The Unbroken Chain

Chapter 3 - Not an easy business...

I think John Kennedy recognized the importance of our presence in space early on, although he operated pretty much on the knowledge of his advisors. Vice President Johnson was probably his biggest influence. Kennedy’s earliest plans for our exploration of space seemed to run independently of the long term planning at NASA. His main goal was to beat the Russians. Von Braun had years before determined that we should go to the moon. But the big question remained, how do we do it? For Kennedy, it became a question of how soon can we do it?

Even before Alan Shepard’s flight, the Kennedy-Johnson administration had been pushing for a lunar mission objective. Although many thought it could not be accomplished until sometime in the early 1970’s, the politicians continued to strive for acceleration in the plans.

Shepard’s MR-3 flight proved that we were capable of operating in space, and politically more important, that we were capable of competing with the Soviets. On May 25, less than three weeks after our first astronaut tested spaceflight, Kennedy was ready to make the public commitment. Although he had intended on setting 1967 as the target date for our assault on tine moon, NASA management convinced him to call for a more flexible date - sometime before 1970. In one of the most famous addresses to Congress, John Kennedy made the challenge known: “I believe that this Nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth. No single space project in this period will be more exciting, or more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space. And none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish. In a very real sense, it will not be one man going to the moon - we make this judgment affirmatively - it will be an entire nation.”

In preparation for MR-4, our second manned Mercury flight, I took a number of trips to St. Louis to monitor development of the next capsule we would launch. This capsule incorporated a number of changes. Most noticeable was its enlarged window. Shepard had only had two small portholes in his spacecraft. Most of his observations were made using the periscope. Capsule number 11, the one that Gus Grissom would fly, was equipped with a substantially larger window made with a special glass developed by Coming. Its wide trapezoidal shape would make it useful for direct visual observations during the flight.

The second major modification was in the instrumentation of capsule number 11. The panel was rearranged to accommodate the new Earth-path indicator. This was essentially a moving sphere which showed the spacecraft’s position over the earth. While it wasn’t needed on Grissom’s flight, another suborbital “lob” as we called it, the instrument would be required for future orbital flights.

The final major modification was in the hatch. Shepard’s hatch had been a clumsy, latch-operated affair. In Grissom’s spacecraft, the 70 hatch bolts were drilled out and a shaped charge run through them. The new explosive hatch could be jettisoned very quickly by the astronaut by simply depressing a switch on the inside of the cabin. Outside, a lanyard stowed safely away in a small compartment could be used to blow the hatch by recovery personnel. I saw a demonstration of the new hatch while in St. Louis. A loud bang and the hatch was blown a good twenty-five feet straight out. Quite impressive. I had no idea that it would soon become a thing of legend.

A couple of other minor changes were incorporated into Grissom’s spacesuit. On his chest would be mounted a convex mirror. We called it his “Hero’s Medal”, but in reality it was simply put in place so that cameras filming the astronaut could, at the same time, record the instruments on the panel. The second little improvement was less noticeable. A heavy latex condom was fabricated with a tube on the end that led to a relief bottle. Learning from Shepard’s lesson, it was decided that if the astronaut needed to go, he sure as hell better be able to.

The Redstone booster for Grissom’s flight arrived at the Cape on June 12, and by the 22nd, we had it erected at the pad. As we completed the final mods to the spacecraft, Gus kept busy with training and simulations, shadowed by his backup, John Glenn.

Over the years there has been a lot of speculation about the origin of the names given the spacecraft by the astronauts. Each one ended with the number “7”. With a little nose-thumbing at the Russians, A1 tagged his capsule “Freedom 7”. The public generally believed that the 7 was meant to refer to the seven Mercury astronauts. While a nice coincidence, Shepard actually chose that number because his was capsule number 7, the seventh one off the production line. Glenn was probably the one who came up with the idea of using “7” to refer to the entire group of Mercury astronauts. Grissom obviously agreed and when it came time to name his capsule, he dubbed it “Liberty Bell 7”. The tradition was born.

Gus was physically the smallest of the Mercury astronauts. He had a face like a bulldog, a close-cropped “flat-top”, and tended to be a man of few words. Once when asked to address a team of contractor technicians, his spoke in his clipped monotone: “Do good work.” Three words said everything that needed to be said. The technicians and engineers understood exactly. An excellent pilot and very thorough engineer, himself, he was highly respected by his comrades.

The initial schedule put the launch of MR-4 on July 18, but weather forced a postponement until the following day. On the 19th, weather was not much improved and the launch was scrubbed just ten minutes before liftoff. Finally, on the morning of the 21st, Grissom arrived in the clean room and we got him loaded aboard with a forecast for improved skies. I felt very handsome in my clean white jacket, white baseball cap with the word “McDonnell” across the front, my headset, and white shirt with a bow-tie. After final hook-ups and adjustments, I shook Gus’ hand and requested the go to close the hatch. In minutes, my technicians were busy torquing down the 70 hatch bolts. One of the bolts got cross-threaded and we called a hold in the count so that engineering management could assess the situation. It was quickly decided that the one bad bolt would not jeopardize proper function of the hatch and the count resumed. At 7:20 a.m., his Redstone roared to life and he rose from Pad 5 in a shower of steam and ice, balanced on a column of thickening white smoke.

With some procedural changes involving Earth observations and Grissom’s testing of the attitude control system, the flight was basically a repeat of Shepard’s flight. It arced out 303 statute miles over the Atlantic, reaching a peak altitude or “apogee” of 118 miles. In a little over fifteen minutes, Liberty Bell 7 was bobbing around in the choppy ocean water, its flight completed.

Gus’ first job was to uncouple himself from the hoses and straps which restrained him. The minutes ticked by as he went through his postflight checklist and prepped the capsule for egress. This included arming the hatch detonator switch and recording all the switch settings on his instrument panels. By the time he was finished, ten minutes had elapsed since splashdown. Gus radioed the main recovery chopper, Hunt Club 1, to proceed with the pickup. Everything was going as planned.

Moments later the astronaut heard a “dull thud.” Seawater began rushing into the cabin. The explosive hatch had somehow detonated and a stunned Grissom instantly recognized the severity of the emergency. Get out or go down with the ship!

Gus Grissom yanked off his helmet and scrambled out of the open hatch, flopping into the ocean water. He was able to swim away from the spacecraft as Hunt Club 1 jockeyed into position to snare it. Thinking that some help was needed, Gus swam back to Liberty Bell 7 and climbed part way onto the sinking spacecraft to help guide the hookup. With the snare made, he gave the chopper pilot, Jim Lewis, the thumbs up signal and retreated back into the water.

Instead of proceeding to extract Grissom from the choppy sea, Hunt Club 1 dragged the capsule up and away. Now completely full of water, it was nearly too heavy for the chopper to lift. Up and down the linked pair went as pilot Lewis tried desperately to pull the spacecraft clear of the water. The emergency was compounded by a warning light on Lewis’ instrument panel. It indicated that his engine could fail in the next five minutes. Time was on no one’s side.

While Hunt Club 1 wrestled with the spacecraft, Gus was tiring in the water. The spacesuit was designed to be water and air tight so he expected good buoyancy. In his haste, however, he had forgotten to close the oxygen inlet valve. As he bobbed up and down in the Atlantic, his suit slowly began to fill. Down-wash from the choppers blasted him from above and choppy ocean waves hit him from the sides. Exhaustion began to set in as Gus tread water and tried to wave at the Navy choppers to come pick him up. They did not realize that he was quickly running out of steam.

With Hunt Club 1 and Liberty Bell 7 well clear of the stranded astronaut, Hunt Club 2 moved in with its safety line. In exhaustion, Grissom draped himself into the “horse collar” and was hauled up into the chopper.

Meanwhile, Hunt Club 1 had managed to drag the capsule barely clear of the churning sea, but its landing spot, the aircraft carrier Randolph, was just too far away. Fearing imminent loss of his engine, Lewis made the fateful decision to cut the spacecraft loose. It sank to the bottom, some 15,000 feet away.

In spite of the fact that the spacecraft was lost, everything else had gone well and the mission was deemed a success. The saga of Liberty Bell 7 and its explosive hatch just wouldn’t die, though. Tests were performed in attempts to discover what caused the premature jettisoning. It was quickly determined that Gus could not have blown it himself. Yet, public opinion continued to place blame on the astronaut. His colleagues all rallied to his defense, but the cloud of suspicion followed him for the rest of his life.

Even though we (and I was onboard the ship for 19 days with Curt Newport when he performed the feat) did manage to recover Liberty Bell 7 in 1999. no one has ever been able to come up with an undisputed theory of what happened. But there is one theory that makes the most sense to me.

If you will remember, we said that the hatch could be blown in either of two ways. First, there was the detonator switch on the hatch, inside the capsule. It looked like a small plunger with a round cap on it. There has been speculation that Gus engaged it by hand, but that is not possible. Those astronauts that did mash the switch ended up with a nice little injury on their hands as the switch recoiled from the explosion. Grissom had no cuts or bruises on his hand. Others have suggested that he hit it with his helmet, but this is highly unlikely.

My own suspicion involves the second method for blowing the hatch: the external lanyard. I believe the lanyard may have gotten free of its compartment on splashdown. Then, in the choppy water it could have swung around and become entangled in the fabric landing bag between the capsule’s rear bulkhead and the heatshield. Thus entangled, it could easily have been pulled. We will never know for sure, but I suspect it was nothing more than a freak accident.

Gus took along a few souvenirs with him on his trip into space. Two rolls of dimes, a few dollar bills, two pairs of pilots wings, and some gold Mercury capsule lapel pins. What he - and I - did not know was that a few of my technicians had secretly stuffed a number of additional dollar bills and Mercury head dimes into the nooks and crannies of the spacecraft. It wasn’t until Max Ary at the Kansas Cosmosphere was doing the restoration of the recovered spacecraft that some of these were found.

Gus Grissom was a wonderful man. He might easily have become the first man to set foot on the moon. Looking back now, it seems like he was tragically fated. A victim of circumstances he simply could not control.

Initially, it had been planned that all the Mercury astronauts would take a sub-orbital ride before we began our orbital program. But by the time Grissom went up, Bob Gilruth, head of the Space Task Group, had determined that only three Mercury-Redstone flights would be needed. John Glenn had been training with Shepard and Grissom and was next in line for a Redstone mission. Gilruth began to consider even skipping MR-5 altogether, so that Glenn could make a 3-orbit flight. This would enable us to pass the Russians. So far, only Gagarin had flown on his single orbit. On August 7, however, Russian cosmonaut Gherman Titov blasted into space with a 17-orbit blockbuster. They had upstaged us again. And even worse, this time the Russian’s orbital track carried him directly over the continental United States. We really began to worry that the Soviets were poised to take permanent control of space. There seemed to be nothing we could do about it except chase them.

Everyone felt the pressure as the Soviet Union left us in their dust. NASA management beat all the ideas back and forth and finally, on August 18, announced that the Redstone program had met all of its objectives and would be canceled. The competition had really heated up and it was time for us to take the next step - we could wait no longer. John Glenn would soon be on his way to becoming a national hero, unlike any we had ever seen before.

With the Redstone program finished, Dr. Debus was transferred over to the Saturn booster program, which would later become Apollo. The long-term plans were for us to continue the Mercury orbital program using the Atlas rocket and then move into the Mercury Mark-II program. This program, later renamed Gemini, was where we would practice the rendezvous and maneuvering techniques that would be needed once the Saturn program began its attack on the moon. We were given orders to pack it all up at Complex 5 and move about a mile north to Launch Complex 14. From here, the mighty Atlas would launch our astronauts into orbit. It had considerably more thrust than the Redstone and that was what we needed to boost our spacecraft into orbit. The Atlas was a flimsy rocket, actually. Its skin was so thin that it could not support itself and its payload unless it was pressurized. Like a balloon full of air, the gas pressure gave it rigidity.

The gantry at Pad 14 had two air-conditioned, enclosed working levels -a huge improvement over the green room we had at Pad 5. These were our first “white rooms” and it was at this time that we really became conscientious about keeping the area and the spacecraft clean. The technology all around us was quickly becoming more complex. Even the smallest amounts of dirt or moisture could cause untold problems.

Our first order of business after getting setup at Complex 14 was to prepare for the launch of Mercury-Atlas 4. Earlier in the year, Mercury-Atlas 3 had been destroyed by the Range Safety Officer only 40 seconds into its flight when its trajectory went awry. Big Joe, MA-1, MA-3... The only success we had had so far in the Mercury-Atlas program had been MA-2. Only one success in four attempts...

The capsule used on MA-3 was saved by the escape rocket and had been sent back to St. Louis for refurbishment. It was to be recycled and used on MA-4, making it the only NASA spacecraft to fly twice (until the Space Shuttle program). Our job now was to load it up for a canned man mission. That was the term we gave to the “crewman simulator” that would ride in the astronaut’s couch. Every conceivable piece of data was to be recorded: noise levels in the spacecraft, vibration, radiation levels, temperature. A special camera was placed in the cabin and would take 20,000 pictures of the instrument panel during the flight. Another camera would take 10,000 pictures through the periscope. At 9 o'clock in the morning on September 13, those cameras began snapping their pictures. Although some minor deviations in the flight envelope were noted, the one-orbit mission was completely successful and the way was cleared for MA-5.

The portion of NASA directing the manned programs had been known as the Space Task Group ever since it had been formed in 1958. Having operated out of borrowed facilities at Langley, it had slowly outgrown its welcome. With the exploding size of our manned program efforts, the decision to move the STG was made. Houston was announced as its new home and a new name came along with the move. Gilruth’s new empire would be known as the Manned Spacecraft Center. NASA’s space program was rapidly expanding into nationwide proportions.

It was about this time that I got to witness the maiden flight of the first Saturn 1. This rocket was huge. It dwarfed the boosters we had been working with for the last two years. It developed more thrust than four Atlas rockets. Watching this monster climb out from Pad 34,1 got my first real feeling that we were actually on our way to the moon.

In early November, a Mercury-Scout test flight went wrong and the booster had to be destroyed 43 seconds into its flight by the RSO. The press was livid. They were all over us with accusations of incompetence and demands that we get a man into orbit. Nonetheless, Mercury-Atlas 5 was scheduled for its orbital flight with our old friend Enos at the wheel. At one point during the countdown, a hold was called because of a telemetry link failure. The gantry was rolled back to the vehicle and the hatch opened. A switch was found to be turned off, so we quickly got it reset. Back at the Mercury Control Center the joke was that Enos had talked to Ham and had flipped the switch off so that he wouldn’t have to go.

MA-5 launched without a hitch and soon Enos was orbiting the earth, pulling the levers at his fingertips as he had been trained. With correct pulls, he was rewarded with banana pellets and sips of water. Incorrect pulls punished him with mild electric shocks to the soles of his feet. The whole experience was obviously stressful though. His heart and respiration rates were significantly elevated and the poor guy began having premature ventricular contractions.

During his fourth session of lever tests, an electrical malfunction occurred and the frustrated chimp was given a classic “insoluble” problem. His correct lever pulls registered as incorrect so he was given a shock and the problem was re-presented. Another correct pull followed by a shock to his feet and he was right back where he started. When he tried an incorrect lever pull, that registered as correct, but he was given the jolt anyway. No matter what he did, he got shocked. In exasperation, Enos managed to free one of his arms from its restraint and tore open the belly panel of his “space suit”. He then proceeded to yank off the bio-sensors attached firmly to his skin and pulled out the urinary catheter with the balloon still inflated! I still wince when I think about that. After splashdown and recovery, press photographers urged Enos’ handlers to put him back into the couch for some pictures. Enos, totally stressed out and determined that he was not going for another ride bit one of the handlers in the leg, giving him a nasty gash. Spaceflight was not an easy business for anyone.