Greater than 60 years in the past, a pair of astronauts ready for America’s third Earth-orbital area mission. Wally Schirra and Gordo Cooper—prime and backup crewmen for Mercury-Atlas-8 (MA-8), a flight Schirra had nicknamed “Sigma-7” on account of its engineering focus—had been coaching to launch atop a large Atlas rocket and spend as much as 9 hours and 6 orbits in area.
However earlier than both man could possibly be cleared to fly, they needed to make it previous the docs. And an omnipotent determine that they encountered every day was the astronauts’ nurse, the formidable Dee O’Hara.
Urine samples had been half and parcel of their medical routine and Schirra and Cooper trusted O’Hara implicitly to take theirs every day. One morning in September 1962, the nurse arrived at her workplace to be greeted by the most recent “specimens” from Schirra and Cooper.
However every time Schirra was round, a sensible joke sat not far behind.
On this event, the astronauts left O’Hara an enormous bottle in the course of her desk, crammed with heat water, coloured with iodine and foamed-up with laundry cleaning soap. For good measure, Schirra tagged the bottle’s supply time in Greenwich Imply Time (GMT), playfully added a handful of lollipops and retreated to await the nurse’s arrival at work.
O’Hara walked in, took a horrified take a look at the big specimen bottle and burst out laughing. Schirra later devoted {a photograph} of the nurse, clutching the bottle, and inscribed it with a easy legend: Gotcha. However Schirra’s Sigma-7 mission, which flew on at the present time in 1962, can be crammed with nice drama, pleasure…and some gotchas of its personal.
He and Cooper had been named as prime and backup crewmen the earlier July and the flight was jam-packed with engineering duties, emphasizing spacecraft methods and administration of hydrogen peroxide propellant utilization for attitude-control and cautious conservation {of electrical} energy. Certainly one of few scientific duties can be an try to watch a ground-based xenon floodlight in Durban, South Africa, which might glimmer at 140 million candlepower, and a one-million-candlepower quartet of flares at Woomera, Australia. A couple of different terrestrial and climate observations had been deliberate, however on the entire Sigma-7 was a pure engineering take a look at flight.
Early on 3 October, Schirra was woke up within the quarters of Cape Canaveral’s Hangar S by Air Pressure flight surgeon Howie Minners. He showered, dressed and ate the standard breakfast of steak and eggs.
One other merchandise additionally took pleasure of place on the breakfast menu. The earlier night, Schirra and fellow astronaut Deke Slayton had gone fishing. The Cape had earned renown for its wonderful surf fishing, particularly within the spring and autumn, and the 2 astronauts hooked a number of bluefish.
They had been “within the five-pound vary,” wrote Schirra in his autobiography, Schirra’s Area, “however they fought free by severing our leaders with their razor-sharp enamel. I managed to land one by slinging it on the seashore and pouncing on it earlier than it might wriggle again to the surf”. The bluefish, it appeared, was not the one particular person with a shock in retailer. The 2 astronauts had been conscious of a Thor-Delta rocket—carrying NASA’s Explorer 14 satellite tv for pc—located on close by Pad 17, however they didn’t know the way shut it was to launch.
“It wasn’t till we heard a roar that we realized the Thor-Delta was lifting-off,” wrote Schirra. “We had been wanting proper up the tailpipe of its monster engine and we knew instantly that we had been within the hazard zone. Had there been an abort, it will have been a foul day for Mercury, with the chief astronaut and the pilot of MA-8 incinerated just like the legendary rattlesnakes.”
America’s third manned orbital mission took flight at 7:15 a.m. Japanese Time, with Schirra describing the exhilaration of ascent as “disappointingly brief”; a nominal trip, regardless of a greater-than-expected roll-rate of the Atlas rocket. Three minutes into ascent, Slayton—seated on the blockhouse console—radioed cryptically: “Are you a turtle, immediately?”
The roots of the unusual query had been defined by Schirra. He informed the story of a very good and noble man, sickened by the vulgar minds of these round him and pushed to despair over whether or not he’ll meet somebody of his personal mind.
At size, he retreated, turtle-like, right into a protecting shell and located his solely respite within the consumption of alcohol (“for purely medicinal functions, in fact”). Over time, he sought out different like-minded people to hitch his ingesting fraternity, dubbed the ‘Historical and Honourable Order of Turtles’.
Nonetheless, he wanted cash and gambled his most prized possession—a donkey—on a horse operating at lengthy odds on the native observe. Happily, he gained the guess and stored the donkey.
To commemorate his triumph, all future members of the fraternity, when requested “Are you a turtle?” had been anticipated to answer, with out hesitating, “You guess your candy ass I’m!” Failure to take action would consign the sufferer to purchase drinks for everybody shut sufficient to have overheard the query.
Sadly for Schirra, the query had been requested over a “hot-mike” and, if he didn’t reply appropriately, the variety of individuals “inside earshot” demanding alcoholic sustenance might run into a whole bunch! Then again, though “ass” on this context referred innocently to the donkey, responding appropriately to Slayton’s query over the open mike might have led to misunderstanding and embarrassment.
Schirra was in a quandary. Then, he informed Slayton “Going to VOX file solely” and introduced the right response into Sigma 7’s voice recorder. Schirra was spared the necessity to purchase drinks, however Slayton scored his personal launch-day ‘gotcha’ and put his pal briefly within the sizzling seat.
With Sigma-7 safely in orbit, Mission Mercury was drawing to a detailed and the mission was tasked to be essentially the most advanced flight to date. Working at an altitude of 160 miles (260 kilometers), increased than any earlier U.S. astronaut, Schirra set briskly to work evaluating his ship’s methods.
“With my eyes mounted on the management panel, studiously ignoring the view, I started a gradual, 4 levels per second, cartwheel,” he wrote in Schirra’s Area. “As soon as within the appropriate orbital place, I checked my gasoline. I had used lower than half a pound of hydrogen peroxide. The thruster jets labored completely. They responded crisply to my contact and shut off with none residual movement. I used to be capable of make tiny, single-pulse spurts—the “micro-mouse farts”—to imagine an actual place.”
Throughout this time, Schirra oriented his capsule to get a greater view of the Atlas rocket because it tumbled away. He concluded that his efforts demonstrated that rendezvous in area (an important requirement for reaching and touchdown on the Moon) was potential in a sensible sense. The handbook system, on the opposite, appeared considerably “sloppy”, with an inclination to ‘overshoot’, and Schirra switched subsequent to the third management mode: the autopilot, which he disparagingly known as “chimp mode”.
At round this time, his stress go well with started overheating. The go well with had been one in every of Schirra’s areas of duty throughout coaching and he would remark afterward the seriousness of the scenario; the truth is, Flight Director Chris Kraft even thought of terminating the mission after only one orbit. Earlier than launch, Schirra had developed his personal method ought to overheating happen: he would inject cool water very slowly into the system, advance the temperature knob by half a mark at a time, then watch for ten minutes. He didn’t wish to rush the water, lest the warmth exchanger freeze.
It labored. By the tip of his first orbit, the temperature had dropped to 32 levels Celsius (89 levels Fahrenheit), which Schirra thought of “sizzling, however not insufferable”. Flight surgeon Chuck Berry suggested Kraft to press on with a second orbit and the information was relayed to Schirra by Capcom Scott Carpenter, primarily based in Guaymas in Mexico.
Schirra was happy, not solely with the prospect of a full-length mission, however the realization that the issue was “solved by means of no large amount of ingenuity, however the level was it was solved by a human”. The necessity to fly individuals into area had been vindicated. After the mission, Schirra would obtain a plaque, signed by Frank Samonski of Sigma-7’s environmental management system group and emblazoned with the legend that that they had ‘sweated greater than you probably did through the first orbit of MA-8’. Affixed to the plaque was the valve utilized by Schirra to regulate the water circulate to his go well with.
Later, as Sigma-7 started its third orbit, Schirra entered a interval of drifting flight, throughout which period he undertook a psychomotor experiment: closing his eyes and touching sure dials on the management panel. “I missed solely three out of 9,” he wrote later, “concluding that my sense of course and distance had not been impaired by weightlessness.”
Repowering his ship, excessive above the Indian Ocean, Schirra switched again to fly-by-wire and efficiently mounted his perspective utilizing the Moon within the window as a reference level. Conscious that flight controllers had been intently monitoring his gasoline consumption, he expressed a hearty “Hallelujah!” when Capcom Virgil “Gus” Grissom, located on the Kauai station in Hawaii, radioed approval to fly a full six orbits.
On the fifth orbit, busily working by means of his pre-retrofire checks, Schirra was infuriated to listen to a voice interrupt from Quito in Ecuador. “We had what we known as a ‘mini-track’ there,” he wrote, “a miniature monitoring station, and it wasn’t supposed to come back on the air besides in an emergency.”
The speaker requested the astronaut if he had any phrases for the individuals of South America. Schirra, irritated, wished them “Buenos dias, you all”. After splashdown, he would obtain a handful of telegrams, complaining of his brusqueness. “However there was one,” he wrote, “I treasured from a U.S. diplomat in Ecuador. He mentioned in impact that Schirra had proved his devotion to the individuals of Latin America by wishing them a very good day.”
Preparations for re-entry commenced over Africa, when Schirra transitioned to fly-by-wire management to orient Sigma 7 utilizing celestial reference factors, then switched to the autopilot to make sure that it operated satisfactorily on this mode. “The flight plan known as for me to place the spacecraft utilizing handbook controls,” he wrote, “then swap to automated for retrofire, as a result of the facility of the massive thrusters offsets the unbalancing pressure of the retrorockets. The retrorockets exert their pressure by means of the centre of the spacecraft, so that they don’t kick it off track.”
In Schirra’s case, nevertheless, the retrorockets of his “candy little chook” fired completely and in sequence underneath automated situations at 4:07 p.m. Japanese Time, somewhat underneath 9 hours since launch. Shortly thereafter, he switched the capsule to fly-by-wire, though Sigma-7 was “regular as a rock”, with a lot gasoline remaining in its automated and handbook provides that he needed to “dump” it throughout re-entry.
Minor changes had been wanted to damp out wobbles after the jettison of the retrorocket bundle, however the descent was as ‘textbook’ because the mission itself. Schirra manually deployed the drogue and principal chutes, his elation evident in his phrases to Grissom, and splashed down simply 4 miles from the USS Kearsarge at 4:28:22 p.m. Inside minutes, wrote Schirra, “a whaleboat was alongside and the underwater group had the flotation collar in place”. Stepping aboard destroyer’s deck, he famous that it was barely ten hours—and 6 full orbits—since his launch from Florida.
One other shock awaited him within the admiral’s quarters: an outsized urine-collection bottle, despatched specifically by the astronauts’ canny nurse, Dee O’Hara. Nearly equivalent to the one which Schirra and Cooper had mischievously dumped on her desk a number of weeks earlier, it concluded the right mission with the right Gotcha.
