Episode 47: The State of the Podcast One-Year Anniversary Extraviganza!

Join me as I look back on my first year of podcasting, talk a little about who is listening, and answer listner-submitted questions. 

Episode 46: Project Mercury, Part V

After Glenn's children Dave and Lyn helped him settle on the name Friendship 7 for his Mercury capsule, he decided that he didn't want to use stincles to write the name on like Shepard and Grissom used, he wanted the name hand painted. NASA employee Celia Bibby was selected for the job which went over so well that she also painted the name on every successive Mercury capsule. Of course, Shepard and Grissom gave Glenn a lot of flack for being "too good for stincles." 

On February 20, 1962, Glenn thought that his flight would be posponed again, as it had been TEN! times before. The 11th time tured our to be the charm as the skys cleared over eastern Florida and he was shot into space, before the thrid person, and first American, to orbit planet Earth.

No long before the flight, Glenn saw a 35mm camera in a store window and wondered it NASA engineers could fix it up so that he would be able to take photographs while in orbit. He became the first space traveler to take picutres while in orbit and the camera mockup is now on display at the Smithsonian Air & SPace Museum in Washington, DC... or, at least it probably will be once the massive remodle is completed later this year.

One of the first pictures taken by Glenn during his flight was the above image of Africa.

40 million American households were glued to their TVs for the Glenn's nearly five hour space flight. They were treated to near-real time coverage showing Glenn and NASA interacting (with just a two minute tape delay). None of those households were as anxious as Glenn's own where his son Dave (far left), wife Annie, and daughter Lyn (near right) sat in their living room with thier pastor... just in case. He wouldn't be needed but for about the final third of his flight, NASA was extreamly concerned he might be.

Episode 45: Project Mercury, Part IV

 

In the days and weeks following Gagarin's flight, there was a lot to distract President Kennedy from space, including the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion, but in the end, he agreed that it was important for the United States to not just continue Project Mercury, but to try to beat the Russians in putting a man on the moon if it was at all possible, thanks in no small part to the encouragement of Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson (rear left). Breaking with norms, JFK address a joins session of Congress a second time in 1961, in an attempt to convince both lawmakers and the American public of the importance of continuing (and continuing to fund) the US Space Program, despite the massive assessed cost. 

After Kennedy's speech to Congress, NASA announced Virgil "Gus" Grissom would be the second American in space. Like Shepard, he would only spend 15 minutes in space in an up and down "short shot" because the rocket NASA was using at the time - the Redstone - didn't have enough thrust to get a Mercury capsule into orbit.

Grissom's flight was just about perfect, that is until splash down when the escape hatch blew open, Grissom almost drowned, and Liberty Bell 7 was lost at the bottom of the ocean. It was found and recovered in the late 1990s and is now on display, just like all the Project Mercury capsules. To this day it is unknown if Grissom panicked and blew the hatch early or if, like he claimed, there was a malfunction that caused the hatch to blow on its own. Either way, losing the capsule was embarrassing for NASA and Grissom didn't receive the same sort of post-flight treatment that Alan Shepard did a few months earlier.

In an attempt to remind the world that what the US space program was doing was cute and all, but that the Soviet program was heads and tails better, Russia sent its second cosmonaut into space, Gherman Titov. And unlike Gagarin's single orbit of Earth, Titov did 17 orbits over nearly 25 hours to prove whether or not humans could sleep in space. It turns out we can. It also turns out that Titov got space sick and spent most of his flight nauseous with a massive headache. He eventually got to sleep but it didn't come easy.

As you might imagine, just as his colleague had been, Titov was hailed a national and international Soviet hero and celebrity. He and his spaceship, Vostok II, were all over the place after he landed, going on a junket to tout the Soviet space program.

Episode 44: Project Mercury, Part III

Hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens pour into Red Square the celebrate Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin's (left) first space flight and orbit of earth. When Gagarin arrived back in Moscow, Khrushchev pulled him up on to of Lenin's Tomb and the crowd went wild at the sight of their new hero.

The Americans were not rushing to catch up, but honestly, they lacked the technology to keep pace. In 1961, they didn't have a rocket with enough thrust to get a Mercury capsule into orbit so they had to be content with a ballistic flight, getting an astronaut into space, but not high enough to get into a low earth orbit. Alan Shepard was the first to go into space. His successful up and down trip lasted 15 minutes. At the end of the flight, he splashed down in the ocean near the Bahamas and was pulled out of the Caribbean by the aircraft carrier USS Lake Champlain.

Shepard named the Mercury capsule that carried him into space Freedom 7. He added the seven as a way to honor all seven Project Mercury Astronauts. Today, Freedom 7 is on display at the Udvar-Hazy Center next to Dulles International Airport in northern Virginia; an annex of the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum, headquartered in Washington, DC. The DC museum has some really cool artifacts in it, but is relatively small. The Udvar-Hazy Center is huge and is where they keep a LOT of their large items and is a must see if you're ever in the area.

Episode 43: Project Mercury, Part II

With as far ahead as the Soviet Space Program was, it wasn't surprising that the first person in space wasn't one of the Mercury Seven, but Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. But what is surprising is that it was almost as big a shock for the Americans as when Sputnik was launched.

After JFK was elected president, Kennedy had a lot on his plate here on earth with the Cold War and really had no interest one way or the other in space. It was his vice president, Lyndon Johnson, who had hoped his plan for space would vault him into the presidency. It obviously did not but it did help him secure the number two job.

But things were not all rainbows and unicorns with the Soviet program. Sure they were beating the Americans to several key firsts, like first satellite in space; first craft onto the moon; and of course, the previously mentioned first person in space; but they were also racking up casualties. Of course, without freedom of the press, the communists were able to cover up their major failures, including the above video , when more than 100 Soviet officials and scientist were killed - including the rocket forces commander - when a rocket exploded on the launch pad.

Gagarin launched on April 12, 1961 and during his hour and a half in space, he orbited the earth once before safely returning to earth and becoming an immediate hero in the communist world. Regardless of one's side in the Cold War, everyone had to admit that orbiting the earth was an amazing technological achievement. Even the Mercury Seven (particularly Alan Shepard, who had been informed privately that he was going to be the first US astronaut in space- a public announcement wouldn't come until a few days before the first US manned mission) were impress. Green with envy, for sure, but also impressed.