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Growing Up With Spaceflight
Thursday, April 24, 2025
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Thursday, February 8, 2024
SKYLAB 4 RETURN TO EARTH
THE FIRST SPLASHDOWN NOT COVERED ON TELEVISION SINCE IT HAD THE CAPABILITY TO DO SO
The following is an excerpt from my book "Growing up with Spaceflight- Skylab/ASTP" the text is protected by Copyright 2015 Wes Oleszewski and no portion of this may be republished in any manner.
Early on
mission day 85, the crew of Skylab 4 closed the hatch on the Multiple Docking
Adaptor for the final time and took their seats in the Apollo Command Module. It was February 8, 1974. Other
than a capture latch snagging, the undocking went off without a hitch. The only
real glitch was that the CM Reaction Control System’s (RCS) number two ring was
showing a helium leak when it was pressurized. Mission Control, suspecting an
impending fuel leak in the ring, decided not to use ring two and to simply
reenter on ring number one. If the crew were to have a problem with ring one,
Mission Control directed them to set the CM into a rolling reentry and proceed.
CBS radio’s spaceflight announcer Reid Collins, while describing the pending
reentry, stated that the crew of Skylab 4 would be coming in “on one ring and a
prayer.”
Since I had
taken the day off from school to watch this historic event on TV I had a whole
60 minute cassette tape ready to fill. I knew full well that it would be a year
and a half before the next manned American spaceflight, and so I was going to
catch every word of the TV coverage. It struck me that when the subject came up
on the morning news shows, there was no mention of when the networks would start
their coverage. At the expected time I was set up
and ready to go, but there was no coverage.
Those of us on
the outside who were growing up with spaceflight were not the only ones who
were screwed by the TV networks; the Skylab 4 astronaut’s families got the
shaft as well. Since there was no prior notice that the three TV networks were not going to cover the splashdown, the
families of the crew had invited guests into their homes to watch the event on
TV and celebrate. Instead of a joyful family moment that would be long remembered,
they were treated to a great disappointment far beyond what those of us in the space-buff ranks had experienced. Later that evening Walter Cronkite, while
talking about the Skylab 4 crew’s return, made it a point to highlight this
historic slight on his CBS evening news broadcast.
“Their landing
today,” Cronkite announced, “the first not covered live on television since it
had the capability to do so.”
In the book,
“Around the World in 84 Days,” Jerry Carr recalls that his son, Jeff, was so
upset by the fact that all of the TV networks had elected to ignore the
splashdown that he wrote letters to the presidents of NBC, CBS and ABC asking
why they had done so. Surprisingly, he received replies from all three, and essentially
they all said the same thing. The splashdown, although a historic event, was, in
their opinion, not newsworthy. The mission was greatly
overshadowed by an independent trucker’s strike, legal fights over Nixon’s
White House tapes and gasoline shortages across the nation.
Thursday, November 16, 2023
SKYLAB 4: CONTEMPLATING A SHORT FALL DOWN THE BASEMENT STAIRS
The following is an excerpt from my book "Growing up with Spaceflight- Skylab/ASTP" the text is protected by Copyright 2015 Wes Oleszewski and no portion of this may be republished in any manner.
Considering that my family had now moved to the country and I was now in a good school, it was pretty hard for me to come up with a reason for staying home from school to watch and record the Skylab 4 launch. Previously my Junior High school had been such den of chaos that my parents were certain that I was learning more sitting home watching spaceflight on TV than I would “…in that damned school…” as my mom often stated. Now, however, being in a good school, I was sure that such was no longer the attitude of my folks. Of course, I considered playing sick, but being a lifelong asthmatic and generally sickly kid, my folks would easily see the difference. And an asthma attack that just happened to coincide with a Skylab 4 launch would be just too obvious for my parents to buy. I could plead and make big eyes, but at age 16 that would just look pathetic. Then, just as I was watching the evening news and contemplating a short fall down the basement stairs as a reason to stay home from school tomorrow, my Mom heard Cronkite talking about the next day’s launch.
“Is that goin’
up tomorrow morning?” she casually said.
“Yep,” I half
sighed in reply.
“I suppose,”
she asked rhetorically, “yer’ gonna stay home and record it.”
“Yep,” I
answered feigning confidence.
“Okay,” she
softly sighed.
Dang! That was
easy.
November
16th, 1973 Skylab 4 was set to launch at 09:01 and coverage of the Skylab 4 launch
began with assorted spots on the TV network’s morning news shows. Continuous
coverage of the launch started on CBS at 8:45 that morning and NBC started five
minutes later. Living in a new location, I found that NBC’s WNEM Channel 5 had
the best sound so I decided to record from there, but
changed over to CBS later just before launch. Deploying my implements
for capturing history, I took my normal space-buff position to watch the
historic launch that most of America would ignore in spite of network attempts of the news media to trump up an air of impending
danger surrounding the replacement of the launch
vehicle’s fins due to the discovery of some minor cracks.
At the Kennedy
Space Center the weather was perfect for a change as
opposed to the string of previous Skylab launches. Skylab’s 1 and 2 had jumped
from the pad and into the clouds in a matter of seconds, and likewise Skylab 3
had done nearly the same sort of departure. Now, however, clear skies and
unlimited visibility were the backdrop for Skylab 4. For the first time since
Apollo 7 the cameras would be able to follow the Saturn IB all the way up.
Considering that I had been held hostage in my fifth grade classroom learning
about the state bird of Iowa, or some such pointless
thing, during the Apollo 7 launch, this would be my first chance to watch an entire Saturn IB boost live on TV.
I was as giddy by
the clear weather as I was that it was a launch day. Also giddy that morning
were the three rookies in the Command Module. Gerry Carr later said that once
they were “closed out” with the hatch sealed and everything was quiet, he sat
up a bit from his couch and looked across his two crewmates. They all looked
back and they all “giggled like a bunch of
schoolgirls,” because they had been waiting so long for that moment.
Much of the
media focus on launch day involved the fin replacement efforts and the
perception that they may fall off at Max-Q. The countdown was normal and I
started my trusty tape recorder. At launch it seemed as if the flame was nearly
as large as a Saturn V, but the Saturn IB was tiny in comparison. It is interesting to note that the thrust of all eight of the IB’s H-1
engines combined was roughly equal to just one of the Saturn V’s F-1 engines.
On prior Skylab
IB launches the launch vehicle was not discernible in the haze, so this time it
was fun to watch. Cronkite kept exclaiming that this was the best we had ever
seen one of these (meaning a Saturn IB), and since I had not seen Apollo 7, I had to agree.
Cronkite
alerted viewers prior to Max-Q, which came at 69.5 seconds after liftoff. The
drama of the fins falling off had to be hyped up I guess. Of course, nothing at
all happened, no fins were lost. Then staging took place at 141.29 seconds into
the flight and we got a good view of the retro and ullage motors firing. Then, 29
seconds later, we saw the escape tower and boost protective cover jettison and
tumble away. Thereafter, Skylab 4 simply became a dot on
my TV screen. The ride on the S-IVB was described later by Gibson as being
“like an elevator.”
“Smooth as glass,
Houston,” Carr reported.
The S-IVB boosted
the CSM to just over 86 miles in altitude, where it pitched slightly downward
and flattened its trajectory to gain velocity. At 577.18 seconds into the boost
the single J-2 engine of the S-IVB shutdown and Skylab 4’s rookie crewmembers
were no longer space rookies.
The
following Monday I showed up as usual for my first hour Earth Sciences class at Freeland High School.
My teacher, Mrs. Warner, asked where I had been on Friday. Expecting the normal rolled eyes and
shaking head from her as I had seen in my previous school, I simply said that I had stayed home to watch the Skylab 4
launch. Instead of disdain, she put down her role-book and her eyes got wide,
“Oh man,” she
sighed, “I wish I could’ve done that.”
What a
difference moving to the country makes.
Monday, September 25, 2023
SKYLAB 3: SCRIBING LITTLE WHIMSIES
Skylab 3:
SCRIBING LITTLE
WHIMSIES
For most of the month of
September 1973 Skylab 3 seemed to, again, nearly drop from the news completely. Personally for me, a huge
transition took place in that same period of time. I was headed for high school and the high school that I had been
headed for was one of the worst in mid-Michigan. Knowing that a smart ass like
their son would quite likely get knifed within a week at that school, my
parents did the only thing that they could; they sold our house in Sheridan Park and the entire family
moved. Of course that up-rooting did not happen immediately. Instead, they
bought a home that was under construction in the little farm town of Freeland,
Michigan. I had an aunt and uncle who resided there and it was arranged that I
could start high school in Freeland and live with my relatives until our new
house was finished. Thus, I took up residence in the bedroom left behind by one
of my grown cousins and started attending a school where actual learning took
place and you could walk the halls in safety. We were on a “half-day” schedule
and classes started at 6:50 in the morning, but got out at noon. That left
plenty of time in the afternoons for space stuff. The only problem was actually
finding the space stuff. Jack Lousma conducted a protracted TV tour of the
Skylab in the closing days of the mission, but only small bits of that were
broadcast by the national news media. It was almost as if Skylab was not aloft
at all.
On September
25, 1973, the reentry and splashdown of Skylab 3 was scheduled for 7:19 p.m.
Eastern Time. I had spent much of that Tuesday afternoon listening to the radio’s
news reports of the progress of the returning crew.
I also had
plenty of time to ponder the fact that my cousin had spent some effort scribing
with a ballpoint pen little late 1960s hippie whimsies about “love” on the mortar joints between the bricks of his
bedroom walls. “How little I know about love, but how much I wish
I knew,” and crap such as that. Since I was not really a part of
that stoned, flower child movement, I found the writing to be a bit odd. Of
course, I was about to do something odd myself as I grabbed my tape recorder
and set it up to catch the reentry and splashdown of Skylab 3 on TV.
As I was
setting up the recording equipment my aunt came into the room and asked me what
I was doing. I replied that I was getting ready to record the Skylab 3
splashdown.
“Well, what do
you wanna do that for?” she asked condescendingly.
I explained
that I recorded all of the splashdowns.
“I don’t see
why you wanna do that,” she quipped, as if trying to motivate me to do
something more “hip,” perhaps
with a ballpoint pen.
I asked if she
could please excuse me because the coverage was about to start. She left the
room shaking her head and mumbling something about “nonsense.” Apparently she
thought my time would be better spent down in that bedroom, stoned and scripting
whimsies about “love” on the mortar joints between the bricks.
Splashdown of
the Skylab 3 crew went as advertised. CBS News had the best coverage with
Morton Dean and Wally Schirra hosting the event. I managed to get nearly a
half-hour of the splashdown activity on tape in spite of my aunt’s disdain for
spaceflight.
A few weeks
later my folks moved into our new house in Freeland and I moved out of my older cousin’s old bedroom. Before leaving I could not
resist taking a ballpoint pen and scribing a whimsy of my own on the mortar
joints between the bricks on the wall; something that would really make my
relatives scratch their heads if and when they ever read it.
“Houston,” I
scrolled in tiny letters, “the Falcon is on
the Plain at Hadley.”
Growing up with spaceflight in the 1970s, it was important to get the
last laugh.
Tuesday, August 15, 2023
M2-FI First Flight Anniversary
It was 60 years ago today that test pilot Milt Thompson piloted the world's first lifting body aircraft, the M2-F1 on its first flight.
Since the M2-F1 had to be very light weight it was constructed of plywood by sailplane maker Gus Briegleb.
So, on August 16, 1963 the M2-F1 was flying on its own. Although the steep "dive bomber" approach caught the observers on the ground, including Dale Reed, by surprise, Milt Thompson was fully in control. He did a simulated landing flair at 9,000 feet and then went right back into the descent profile. Landing exactly on his planned touchdown point he let the bird roll to a near stop before turning to roll clear of the desert runway.
When I was in high school in 1976 I designed my own lifting body "shape." It was a part of my 11th grade drafting class final project. While I was working on it- along with a model rocket booster and launch service tower with a retracting service structure (that I'm sure NASA stole from me), my drafting teacher the late Dan Craig came up and looked at the project.
"What's that wedge thing?" he asked.
"It's a lifting body," I replied as if he should know what I meant, "it's a wingless aircraft."
He simply shook his head and walked away. I go a "C" on the project mostly due to assorted tiny drafting errors, and on the lifting body he scrolled a message,
"Aircraft can't fly without wings- you should know that!"
Mine flew. Many years later my college roommate saw one of my lifting body balsa wood models and was so fascinated I gave him one. He went on to work as a NASA contractor at then Dryden, and Dale Reed's deck was just a short distance from his. So, he showed Mr. Reed my lifting body. The father of lifting bodies was impressed and said, "That would also make a great hypersonic shape."
But not constructed of balsa wood... of course
Saturday, May 13, 2023
LAUNCH OF SKYLAB 1
The following is an excerpt from my book "Growing up with Spaceflight- Skylab/ASTP" the text is protected by Copyright 2015 Wes Oleszewski and no portion of this may be republished in any manner.
SKYLAB 1:
THEY ALMOST LOST THE WHOLE DAMNED VEHICLE
Launch day was set for Monday, May 14, 1973, at 1:30
in the afternoon Eastern Time. Coverage of the launch on ABC and NBC began
exactly ten minutes before liftoff, and CBS came on five minutes prior to
liftoff. That fact alone was symbolic of the TV network’s attitude toward
Skylab. Gone were the days when the launch of a Saturn V to begin a mission
garnered more than a full hour of coverage. Oddly, the best coverage came in
the way of segments presented on the morning news shows such as “The Today
Show.” Seeing that I was in the last few weeks of attending what I considered
to be one of the worst junior high schools in the galaxy, I had no trouble
getting my parents to give me the day off from school to watch the launch.
My first view of the Saturn IB booster
that was to loft the crew up to the workshop came on the morning of Skylab
1’s launch. Scheduled to launch the day after the workshop had been placed into
orbit, the Saturn IB was mounted on a tall pedestal called a “milk stool.” The
reason for the milk stool was to allow the S-IVB stage and the Apollo
spacecraft to use their regular swing arms and assorted umbilical connections
on the launch tower. That tower had been built to service the Saturn V, which
was 196 feet taller than the Saturn IB. So a stool was needed to elevate the
vehicle. It was a unique and clever solution to allow the Saturn IB, which had
not been launched since October of 1968, to utilize hardware and launch pads
that had been leftover from the Apollo lunar missions. Originally, the milk
stool had been called the “bar stool” until some wise person at NASA
Headquarters pointed out there may be some problems with that name.
What stunned me about the Skylab Saturn
IB was that, unlike every other Saturn IB that I had seen photos of, all eight
tanks on the SA-206 first stage were painted white! All of the previous Saturn
IBs had their RP-1 fuel tanks painted black with a white rectangle containing
the words “UNITED STATES” painted in red. SA-206’s RP-1 tanks were all white
with the red lettering. In fact, all of the future S-IB stages would be painted
in the same manner. Why the heck had they done that? It was a question that
bugged me for more than three decades. Then, while researching documents on the
early Saturn IB’s, I found the answer. AS-206
through AS-210 had all of their S-IB fuel tanks painted white instead of black
because on April 19, 1965, unexplained deformations had appeared in the black
tanks on the very first Saturn IB’s S-IB stage. These deformations corrected
themselves once the stage was taken indoors. Thus they were thought to be
caused by simple sunlight heating the tank. Painting the tanks white was the
fix that eliminated the deformations. Since the tanks for SA-206 were the next
ones on the assembly line that had not yet been painted it was decided to make
the change there and simply live with the deformations from SA-201 to 205.
As network coverage of the Skylab 1 launch began I was
fully prepared with my trusty cassette recorder, a portable TV, the family TV
set and naturally my models of a Skylab Saturn V and a Saturn IB; minus the
all-white tanks, of course. Indeed I had my own launch control center all set
up in the family living room.
The countdown was smooth, having started the previous
Wednesday at two o’clock in the morning. That countdown ran in parallel with
the Saturn IB’s countdown that began at eight o’clock that same morning. It was
the first time since Gemini 12 in November of 1966 that a dual countdown had
taken place in a NASA mission.
Overall the planning for Skylab 1’s trip up-hill was
nearly identical to the previous Saturn V launches. There was, however, one
planned difference and it involved the shutdown of the F-1 engines on the S-IC
stage. Normally the center engine was shut down first at about 140 seconds into
the boost and the four outboard engines were shut down together about 20
seconds later. In the case of AS-513 the center engine was planned to shut down
at the normal time but the four outboard engines were scheduled to shut down in
sets of two, 0.7 seconds apart, in order to soften the shock of staging. That
shock, it was reasoned, could have damaged the Apollo Telescope Mount (ATM).
Counting down, the final seconds were familiar to us space-buffs
as the big Saturn V ignited at T-8.9 seconds and roared to life. As it lifted
off I had two very clear thoughts. First, I thought, “I saw you in person,” and
secondly I was somewhat saddened in the knowledge that what I was looking at
was the last Saturn V that would ever fly. Just 49 seconds after liftoff,
Skylab 1 was swallowed by a thick layer of clouds that blocked out any view
from the ground. That was unfortunate because big problems were just seconds
away.
Shortly after vanishing from sight, an “anomaly”
occurred aboard the Saturn V that put the entire Skylab program in jeopardy.
The events began about 63 seconds after liftoff. This anomaly can be found
described in historical shorthand by both NASA publications and media
presentations as being the moment when the workshop’s micro-meteoroid shield
prematurely deployed, was caught by the slipstream, and torn off the Skylab.
The overall results were workshop overheating and a
jammed solar panel wing. The second solar panel wing had been lost off the
workshop completely. Although most accounts of the launch and the Skylab program
normally leave it at that; a study of the overlooked details of the 63 second anomaly
is far more interesting and far more frightening. AS-513, in fact, came within
seconds of becoming the first Saturn V to be lost in flight.
At 62.807 seconds after liftoff the launch vehicle
began to react to an external, abnormal aerodynamic force. This was 1.707
seconds after Mach 1 (the sound barrier) was passed and was the beginning of
the anomaly that was the premature deployment and subsequent loss of the
workshop’s micro meteoroid shield.
Most media and poorly researched accounts say that the
event took place at “…the point of maximum vibration…” or they will also say it
happened at “Max-Q,” or the point where the vehicle experiences maximum
aerodynamic pressure. But, Max-Q was a full 10.63 seconds into the future and
the meteoroid shield would be long gone by then. What really happened was that
as the Mach 1 shock wave passed down the vehicle a reverse flow of air along
the skin of the vehicle found its way up what was called the Auxiliary Tunnel
(a conduit that ran the length of the workshop). Entering through two uncapped
stringers at the base of the tunnel, the high pressure air moved up the tunnel
and popped the rubber boot at the top. That airflow got up under the shield
structure and propagated a bulge that was just enough to lift the shield more
than 2 inches into the slipstream, which was now at Mach 1.05. By 63.289
seconds into the flight, less than one second after it had started, the damage
was done and the shield had torn away and its departure loosened both Solar
Array Assembly (“SAS”) wings as it went. The worst of the damage, however, was
not done yet.
As the two-and-a-half story tall, 22-foot-wide hunk of
meteoroid shield fell, it struck the Saturn V at least twice. The first impact
was on the S-IVB to S-II adapter, where the debris punched a hole in the
adapter’s skin. This showed up in post flight data as the pressure in the
adapter area was shown to drop at an abnormal rate. The potentially fatal blow,
however, came when the shield’s remains struck the Saturn V for the second
time. The impact area included the second plane separation point where the
linear shaped charge was located that pyrotechnically blows the parts of the
airframe apart so that the “skirt” ring can be dropped after first stage separation.
This “skirt sep” often seen in videos, normally took place about 30 seconds
after first stage separation. It is a critical event and, in manned Apollo
flights, if the skirt failed to separate from the S-II, it was an abort
situation requiring use of the escape tower.
The reason why this “skirt sep” is so critical is not
one of weight, but rather it is thermal in nature. A back-flow of hot gasses
from the five J-2 engines would become trapped in the confines of the skirt and
the issue would become critical at center engine cut off. With the four
outboard engines still firing in the near vacuum of space, and no center engine
to provide its flow, the back-flow of heat would intensify. The temperatures
imposed on the base of the stage along the thrust structure would quickly spike
and go into the range where a “thermally induced failure” of the stage would
take place. In that scenario the thrust structure melts and the burning engines
push up into the LOX tank. On AS-513, that is what began to take place and the
vehicle was within seconds of failure when S-II’s outboard engines finally shutdown.
Had there been the loss of one engine, and the stage had been forced to burn a
bit longer to compensate, they would have lost the entire vehicle. Even with
the S-II engines burning normally, the estimates are that the Skylab 1 vehicle
came within a very few seconds of that disaster.
So, why did the skirt fail to separate and, worse yet,
why did the ground controllers not get an indication of failed separation?
Here is why: When the separation signal was sent by
the Saturn V’s Instrument Unit (IU), two Exploding Bridge Wire units would fire
at opposite ends of the Linear Shaped Charge (LSC) loop that passed completely
around the vehicle at the separation plane. The LSC would then blow apart 199
tension straps holding the two sections together, and the skirt would thus be
freed to drop away from the S-II stage. A back-up charge would fire if an
electrical plug between the two sections did not disconnect, indicating that
the two sections were less than ¼ inch apart. On AS-513, the meteoroid shield
impacted the seam where the LSC for the skirt was located and it broke the
loop. When the LSC fired, the explosion only propagated 165 degrees around the
separation plane (about 89 tension straps). But that was enough to pull out the
electrical plug used to indicate a separation of more than ¼ inch, so no
back-up charge firing was commanded and the signal sent to the ground said that
separation had taken place when in fact it had not. Because of the cloud cover,
no ground cameras could be used to back up the faulty telemetry, so no one in
Mission Control knew that the skirt was still attached. It was calculated that the
huge meteoroid shield impacted the S-II skirt at between 200 and 1,000 feet per
second. It was a close one; they almost lost the whole damned vehicle.
A second anomaly, which also is often misreported,
involved the loss of SAS wing number 2. Most accounts say that it was lost with
the meteoroid shield, but in fact it was not! Although loosened by the shield’s
departure, SAS wings number 1 and 2 stayed connected to the work shop all the
way up. At S-II shutdown, however, four solid fuel retro rockets mounted at 90
degree intervals around S-IVB / S-II forward adapter skirt fired to aid in
separation of the S-II from the upper stage. SAS wing number 2 was centered
just 16.8 degrees off of one of the retro rockets. The plume from that retro’s
firing hit the already loose SAS wing and blew it “…completely off the bird,”
as Pete Conrad later observed. SAS wing number 1 was held down by debris from
the meteoroid shield which was enough to hold it against its associated retro’s
plume.
Although you may see the anomaly sequences misreported in “documentaries” and even in some NASA films, the facts are as stated here. It simply shows that accounts of spaceflight history are normally written by persons too lazy to dig into the post-flight analysis. It also is important to keep in mind that normally NASA films are produced by outside contractors who know little or nothing about the subject, yet were able to make the lowest bid in order to get the project. For those of you still not convinced, perhaps because Wiki something says different, don't take my word for it. Simply find NASA report MPR-SAT-FE-73-4, August 1, 1973, Saturn V Vehicle Flight Evaluation; SA-513 Skylab 1 Saturn V... and READ IT.
Friday, May 5, 2023
FACTS AND MYTHS OF FREEDOM 7
Flying aboard his Mercury capsule, christened “FREEDOM 7,” Alan Shepard made a sub-orbital hop down the Atlantic Missile Range. Officially the flight was designated Mercury Redstone Three or, more commonly, MR-3. His flight lasted just 15 minutes and 22 seconds. On the ground the news media on both radio and TV really did not quite know how to actually broadcast a spaceflight. After all, they were used to broadcasting political conventions and ball games and this was nothing like that. In fact, considering that the Soviets did their launches in secret, it was like nothing that had ever been broadcast before.
THE FLIGHT:
Shepard rode the Redstone for 142 seconds. At that point the
engine cut off exactly as planned and the escape tower jettisoned itself
simultaneously. Although Shepard heard the event, he did not see any part of it
other than the green light that indicated tower jettison. Next, he heard the
clamp-ring that held the capsule to the booster blow apart and saw the green
light that indicated the event. He also felt what he described as “a little
kick in the tail” when the posigrade separation motors fired and separated the
spacecraft from the booster.
Now Alan Shepard was flying in space.
Automatically the Mercury spacecraft rotated around to what
was known as the “blunt end forward” attitude needed for reentry. From that
position Shepard exercised FREEDOM 7’s manual controls in the pitch, roll, and
yaw attitudes and reported periscope observations for all of two minutes. Then,
at five minutes and 14 seconds into the flight it was time for the retro
sequence. The retros fired on time and one minute later the retro package was
jettisoned. Shepard heard what sounded like the pack letting go and saw some
small bits of debris out the porthole, as well as part of one of the
restraining straps, but he did not get an event light indicating the jettison.
Instinctively he hit the manual “JETT RETRO” override switch and the green
event light illuminated. After years of preparation to fly in space and months
of preparation for this specific flight, all of which involved countless
problems that could occur, this single little glitch with the retro package
jettison light was the only thing on Shepard’s flight that did not go as
planned.
FREEDOM 7’s reentry carried a high “G” load and Shepard
momentarily soaked up 11 G's – 11 times the force of what a person experiences
in normal gravity, or 1 G. The high G loading lasted only a few seconds, after that
Shepard simply sat there and dropped into the atmosphere. At nine minutes and
38 seconds into the flight, FREEDOM 7’s drogue parachute deployed and shortly
thereafter the main chute deployed normally. FREEDOM 7 splashed down so close
to the recovery helicopters that even before Shepard could get a good start at
reading his instruments and switch positions as required during the post flight
process, the recovery “helo” had already hooked onto the capsule. Concerned
that the capsule may be a bit too low in the water, Shepard radioed up and
asked the recovery helo to lift FREEDOM 7 a bit higher. As soon as that happened,
he took off his helmet, hung it on the hand-controller, reached over his right
shoulder and cranked the lever that opened the hatch. He then sat on the hatch
sill and grabbed the horse collar that was lowered from the helicopter. Alan
Shepard, the first American to fly in space was safely landed aboard the
carrier USS LAKE CHAMPLAIN, and thus brought the Free World to a standing
ovation.
MYTHS AND FACTS:
A number of myths and legends have grown around Shepard's
historic first flight. From a Hollywood movie that played VERY loosely with the
facts, to poorly produced documentaries, to sanitized accounts published by
NASA and “LIFE Magazine,” to personal accounts drafted from memories with
plenty of wear on them – it is often hard to drum out something close to the
actual events. Since my personal account of FREEDOM 7 ranges no farther than my
grandma’s TV set and watching the launch at age 4, I figured it would be fun to
denote a few of those odds and ends of the mission here.
One commonly held myth is that Shepard reported aspects of
his condition and those of his capsule as being “A-ok.”
In fact, Shepard never used the term “A-ok” during the
mission. The term “A-ok” was actually popularized by NASA Public Affairs
Officer (PAO) John “Shorty” Powers who announced the flight. Yet the term
“A-ok” was instantly integrated into the general public’s spaceflight
vocabulary. In the early 1960s my parents bought me a little blue jumpsuit with
astro-insignias all over it. The one on the right chest was a round white logo
that had a red “A-ok” on it.
Many people think that during Shepard’s flight, the public heard
his voice calling out readings and making observations as it happened.
In fact, not a single word that Shepard spoke during the
mission was allowed to be heard live by the public. Only those who were inside
NASA working the mission and had a “need-to-know” were allowed to hear the live
air-to-ground transmissions. This may seem amazing today when nearly every word
of a spaceflight is broadcast live. Yet, although NASA was far less risk averse
in the Mercury days, they were far more image aware. All of the air-to-ground
transmissions that the Mercury astronauts broadcast were filtered through PAO
Shorty Powers, who then repeated to the public a “NASA-correct” version of what
was being said. Later, shortly after the flight, films of the mission had the edited
recorded voice track of the astronaut dubbed in and from there on that became
the “official version” of the mission. As the Gemini program came into being,
the voices of the crew on orbit were allowed to be broadcast- but were normally
done so by NASA on a time delay. Reentry and launch air-to-ground was not
allowed to be heard live by the public until, believe it or not, Apollo 10.
Prior to that, since the live broadcasts were quickly forgotten by the general
public, those official films and clips that were later fed to the public soon
developed the illusion that everything was always heard live. This became
especially engrained in the public after Apollo 10, when all future launches
and reentries carried live air-to-ground voice.
The Soviets plotted to liquidate the first American
astronaut
Fact- Exactly who would be the astronaut to fly aboard the
first Mercury spacecraft was kept a close secret within NASA.
All that was released to the public were the names of the
top three choices: Glenn, Grissom and Shepard. It was not until after the scrub
of Shepard’s original launch date on May 2 that NASA decided to actually make
public his identity as the first United States astronaut to fly. There were
very elevated concerns that if the Soviets found out which of the seven Mercury
astronauts were actually slated to make the first flight, the Soviets might
assign agents to do harm to that individual. This, however was a myth. Historians
digging into the KGB archives years later found no such inclination at all by
the Soviets.
Fact- Shepard’s FREEDOM 7 spacecraft was unique because it
had a manually opened hatch.
The hatch itself was closed with 70 bolts, but was released from the inside by way of a mechanical handle located over Shepard's right shoulder. Spacecraft 7 was the only manned Mercury capsule equipped with this hatch, which weighed 82.23 pounds. The other manned Mercury spacecraft all saved weight by having a pyrotechnically removed hatch, which weighed just 22.9 pounds.
Myth- “What a beautiful view”
His spacecraft also differed from the other manned Mercury
vehicles because it was equipped with two portholes rather than a forward
forward-facing window. That forward facing window, however, ate up a large part
of the weight saved in the use of the light weight pyrotechnically opened
hatch.
Shepard can be heard during the flight describing the
“Beautiful view” seen through his periscope. That was a myth concocted by
Shepard himself. Remember, FREEDOM 7 was the only manned Mercury spacecraft
that did not have a “pilot’s” window. Instead, the spacecraft had two portholes
located approximately where the astronaut’s elbows would be. It was nearly
impossible for a pressure-suited astronaut with a helmet on to see much of
anything through those portholes. Like most of the manned Mercury spacecraft,
however, Shepard’s had a periscope. The periscope was a handy tool, and the
Mercury crews liked it. As Shepard waited through a series of pre-launch holds,
he had nothing to do other than look out through the periscope. At sunrise, as
the vehicle sat on the pad, the sun shined directly into the periscope, so
Shepard put in a dark gray filter to cut down the glare. Unfortunately, when he
remembered to remove the filter prior to launch, as he reached out for it the
pressure gage on his wrist contacted the “Abort” button. Shepard immediately decided
that he was not going to monkey with those filters anymore because initiating a
pad abort, with the escape tower pulling the capsule away from a perfectly good
booster because you were messing with periscope filters, would be hard to
explain in the debriefing. During his flight, there was a specified point where
he was supposed to look through the periscope and make a report. Dutifully, he
deployed the periscope and discovered that the dark filter heavily obscured
what he could see.
“I really couldn’t see a damned thing through it,” he
confided to Gus Grissom after the flight, “so I just gave the same weather
report that I’d been given in the preflight briefing and called out some known
landmarks.”
In fact, if you read the actual weather briefing given to Shepard before the launch and compare it to what he broadcast back to the ground it is almost word-for-word the same – with a few well-known landmarks thrown in. In the transcript of his recorded debriefing, Shepard is evasive about this part of the flight and finally resorts to answering questions about his ability to see landmarks by simply saying “I don’t remember” repeatedly. In that same debriefing he does, however, remember every other tiny detail about the flight. Hummmmm.
Myth: The pre-launch thumbs up
In that near-fictional movie titled “The Right Stuff,” Shepard
is shown stepping from the transfer van at the launch pad, stopping and looking
up at the booster then giving a big “Thumbs Up.” He did stop and look the
booster over, but he never did the thumbs-up. Additionally, the movie shows him
stepping from the recovery helicopter onto the carrier deck and having his
first footprints on the deck outlined in yellow paint. That never happened
either. Of course, those are just two of a large number of errors in that
movie.
Facts- Oil derrick and Surfside 5
The service gantry used on Shepard’s Mercury Redstone was a
former oil derrick that was disassembled and trucked to Cape Canaveral during
the early 1950s. It was set up at the newly established Launch Complex 3 &
4 to service the Army’s first Redstone tests. The gantry was moved on common
railroad rails in order to clear the rocket. Sometime between March of 1955 and
April 1955 the tower was lowered, and the gantry was moved to the Army’s new
Vertical Launch Facility. It was there that the gantry serviced FREEDOM 7’s
launch vehicle.
Early image of Redstone IRBM and the service tower used for Freedom 7 several years later. |
It is also true that Shepard peed in his spacesuit while on
the launch pad. The flight had been planned for just 15 minutes, so there would
be just over four hours between the time Shepard was zipped into his space suit
and zipped out of his space suit; and a good pilot can hold his water for that
long. Unfortunately, assorted launch delays lengthened that time and the
astronaut’s bladder began to send signals insisting on being de-tanked. After
some discussion, it was decided to cut the power to his bio-medical equipment
and allow Shepard to wet his pants. On the next flight a sort of diaper
arrangement was improvised.
So, although the flight of FREEDOM 7 was a historic event
that was planned to the smallest detail, there were still some odd aspects to
it. The legends and myths about the flight grew on their own, unfortunately
aided by TV and movie producers who knew and cared nothing about spaceflight.
Although Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev called the flight
of FREEDOM 7 “a flea’s jump,” Shepard’s flight was 100% successful. To many
Americans it was a grand-slam home run scored in a game of spaceflight with the
Soviets where we had previously been hitting foul balls and striking out. The
flight helped influence President Kennedy to set the nation’s course toward a
landing on the moon. Additionally, in the wake of the Bay of Pigs political
disaster the previous month, the FREEDOM 7 mission was the first major positive
political event in the Kennedy administration. Overall, May 5, 1961, was a very
good day in the free world… oddities, myths and legends aside.
For detailed accounts of all of the Mercury flights, check out Wes' book HERE |