by Jay Barbree
But more important, it got action, and NASA powers were all over Colonel Powers. “We need a clear-cut statement by the Mercury Seven for the press.”
Colonel Powers jumped out of bed, and the space agency was talking. The astronauts were allowing they were disappointed, but made certain to offer sincere congratulations to their fellow cosmonauts for a terrific technical feat. And once again John Glenn galloped to NASA’s rescue on his white steed. The seeds of a politician were already sprouting in John. He was honest to a fault, and he knew precisely what to do: be blunt and truthful.
“They just beat the pants off us, that’s all,” he told the flock of reporters. “There’s no use kidding ourselves about that. But now that the space age has begun, there’s going to be plenty of work for everybody.”
The question of who was the first human in space would never mean that much. Not really. When Yuri Gagarin went into orbit, the guesswork vanished. But would Shepard fly? Given Gagarin’s success and the overwhelming power of the Russian rockets, there were suggestions in Washington that the U.S. man-in-space program be dropped. The never-finish-anything-you-start bunch were crying that the United States could never catch the Russians now, so why waste the time and effort and money?
If ever the country’s new President needed to take a bold step, now was the time. John Kennedy called in NASA’s best minds. “I want you to tell me where we stand. Do we have a chance of beating the Russians by putting up an orbiting laboratory? Or by a trip around the moon, or by a rocket to go to the moon and back with a man?”
“Yes we do, Mr. President. We can beat them to the lunar surface. We can plant the first flag on the moon. The American flag.”
Kennedy was just as direct. “GO!”
Five weeks after Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space, America was ready.
Three hours before scheduled launch on May 2, Associated Press photographer Jimmy Kerlin spotted Alan Shepard suiting up, and the name of the first American in space was out.
Shepard was relieved.
But there was no flight that day. Low clouds rolled in, and Walt Williams scrubbed the launch. The flight operations director wanted a clear view of Shepard’s Redstone all the way through burnout.
Alan Shepard slips into his Mercury capsule, named Freedom Seven, for launch. (NASA).
Three days later, May 5, 1961, the countdown moved into its final minute, and I could hear my own voice grow with anticipation as I told our NBC audience this should be it. My co-anchor, Merrill Mueller, and I were in and outside our broadcast trailer with a continuous audio report of everything happening. We had been airing all of NASA’s reports live and I reported, “Everything looks good. The weather is go, and Mercury Control says Alan Shepard and his Freedom Seven are go.” Then I switched. “Now for the launch of the first American in space, here’s the final countdown from Colonel John ‘Shorty’ Powers in Mercury Control.”
“This is Mercury Control. Alan Shepard and the range are green…”
T-minus seven, six, five…
Alan Shepard braced his booted feet against Freedom Seven’s floor.
Four…
Shepard had his hand up near the stopwatch on the panel. He had to initiate the timer at the moment of liftoff in case the automatic clock failed.
Three…
Left hand on the abort handle. The escape tower was loaded.
Two…
Shepard took a deep breath.
One…
One last reminder to himself: “Okay Buster, make it work.”
Zero…
Shepard heard Deke Slayton sing out, “IGNITION!”
Rumbling far beneath him. Pumps spinning at full speed. Fuel gushing through lines…Alan Shepard tensed his body.
His rocket had been lit.
“LIFTOFF!” Slayton called.
Freedom Seven swayed.
“You’re on your way, José!” Slayton shouted, referring to a comedian friend who had a routine called “The Nervous Astronaut.”
“Roger, liftoff, and the clock has started,” Shepard called out. Now he felt the power. “This is Freedom Seven. Fuel is go. Oxygen is go. Cabin holding at 5.5 PSI.”
Now he was in his element. This was what Alan Shepard was born to do. He was the quintessential test pilot. He was the most relaxed, most assured person along the entire spacecoast.
Streaking toward the flaming Redstone in F–106 jets were astronauts Scott Carpenter and Wally Schirra. They were geared to chase and observe the Redstone as long as they could before it sped from sight. Tracking and search planes cruised from low-level to stratospheric heights, and the sea was dotted with swift boats and navy ships, all coiled to spring toward Freedom Seven’s rescue if needed.
At the center of Cape Canaveral’s fifteen thousand acres was a makeshift press site crowded with trailers, television trucks, prefab offices, bleachers, high viewing stands, camera mounts, a blizzard of antennas, and a snake forest of cabling along the ground. The fourth estate was linked to sending and receiving facilities in every major city around the planet. NBC itself was hooked up to sixteen networks worldwide including the BBC and the armed forces, and my broadcast partner, Merrill Mueller, and I were reporting every single thought and fact we could muster as others screamed, “Go! Go! Go!” while Freedom Seven climbed higher and higher into space. Tough and grizzled news veterans unashamedly cried as they pounded fists on wooden railings, against their equipment, against the defenseless backs of their compatriots in support of Alan Shepard.
Beyond the Cape, along the causeways and beaches and lining the roadways, a great army had assembled to witness an epochal moment in history. Half a million men, women, and children in cars, in RVs, on trucks, on motorcycles, on trailers, on anything that would roll had gathered, nudged, pushed, shoved, and squeezed as close as they could to the security perimeters of the Cape to watch and, most important to them, to shout encouragement.
Two thousand–plus journalists stood fast on the press-site mound watching Alan Shepard rocket into space. (USAF).
They went mad at the sight of the Redstone breaking above the tree line; their combined chorus of hope and prayer was almost as mighty as the roar of the rocket.
Throughout the area now referred to as the spacecoast, people left their homes to stand outside and look toward the Cape. They stood atop cars and trucks and rooftops. They left their morning coffee and bacon and eggs in restaurants to walk outside. They left beauty parlors and barbershops with sheets around their shoulders. And on the ocean itself, surfers ceased their pursuit of waves and stood on beaches, transfixed.
Fire was born, the dragon howled, and Redstone levitated with its precious human cargo. That was but the beginning. When the bright flame came into view, even before the deep pure sound washed across the towns and beaches, something wonderful happened.
Men and women sank slowly to their knees, praying. Others were crying.
Time stood still.
Flame lifted Alan Shepard higher, faster. And up there, all alone, America’s first astronaut was pleased. Not bad at all, he thought. This is smoother than anything I ever expected. Hang in there, guy, he told himself. It’s going beautifully.
Then, he spoke to Mercury Control. “This is Freedom Seven. Two-point-five-G. Cabin five-point-five. Oxygen is go. The main bus is twenty-four, and the isolated battery is twenty-nine.”
A comfortable, assured “Roger” came back from Deke Slayton.
Shepard was at two-and-a-half times his normal weight. So far the flight had been a piece of cake. Flame beneath the Redstone grew longer as the outside air grew thinner. He was through the smoothest part; he was running into the rutted road, the barrier he had to defeat before he could leave the atmosphere behind.
Redstone was pushing with hammering raw energy into the reefs of Max Q, the zone of maximum dynamic pressure where the forces of flight and ascent challenged its structural soundness.
Buffeting began, an upward gutsy climb for the Redstone ove
r invisible deep and jagged potholes. Shepard’s helmet slammed against his contoured couch and inches before him, the instrument panel became a blur.
A thousand pounds of pressure, for every square foot of Freedom Seven, was trying to crack the capsule like an eggshell. He was being pounded from all sides and for a split second Shepard considered calling Slayton, but instantly changed his mind. He reminded himself any sort of transmission at this point could be interpreted as fear, and it could send Mercury Control into a tizzy. It might even trigger an abort by someone overzealously guarding his safety.
The Redstone slipped through the hammering blows into the smoothness beyond. Out of Max Q. Shepard grinned. He still had all his teeth, and he keyed his mike.
“Okay, it’s a lot smoother now. A lot smoother.”
“Roger,” Slayton said calmly.
It was time to smile.
Louise Shepard stared at the television, watching the rocket magically lift her husband into space. She tried desperately to hear, but their girls were out of control, wild, cheering, and shrieking at the top of their lungs.
That was their father in that rocket.
This was their moment.
And her moment, too. She smiled, bringing a hand to her lips. “Go, Alan,” she said quietly and only to herself. “Go, sweetheart.”
Mercury Control called out the time hack. “Plus two minutes…”
Alan Shepard was now twenty-five miles up and gaining speed, headed into high flight with the forces of gravity mashing him down into his couch.
Damn it hurt, but it felt terrific. What a ride! He keyed his mike: “All systems are go.”
Freedom Seven’s flight was prime time for radio and television news coverage, and we were enjoying every moment. The listeners were so many they were not countable, and I was blessed to be on the air with the unflappable Merrill Mueller, a veteran’s veteran. He’d done his newscasts through raging battles in World War II, and he’d been the voice that reported the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay in 1945 from the deck of the USS Missouri. Losing his cool was not an option.
We had a thousand things to say about Alan Shepard, his family, the mission, the Redstone, Freedom Seven. But we’d never seen a man disappearing into bright sunlight—a single point of silvery flame leaving Earth.
Merrill was the master, but we had been on the air all morning and we both were running dry on things to say. Our voices fading, Merrill swallowed hard. Then the master found one last masterful thought…
“He looks so lonely up there…”
The sixteen worldwide NBC Radio networks fell silent.
The rocket’s thrust increased Shepard’s weight sixfold, and he found it difficult to speak. The growing force of gravity squeezed his vocal cords and he drew on experience, on the techniques he had mastered catapulting off carriers in fighter jets. Slayton heard him clearly.
He was struggling, but he was smiling broadly inside his helmet. End of powered flight was near.
Three, two, one, cutoff!
The Redstone stopped burning.
Above Shepard’s head a large solid-propellant rocket fired, spewing thrust from three canted nozzles. These broke connecting links to pull the escape rocket and tower away. They were no longer needed.
Next, more rockets fired, and Freedom Seven separated from its Redstone. A new light flashed on the instrument panel.
“This is Seven. Cap sep is green.”
Shepard and Freedom Seven were on their own, moving through space at more than four thousand miles per hour.
“Roger,” Slayton confirmed.
Mercury Control had its ears on. They wanted to hear what it was like to be up there.
Well, first, only seconds ago Shepard weighed a thousand pounds. Now he weighed less than a thousandth of a pound.
“I’m free!” he shouted.
“Does Louise know?” Deke joked.
Alan laughed and moved within his restraints to feel the freedom of weightlessness. It was…well, hell, it was wonderful and marvelous and a miracle. That’s what it was. Were he not strapped in, he would have floated about in total relaxation. No up, no down, and as John Glenn had posted on the capsule’s instrument panel before Alan entered, “No handball playing in here.” A missing washer and bits of dust drifted before him. He smiled.
No rush of wind crossing the skin of Freedom Seven despite its speed. No friction. No turbulence. Outside, the silence of ghosts reigned.
But inside, his Mercury capsule had its own pressurized atmosphere where ghosts were real. They made their own sounds. Inverters moaned. Gyroscopes whirred. Cooling fans spun. Cameras snapped. Radios hummed. They were the voices of Freedom Seven.
Alan Shepard took to space with fierce pleasure as he felt Freedom Seven slowly turning around, and he realized it was time to go flying. He wrapped his gloved right hand around the three-axis control stick.
“Switching to manual pitch,” he radioed Mercury Control.
“Roger.”
He moved the stick. Small jets of hydrogen peroxide gas shot into space from exterior nozzles. Instantly he felt the reaction as the capsule’s blunt end raised and lowered in response to his commands. He couldn’t believe how easy Freedom Seven was to fly. It was doing precisely what he asked.
“Pitch is okay,” he reported. “Switching to manual yaw.”
“Roger. Roll.”
Again Seven moved on invisible rails. Shepard wasn’t just a passenger. He was flying his spacecraft, controlling its attitude. “Finally,” he shouted aloud, “we’re first with something!”
He checked his flight plan.
Fun time, he smiled, moving to look through the periscope at the Earth below.
Damn, he cursed.
While on the launch pad he had checked the periscope and stared into a bright sky. Immediately he had moved in filters and now, looking through the scope, instead of a brilliant blue Earth, he saw only a gray planet.
He reached for the filter knob and as he did, the pressure gauge on his left wrist bumped against the abort handle. He chastised himself. Sure, the escape tower was gone, and hitting the abort handle might not be a problem, but this was not the time to play guessing games.
Shepard looked again through the periscope. Even through the gray, the sun’s reflection from Earth below was enough to give him a picture.
“On the periscope,” he radioed. “What a beautiful view!”
“Roger.”
“Cloud cover over Florida, three to four-tenths on the eastern coast, obscured up through Hatteras.”
Shepard spoke of the rich green of Lake Okeechobee’s shores and the spindly curve of the Florida Keys. He shifted his eyes to see the Florida panhandle extending west and saw Pensacola clearly. On the horizon he caught a glimpse of Mobile and said, “There, just beyond, just out of my view is New Orleans.” He gazed across Georgia, to the Carolinas, and saw the coastline of Cape Hatteras and beyond.
Then he looked straight down and studied the Bahamian islands through broken cloud cover. “What I’d give,” he said, “to have that filter out of there so I could see the beautiful green Bahamian waters and coral formations around those islands.”
He was now at his highest point, 116 miles. He reminded himself he had duties. Freedom Seven, obeying the intractable laws of celestial mechanics, was swinging into its downward curve, calculated to carry Shepard directly to the navy recovery teams waiting for him in the waters near Grand Bahama Island.
He was on the stick again, moving Freedom Seven to the proper angle to test-fire the three retro-rockets. “Five, four, three, two, one, retro angle,” Mercury Control confirmed.
“In retro attitude,” Shepard reported. “All green.”
“Roger.”
“Control is smooth.”
“Roger, understand. All going smooth.”
“Retro one,” Shepard shouted. The first rocket fired and shoved him back against his seat. “Very smooth,” he added.
“Roger, roger.”
“Retro two.” Another shove backward.
“Retro three. All three retros have fired.”
“All fired on the button,” Mercury Control confirmed.
The weightless wonderland vanished. Gravity was back. Freedom Seven was plunging into the atmosphere.
“Okay. This is Freedom Seven… my g-buildup is three…six…” His voice began to falter. “Nine…” he grunted, using the proven system of body-tightening and muscle rigidity to force the words through his throat.
“Roger,” Slayton acknowledged.
“Okay…Okay…” Shepard’s voice rose as the intensity of the struggle increased. Eleven times the normal force of gravity, getting close to “weighing” a full Earth ton. But he had pulled eleven-g loads in the centrifuge, and he knew he could keep right on working now.
He did.
“Coming through loud and clear, Seven.”
“Okay,” came the grunt.
“Okay…” They noticed the change in his voice. Lower pitch. The g-loads were fading.
“Okay…this is Seven, okay. Forty-five thousand feet. Uh, now forty thousand feet.”
Shepard was through the gauntlet. He had handled the punishing g-forces, the eye-popping deceleration, and 1,230 degrees of blazing reentry heat. He felt just dandy because during the scorching dive, his cabin temperature hit a peak of only 102 degrees while inside his suit the temperature rose to only 85. Just nice and toasty, he thought.
His altimeter showed 31,000 feet when Slayton’s voice reached him again. “Seven, your impact will be right on the button.”
Great news. Flight computations were perfect. So were the performances of the Redstone and the spacecraft. Freedom Seven was heading directly for the bull’s-eye on the Atlantic recovery-area target.
“This is Seven,” Shepard called. “Switching to recovery frequency.”
