by Jay Barbree
“Roger, Seven, read you switching to GBI.”
Slayton was eager to cut the hell out of Dodge as fast as he could. Shepard laughed aloud. He knew Gus would be right there with Deke, and the two would be burning sky, blazing their way to Grand Bahama Island so they could be on the ground when he arrived.
“Seven, do you read?” came a new voice on the GBI line.
“I read,” Shepard called back.
He was aware the flight wasn’t quite over. He still had to reach water in good shape. That meant the parachute system had to work.
Perfectly.
Above him, panel covers snapped away in the wind.
“The drogue is green at twenty-one, and the periscope is out.”
Down went Freedom Seven and Alan Shepard. The altimeter unwound and aimed for ten thousand feet where the main chute was to open. If it failed, well, he already had a finger on the “pull like hell ring” that would release the reserve.
“Standing by for main.”
Freedom Seven continued like the champ it had proven to be. “Through the periscope,” Shepard would later say, “I saw the most beautiful sight of the mission. That big orange-and-white monster blossomed above me so beautifully. It told me I was safe, all was well, I had done it, all of us had done it. I was home free.”
“Main on green,” he reported. “Main chute is reefed and it looks good.”
Freedom Seven swayed back and forth as it dropped lower. Compared to moments in his immediate past, Shepard was tiptoeing gently toward the ocean instead of crash landing a jet fighter on a carrier deck.
He opened his helmet’s faceplate. Quickly he disconnected all hoses and snaps. He wanted nothing to impede a hasty exit just in case the water landing went haywire.
He braced himself for–
SPLASHDOWN!
“Into the water we went with a good pop!” Shepard said, laughing over a drink with me later. “Abrupt, but not bad. No worse than the kick in the butt when I’m catapulted off a carrier deck.”
The spacecraft tipped on its side, bringing water over the right porthole. He smacked the switch to release the reserve parachute that kept the capsule top-heavy. He was thinking about the chimp’s near disappearance beneath the ocean. He began checking the cabin for leaks. He was ready to punch out at the first sight of the wet stuff pouring in.
The water didn’t come, and he stayed dry. Shifting the center of gravity worked, and the capsule came back upright.
Planes roared overhead. “Cardfile Two Three,” he called. “This is Freedom Seven, would you please relay all is okay?”
“This is Two Three; roger that.”
“This is Seven. Dye marker is out. Everything is okay. Ready for recovery.”
Green dye spread brilliantly across the ocean surface from Freedom Seven.
“Seven, this is Two Three. Rescue One will be at your location momentarily.”
It went like another practice run. Rescue One was overhead. Shepard opened the hatch, grabbed a harness dropped from the helicopter, and was winched aboard.
Rescue One turned for the prime recovery ship, the aircraft carrier USS Lake Champlain, and lowered itself gently onto the deck. “This is the best carrier landing I’ve ever made,” Shepard laughed.
He couldn’t wait to tell Deke and Gus and John and Gordo and Scott and Wally all about it.
They, the Mercury Seven, had done it!
FIVE
John Glenn
Alan Shepard’s success solidified questions for John Kennedy about America’s efforts in space. The young President knew the difference between American and Russian rockets. He accepted the fact that the Soviets had overwhelming superiority in size and power.
What the President also had come to realize was that in spite of appearances, the Russians were not ahead of America because they were better at science; it was the exact opposite. The Soviets had their monster boosters because they couldn’t build a smaller nuclear warhead. They needed the giants to get their five-ton, unsophisticated bombs to American targets. Our warheads, with the same destructive power, were much smaller. They needed only a third of the rocket power to reach their destinations.
For this reason, Kennedy was willing to take the long-range gamble that American science, technology, and industry would persevere and, with clearly defined goals, be able to surpass the Soviets.
At NBC we learned what the President was up to, and I jumped in. “Americans are going to the moon,” I reported, and my boss, Russ Tornabene, shouted down the phone line, “Barbree, I want you on this. Kennedy is speaking before Congress and it’s your story.”
Feeling a historic milestone in the making, I covered Kennedy’s congressional address by closed-circuit television from the Cape Canaveral site where future astronauts would lift off for the moon. In ringing tones, the energetic President told an attentive Congress the nation should take longer strides, America should become the leading player in space, and the country should lead the world into a better future:
I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space, and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.
John F. Kennedy spoke, and Congress leapt to its feet with thundering applause. If the congressional reaction was any sign of the future, then his “new frontier” had absorbed new life and vitality. Despite the “Bay of Pigs” debacle and a rough start, Kennedy was on his way back. He had absolute confidence that this was a gamble his administration could not lose. Americans would be the first on the moon.
Two months later, Gus Grissom had his Liberty Bell Seven Mercury capsule loaded with one more item than Alan Shepard had had: a parachute.
“Damn, Gus,” argued NASA engineer Sam Beddingfield. “If you need it, you won’t have time to use it.”
“Get me the parachute, Sam,” Grissom demanded. “If something goes wrong, it’ll give me something to do until I hit.”
Beddingfield shook his head but stuffed a parachute in Liberty Bell Seven, and Grissom lifted off from the Mercury-Redstone launch pad on July 21, 1961. His flight was a photocopy of Alan Shepard’s suborbital flight—115 miles up, 300 miles down range. But that’s where any similarities to Shepard’s mission ended.
Following splashdown, Grissom prepared his Mercury capsule for helicopter recovery. He was lying back, waiting for hookup, when an explosion blasted away his hatch. The hatch, modified to use an explosive primer cord instead of the mechanical locks of Shepard’s capsule, had ignited.
Water rolled in and Grissom rolled out. He had to swim for his life as he watched the three-thousand-pound spacecraft slip beneath the waves.
Engineers scratched their heads. Some said the design of the capsule’s hatch made an accidental explosion impossible. They covered their asses by suggesting Grissom had panicked and triggered the hatch release. Grissom denied the charge repeatedly, insisting, “The damn thing just blew.” His fellow astronauts backed him all the way, and an accident review board cleared him of any wrongdoing.
Nevertheless, it left a bad taste in Grissom’s mouth that refused to go away.
The sinking of Liberty Bell Seven would not be the only event to throw cold water on Grissom’s perfect spaceflight. Sixteen days later, the Russians gave what was left of NASA’s pride another swift kick. A second Vostok spaceship, this one named Eagle, carried Major Gherman Titov, Yuri Gagarin’s backup pilot, into Earth orbit, where he played around in weightlessness a full day.
Project Mercury managers and the astronauts threw up their hands. They agreed that Redstone had done its job. But if there was to be any hope of keeping up with the Russians, it was time to get on with launching an American into orbit. And, most important, to get the job done before the end of 1961. History would record the Russians and Americans did it the same year.
The White House told Mercury Operations director Walt Williams to fix it. The President wanted an American in orbit, and Williams was told, in no uncertain terms, “No more excuses.” Williams went after the air force, who held the Atlas contract with NASA, and the job of setting things right went to the toughest test conductor around, a hulking six-foot-one Irish altar boy by the name of Thomas J. O’Malley.
Despite the failures, there seemed to be little concern around the Mercury-Atlas pad. Many thought the problems would resolve themselves. O’Malley called the launch team together. He gave them the new word: “The next son of a bitch who says no sweat, who tells me or anybody else we don’t have a problem, will ride the toe of my boot out the door.” T. J., as he was known, was simply the tough, hard-nosed manager Atlas-Mercury needed. His hard-boiled attitude whipped the Pad 14 launch team into shape—a team ready to work 24–7 to turn the Atlas into a piece of reliable machinery.
The troublesome Atlas systems were modified, the fragile skin was given its own steel belt, and on September 13, 1961, five months after the last Atlas failure, the rocket was ready for another try. Atlas drilled its unmanned Mercury capsule into a perfect orbit, and after completing one trip around Earth, a California tracking station fired the capsule’s retro-rockets and the spacecraft returned for a safe splashdown.
T. J. O’Malley ready to launch John Glenn, the first American, into Earth orbit. (O‘malley Collection).
NASA and the Atlas managers were pleased. O’Malley, the Irish altar boy, had gotten the job done.
John Glenn was ready. He’d been ready from the moment he was selected as an astronaut to be first in space, but Yuri Gagarin and Gherman Titov had shot the hell out of that plan. No more suborbital flights. Mission number three would go for orbit, and Glenn, as backup to both Shepard and Grissom, was in a perfect position. No astronaut had better credentials. Glenn was born in the heart of the great radio days. To the Marine Corps he was a public-relations dream, and to the public, he was Jack Armstrong, all-American.
He was ready, but NASA wasn’t. Not quite. John Glenn would have to endure the same humiliation that had tormented Alan Shepard. On November 29, 1961, the marine fighter pilot stepped aside while NASA loaded another chimpanzee, Enos, into a Mercury capsule. The Atlas and Mercury capsule performed flawlessly, but the chimp’s equipment failed and the electrical system and light tests went haywire.
Every one of Enos’s display’s buttons lit up wrong. He banged on every lever he could find, but that didn’t help. For his efforts, instead of a banana pellet, he was rewarded with a nasty shock.
Enos came out of orbit biting anything that moved. NASA went through a sort of scheduled greeting, but the chimp wouldn’t let handlers diaper him. Enos had a large erection, but this didn’t stop the proud officials. NASA news chief Jack King paraded the chimp before the media. This prompted a popular woman broadcaster to ask, “Jack, are you going to breed that chimp?”
Satisfied with the chimp’s flight, NASA managers scheduled Glenn’s launch for December 20, 1961. Get into orbit before year’s end was the cry; it was to be a Christmas present for the boss, JFK. But Santa Claus’s elves were not on John Glenn’s side. No sooner than the Atlas and Mercury capsule were erected on the launch pad, there began a series of frustrating delays. It would have broken the spirit of most, but Glenn and the launch team kept pushing ahead. Finally, on the morning of February 20, 1962, after eighty-two days of weather and mechanical delays, Glenn was strapped into the spacecraft he had named Friendship Seven. Lady luck smiled. It was try number ten, and the countdown nudged its way toward 9:47 A.M. Eastern time.
But before Glenn could be launched, there was one last thing. The international community needed to certify that John Glenn was actually on board Friendship Seven—that he had not slipped down the gantry’s elevator before the structure had been moved. So, with the Mercury-Atlas standing alone on its launch pad, lead rocket engine engineer Lee Solid left the blockhouse and escorted the Federation Aeronautique Internationale representative to a clear view of Friendship Seven. From the blockhouse, astronaut Scott Carpenter told Glenn to wave. The FAI representative smiled. For the record, John Glenn was on board and test conductor T. J. O’Malley and his long-frustrated launch team moved the countdown clocks ahead.
John Glenn leaves for the launch pad. (NASA).
The media gathered at Cape Canaveral’s press mound for John Glenn’s orbital flight. Inside its broadcast trailer, the NBC team is on the air. Left to right: news manager Russ Tornabene, correspondent Jay Barbree, and correspondent Merrill Mueller. (Barbree Collection).
Again, Merrill Mueller and I were at the NBC microphones, and when possible, we carried the voices from the blockhouse and Mercury Control live on our worldwide networks.
It was perfect radio. Launch-team members’ voices were in pure harmony.
“Status check,” O’Malley barked into his lip mike, his words carried to the headset of every member of his team. He had to know if all the Atlas-Mercury systems were ready.
“Pressurization?” his sharp clear voice demanded.
“Go.”
“Lox tanking?” O’Malley needed to know if the liquid oxygen tank was filled, if there was enough to oxidize the fuel to get Glenn in orbit.
“I have a blinking high-level light.”
O’Malley also knew the signal was false. “You are go,” O’Malley snapped.
“Range operations?”
“Go for launch.” All tracking stations were in the green.
“Mercury capsule?”
“Go.”
“All pre-start panels are correct,” O’Malley acknowledged. “The ready light is on. Eject Mercury umbilical.”
“Mercury umbilical clear.”
“All recorders to fast,” T. J. ordered. “T-minus eighteen seconds and counting. Engine start!”
“You have a firing signal,” astronaut Scott Carpenter told his friend John Glenn from the blockhouse.
O’Malley’s boss, B. G. MacNabb, came on the line. He spoke directly to the altar boy: “May the wee ones be with you, Thomas.” O’Malley managed a quick smile. He’d take the luck of the wee ones anytime. He’d been praying all day, and the tough test conductor crossed himself. “Good Lord, ride all the way,” he said prayerfully.
“GOD SPEED, JOHN GLENN!” The call boomed deep from the heart of Scott Carpenter. A quick nod of acknowledgment between O’Malley and Carpenter, and Scott began racking down the final seconds of the count.
“Ten,
Nine,
Eight,
Seven,
Six,
Five,
Four,
Three,
Two,
One…
Zero!”
The voices fell silent. Atlas was ablaze on its pad, flame pouring from its mighty engines, the vibration trembling John Glenn’s voice.
“Uh…rog-ger…the clock is operating…We’re underway….”
Atlas was now a monolith of flame and gleaming silver with Glenn and his black Mercury spaceship resting on thick ice from the super-cold fuels beneath it, the red escape tower standing above all, pointing the way into a welcoming blue sky.
Flaming thrust pushed the rocket and spacecraft stack toward orbit. The autopilot ticked away the commands, and Atlas and Mercury obeyed as Glenn reported, “We’re programming in roll okay.”
People. A million of them were on highways and beaches, atop buildings, and on streets. Atlas rolled thunder from its mighty throat as it pushed steadily upward and the onlookers went mad—a million
voices shouting, cheering, and crying.
Tremendous air pressure squeezed Atlas, buffeted the big rocket, hammered against its steel belt strengthening its thin skin, rattled and shook the machine. It was every pilot’s old friend Max Q, and the marine along for the ride called Alan Shepard, his CapCom, short for capsule communicator, who was located in Mercury Control.
“It’s a little bumpy along here.”
Climbing out of Max Q, the engines were increased in thrust and power. Every second they burned fuel they reduced Atlas’s weight. Then, a little more than two minutes into the flight, the two booster engines were done—they burned out and fell away with the rocket’s rear skirt. This trimmed Atlas to one remaining main engine, called the sustainer.
Friendship Seven was over one hundred miles high and still climbing when the sustainer cut off. The escape tower was gone, the separation rockets spurted, and Glenn and his Mercury capsule pushed away from the now lifeless Atlas.
“Roger, zero-g and I feel fine,” Glenn reported. “Capsule is turning around. Oh! That view is tremendous!”
John Glenn and America were in orbit. A grateful country shed its tears and screamed its cheers. Some of its lost prestige had just been restored.
Friendship Seven set its course for the first of three planned trips around Earth, and Glenn reminded himself he had a debt to pay to American taxpayers. They were all anxious, almost desperate, to hear from him. He offered glowing descriptions of the planet sliding beneath Friendship Seven: the sculpted sands of the deserts, the mantle of snow covering the mountains, and closer to home, the rich deep green of Bahamian waters. He peered down volcanoes, and when it was night, he looked into the blackest of black below and saw great thunderstorms split themselves apart with lightning bolts that left trails of snarling fire.
