of which were true redundancies now; and, in particular, the 76-pound periscope were deleted. Manned Spacecraft Center engineers almost discarded the fiber-glass couch in favor of a new hammock to shave away 17 more pounds, but that change did not materialize because the engineers feared the material might stretch and the astronaut bounce. So the MA-9 payload continued, through 31 weeks of grooming, to grow into an estimated weight of 3,026.3 pounds in orbit.⁴³

Such weight increases had become expected, at the rate of about two pounds per week of preparation, and early in 1962 the Mercury managers had called for an extensive requalification program of the parachute and landing system. Known as Project Reef, these tests had effectively allayed all fears about the ringsail parachutes' margin for error with heavier loads long before Sigma 7 gave an even better demonstration. At the beginning of 1963, NASA scientists from other centers were pleased to gain some voting strength on the 20-man committee established nine months earlier to decide what in-flight scientific experiments should be conducted. But the majority voting strength of this panel still remained with MSC engineers, whose weight-consciousness and power-consciousness effectively stifled the transformation of MA-9 and spacecraft No. 20 into a more purely scientific orbital laboratory.⁴⁴

Another ground test program behind the scenes, namely Project Orbit, which by the end of February 1963 had completed a 100-hour full-scale simulated mission in its thermo-cryogenic vacuum chamber, stirred up concern that the reaction control thrusters might get sluggish or freeze during long periods of inactivity in space. In all other respects, Project Orbit seemed to certify that the McDonnell spacecraft and all subcontracted systems were ready and reliable for a full day or more up there.⁴⁵

Meanwhile, the tiger teams at work on Atlas 130-D were exceptionally pleased when, on March 15, 1963, the second factory rollout and flight-acceptance inspections on this booster were completed without a single minor discrepancy. Philip E. Culbertson, Gus Groissant, John P. Hopman, and David R. Archibald of General Dynamics/Astronautics flew across the country to deliver to their test conductor at the Cape, Calvin D. Fowler, what they believed to be their best bird yet. Bernhard A. Hohmann and helpers at Aerospace Corporation had defined an offset of the booster engines to counteract the threatening roll rate that Schirra had experienced at liftoff. And on April 22 spacecraft and rocket were mated.⁴⁶

By the end of April, all plans and preparations had been well laid and revised in accord with the precedents and lessons of previous flights. The detailed flight plan, technical information summaries, calculated preflight trajectory data, public information directives, experiments guidebook, and documentation directives were all disseminated. The world was girdled by military and medical recovery personnel waiting for May 14 and the launch of Gordon Cooper. A total of 28 ships, 171 aircraft, and about 18,000 servicemen were assigned to support MA-9. These included 84 medical specialists, a reduction by half in the number of medical monitors and corpsmen since Glenn's flight. This was a token of the confidence the planners now had in Mercury and its men.⁴⁷

But that confidence was not shared by everyone. While Cooper struggled to select the most appropriate name for his capsule, criticism of NASA and its implementation of national space goals swelled once again. Philip H. Abelson, editor of Science, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; Warren Weaver of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation; and Senator J. William Fulbright from Arkansas raised voices in protest against the Moon race and against manned space flight in general. The costs of manned orbital flight, the confusion regarding "science" and "technology," and urgent social and political problems deserving equal attention were to be widely debated.⁴⁸

Against this context, when Cooper finally announced his choice of a call-sign - Faith 7, symbolizing "my trust in God, my country, and my teammates" - NASA public affairs officers were described by the Washington Post as worried:

The naming of the bell-shaped capsule - a tradition accorded to the astronaut riding it - has given Cooper some bad moments. He has picked "Faith 7," which has drawn some raised eyebrows in the "image" conscious space agency.

"Suppose that, for some reason, we lost the capsule at sea," said one source."Then it would come out reading something like, 'The United States today lost Faith… .' "⁴⁹

So much had happened, so many things had changed in the four years since Project Mercury had become publicized by the selection of its seven astronauts, that the Manned One-Day Mission seemed an appropriate new name to symbolize the differences. Now there was a second class of nine more astronauts-in-training; there was the national goal of a lunar landing before 1970; there were new facilities, new administrators, and thoroughly reorganized procedures and policies to follow. Mariner II, in its magnificent survey of Venus in December 1962, was interpreted a few months later as having proved Venus to be one destination in planetary space that might as well be forgotten as a target for manned landings. Mars remained a mystery, and so also did Earth's Moon, for that matter, but the decision to try Project Apollo made Mercury already merely a demigod. While Project Ozma used radio telescopes in a search for evidence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, Telstar II was launched May 7, 1963, to renew the hope that Earthmen might exercise greater intelligence than they had in the past by establishing more intelligent communications with each other.⁵⁰

In the midst of the heat of scientific and political criticism of both Department of Defense and NASA space priorities and costs, NASA and the Mercury managers had to decide what, if anything, should be the next mission after MA-9. If Walter Williams and others at MSC had their way, an MA-10 mission, planned for a three-day sojourn in space, would follow. But they were overruled, and Julian Scheer, the new NASA Deputy Assistant Administrator for Public Affairs, announced emphatically on May 11, "It is absolutely beyond question that if this shot is successful there will be no MA-10."⁵¹

So Astronaut Cooper knew, as he made the final preparations after four years of training, that his flight would mark the end of the beginning. A well-known life insurance company subscribed to Cooper's faith by underwriting the first commercial astronaut policies, including one for Cooper. The Mercury operations team gathered at the Cape the second week in May and found Faith 7, Atlas 130-D, and Cooper all ready to take off. Only the weatherman, Ernest A. Amman, voiced his doubts about the May 14 launch date.⁵²

At 6:36 on the morning of May 14, Gordon Cooper was sealed inside his Faith 7 spacecraft atop the steeple that was his Atlas. He checked off all his systems and awaited completion of the blockhouse and Control Center checkoffs, which should count down to ignition about 9 o'clock and lift him up to insertion about 9: 05. A suction-cup force pump, the kind commonly called a "plumber's friend," had been Alan Shepard's parting gift to Cooper, but the instruction inscribed on the handle, "Remove before launch," had been obeyed. It would not make the long trip with Cooper.

While waiting, Cooper heard the secondary control center on Bermuda report that its basic C-band radar system was misbehaving both in azimuth and range. So he napped for a time during repairs. When Bermuda had corrected the difficulty, at about 8 o'clock, the countdown was resumed, and the gantry was ordered back. But the diesel engine failed to move the gantry, and engineers scurried around, looking for the proper plumber's helper to repair a fouled fuel injection pump. More than two exasperating hours were lost on the "fail-safe" diesel locomotive before the count could resume.

At high noon, the gantry was driven back. But radar data from Bermuda, which was vital to the go/no go decision before the point of no return, now was intermittent. The launch was postponed. Cooper emerged from his capsule, saying, "I was just getting to the real fun part… . It was a very real simulation." Later that afternoon he went fishing, while checkout crews stayed at the pad, seeking out unsuspected trouble spots such as the diesel fuel pump.⁵³

That night Mercury Operations Director Williams broadcast the word: "All systems are go, and the weather is good. Let's pick up the count and go." Cooper lay down to sleep, confident that his safety and the mission would keep until he should awake and take his place.

Next morning the countdown proceeded smoothly. Cooper had lain in the capsule only two and a half hours when he heard the final chant:

"T minus 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Ignition. Liftoff."⁵⁴

Faith 7 for 22 Orbits

Thirteen seconds past 8: Q4, range-zero time, on the morning of May 15, 1963, Mercury-Atlas 9 lumbered upward the two inches that defined liftoff and thundered on toward its keyhole in the sky. Inside MA-9, Astronaut Gordon Cooper felt the smooth but definite push intensify as Faith 7 gained altitude faster each second. His clocks marking the moments in synchronization, Cooper shouted through the din of the afterburner behind him to Walter Schirra, his predecessor and now capsule communicator at the Cape, "Feels good, buddy… . All systems Go "⁵⁵

Sixty seconds upward, MA-9 initiated its pitch program, and Cooper felt the max-q vibrations grow, but the rate gyros sensed greater lateral oscillations than the pilot did. Six or seven swings from peg to peg on his instruments, and the flight smoothed out. Two minutes and 14 seconds upward Cooper heard "a loud 'glung' and then a sharp, crisp 'thud' for staging" as booster engines cut themselves out and off. Then away flew the needless escape tower, and at three minutes after launch cabin pressure sealed and held while Cooper reported, "Faith Seven is all go."

The Atlas sustainer engine continued to accelerate, and its guidance system performed perfectly for two more minutes before SECO. Faith 7 and "Sigma 7" swapped remarks on the sweetness of the trajectory. Schirra, at the point of Cooper's orbital insertion and capsule separation, said, "Smack dab in the middle of the go plot. Beautiful." And Cooper replied, after turning around on the fly-by-wire, "Boy, oh, boy … working just like advertised!"

In full horizontal flight over Bermuda at 17,547 miles per hour, Cooper watched his booster lag and tumble for about eight minutes, then checked his temperatures and contingency recovery areas, and tried to adjust to the strange new sensations and perspectives at a little more than 100 miles (near his perigee) above sea level. Floating higher in his couch, now that he was weightless, Cooper agreed with Carpenter's report that an astronaut's sense of the cockpit changes when he reaches zero g and no longer feels himself flying flat on his back. Status checks with the Canary Islands and Kano, Nigeria, came on so fast that Cooper could hardly believe he had crossed the Atlantic Ocean and half of Africa already.

Over Zanzibar, he learned that his orbital parameters looked good enough for at least 20 revolutions and that all Faith 7's telemetry was working well. His suit temperature fluctuated somewhat erratically, but as he watched his first sunset from space over the Indian Ocean he forgot his discomfort while looking at the airglow, spotting the twinkleless stars, and observing sheet lightning in scattered thunderstorms "down under." He saw the lights of Perth, Australia, on schedule 55 minutes after liftoff, and over Canton Island, in the Polynesian Archipelago, just south of the equator, the Sun began to rise behind him (as he flew backward toward the sunrise), and Cooper reported observing Glenn's "fireflies," or Carpenter's "frostflies," drifting along with the spacecraft at five miles per second.

From Guaymas, Mexico, Grissom, acting as capsule communicator, officially relayed the computer-blessed "go for seven orbits." Cooper, audibly impressed with the perfection of the flight so far, said, "It's great… . quite a full night… . everything appears very nominal on board here." As Cooper passed over the launch site at Cape Canaveral, Schirra raised him on the radio circuits once again and complained, "You son-of-a-gun, I haven't got anything to talk about… . I'm still higher and faster, but I have an idea you're going to go farther." The manned one-day mission was off to an auspicious start. Alan Shepard, who had been Cooper's backup pilot and was now also talking to Faith 7 from Mercury Control, coached Cooper into his second orbit, saying, "All of our monitors down here are overjoyed. Everything looks beautiful."

Cooper thought so, too. All his spacecraft and physiological systems performed perfectly on his first two orbits. His only complaint concerned an oily film on his "windshield" that seemed to be on the outside pane of the window. Between Zanzibar and Muchea on his second pass, Cooper dozed off for a four-minute nap and then drifted across the Pacific, observing storms while inverted and stars when facing spaceward.

Beginning with his third orbit, the astronaut checked over the 11 experiments in which he was to participate. He prepared to eject a six-inch-diameter sphere, equipped with polar xenon strobe lights, that was to test his ability to spot and track a flashing beacon in a tangential orbit. At three hours and 25 minutes elapsed time, Cooper clicked the squib switch and heard and felt the beacon kick away. But, try as he might, he could not see the flashing light in the dusk or on the nightside during this round. On the fourth orbit, however, he did spot the beacon at sunset and later saw it pulsing. So he knew he had indeed launched a satellite from his satellite. Cooper jubilantly reported to Carpenter on Kauai, "I was with the little rascal all night."

Subsequently, on his fifth and sixth orbits, Cooper saw the flashing xenon several more times, and likewise spotted the constant xenon ground light of 44,000 watts placed at Bloemfontein, a little horseshoe-shaped town in the Union of South Africa. Having eaten some bite-sized brownie and fruitcake foods and excreted periodic samples for urinalysis, Cooper also kept up with his calibrated exercises, took oral temperatures and blood pressure readings, and did other duties required for the highest priority experiments of the MA-9 mission, the aeromedical ones.

Also on his sixth orbit, after nine hours in space, the astronaut set his cameras, attitude, and switches to deploy a tethered balloon, similar to the one tried on MA-7, for aerodynamic studies of drag and for more visual experiments. The balloon, a 30-inch-diameter Mylar sphere painted fluorescent orange, was to be inflated with nitrogen and attached by a 100-foot nylon line to the spacecraft antenna canister; a strain gauge in the canister should be able to measure the differences in pull on the balloon at apogee (166 miles) and perigee (100miles). Cooper carefully went through his checklist, then tried to eject the balloon package, but nothing happened. He tried again, and still nothing happened. Because the antenna canister was later lost, no one ever knew why the tethered balloon failed to eject. But the second failure of this experiment was more severely disappointing than the first.

When Cooper surpassed Schirra's record by moving into a seventh orbital pass, he was engaged with the radiation experiments and with the hydraulic work of transferring urine samples and condensate water from tank to tank. During the automatically recorded radiation measurements, he had to turn the recorders on and off precisely on time and estimate accurately, without benefit of gyros, his drifting spacecraft's attitude. The hydraulic work was more difficult, because the hypodermic-type syringes used to pump the liquid manually from one bag container to another were unwieldy and exasperatingly leaky. At 9:27 elapsed time, Cooper spoke into his tape recorder, "The thing about this pumping under zero g is not good. [Liquid] tends to stand in the pipes, and you have to actually forcibly force it through."

After 10 hours of the mission, Zanzibar officially informed Cooper that he had a go for 17 orbital passes. The tracking, communication, and computing facilities at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland had long since settled down to a routine in following Faith 7 around the world. The actual orbital parameters for Cooper's flight were proving so close to those planned that the differences were measurable only in tenths of a mile and hundredths of a degree. MA-9 was circumnavigating Earth once every 88 minutes and 45 seconds at an inclination angle of 32.55 degrees to the equator. Soon, as Earth turned beneath Cooper, his orbital track would have shifted too much to keep him within range of most of the scattered tracking and communications sites in Mercury's worldwide network. Then, too, the word "orbit" would become confused, because passing over the same meridian on the rotating planet is not the same as passing through the space-fixed point of orbital insertion.

Cooper spent his last "orbit" before his scheduled rest period, on orbits 9 through 13, in extensive activity. He finished the radiation measurements; he ate his supper of powdered roast beef mush and gulped some water; he took pictures over India and Tibet; and he checked all his machinery for readiness to power down and drift and dream for the next seven hours or so. Passing from the Himalayas to Japan in less than five minutes, Cooper was aroused by John Glenn's second transmission from the tracking ship Coastal Sentry, located near Kyushu. Veteran spaceman Glenn assured Astronaut Cooper, "You're sure looking good. Everything couldn't be finer on this pass."Ten minutes later Cooper had traversed the Pacific lengthwise in a southeasterly direction and had come over the telemetry command ship Rose Knot, positioned near Pitcairn Island, at latitude 25 degrees south and 120 degrees west. There he gave a full report on all systems; the shipborne communicator advised him to "settle down for a long rest."

But Cooper was still too excited and fascinated to feel sleepy. Orbit 9 was to carry him again around South America, over Africa, northern India, and Tibet during daylight, and he resolved to record on film some of the remarkable things he could see while looking down at open terrain. On this circuit Cooper snapped most of his best photographs, demonstrating his contention that he could see roads, rivers, small villages, and even individual houses if the lighting and background conditions were right. High over the highest plateau on Earth, the Tibetan highlands, where the air is thin and visibility is seldom obscured by haze, Cooper thought he could even judge speed and direction of ground winds by the smoke from the house chimneys.

In their third radio contact, John Glenn, as "Coastal Sentry Quebec," advised Cooper, who had now been in space over 13 hours, 34 minutes, that he should "tell everyone to go away and leave you alone now." Cooper then relaxed and fell into a sound sleep. He awoke drowsily an hour later when his suit temperature got too high. Intermittently, for the next six hours, during orbital passes 10 through 13, Cooper napped, took more pictures, taped status reports occasionally, and cursed to himself over the bothersome body-heat exchanger that kept creeping away toward freezing or burning temperatures. At the end of his rest period, Cooper taped his surprise at having napped so soundly that neither floating arms nor weightless dreams had startled him into awareness of where he was when he woke. But he cautioned psychologists not to make too much of this:

Have a note to be added in for head-shrinkers. Enjoy the full drifting flights most of all, where you have really the feeling of freedom, and you aren't worried about the systems fouling up. You have everything turned off, and just drifting along lazily. However, I haven't encountered any of this so-called split-off phenomena. Still note that I am thinking very much about returning to Earth at the proper time and safely.

Coming around Muchea again, on his fourteenth pass, Cooper checked over all his systems, found his oxygen supply plentiful, and reported his peroxide fuel for attitude control showing 69 percent remaining in the automatic tank and 95 percent in the manual. He was in good shape, and all systems were still working "as advertised." At this point, Gordon Cooper spoke a prayer into his tape recorder aboard Faith 7, high in the heavens over the South Pacific. The MA-9 mission was well beyond its midpoint in time and space, and Cooper was humbly grateful that everything was still nominal. Physiologically his vision he knew was abnormally good. Philosophically the vision of this eighth man in history to orbit Earth in a manned satellite was bound to his culture, his times, and his origins in Oklahoma.⁵⁶

Flight of Faith 7
May 15-16, 1963

Orbit 15 was consumed largely in calibration of equipment and synchronization of clocks, since by now Earthmen had experienced one more full 24-hour day of grace, whereas Faith 7's elapsed time was faster by some 16 seconds than range-zero elapsed time. Orbit 16 brought Cooper back over Cape Canaveral and onward, virtually retracing his first shadow over Earth. The President of El Salvador had radioed greetings on pass 15, and on 16 Cooper sent a similar political greeting to African leaders meeting in Ethiopia. Then he buckled down immediately to another high-priority experiment requiring elaborate timing precautions.

As he entered Earth's shadow, or nightside, on this sixteenth orbit, Cooper caged and freed his gyros in such a manner as to allow his automatic attitude control system to torque the spacecraft slowly in pitch through the plane of the ecliptic. He could view, through his window, the mysterious phenomena of zodiacal light and night airglow layer. Together these two different objectives were called "dim light" phenomena, and the experimental photographs were designed to answer astrophysical questions about the origin, continuity, intensity, and reflectivity of visible electromagnetic spectra along the basic reference plane of the celestial sphere. They might also help answer some questions about solar energy conversion in the upper atmosphere. From Zanzibar, past the Canton Island station, Cooper called out the count as he clicked the series of astronomical photographs. Although the zodiacal light pictures turned out underexposed and the airglow shots overexposed, they were of usable quality and supplemented Carpenter's pictures from Aurora 7 nicely.

Over Mexico, Cooper shifted to the next most important photographic task, that of snapping horizon-definition imprints in each quadrant around his local vertical position. Just as University of Minnesota scientists had prepared him for the zodiacal light task, so Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers had arranged for these snapshots to aid in the design of a guidance and navigation system for Project Apollo. Cooper's horizon-definition pictures marked a significant advance beyond those from the MA-7 mission. In contact with the Cape once again, Cooper lightheartedly complained like a typical American tourist, "Man, all I do is take pictures, pictures, pictures!"

But he was not through yet. On orbits 17 and 18 he took infrared weather photographs of good quality and a few excellent moonset Earth-limb pictures. Meanwhile, he resumed the geiger counter measurements for radiation, continued his aeromedical duties, and adjusted his television monitor at the request of ground observers. The eighteenth pass over the United States, like the sixteenth, gave his extraordinary vistas of his country from southern California, across Dallas the first time and Houston the second, to the Florida peninsula. He sang during orbits 18 and 19, still surprised with every pass, still marveling at the greenery on Earth and on his instrument panel as he came toward his thirtieth hour in space.

Although "this fine plumbing they put in this thing" proved more troublesome later, Cooper had learned to adjust his suit temperatures for comfort and to eat and drink over the rim of his helmet fairly effectively, if awkwardly. Then on his nineteenth orbit, while checking his warning lights before a high-frequency antenna test over Hawaii, Cooper noticed the first potentially serious systems anomaly of his mission.

A small telelight lit up green, indicating that Faith 7 was decelerating and that the centripetal force of gravity had overcome by .05 g the centrifugal force of the spacecraft's orbital moment of inertia. This had to be a false indication, reasoned Cooper, because he felt, and his loose gear still appeared, weightless. But were g forces building up imperceptibly? California confirmed no such indication. Mercury Control showed great concern over the implications of this little light for the attitude stabilization at retrofire. The fears of the flight controllers were realized on the next pass, when Cooper lost all attitude readings. Then, on the twenty-first orbit, a short-circuit occurred in a busbar serving the 250-volt main inverter, leaving the automatic stabilization and control system without electric power. The minor glitch had become a serious hitch.

Mercury Control Center was in a flurry of worried activity, cross-checking Faith 7's problems and Cooper's diagnostic actions with identical equipment at the Cape and in St. Louis, then relaying to each communications site questions to ask and instructions to give. Cooper remained cool, if not calm, now that his alertness had been stimulated by a medically prescribed pill of dextroamphetamine.

On the twenty-first pass (over the tracking ship Coastal Sentry), John Glenn helped Cooper prepare a revised checklist for retrofire procedure during the next, and last, time around. Only Hawaii and Zanzibar were within voice radio range on this last circuit, but communications were good. When the ASCS inverter blew out, Cooper also noted that the carbon dioxide level was rising in both his suit and cabin. "Things are beginning to stack up a little" was his classic understatement to Carpenter, and then Zanzibar heard him say he would make a manual reentry.

Twenty-three minutes later Cooper came into contact with Glenn again, reporting himself in retroattitude, holding manually, and with checkoff list complete. Glenn gave the 10-second countdown, and Cooper, keeping his pitch down 34 degrees by his window reticle, shot his retrorockets manually on the "Mark!" Glenn reported: "Right on the old gazoo… . Dealer's choice on reentry here, fly-by-wire or manual … It's been a real fine flight, Gordon. Real beautiful all the way. Have a cool reentry, will you."

"Roger, John. Thank you."

And that he did. All the complicated, crowded events of the next 15 minutes occurred precisely as planned, while Faith 7 plummeted down through the atmosphere. Four miles ahead of the prime recovery ship, again the carrier Kearsarge, just south of Midway Island, the canopied capsule containing Gordon Cooper broke through a mild overcast and landed on the lazy waves of the blue Pacific.

Splashdown came 34 hours and 20 minutes after liftoff. Cooper professed disappointment that he too had "missed that third elevator" aboard "Begonia," meaning the Kearsarge. The spacecraft floundered in the water for a moment, then righted itself, as hovering helicopters dropped their swimmers and relayed Cooper's request as an Air Force officer for permission to be hoisted aboard the Navy's carrier. Permission was granted, and 40 hot, humid minutes later the explosive hatch blew open at the command of MSC engineer John B. Graham, Jr. Physicians examined Cooper for eight more minutes while he lay in the couch. Then they helped him emerge and steadied him during a moment of dizziness until he regained his equilibrium. Away in triumph marched the one-man crew of the one-day Mercury mission.⁵⁷

Like Schirra, Cooper went through arduous medical, technical, and operational debriefings aboard the Kearsarge and later back at the Manned Spacecraft Center. He, too, was found to be dehydrated and suffering from a slight case of orthostatic hypotension. He had lost seven pounds since suiting up, but after drinking "a few gallons of liquid," he was fine, ebullient both mentally and physically, and convinced that "we certainly can elongate this mission." Robert C. Seamans, Jr., Associate Administrator of NASA, and Robert Gilruth, Director of MSC, had different ideas about MA-10, but Cooper reiterated the proof that "man is a pretty good backup system to all these automatic systems, and I think the mission was conducted just like it was planned … in spite of … equipment breaking down."⁵⁸

In addition to undergoing technical debriefings over the next several days, Cooper was honored by parades through Honolulu, Cocoa Beach, Washington - where he addressed a joint session of Congress - and New York City, where he was hailed by one of the largest tickertaped crowds ever to greet an individual. Other crowds in Houston and in his hometown of Shawnee, Oklahoma, also celebrated the return of the sixth Mercury astronaut from space.

The fact that Cooper, like Glenn, had had to take action to save his mission from a probable failure added luster and meaning to the glory he received. While postflight inspections, data reduction, and mission analyses proceeded through the following month to pinpoint the causes of the few electromechanical faults of the flight, Mercury systems engineers could find no fault with pilot performance. Physicians, however, were cautious about the implications for longer space missions of Cooper's hemodynamic response.

Faith 7
Aftermath

Probably no other result of the MA-9 mission excited more interest than Cooper's claim to have seen from orbit objects on the ground as small as trucks and houses. Skepticism on this point abated after the astronaut explained in detail to representative scientists at the Cape on May 21 just where, when, and how he could see dust and smoke below, from 100 miles directly above - if the contrast was right. Also at this, the first and only "scientific debriefing" following a Mercury flight, the value of extensive questioning of the subject pilot was clearly demonstrated, when Cooper was asked whether he could see Earthshine on the Moon. "Well," he replied, "the Moon was fuller as it was setting than it was on the nightside. It was almost a full Moon. Gee, that's funny, I hadn't even realized that before. It seemed to be almost full as it was setting, whereas on the nightside it was only a third of a Moon."⁵⁹ This Moonshine was clearly Earthshine. Other postflight analyses added praise for the sunshine that blessed Faith 7. "The sun literally smiled on MA-9," wrote J. C. Jackson and Niles R. Heller in Goddard's report of the network radio performance. "It [MA-9] was favored with better than average radio frequency propagation conditions for the present phase of the solar sunspot cycle."⁶⁰

Whither Gemini?

On June 6 and 7, 1963, Brainerd Holmes, Gilruth, Walter Williams, and Kleinknecht met with Administrator Webb, Hugh L. Dryden, and Seamans in Washington to make a final decision on whether to fly an MA-10 mission. President Kennedy had clearly left the decision up to NASA. Webb listened thoughtfully to the presentations of each NASA official, and although both he and President Kennedy had heard the Mercury astronauts' plea for one more Mercury mission, Administrator Webb announced before the Senate space committee on June 12, 1963, that "we will not have another Mercury flight."⁶¹ It was to be 22 months before another American manned space flight.

Project Gemini, designed in 1961 to double the volume while retaining the basic shape and systems of the McDonnell-Mercury spacecraft, now was well into the development and redesign phase of construction. And the Martin Company's mighty Titan II rocket, in spite of a recent explosion on launch, had a record of nine cleancut successes out of 16 launches. Another Mercury-Atlas flight would have been a relatively economical way to extend space technology and fill the time (then estimated at a year) before Gemini-Titan could be flight-tested. But now that Project Apollo, employing a concept called lunar orbital rendezvous (LOR) to land a man on the Moon and recover him, was the ultimate goal of the decade, space rendezvous and docking had to be perfected. Mercury had served far more than its original purpose, but it could hardly be maneuverable. And so Project Gemini was designed to fill these gaps. As people were asking whither and whether Gemini was taking them, Mercury died a natural death, while Apollo and Saturn were aborning.