PROJECT MERCURY America’s First Astronauts BY CRAIG COLLINS Photos courtesy of NASA
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any years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, “Because it is there.” Well, space is there, and we’re going to climb it, and the Moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God’s blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.
– John F. Kennedy, Rice University, Sept. 12, 1962
Many Americans forget, given the eloquence of John F. Kennedy in describing the nation’s aims in space, that he wasn’t the president under whom NASA’s Project Mercury was devised on Oct. 7, 1958 – a year after the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik 1. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who never really saw the point of a lunar landing, had a more sober aim for space exploration, and a simpler answer to the question of why the United States wanted to send men into space: because the Russians were there. Of course Kennedy, his successor, understood the delicate power balance between the world’s two superpowers, and the strategic importance of gaining a technological edge on the Soviets – he simply preferred to frame the space effort as a noble quest that would bring out the very best in humankind. As the competition known as the “space race” played out as a kind of geopolitical soap opera, the public statements of U.S. and Soviet leaders revealed fascinating differences in how each nation conceived of and pursued its aims in space – and a reminder that our headlong rush into space was driven by equal parts pragmatism and grandeur. In the United States, the first effort at manned spaceflight – Project Mercury – was a carefully designed set of unmanned and manned flights that achieved a logical sequence of practical goals. But it was also an emblem of the idealism of America’s president and of its citizens. ABOVE: The launch of Friendship 7, the first American-manned orbital spaceflight. Astronaut John Glenn aboard, the MercuryAtlas rocket is launched from Pad 14. OPPOSITE PAGE: Astronaut Alan B. Shepard, Jr., suiting up for the first manned suborbital flight on MR-3 (Mercury-Redstone) Freedom 7, on May 5, 1961.
6 APOLLO 11 I 50 YEARS
MERCURY-REDSTONE 3 May 5, 1961 Spacecraft: Freedom 7 Astronaut: Alan B. Shepard, Jr. A suborbital, ballistic-trajectory flight that lasted 15 minutes, 28 seconds, Mercury-Redstone 3 successfully put the first American into space.
MERCURY-REDSTONE 4 July 21, 1961 Spacecraft: Liberty Bell 7 Astronaut: Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom A duplicate of Shepard’s mission that lasted 15 minutes, 37 seconds. The flight was successful, but the spacecraft sank shortly after splashdown.
MERCURY-ATLAS 6 Feb. 10, 1962 Spacecraft: Friendship 7 Astronaut: John H. Glenn, Jr. The first American to orbit Earth, Glenn orbited three times and was in space for 4 hours, 55 minutes, 23 seconds.
