The Unbroken Chain

Chapter 4 - Orbit!

The year 1962 brought us numerous delays in the scheduled launch of John Glenn. With each new slip in the schedule, the press and the Congress got more nervous and irritable. The general feeling was that NASA could not get its act together. But the Russians were ahead of us for three reasons: their rockets were bigger, they were working with less complex technology, and they simply took more chances. We knew our more cautious approach was the right one.

On evenings when I got home with a couple of hours of daylight left, 1 usually took my boat out in the Banana River to do some fishing. It was a favorite release of mine, but I usually found myself engrossed in thought. I started playing the “what if?” game. I tried to figure out what could be done if we had a fire at the base of the booster, or what could be done if a big hydrogen leak developed, or what could we do if lightning hit the gantry. I knew that in the type of work we were in, problems could escalate rather rapidly. It was important to he prepared for the situations we least expected. We would not always have time to pull out manuals or to wait for the test conductor, miles away, to suggest a course of action. We had to be ready to act on our own. Many of my evenings were spent pondering these problems. I don’t think it was ever completely out of my mind.

Although Pad 14 was much more sophisticated than Pad 5, it still lacked a few of the creature comforts we would have liked to have had. The only restroom facilities we had were three open-fronted stalls constructed out of wood below the main pad structure. An electrical technician reported back to work one afternoon, his face flushed red with terror. Me had been sitting on the outhouse bench below the pad when he noticed a six-foot diamondback rattlesnake approaching in his direction. As the large snake came closer, the young man began flinging rolls of toilet paper at it. Unabated, the rattlesnake continued slithering toward the stall. In desperation, the technician stood up, his pants still down at his ankles, and grabbed an overhead bar. Swinging over the snake he landed on his feet and ran all the way out to a dirt road before even stopping to pull his pants up. We thought it was hilarious. The poor technician did not.

The space program had become such big news that we had a steady stream of Congressmen and other politicians who saw us as an opportunity to get themselves quoted or to get their pictures in the paper. It was rather disheartening when we got a visit from the number two man in the Senate’s Space Committee. You would have expected such a man to have some basic knowledge about the program. In the white room I briefed him on our procedures and explained such operations as fueling the booster and loading the astronaut into the spacecraft. He listened quietly, nodding his head from time to time. After I had finished he looked at me and asked, “My good man, where are the engines located on this rocket?”

I said, “Senator, they are way down below us, at the very bottom.”

“Oh...” he replied pointing up at the ceiling. “So you mean the I'ocket goes straight up this way, eh?”

“Yes sir. That’s the way it goes,” was all I could answer.

During the unmanned launch of MA-3, a one and a half ton flatbed truck had been parked near the base of the booster to test blast effects from the Atlas. Examination of film coverage showed that the effects from heat were negligible, but the blast itself had overturned the truck and rolled it a considerable distance. It was noted that the cherry-picker would need to be securely attached to the pad if it was to escape a similar fate during Glenn’s upcoming Mercury-Atlas 6 launch.

For the Atlas program, a second M-113 tank was added. One was designated for fire fighting while the other was responsible for rescue and evacuation. Both tanks would be stationed south of the pad. Since a large drainage ditch blocked their path, a steel culvert had to be constructed to give them access. Special breakaway sections were installed in the chain link fence that encircled the complex.

Although we did bring the cherry-picker with us to Pad 14, it was not to be used as a primary means of egress. That left us with developing some alternate way for the astronaut to escape the spacecraft in an emergency. A tiny elevator was installed on the umbilical tower. It ran on a single cable and was considered so unsafe, MAC employees were prohibited from riding in it. After it was first installed, a painter was subcontracted to paint the structure. Working at the ground level, he sent the car to the top so that he could paint inside the shaft. When the car reached the top, the stop switch failed and the motor continued to wind until the cable finally broke. Back down the shaft the car hurtled. The painter had been leaning inside the shaft and had just leaned back out to put paint on his brush when the car crashed into the ground in front of him.

On January 2nd, we mated the spacecraft to the Atlas booster in preparation for Glenn’s flight. Small problems delayed the launch and tried Glenn’s patience. Some tests required Glenn or his backup, Scott Carpenter, to spend hours lying on their backs in the capsule. On one of the long suited-up tests, a technician decided to break the monotony by holding up a Playboy magazine centerfold in front of the periscope. At the Control Center, Glenn’s heart rate was seen to rise. We didn’t bother to tell them the reason.

I was starting to get a reputation for being very meticulous and intolerant of mistakes by now. It was pretty well known that when you were at the spacecraft level, you did not do anything without my approval. Glenn had recently seen the film of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and had been struck with the almost mechanical perfection that the Germans exhibited in the opening ceremonies. Everything went very smoothly with few deviations. It reminded him of how I ran the show in the white room.

“You’re just like the Fuehrer!” John snapped at me one day. Everyone around erupted into laughter and the nickname stuck. From then on, I was “the Fuehrer of the Launch Pad”.

Except for some changes in the panel layout, Glenn’s spacecraft was little different from Grissom’s. Perched atop the shiny Atlas booster, the entire vehicle had a much different look, however. It was more massive and appeared much taller. Part of that was due to the two-story tall launch pad, a complicated structure of steel and concrete, wrapped with a maze of large metal pipes. Still, the Atlas was a monster compared to the slim Redstone.

The scheduled launch date slipped several times in January and the press and Congress became more impatient. Many were starting to believe that we had already lost the race with the Russians. Everywhere the astronauts went, press people hounded them. They staked out the Holiday Inn and followed them into restaurants. It got to the point that the guys could get no privacy at all. To ease that problem, I welcomed them as guests in my house. They gladly accepted. They ate dinner with us when we were home. When we were not, they just looked in the refrigerator and helped themselves. I think treating them like family members did a lot for their morale during this period. My daughters and their friends got used to coming home to find an astronaut asleep on the couch in the living room. It seemed perfectly normal to them. It was a very well-kept secret and the press people were going crazy trying to find out where the astronauts were disappearing to.

The stress on the astronauts’ families was obvious. John’s wife, Annie, once asked me, “Guenter, can you promise me that John will get back safely from his flight?”

I knew the answer she wanted, but 1 just couldn’t give it to her.

“Anyone who promises you that is just not being truthful with you,” I told her. Knowing the state of the hardware, the inherent dangers in the missions, there could simply be no guarantees.

“I will promise you this. When we close the hatch and roll the gantry back, I will promise you that there will be nothing that I know of which would prevent his safe return.” Annie smiled and nodded. She understood that was the best I could offer and appreciated my honesty. And she still worried.

All during the month we worked 12-hour days. There was always some modification needed or some little problem that needed fixing. Sometime during that period we came up with the idea of possibly stowing some dollar bills onboard the spacecraft as souvenirs. I suppose the idea was probably hatched by my assistant, K. J. Day, who had secretly done this for Grissom’s earlier flight. We decided to approach Glenn with the idea and to our surprise, he approved. A group of about fifty one-dollar bills were rounded up and we recorded their serial numbers. John signed each one “John H. Glenn” and returned them to us. Next we rolled them up tightly and inserted them into a piece of thermal-shrink tubing. The plastic tube was then evacuated and sealed. When we applied heat, it shrunk into a tight package. The packet of bills was installed next to a wiring bundle in the spacecraft, and inspectors verified the professional installation, using existing standards. In this manner, our souvenirs would accompany Glenn on his historic flight.

Sometimes I was invited up to the astronaut quarters for dinner. I knew what this really meant though. They had some space food they had to test, and wanted to share the experience with me. Most of the samples were in squeeze containers, somewhat similar to toothpaste tubes. Other times they were in plastic bags or bottles. In spite of the various names that appeared on the labels, it all tasted pretty much like wallpaper glue. Maybe this stuff was good for them, but it sure didn’t taste good.

On January 27th, we got Glenn loaded into the capsule with hopes for a launch. The skies were overcast, but there was a chance for a clearing. John lay patiently on his back in the capsule he had named “Friendship 7”. For over six hours he waited to see if the gantry would be rolled away. By noon, however, the clouds had not cleared and flight director Walt Williams called it a scrub.

On the 30th, we once again began preparations for a launch. After fueling the Atlas, a leak was discovered forcing a postponement for another two weeks. Public pessimism ran high, influenced by the press. The urge for us to get the launch accomplished was nearly overwhelming. It was really difficult to exercise restraint. The only good thing out of the delay was that it gave John some time to return home to Langley for a well-deserved rest.

The new scheduled launch date of February 13 came and went. Two days later, another cancellation due to bad weather. It seemed like we would never get the flight off. On the 19th, a split countdown was started with hopes for a break in a frontal system on the following day. By late afternoon, the skies were looking much improved.

After a brief sleep at home, I returned to Pad 14 for the pre-dawn preparations. I and my crew all wore white lab coats with the word “McDonnell” embroidered across our backs. The little paper hats we wore made us look like ice-cream vendors. Scott Carpenter soon joined us to check out the spacecraft, also in a white smock and hat. He was a warm and sincere guy. I always enjoyed seeing him.

Right at 6 o’clock in the morning, Glenn stepped out of the transfer van at Pad 14 in his silvered space suit. Every person at the complex watched with anticipation as he rode the elevator up the fifteen stories to the white room. When the smiling Glenn appeared, we all shook his hand and swapped some light jokes. In minutes, he was safely tucked away in Friendship 7. A small glitch occurred with a respiration sensor attached to his microphone. Joe Schmitt made some adjustments to the bracket, but ultimately, it was decided just to ignore the problem and continue.

My closeout crew slid into position and began bolting down the hatch as the)' had done so many times before. Halfway through the procedure, one of the bolts snapped off. I immediately got on the line to the Control Center. Unlike the cross-threaded bolt we had had on Grissom’s flight, this bolt had sheared completely off. I suggested that it should be replaced and Walt Williams called the hold while we began to work on the problem. The TV cameras that were fixed on us saw little but the backs of our smocks as we huddled over the work area. I dropped the fractured bolt into my pocket.

My technicians removed the hatch and then had to drill out the plate nut where the broken remains of the bolt were lodged. This took about 22 minutes. And all during that time, our worldwide television audience stared at the word “McDonnell” on the white background of every lab coat. It must have been terribly boring for the viewers. After getting the broken bolt removed, we again replaced the hatch and began buttoning it up. This time, no broken bolts. We began the cabin purge in order to pressurize the spacecraft with 100% oxygen. At 8:05, the countdown resumed and not long after, we vacated the spacecraft level leaving Glenn all alone. The white room was collapsed like an accordion and the gantry rolled back.

From the fallback area, a couple of hundred yards down the access road, my job now was just to monitor the process. Two more short holds were called by the test conductor, Tom O’Malley, but soon we were at T minus ten minutes and counting. The morning was chilly and I was happy to have my headset covering my ears. Through the tiny speakers I could hear the count winding down. One hundred million people were glued to their black and white TV sets and over 50,000 spectators crowded the beaches to the south. Whatever happened, everyone was going to see it live.

“T minus 15 seconds,” I heard in my headset.

Feet shuffled but no one spoke. I could see a few people train binoculars on the Atlas scarcely a quarter mile away. They weren’t needed. It looked like we were standing right beside it.

“T minus 10..., 9...., 8...., 7..., 6....” My heart rate was surely higher than Glenn’s.

“5..., 4..., 3..., 2..., 1, ignition”

The Atlas seemed to shudder as flame burst from its base and a giant cloud of white steam mushroomed out to the side.

“Liftoff!” Slowly, the vehicle began to climb from the pad. Noticeably slower than the Redstone had. The fiery plume and cloudy trail were immense as the rocket cleared the tower. Fly! Fly! We craned our heads, looking more steeply into the bright sky as the silver bird soared higher. No one could hear it over the sound of the rocket engines, but every mouth seemed to be shouting and fists were triumphantly raised into the air.

The Atlas was gulping fuel down at the rate of 2,000 pounds a second.

With each passing second it gained speed. And with each second it became lighter allowing it to gain even more speed. Soon it would hit max-q, the point at which aerodynamic pressure was greatest. If liftoff was the first hurtle, max-q was certainly the second. It was the one point where the odds were greatest that the vehicle might explode. I crossed my fingers in my pocket.

As Mercury-Atlas 6 passed through max-q, Glenn reported on the radio, “It’s a little bumpy about here.” But then it was over and his ride smoothed out as the air became thinner. Glenn was going higher and faster, accelerating toward the 17,500 mph orbital insertion speed. He would be feeling close to 7 times his normal weight by now. We strained to see the tiny bright dot which had outrun its long, white contrail.

At five minutes into the flight and at an altitude of approximately one hundred miles, the Atlas’ engines shut down and the capsule separated from the booster. “Zero-g and I feel fine,” the astronaut reported. John Glenn was in orbit.

As the crowd at the fallback area finished their handshaking and back-slapping, I awaited the “all clear” from the Pad Safety Officer. In a few minutes I had it and took my crew back for the post-launch cleanup. While we got our equipment secured, Glenn completed his first orbit, passing unseen over our heads. A few small attitude problems occurred, but he successfully flew the spacecraft by hand and everything was looking very good. Unknown to us, and to Glenn, a controller at the Goddard Space Flight Center had received a troubling signal from the spacecraft.

The telemetry code was referred to as “segment-51 ”. If correct, it would spell disaster. The heatshield on Friendship 7 was a bit different from the beryllium ones used on Shepard’s and Grissom’s flights. A1 and Gus reentered the atmosphere at substantially slower speeds than Glenn would. Their beryllium shields were perfectly capable of insulating them from the frictional heat that was generated as they crashed back into the atmosphere. Higher speeds and higher temperatures mandated an ablative heatshield on orbital flights. Without it, the spacecraft and its occupant would be incinerated. After a successful reentry, but prior to splashdown, the heatshield would be discharged from the spacecraft, but would remain attached to a fabric landing bag. This bag was to provide an impact cushion. What segment-51 indicated was that the heatshield had been released so that the landing bag could be deployed. If that happened prior to reentry, the heatshield would be ripped free leaving John exposed to searing temperatures exceeding 1,600 degrees Celsius.

Someone at the Mercury Control Center got hold of Max Faget on the telephone. Faget, the project’s chief engineer, had been one of the lead designers of the spacecraft. Fie even held a patent on it. The crusty little Cajun knew the capsule as well as anyone on Earth.

If the heatshield was indeed loose, the only thing holding it in place would be the retro-rocket package. This was a small array of three rocket motors strapped to the bottom of the heatshield. Its job was to slow the spacecraft from orbital speed prior to reentry. Faget suggested that the retro pack should not be jettisoned after it was used. Fie hoped that the steel straps might help to hold the heatshield in place.

After three orbits, Glenn fired the retros, but retained the pack as he had been instructed. As he slowed in the thickening atmosphere, a huge fireball surrounded Friendship 7. Chunks of anonymous metal from the retro-pack clanked against the spacecraft as they burned away. A huge relief was felt when the fiery shroud began to diminish and Glenn finally reported in on the radio that everything was okay. Fie splashed down safely just six miles from the recovery ship.

With our work at the pad completed, I returned to my office at Hangar S. Late that afternoon I got a telephone call from John Yardley. Mr. Mac wanted to get the broken hatch bolt that we replaced and have it gold-plated for display in our St. Louis offices. All during the time we worked on the repair, the TV cameras were focused on the backs of our lab coats. Mr. Mac was thrilled because for twenty-two minutes the world had seen little but the word “McDonnell” on their televisions. Twenty-two minutes of free television advertising for Mr. Mac’s company.

I removed the bolt from the pocket of my lab smock and rolled it over in my hand. It was so similar to any number of other hatch bolts that we had lying around Hangar S. They all certainly looked the same. I walked over to Yardley’s office to give him the bolt.

“You know, Guenter, it seems to me that there is only one person who knows if this is really the exact bolt,” Yardley said as he looked at the broken piece of hardware. “Would you swear to me on a stack of Bibles that this is the one from the spacecraft this morning?”

“You got a stack of Bibles around here?” I asked. No, not a one in Hangar S to be found.

So, we just left it that the one I gave him was the real one. Now, in my own personal collection I do have a broken hatch bolt which looks very similar to that one...

John, Al, and Gus stayed busy with national parades, speeches, and visits to Congress over the next few days. During the same period, the Manned Spacecraft Center began packing up for its move to Houston and the Saturn booster was formally selected as the rocket that would send astronauts to the moon.

When John returned to the Cape, we had our After Launch Dinner Party. The stories Glenn told of his flight were fascinating and we felt quite special at hearing his candid report. We had removed the earth-path indicator from his spacecraft and had mounted it in a rosewood case. I was proud to present the gift to him after the dinner. It formed a very attractive in/out basket and I was pleased to see it displayed many years later on his desk in his Senate office.

With the success of Glenn’s flight and all the notoriety it brought, suddenly, every politician wanted to be seen at the Cape. It seemed like a solid stream of photo ops and press conferences. One Senator arrived at the white room with an entourage of about thirty reporters with him. He stepped up the little steps to the spacecraft and leaned against the hatch.

“Okay,” his assistant called out. “Let’s get some pictures.”

At the back of the white room, I spoke up rather loudly.

“Hey, stop it. There’s a problem.”

The Public Affairs Officer turned to me with an annoyed look demanding to know what the problem was. “We have permission to do this, you know,” he complained.

I offered to go up and explain the problem to the Senator, but no, they wanted me to speak right up.

“Alright,” I answered. “Senator, your fly is open.” Deke Slayton was next in line for an orbital flight. He and his backup, Wally Schirra, had been training alongside Glenn and Carpenter for several months. Deke was excited about his flight and had chosen the name “Delta 7” for his spacecraft. Unfortunately, the medical community was about to force a change in his plans.

NASA had known for a while that Deke had an anomalous heart rhythm. The doctors had an official term for it - idiopathic atrial fibrillation. At any rate, it was not considered to be of much significance. With his flight coming up next his medical case was reopened. Bill Douglas rounded up three other doctors assigned to the Mercury program to review the data. They concluded that Slayton’s heart condition was not a factor and that he should continue with the mission. The Air Force then became involved. Their team of doctors came to the same conclusion. Deke was fit for duty. NASA Administrator James Webb went one step further and referred the case to three nationally recognized cardiologists. They were unable to determine, one way or the other, whether or not the heart condition might affect Slayton’s performance. Their recommendation was that another astronaut be chosen for the flight. In spite of high level lobbying by Walt Williams (now Director of Operations) and Bob Gilruth, Slayton was grounded. They wouldn’t even let him fly an aircraft without another pilot aboard, Everyone felt the disappointment.

Scott Carpenter was selected to take the next flight. MA-7. Scott was an unusual guy. Physically the best specimen of the seven, he was also the most philosophical. To him, this was not just an orbit of the earth, it was a pioneering step to the stars. He saw a much bigger picture than any of the rest. Scott was always polite and thoughtful, one of the nicest people you would ever meet. But once he slid behind the wheel of his Chevy convertible, the stereotypical astronaut emerged. He was hell on wheels, blazing around Cocoa Beach. Later on, he graduated to a custom Shelby Cobra. I think he scared the crap out of Glenn on numerous occasions.

We worked on a number of modifications to Carpenter’s capsule, most aimed at reducing weight or correcting some of the control difficulties that Glenn had experienced.

Like Glenn had done before, Carpenter spent many hours suited up and on his back in the spacecraft. There was a great German restaurant in town called The Black Forest Inn. Scott had eaten a hearty meal there I he night before one of the tests. After several hours of work, I heard some type of groan through my headset. I looked around and a few raised eyebrows and shaking heads indicated that no one knew where it came from. A few minutes later we heard it again. The medics in the blockhouse heard it, too. and feared it might be coming from Carpenter.

“You okay in there, Scotty?” someone asked. “Is there a problem?”

“No, no problem,” he replied. “But that’s the last time I eat sauerkraut, knockwurst, and beer at that damn German restaurant.”

The space suit did not have a very good odor decomposing system. Carbon dioxide was removed, but whatever else was in the suit simply got recirculated. Closed up tight in his silver skin, poor Carpenter had been forced to breath the exotic gases that now circulated inside.

During another test, Sam Beddingfield injected a little humor into the capsule. Scott was always singing this song called Yellow Bird. Sam had someone with some artistic talent draw up a picture of a nude girl laying next to a pillow and guitar. They got it sneaked into the spacecraft and stuck onto the periscope. The caption to the picture read, “But Scott-Sweetie - - Yellow Bird Again!??” By late May, Carpenter and his spacecraft were ready to go. On the 24th, weather and technology conspired to get the mission off on schedule. With uncharacteristic smoothness, the countdown marched to zero and Scott Carpenter blasted into the sky. For three orbits, he saw the universe unfold in front of him as few humans would ever see it.

At Cape Canaveral, the rocket programs were all in full swing. On any given day you might see the launch of an Atlas, or a Titan, or Polaris, a Delta, or a Minuteman or a Pershing. We were showing ourselves off to the world in grand style.

One thing bothered me though. Each morning when I came in through the South Gate. I was aware that there was no American flag. It really started to bother me that there was no flag to show who owned this place or who we were working for. With that in mind, I wrote a letter to Major General Leighton Davis, the commander of the Air Force station:

“Would it not be possible to display the American flag daily at the North and South Gates to remind the many people who enter this place, to go beyond the bare fulfillment of their assignment? To do a little more than asked, for the benefit of this land of ours, symbolized by Old Glory. Maybe I am over-sensitive to the lack of interest since I was raised in a totalitarian regime. But the real value of freedom is only known after one loses it.

So let us display the symbol of freedom, not just on holidays, but every day of the year. To entice the people who enter the test annex to look beyond their company regulations or agency's framework to work toward the maximum benefit of the United States.”

A couple of weeks later I got a reply. The lack of a flag was not due to a lack of interest, I was told. Regulations restricted the Air Force to only one flag per installation. That flag, the letter said, was flying in front of Building 425, the Administration Building.

Now you have to understand that the flag they were referring to was a good twenty-two miles away, on the other side of Cocoa Beach at Patrick Air Force Base. As far as I was concerned, we still had no flag, so I got to work to come up with a remedy. After some phone calls and meetings I got back in touch with General Davis’ office. I had it all figured out. What if I could supply a flag pole and a flag for the South Gate at no charge to the Air Force? Pan American, the base contractor, had already agreed to run it up and down the pole each day at no extra charge. Alright, they told me, but they would still have to see if they could get an exception to the Air Force regulations mandating only one flag per base. 1 offered to help by involving some Congressmen friends of mine. A week later, 1 got a call from General Davis’ office. The Pentagon had given approval for a flag at the South Gate and the pole was being installed as we spoke. To this day, that same flagpole greets everyone who comes through the gate.

A few months later, Mr. Mac came down for a visit and 1 asked him how he liked the new flag. Oh, it looked great, he said. You could easily see it from a half mile out. When I told him I had committed him for ten thousand dollars, he looked a bit surprised.

“That’s what I bought with $10,000?”

“No, sir. The Air Force put it up,” I told him, then gave him the whole story of how I had offered to do it myself.

“Well what would you have done if I had said no?” Mr. Mac asked.

“Oh, you know me. I would have taken my hard hat and gone around to the other contractors asking for donations.” Mr. Mac just shook his head. “You never change, do you Guenter? You don’t follow any rules or regulations.”

“Mr. Mac, I just see a problem and solve it the quickest way 1 can.” Sometime in mid-1962, the Air Force decided to make the final phases of all the launch countdowns public and broadcast them over the PA system all across the area. On one early Delta launch, the guy giving the count apparently forgot he was being heard publicly.

“5..., 4..., 3..., 2..., 1..., liftoff..., plus 1..., plus 2..., plus 3..., oh, shit!” That never happened again. They said he was transferred to Alaska.

At any rate it was interesting to keep up with all the launches. You didn’t even have to see them to know what was going on.

In late summer, we began approaching the date for Wally Schirra’s MA-8 flight. Like all the rest of the astronauts, he spent a lot of time training in Hangar S and working in tests at the pad. Wally was a real character. A very assertive type, but not arrogant. He usually tempered his comments with humor and, in fact, was probably the biggest jokester of the bunch. I always enjoyed hearing him bellow at me: “Hey, Gunner!” followed by some loud punch-line. His guffaws were commonly heard all through the white room.

August 15 marked the launch of another Russian Vostok spacecraft. Surely they expected to break the seventeen orbit record held by Titov, leaving us further behind in the race. The following day, it only got worse when Vostok IV was launched. Now the Soviets had two spacecraft in orbit simultaneously. At one point, they even approached within three miles of each other. We felt it like another slap in the face. Would we ever be able to catch up with them?

Several days before Schirra’s launch, we were busy servicing the hydrogen peroxide thrusters in the spacecraft. Through my headset I heard one of the engineers ask the person in the capsule to pass on some meter readings so he could determine if the tanks were full. The answer came back immediately.

“I’m not showing any hydrogen peroxide onboard.” There was dead silence on the intercom for several moments. Finally the engineer came back online.

“Cycle the breakers and see if any of the gages move.”

The man aboard did so and replied, “Negative, no movement. We aren’t registering any peroxide at all.”

“Standby,” the engineer transmitted. He went straight to the technicians involved in the fueling and had them weigh the tanks. They were virtually empty indicating that all the hydrogen peroxide had been transferred. The dangerous liquid was somewhere in the spacecraft. Everything came to a screeching halt. There was a real concern that some of the plumbing had sprung a leak and the entire load of hydrogen peroxide might be bottled up behind the heatshield. We immediately called the chief test conductor and had the area evacuated. Everyone left except for a couple of inspectors and myself.

Hydrogen peroxide is a highly unstable chemical. It readily reacts with hydrocarbons in what chemists refer to as a “rapid decomposition.” In common language, it explodes.

We got Roy Post, a McDonnell engineer, on the telephone. He had designed the belly band which attached the spacecraft to the booster and was very knowledgeable in the workings of the heatshield. In short order, he was up in the white room with us. Somehow, we were going to have to drop the heatshield with a bunch of fire engines standing by, then flush out the peroxide. The only way to do that would be to disconnect the spacecraft from the rocket, then slowly lower it to the ground where the heatshield could be dropped. It would have to be as gentle an operation as we had ever done.

It was an extensive amount of work and we had to perform it with as few' people as possible. Except for the firemen below us, the entire pad had been vacated. After a couple of hours of delicate work, we had the capsule disconnected and lifted it away from the Atlas. With equal care, we lowered it slowly toward the ground.

Numerous firemen gathered around the spacecraft, their hoses held at the ready. We had rigged a lanyard to manually drop the heatshield. I told the fire captain that the instant I gave the order to pull the lanyard, the fire crews were to blast the capsule with water. I was very worried that we might have a huge fire right next to the booster.

Everyone possible took cover and 1 got the go from the block house to drop the heatshield. The instant the lanyard was pulled, fire hoses began pumping hundreds of gallons of water over the capsule, and directly into the vent holes in the landing bag. As Ihe dangerous chemical became diluted, firemen moved in closer until they actually had one of the hoses stuck directly through a vent hole.

Once again our chain had held tight. We had identified a problem, involved the proper people, come up with a solution, and implemented the solution successfully. Any one break in the chain could have caused the event to end in disaster. That’s the way the space business worked. No one was inconsequential.

Scott Carpenter had been handicapped somewhat on his mission by receiving his flight plan late. In post-flight briefings, his suggestion for a longer lead time was heard. Wally got his Mercury-Atlas 8 documents in plenty of time to allow for the training period Carpenter had recommended.

MA-8 was to be a qualification run for longer duration missions. While Glenn and Carpenter had only completed three orbits each, Wally was scheduled to go for six. One of his main mission objectives was to optimally manage the spacecraft systems to conserve thruster fuel and electrical power.

On October 3rd, we all arrived at Pad 14 with high hopes and a good weather forecast. At 4:40 a.m., Wally entered the white room, joking and relaxed. After getting situated inside the spacecraft, he let out a loud chuckle. He had discovered the automobile ignition key the crew had left hanging inside. Rummaging around some more, he found a steak sandwich, wrapped up securely in plastic.

The countdown progressed smoothly for the next two and a half hours. At 7:15, Wally Schirra aboard “Sigma 7”, launched into the heavens in what would later be termed a “textbook flight.” No BS for Wally Schirra. When it came right down to it, he could always be counted on to focus totally on the job. When the laughs all died away, Wally was as serious a pilot as you could ever find. Fly the damned spacecraft! And that he did until, nearly nine hours later, he reentered the atmosphere and effected a pinpoint landing in full view of the camera crews on the recovery ship.

With five successful Mercury manned launches under our belts, things were looking pretty promising. There was only one more Mercury launch scheduled, a day-long flight by Gordo Cooper to rate the systems and astronaut for long-term orbital exposure. The possibility for a follow on three-day mission existed, but we were already looking past that to the upcoming Gemini program. This would be where we really tested our ability to live and work in space. It would be our step up from a Model-T to a sports car.

Meanwhile, nine new astronauts had been selected. Jim Lovell, Neil Armstrong, John Young, Pete Conrad, Frank Borman, Elliot See, Jim McDivitt, Tom Stafford, and Ed White joined the “Mercury Seven”. Completely aware of their subordinate status, they dubbed themselves the “Next Nine”. I wonder if they guessed, at the time, that two-thirds of them would one day make the journey to the moon while two of the nine would never see a manned Apollo flight leave the earth?

Gordo Cooper had always been something else. He was quiet and “laid back” as Americans like to say. But he also had a wild streak in him that did not sit well with NASA management. As easy going as he seemed to be, the man loved speed. When he wasn’t blasting around the Cape in his Corvette, he was racing laps at the Daytona International Speedway. He was just too slippery to be tied down.

Six months of preparation separated Cooper’s flight, “Faith 7”, from Schirra’s. The Mercury-Atlas 9 flight plan called for twenty-two orbits over a thirty-six hour period. It was, by far, our longest mission yet. Soon after Cooper began training, I made an 8x10 coupon out of a piece of cardboard. It read, “This coupon and 25 cents will get you the flight of your life. Present it at Pad 14 for your ride into space.” I had the card laminated in plastic and put it on his desk in the astronaut quarters.

Two days before the scheduled launch date, my crew and I busied ourselves in the white room preparing for the flight. There was always some kind of loud noise going on - the loud hiss of escaping gases, the clanking concussion of some hydraulic arm, messages broadcast over the pad on the PA system. But a new, sudden roar and shriek slammed us like an explosion. WHOOOM! Cooper’s F-102 jet blasted through the launch complex, its afterburner rattling every bolt and rivet in the gantry. The sound was deafening.

After we regained our senses and realized what it was, a few shaky chuckles went around the white room. Yep, that’s old Gordo alright. I was sure he was leaned back in the cockpit, cackling away with glee. Walt Williams, however, was not. He was immediately on the phone to Deke Slayton who now held the title of Chief Astronaut.

Williams was furious. He had had it with Cooper’s rogue nature and high speed antics. He couldn’t care less if the flight was only two days away. Cooper wasn’t going to fly it! With considerable effort, Slayton managed to calm him down. Deke knew well what it felt like to have a flight pulled out from under you. There was no way he was going to let that happen to Gordo. In a monumental act of diplomacy, Deke convinced Williams to keep him on the mission. Gordon Cooper was going to fly in space.

On May 14, 1963, Cooper stepped out of the elevator into the white room. His face was lit up with his trademark smile. Gordo gave me a crisp salute.

“Private Fifth Class Gordon Cooper reporting for duty.”

I returned the salute. “Private Fifth Class Wendt standing by.” Chuckles went around the room as Cooper proceeded in, shaking a few hands as he went.

“Hey, Gunner. I’ve got somethin’ for you,” he said as he reached into the pocket on the right knee of his spacesuit. Out came a little plastic case with a gold-plated quarter in it and a plaque that read as follows:

“To The Proprietor of Pad 14: Here is my quarter. Now I want the ride of my life."

Unfortunately, the tracking radar system in Bermuda developed problems and a hold in the count was called. It took them about an hour to get things working and around 8:00 a.m., we got the order to clear the gantry for the rollback. Now the second snag happened. The diesel locomotive engine that moved the gantry would not fire up. We considered trying to pull the gantry back on its tracks with several large trucks, but decided that that would not work. It was just too massive. For two long hours, engineers worked on the engine’s fuel pump. By the time they had it working and got the gantry rolled clear of the vehicle, radar problems had reappeared in Bermuda. The blockhouse called for a postponement, so we moved the gantry back into position and opened up the hatch. After sliding Gordo back out of the spacecraft he had named Faith 7, he turned to us smiling and shaking his head.

“And I was just getting to the fun part. That sure was a realistic simulation.”

The next morning, the 15th, we got Cooper loaded once again into his spacecraft. After getting the hatch closed on Faith 7 and getting the go ahead to clear the white room, I took one last peak through the capsule’s window. There lay Gordo, peacefully on his back with eyes closed, taking a leisurely nap. That was the day he got the ride of his life.