Tag Archives: mercury-redstone

Science / Space Race

[February 1, 1961] Fur and Film (Mercury Redstone 2 and Samos 2)

It's hardly kosher, but it's certainly good news: yesterday, a Redstone rocket launched the first piloted Mercury capsule on a 15-minute flight into space.  No, we didn't put a man in orbit–we sent a three-year old chimpanzee named Ham on a vertical jaunt over the West Atlantic. 

It wasn't a perfect mission by any means.  The rocket fired too hard and too long, subjecting the little pilot to extra "Gs".  Also, the rocket-powered escape tower was triggered about five seconds from main-booster burnount, and poor Ham and his ship were dragged a thousand feet from their Redstone.  These issues are troubling and may result in another test mission before the all-up effort.  On the other hand, they also show that the sturdy capsule can "take a licking and keep on ticking."  The pilot was sturdy too despite the rigors of the journey, Ham dutifully ran through his in-flight routine, flipping switches and levers for the duration of the 15-minute flight.

In other news, the Air Force finally got its "official" spy satellite into orbit.  Samos is the successor to the utterly, completely, unquestionably solely scientific series, "Discoverer", which sent back capsules from space that may or may not have had photographs of the Soviet landscape in them.  Samos 2 (the first one was a dud) was launched into a polar orbit, like Discoverer.  It might also send back film, but its main purpose (I am given to understand) is to broadcast real-time photography from space without having to return film to Earth.  Instead, the pictures are photo-statted in space and then 'faxed down to Earth.  I wondered why the satellite didn't use a TV system, like the weather satellite, TIROS, but I imagine the resolution would be too poor to be useful.  I have also heard some accounts that Samos 2 is testing out an ELINT (Electronic INTelligence) system that will allow us to locate and evaluate Soviet radar systems.  It's hard to get a consistent report on the matter–the Air Force is clamming up on its programs these days.

So there you have it: the civilians are sending up sounding apes, and the missilemen are orbiting eyes in the sky.  No matter how you slice it, 1961 is already an interesting year in Space.

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Science / Space Race

[Dec. 19, 1960] A Very Good Day (Mercury Redstone 1A)

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There are days when everything goes right.

Here we are at the end of a difficult year for space travel.  The Air Force had nearly a dozen failures in a row with its Discoverer proto spy satellite.  The Pioneer Atlas Ables moon shots were all a bust.  Even the successful probes rarely made it into space on the first try, viz. the communications satellites, Echo and Courier.  The American manned space program was dealt a number of setbacks, limping along at a pace that will likely get it to the orbital finish line quite a bit behind the Soviets. 

But Discoverer now has enjoyed a several-mission success streak.  The latest Explorer probe is sending back excellent data on the ionosphere, and its elder sibling is still plugging away in orbit, returning information on the heat budget of the atmosphere.  TIROS 2 provides up-to-date weather photos from overhead.

And this morning, just a few hours ago, Mercury Redstone 1A carried a production model Mercury spacecraft into outer space.  The suborbital mission took only 15 minutes, but it was an exact duplicate of the trip a human astronaut will take in the next few months.  The capsule was retrieved from the Atlantic in short order, and to all accounts, the flight was a complete success.  Just one more mission, crewed by a trained chimpanzee, and after that, America will have a man in space.

It is still unknown just who that person will be.  Any of the "Mercury Seven" are qualified, of course.  Moreover, the group includes representatives all three branches of service that fly jet planes (Air Force, Navy, and Marines) so I don't think that will be a factor.  John Glenn is the most charismatic; Alan Shepard has the most test pilot hours; Scott Carpenter is the handsomest; Donald K. (Deke) Slayton has the most appealing nickname. 

It's probably a good thing I'm not in charge of the selection process!

Speaking of good days, I am currently holed up in The Book Tree, a lovely little book store on Adams in San Diego.  The proprietor is kindly allowing me to bang on the keys of my portable typewriter so I can get this stop-press out.  He has an excellent science fiction selection, including an intriguing new book I picked up by Ben Barzmann: Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, which I hadn't seen on the shelves of my normal haunts.  I highly recommend this establishment!

And now, back up Highway 395, the fast way to Escondido from San Diego.  See you soon with a review of this month's Analog…

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Science / Space Race

[Dec. 15, 1960] Booby Prize (Pioneer Atlas Able #4)

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Today, NASA made a record–just not one it wanted to.

For the first time, a space program has been a complete failure.  Sure, we've had explosions and flopniks and rockets that veered too high or too low.  We've had capsules that popped their tops and capsules that got lost in the snow.  But never has there been a clean streak of bad missions.

Pioneer Atlas Able, Space Technology Laboratories' sequel to its marginally successful Pioneer (Thor) Able moon probes and its rather triumphant Explorer 6 and Pioneer 5 missions, was supposed to be the capping achievement.  It was the biggest American probe yet, and it carried an unprecedented myriad of instruments.

The problem wasn't the probe, which probably would have worked given the success of its well-tested predecessors.  No, it was the rocket.  We just didn't have anything purpose-built that would throw in the Soviet weight class.  But there were a few Atlas ICBMs lying around, as well as the generally reliable second and third stages used in the Thor Able.  They were married in the ungainly form of the Atlas Able.

None of them worked.  The first one died in September '59 in a static (non-launch) test.  #2 popped its top two months later when the air pressure in the nosecone was insufficiently vented.  #3 weathered Hurricane Donna only to tip fanny over kettle and plunge into the Atlantic.  And #4…

We're still not sure why #4 burst into flames early this morning at a height of 40,000 feet.  What we do know is that's another $40,000,000 down the drain, and it marks an end to the STL space program, at least for now. 

In fact, it marks a rather dramatic end of an entire chapter of spaceflight.  The next set of moon probes, called Ranger, are being developed by a completely different center (Jet Propulsion Laboratories) and along completely different lines.  It won't be launched by an Able derivative but rather a rocket using one of the new second-stage boosters: the Air Force's Agena, or maybe even the powerful Centaur.

Either way, it's likely that the Soviets will score the next success in the lunar/interplanetary race as a result. 

On the other hand, it's not all bad news.  The Air Force's ill-starred Discoverer program, which suffered far more failures than Atlas Able, has had an unbroken streak of success.  #18 flew on Pearl Harbor Day, and its capsule, containing biological specimens (and probably several rolls of film with snapshots of the Russian countryside from orbit), was recovered in mid-air, as planned.  The government is no longer hiding the surveillance purpose of the program, which I suppose is reassuring, somehow.

The next Mercury test is set to go in four days.  Keep your fingers crossed!

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Science / Space Race

[Nov. 23, 1960] Premature Ejection (Mercury-Redstone 1)

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The American manned space program is on a tight schedule if it wants to place an astronaut in orbit before the Soviets.  The Communists already have a striking lead.  They had it three years ago when they launched the first Sputnik, and they've maintained it with the recent Sputnik 5, which featured two Muttniks, who were returned safely to Earth after an orbital flight. 

It may well be that, as I write this, the Soviets will already have put a man in space.

NASA is moving at as brisk a pace as they can manage while doing their best to guarantee the safety of our spacemen.  I can only imagine the frustration and impatience of the seven Mercury Astronauts, who were picked a year and a half ago as they cool their heels watching the test program play out.

So far, we've seen several low altitude launches of the Mercury spacecraft (Little Joe).  There has been a test of the Atlas orbital booster (Big Joe).  But there had yet to be an all-up suborbital test of the Mercury-Redstone, mimicing the first few missions that will be flown.

Until the day-before-yesterday.

MR-1 has been on the launchpad at Cape Canaveral in Florida since late October.  No pilot was assigned to the Mercury capsule, not even a monkey or a dog.  The flight was just to ensure that all of the components would work properly during a 15-minute trip.  The mission was originally scheduled for November 7, but a sudden loss in fuel pressure during the countdown caused launch to be aborted.

A similar problem was caught and fixed on the launch pad the morning of November 21.  As the count went to zero, all systems were go.  The Redstone booster ignited at 9 a.m. 

And promptly shut off a second-and-a-half later.  The booster stack was just four inches off the ground, and it settled back onto its fins without tipping over.  But the true ignominy of the event happened at the top rather than the bottom of the stack.  The escape tower, designed to drag the Mercury capsule to safety in the event of a booster failure, took off like a scared rabbit but left the spacecraft behind.  Adding insult to injury, the main and reserve Mercury parachutes then popped out the top of the capsule.  You probably saw this comic event on the TV news.

Yesterday, some brave engineers went out to unplug the booster and figure out what went wrong.  It turns out that the culprit was a safety mechanism, a little two-prong plug designed to shut off the booster engine if there was too much of a time delay between the disconnection of the prongs as the rocket launched.  The plug has been designed for the stock Redstone missile; the Mercury-Redstone combination, being heavier, took longer to launch and thus set off the safety mechanism.

The booster is damaged but reusable.  We'll likely see it fly in December.  Still, it's a setback in the program, which still has a few more test flights to go until a person can be launched.  I'm guessing we won't see an American in space until next Spring or Summer.

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