Freedom 7 The Historic Flight of Alan B. Shepard, Jr. Other Springer-Praxis books of related interest by Colin Burgess NASA’s Scientist-Astronauts with David J. Shayler 2006 ISBN 978-0-387-21897-7 Animals in Space: From Research Rockets to the Space Shuttle with Chris Dubbs 2007 ISBN 978-0-387-36053-9 The First Soviet Cosmonaut Team: Their Lives, Legacies and Historical Impact with Rex Hall, M.B.E. 2009 ISBN 978-0-387-84823-5 Selecting the Mercury Seven: The Search for America’s First Astronauts 2011 ISBN 978-1-4419-8404-3 Moon Bound: Choosing and Preparing NASA’s Lunar Astronauts 2013 ISBN 978-1-4614-3854-0 Colin Burgess Freedom 7 The Historic Flight of Alan B. Shepard, Jr. Colin Burgess Bonnet Bay New South Wales , Australia SPRINGER-PRAXIS BOOKS IN SPACE EXPLORATION ISBN 978-3-319-01155-4 ISBN 978-3-319-01156-1 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-01156-1 Springer Cham Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London Library of Congress Control Number: 2013944297 © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifi cally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfi lms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. 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Harland Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) Contents Dedication .................................................................................................................. ix Foreword .................................................................................................................... xi Author’s preface ........................................................................................................ xv Acknowledgements ................................................................................................... xvii Illustrations ................................................................................................................ xix Prologue ..................................................................................................................... xxv 1 History and development of the Mercury-Redstone program ........................ 1 A rocket for the Cold War ..................................................................................... 1 The fi rst Redstones ................................................................................................ 3 Flight testing ......................................................................................................... 5 Handing over to NASA ......................................................................................... 5 MR-1 launch failure .............................................................................................. 12 MR-1A fl ies .......................................................................................................... 20 Tribute to the Redstone ......................................................................................... 27 2 The Mercury fl ight of chimpanzee Ham ........................................................... 29 Out of Africa ......................................................................................................... 31 Training for space ................................................................................................. 35 Prelude to fl ight ..................................................................................................... 41 Good to go ............................................................................................................. 41 A troubled fl ight into space ................................................................................... 46 Spacecraft recovery ............................................................................................... 48 Unwanted fame ..................................................................................................... 53 Final checkout of the Redstone booster ................................................................ 58 A successful test fl ight .......................................................................................... 60 Russia responds ..................................................................................................... 63 v vi Contents 3 NASA’s fi rst space pilot ...................................................................................... 65 Cheering the Pride of Derry .................................................................................. 67 A family’s history ................................................................................................. 69 Early infl uences ..................................................................................................... 69 The urge to fl y ....................................................................................................... 70 Selecting the Seven ............................................................................................... 74 Training for space ................................................................................................. 77 Settling in .............................................................................................................. 87 “My name, José Jiménez” ..................................................................................... 90 Decision day .......................................................................................................... 93 Stepping up the training ........................................................................................ 94 Caution wins, America loses ................................................................................. 96 4 Countdown to launch .......................................................................................... 103 Thunder over the Cape .......................................................................................... 103 Diminishing chances ............................................................................................. 106 Postponement ........................................................................................................ 110 A day for history ................................................................................................... 112 Delay after delay ................................................................................................... 130 5 Fifteen minutes that stopped a nation ............................................................... 139 Liftoff! ................................................................................................................... 139 First to fl y .............................................................................................................. 144 The view from space ............................................................................................. 148 End of weightlessness ........................................................................................... 152 The fi nal hurdle ..................................................................................................... 154 6 Splashdown! ......................................................................................................... 159 Civilians on board ................................................................................................. 160 Eyewitnesses to history ......................................................................................... 163 From the land to the sea ........................................................................................ 165 The man with the camera ...................................................................................... 167 Calling Freedom 7 ................................................................................................. 169 A hero returns ......................................................................................................