50 years ago today - MA-6
 

Today is the 50th anniversary of MA-6 (Mercury-Atlas Mission 6).

Payload was a Jarhead named John Glenn. Enos wanted more money so I guess they used a Marine instead. :D

First orbit of an American Astronaut. Three Orbits in just over 4 hours 55 minutes. :yeah:

Not too shabby for a Leatherneck, didn't hardly break anything. :D

Yeah, they ran out of monkeys...

:D

Qualified monkeys.

a really interesting article:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-19514_3-57...th-john-glenn/

Apparently at 90, Glenn still has his pilot's license and only sold his plane last year.

I went to the Evergreen Space museum on Saturday.
http://www.evergreenmuseum.org/the-m.../space-flight/

They have some great exhibits of the Mercury flight. Now that was a bloody small capsule he flew in.:o

Down in Richmond, South Virginia there is a museum with a mock up of the Mercury capsule that you can climb in... or at least try to climb in.

There was a reason there was a height restriction on Mercury astronauts. :yep:

I believe the Boeing Museum also has a capsule you can climb in. Man that must have been one hellavah ride!:dead:

Interesting article.

All jokes aside when you stop to consider a few things, Glenn's achievement and Shepard's and Gagarin's were remarkable to say the least. Less than 20 years earlier men were fighting a war in prop driven aircraft and rocket propulsion was still not perfected. A 45% failure rate for the Atlas rocket booster would have been a cause for concern as well. Not great odds.
These guys had to be brave and just a little crazy.

Hats off to John Glenn for a long and successful career. :salute:

speaking of Gagarin, did anybody see the show "Dark Matters" , about the cosmonauts before Gagarin?

http://science.discovery.com/tv/dark-matters/

The old rumor I always heard was that the first cosmonaut was the son of a Russian jet designer, Vladimir Ilyushin. Stories were that he died, was critically injured or spent the rest of his life in an asylum.

Ah, heres a page on him: http://www.lostcosmonauts.com/ilyushin.htm

Of course in those days, EVERYTHING in the USSR was a state secret. And if anything happened to you, they just airbrushed you out of the old photos and pretended that you never existed. So even guys who were hurt in standard flying accidents or training were "excised" from history. However, color me skeptical on the lost cosmonauts stories. No real evidence has ever been found. The Soviets launched Sputnik 1 and 2 in 1957. Sputnik 2 pretty well maxed out the R-7 booster. I doubt it had the capacity to carry a human. Sure, if they left off the upper stage, they might have the lifting capacity to carry a human on a suborbital flight but it's unlikely they had a vehicle ready.

"The Right Stuff" by Tom Wolfe is a great book on the Mercury program. (As usual, the book has about 10x more content than the movie).

There was a real concern that the rocket might blow up since the Atlas rockets had a very spotty record. Both previous launches had used the more reliable Redstone rocket. During the middle of the flight, ground control were receiving warnings that the heat shield might be detached, so they were not even sure he could make it back alive.

All the mercury astronauts were great pilots. When Gordo Cooper made his record breaking flight in 63, all the electronics progressively failed and he had to fly the entire landing manually, guesstimating the proper re-entry angle by looking out the window and timing the burn with his watch. He still managed to land right in the middle of the landing area.

The true story.

http://www.filmfan.com/images/stills...ronaut_B&W.jpg

"Godspeed, John Glenn!" I'm old enough to remember listening to it on the radio. I still have the National Geographic with the article in it. :sunny:

...must....resist....temptation....:D