‘What a Beautiful View’: 55 Years Since Freedom 7 Began America’s Adventure in Space (Part 2)

Shepard's 15-minute flight offered him a few minutes of weightlessness and a few minutes to glimpse the grandeur of Earth from space. He was only the second human being to leave the Home Planet. Photo Credit: NASA
Shepard’s 15-minute flight offered him a few minutes of weightlessness and a few minutes to glimpse the grandeur of Earth from space. He was only the second human being to leave the Home Planet. Photo Credit: NASA

In the half-hour between 9:30 and 10 a.m. EDT on 5 May 1961, the United States came to a standstill. A Philadelphia appeals court judge interrupted all proceedings to make an announcement, whilst free champagne—even at this hour—flowed freely in taverns, traffic slowed on Californian freeways, and people danced and sang in Times Square. Even the new president, John F. Kennedy, barely four months into his new job, could only watch, dumbstruck, as he beheld the view on a TV screen. Fifty-five years ago, this coming week, America launched its first astronaut into space. Standing in his secretary’s office, after having just broken up a meeting of the National Security Council, Kennedy’s hands were deep in his pockets as he witnessed history in the making. On the screen, the camera panned upward to trace the trajectory of a rocket, heading into space, bearing the first American ever to break the bonds of Earth and venture into the ethereal blackness of space beyond.

More than five decades later, it is easy to consider John Glenn’s orbital mission, in February 1962, as having overshadowed the 15-minute “suborbital” flight of Alan Shepard aboard Freedom 7. As outlined in yesterday’s AmericaSpace history article, Shepard’s Redstone booster lacked the impulse to accomplish a full orbit, and he essentially rose from Florida and splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean, 100 miles (160 km) north of the Bahamas. Yet for a relieved America it was a timely and spectacular triumph. At 9:34 a.m., Shepard heard the firing command, but later admitted that excitement quickly took over. When the countdown clock touched zero, Shepard’s gloved hand moved to start the mission timer. “The liftoff was a whole lot smoother than I expected,” he later recalled. “I really expected to have to use full volume control to be able to receive, but all my transmissions over UHF were immediately acknowledged, without any repeats being requested.”

Fifteen minutes seems too short a time for much of meaningful substance to be achieved. It was quite the reverse. Before launch, Shepard agreed with Project Mercury Operations Director Walt Williams that he would talk as much as possible, to keep everyone updated on his progress. As the Redstone—a former U.S. Army missile, human-rated to support suborbital flights—rose higher his calls crackled over the radio, giving fuel readings, oxygen readings, G-meter readings, and systems readings. The stresses of launch were surprisingly low, but the flight took a bumpier turn when the Redstone reached the transitional zone between the edge of the “sensible” atmosphere and space. Eighty-eight seconds into the flight, Freedom 7 shuddered violently and, according to Shepard’s biographer, Neal Thompson, the astronaut’s head began “jackhammering so hard against the headrest that he could no longer see the dials and gauges clearly enough to read the data.” Shortly thereafter, the vibrations calmed.

Carrying the hopes and dreams of a nation, Freedom 7 thunders into space on the morning of 5 May 1961. Photo Credit: NASA
Carrying the hopes and dreams of a nation, Freedom 7 thunders into space on the morning of 5 May 1961. Photo Credit: NASA

A minute later, at 141.8 seconds after launch, the rocket’s engine finally fell silent and the escape tower was jettisoned. The latter should have been automatic, but it would appear that Shepard pulled the manual “JETT TOWER” override. Small explosive charges separated Freedom 7 from the rocket, and thrusters pushed the pair gently apart. Now flying freely, Shepard’s mission was to prove that, unlike Yuri Gagarin, he could actively control his spacecraft. He switched from automatic to manual control about three minutes after launch and, using his control stick, tilted the capsule through pitch, yaw, and roll maneuvers, all whilst traveling at a suborbital velocity of more than 5,000 mph (8,000 km/h), three times faster than any American in history. The craft responded crisply, although the spurt of its hydrogen peroxide thrusters was often drowned out by the crackle of the radio.

“Weightlessness” came as a peculiar surprise, as Shepard’s body gently floated from his couch and against his shoulder harnesses. Flecks of dust drifted past his face, together with a steel washer, which quickly vanished from view. Nearing the apex of his upward arc from Earth, he glanced through Freedom 7’s periscope to behold the splendor of Earth. Unfortunately, during the morning’s lengthy delays, to prevent sunlight from blinding him he had flipped a switch to cover the lens with a grey filter and had forgotten to remove it. Now he could only see a grey-colored blob on the screen. He tried to reach across the cabin to flick off the filter, but his wrist inadvertently touched the abort handle and he thought it best to leave it well alone.

His words—“What a beautiful view!”—were doubtless sincere, but certainly were not accompanied by full color. Still, he was able to see quite “remarkable” things, including Lake Okeechobee, on the northern edge of the Everglades, as well as Andros Island, shoals off Bimini, and cloud cover over the Bahamas. Later, he would tell a journalist for Life magazine that he saw “brilliantly clear” colors, but admitted privately that the grey filter obliterated most of the color. When questioned by fellow astronaut Wally Schirra, his response was simple. “Shit,” he said, “I had to say something for the people!”

Back on Earth, those “people” were watching and listening and praying intently. At the top of his long arc over the Atlantic Ocean—reaching 116 miles (186 km) at his highest point—the periscope automatically retracted and Shepard strained to search for stars through Freedom 7’s awkwardly placed port holes. Disappointingly, he saw nothing. There was little time to ponder about it. Only a third of his 15-minute space voyage would be spent “in space,” and of those precious minutes virtually all were devoted to scientific and technical tasks, lasting a minute here and two minutes there. At length, the capsule’s retrorockets fired and at 9:40 a.m., six minutes since launch, Shepard began his descent to the ocean.

The return to Earth, whose gravitational stresses peaked at 11 G, was physically demanding and “not one most people would want to try at an amusement park.” Within 30 seconds, Freedom 7 slowed from 5,000 mph (8,000 km/h) to less than 500 mph (800 km/h). So high were the G forces that Shepard could barely manage more than a few guttural grunts to fellow astronaut Deke Slayton at the control center. Inside the capsule, temperatures remained stable at 28 degrees Celsius (82.4 Fahrenheit)—“like being in a closed van on a warm summer day,” he later noted—as the blistering extremes of re-entry, outside, reached 1,200 degrees Celsius.

Shepard is winched to safety in the minutes after Freedom 7 splashed into the Atlantic Ocean. Photo Credit: NASA
Shepard is winched to safety in the minutes after Freedom 7 splashed into the Atlantic Ocean. Photo Credit: NASA

It was 9:43 a.m. Nine minutes since launch.

Four miles (6.4 km) above the Atlantic, the drogue parachute popped out of Freedom 7’s nose, followed by the jettisoning of the antenna capsule and deployment of the 63-foot (19-meter) orange and white main canopy. With “a reassuring kick in the butt,” this arrested the capsule’s descent and a snorkel valve equalized pressure with the outside air. Moving more slowly now through the clouds, the capsule descended in a stately manner, at no more than 19 mph (30 km/h), and splashed down beautifully. Shepard had landed 300 miles east of Cape Canaveral and within sight of the recovery vessel, USS Lake Champlain.

It was 9:49 a.m. Fifteen minutes and 28 seconds had elapsed since launch. America’s first mission into space was over.

After splashdown, Freedom 7 listed over to its right side, but quickly returned to a normal, heatshield-down orientation. The parachutes cast loose to prevent dragging the capsule and a large patch of green fluorescent marker dye quickly spread across the water. Within minutes, Wayne Koons, pilot of one of the five Marine Air Group 26 rescue helicopters from the Lake Champlain, was hovering overhead, and his co-pilot, George Cox, had snagged the capsule with a hook and line.

At length, Shepard popped open the hatch and grabbed the padded harness (nicknamed “The Horse’s Collar”) that Cox had lowered, looping it over his head and under his arm. For America’s first astronaut, and for a relieved nation, it was “a beautiful day.” Twelve hundred sailors crowded onto the deck of the Lake Champlain, cheering their newest hero. Freedom 7 would be exhibited at 1961’s Paris Air Show, and the astronaut himself set foot on the deck of the recovery ship as the clock struck 10:00 a.m. EDT. Across the nation, the euphoria was electrifying. Floridians cheered, John Glenn jokingly asked for another Redstone to be set up for him, New Hampshire’s governor visited Shepard’s hometown, schools were closed, and military aircraft dropped confetti. The astronaut’s proud parents and sister rode in an open-topped convertible, his wife, Louise, chatted to journalists outside her Virginia Beach home, and Navy jets spelled the letter “S” in the sky.

The flight of Freedom 7 was an enormous shot in the arm for the United States, at a time when the nation’s scientific and technological might was being held in check by the Soviet Union. Although Shepard had not surpassed Yuri Gagarin’s achievement, the fact that his mission was played out in the full glare of world publicity underscored the reality that America desired to adopt a stance of openness and transparency in its human space endeavors. Three weeks later, on 25 May 1961, the ultimate consequence of Shepard’s flight was enshrined in government policy by President Kennedy himself: by committing the nation to landing a man on the Moon … and granting barely eight years in which to do it.

 

 

This is part of a series of history articles which will appear each weekend, barring any major news stories. Next week’s article will focus on the 30th anniversary of Missions 61F and 61G, a pair of flight which should have occurred a week apart in May 1986, but were canceled in the wake of the Challenger tragedy.

 

 

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3 Comments

  1. Wonderful account of Freedom 7. As a side note, I believe that the firing of the retro rockets was used as a “test” for the later orbital missions. The capsule would have fallen back to Earth anyway because of its slow velocity.

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‘Man, I Gotta Pee’: 55 Years Since Freedom 7 Began America’s Adventure in Space (Part 1)

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