Episode 50: Project Gemini, Part II

 

Have you ever heard of the Mercury 13, the group of 13 women who passed the same initial tests their male counterparts, the Mercury 7, took to become astronauts? Two of them even passed the second adn third phases of testing but because it was an unofficial test program and not authorized by NASA, the US Navy withdrew their support - and more importantly their equipment - for the tests. Jerrie Cobb (above) performed in the top 2 percentile of tests of astronauts of both genders. She was also already such a renounded pilot that when Soviet Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, met Cobb, Tereshkova told the American that she was her hero and also that all the women Cosmonauts thought Cobb would be the first woman in space.

In 1995, a woman was assigned to pilot a space shuttle for the first time and the seven surviving members of the Mercury 13 (or as they sometimes called themselves, the FLATS [First Lady Astronaut Trainees]) were invited to Florida to see the historic launch. From left to right they are: Gene Nora Jessen, Wally Funk, Jerrie Cobb, Jerri Truhill, Sarah Ratley, Myrtle Cagle, and Bernie Steadman).

Jerrie Cobb never made it to space, but Jerry Funk, the youngest of the Mercury 13 and the only other woman to get the chance to talk all three phases of the Mercury astronaut candiates test get make it to space. In 2021, she flew on the the first Blue Origin commerical space flight. t 82-years-old, she set the record for the oldest person to go to space, passing the mark set by (spoiler!) 77-year-old John Glenn during his shuttle mission. Her record was broken later that year by 90-year-old William Shattner.

In the mid-1960s, the American space program was preparing the launch the first multi-crew capsule into space, the two person Gemini capsule. When the Soviets caught wind of this the decided to beat them to the punch by engineering a way to cram three cosmonauts inside a modified Vostok capsule called Voshkod 1. This is often considered the riskiest space mission because the spaceship was so cramped, the crew flew in track suits instead of pressurized space suits. They survived though and the Soviets achieved another record first for thier space program.

The Soviets also launched Voshkod 2 while the Americans were still testing Gemini capsules. This second Voshkod mission saw the first spacewalk by a human and answered the quiestion once and for all if humans, with the proper equipment, could work in open space. The spacewalk was televised live for the entire world to see... at least until things got a little hairry and the live transmission was cut off. 

(CCCP Spacewalk still courtesy of https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/2014/newsspec_9035/index.html, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46303679)

Episode 49: Project Mercury, Part VII and Project Gemini, Part I

 After being told that he would never fly in space again, Mercury Seven astronaut Scott Carpenter left NASA and the US Navy SEALAB program which was testing the effect of living in capsules at the bottom of the ocean for extended periods of time on humans. Carptenter (center) served abord SEALAB II.

Those selected for the SEALAB program were given the title aquanaut. Carpent is the only person in US history... and possibly world history (though I will admit that I was lazy and didn't specifically look that fact up) to become both an astronaut and an aquanaut.

Carpenter retired from the Navy on July 1, 1969, three weeks before the first NASA astronauts would land on the moon. In later life, Carpenter would work as a engeneering consultant, wasp breeder (to which I can only ask WHY? Why breed wasps when you could keep bees?!), and a novelist. When he passed away in 2013, at age 88, he was the second-to-last surviving Mercury Seven astronaut. Ironically, this left John Glenn, the oldest of the Mercury Seven at the time of their selection, as the last remianing. Glenn attended Carpenter's public memorial serive in Colorado.

I was unable to find a photograph of Carpenter's headstone - he was interred at the family's private cemetery at their ranch in Steamboat Springs, CO - so I will have to suffice with the above photo on his flag-draped coffin at his public memorial service.

I had to share this final image becasue I am absolutly captivated by the excitment and eagerness in Carpenter's eyes as he suits up prior to going into space aboard Aurora 7.

I can't introduce the Next Nine without including a picture here so here is a NASA publicity photo of the Mercury Seven (seated left to right: Gordo Cooper, Gus Grissom, Scott Carpenter, Wally Schirra, John Glenn, Alan Shepard, and Deke Slayton) and the Next Nine (standing left to right: Ed White, James McDivitt, John Young, Elliot See, Charles Conrad, Frank Borman, Neil Armstrong, Thomas Stafford, and Jim Lovell). We'll get to know these guy more in coming podcasts.

Episode 48: Project Mercury, Part VI

 

John Glenn (left) and Scott Carpenter (right) were the primary and alternate pilots for the United States' first orbital flight. I can only imagine what Carpenter was thinking when he got the word NASA was concerned that Glenn's heat shield wouldn't stay on during re-entry and if that happened, his friend burn up on re-entry.

He later admitted that he was a little worried re-entering the atmosphere but also knew that if he did lost the heat shield, it would all be over quickly. After his successful re-entry and recovery by the USS Noa, Glenn was cool, calm, and collected, at least on the outside. Rocking those classic Chuck Taylor's, he was certainly cool!

After his safe return, Glenn was awarded a medal by JFK, address a joint session of congress following a parade down Pennsylvania Avenue, and received a ticker tape parade in New York City. Of all his accolades, it seemed the one he found most unbelieveable was when his hometown named the college gym in his honor.

John Glenn wasn't Friendship 7's only trailblazer. After her great job with the insignia artowrk, Cecelia Bibby was brought back to design and paint the misison logos one each subsequient capsule - including two missions that were never flown.

More three more Mercury flights followed Glenn's but by this time NASA was already looking to the future and Project Gemini which would do even more to get astronauts ready for the real prize - the Apollo mission that hopefully take humans from earth to the moon and safely back again.

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.