Liberty Bell 7: The Suborbital Mercury Flight of Virgil I. GrissomNASA’s Mercury astronauts were seven highly skilled professional test pilots. Each of them seemed to possess the strength of character and commitment necessary to overcome apparently insurmountable obstacles as the United States entered into a Cold War space race with the Soviet Union. This was never more evident than on the epic suborbital MR-4 flight of Liberty Bell 7 with astronaut Virgil (‘Gus’) Grissom piloting the spacecraft to a successful splashdown, followed by the premature blowing of the craft’s explosive hatch. After a hurried exit and struggling to stay afloat, he could only watch helplessly as the recovery helicopter pilot valiantly fought a losing battle to save the sinking capsule. That day NASA not only lost a spacecraft but came perilously close to losing one of its Mercury astronauts, a decorated Korean fighter pilot from Indiana who might one day have soared to the highest goal of them all, as the first person to set foot on the Moon. For the first time, many of those closest to the flight of Liberty Bell 7 and astronaut Gus Grissom offer their stories and opinions on the dramatic events of July 21, 1961, and his later pioneering Gemini mission. They also tell of an often controversial life cut tragically and horrifically short in a launch pad fire that shocked the nation. |
Contents
1 | |
An astronaut named Gus | 55 |
Preparing for launch | 67 |
The flight of Liberty Bell 7 | 101 |
An astronaut in peril | 123 |
One program ends another begins | 161 |
A tale of two hatches | 199 |
Epilogue From the depths of the ocean | 223 |
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Liberty Bell 7: The Suborbital Mercury Flight of Virgil I. Grissom Colin Burgess No preview available - 2014 |
Common terms and phrases
aboard agency’s Air Force Alan Shepard antenna Apollo astronauts Atlas attitude Beach Betty booster cabin CAPCOM Cape Canaveral capsule’s carrier co-pilot Colin Burgess command control system Cosmosphere and Space countdown crew Curt Newport debriefing Deke Slayton Douglas drogue E-mail correspondence egress engineers explosive hatch Faget feet fire Flight of Virgil flying going Grand Bahama Island Grissom later Guenter Wendt Gus Grissom Hangar heat shield helicopter Hunt Club Jim Lewis John Glenn July Kansas Cosmosphere knew landing Langley launch pad Liberty Bell liftoff looked Luetjen Mercury astronauts Mercury capsule Mercury Control Center Mercury spacecraft Mercury-Redstone miles minutes MR-4 mission NASA NASA’s Navy neck dam ocean operation orbital Photo planned pressure Project Mercury recovery Redstone Redstone rocket reentry retro retro-fire Robert Gilruth rocket Roger Scott Carpenter space flight splashdown Suborbital Mercury Flight switch There’s told trainer USS Randolph vehicle Wally Schirra XX:XX:XX