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Aviation History
1962
1962 - 0375.PDF
* FLIGHT International, 8 March 1962 Re-eitry As most of you probably know, the ground telemetry receivers had picked up an impulse that we possibly had a loose heat-shield. For that reason, it was deemed advisable to keep the retro-package in place during re-entry, so that it would go ahead and burn off; by that time we would be in a high enough aero dynamic force field to keep the heat-shield in place in case it was, in fact, loose. This made a pretty spectacular re-entry from the capsule stand point, because as the retro-pack—as I retained the retro-package and entered into the first part of the high heat area of the re-entry, the straps on the retro-pack broke loose, and I felt a bump on the cap sule and thought that the retro-package had jettisoned as it was supposed to do. Apparently this was not true, but I thought so at the time. As I went on into the higher heat pulse end, and this glow picked up outside the capsule to sort of a bright orange glow outside the window, it became apparent that something was tearing up on the heat-shield end of the capsule, because there were large pieces, any where from pieces as big as the end of your finger to pieces probably seven or eight inches in diameter, breaking off and falling off the edge of the capsule and coming back up past the window, and were flaming very brightly. You could see the fire and glow from them as they would come past the window. This obviously was the retro-package tearing up and breaking off as we knew it would, if it had been retained. I thought at that time, however, that the retro-package had already been jettisoned. So there were some moments of doubt there as to whether the heat- shield had been damaged and whether it might be tearing up, itself. This could have been a bad day all the way around if that had been the case. But it was very spectacular, looking out into this orange glow outside the window, bright orange glow, and seeing these flaming chunks go back along the flight path. The g during re-entry got up to about eight. Parachute functioned in completely normal fashion, and that is probably the prettiest little old sight you ever saw in your life, to look out the window and see that parachute. I remember Al Shepard making some comments about that after his flight, about how pretty that parachute was, and I concur, that is just about as pretty as anything you see at that point. The capsule was pretty warm after re-entry, very hot in fact, and it was getting very warm inside. I was sweating rather profusely when I came down and when I landed, so I remained as still as I could in the capsule, trying to add as little heat-load to it as I possibly could. Recovery The destroyer Noa was close by, had me spotted, and came over and made an excellent pick-up of the capsule. I came aboard, and at that time I had been heated up enough and had been sweating very profusely long enough that I decided after taking the panel, the right side of the panel down, preparing to egress out through the top, I decided at that time, since we were already on deck, it was hardly worth the effort, and I should get on out and be comfortable. So I did. We blew the hatch out the side, after check ing to see that everyone was clear outside, and came out through the side hatch. I was not in such bad shape at that time that I could not have gotten out through the top. But at that time I was hot, and had been sweating for a long period of time, and it seemed like the thing to do was to get out of there at that time. Lessons from the flight I think perhaps the difficulties that we had and the action I had to take may actually have been a blessing in disguise in one way, because it showed when we had to mat a man can take over control of various systems, operate manually, still know what he is doing, not have any ill-effects in this regard from zero g. If sufficient study of our records from this flight warrants it, we probably can go on some future flights with considerably less automation and less complexity, we hope, as a result of some of the things we learned on this flight. We certainly hope so, anyway. Before we make any big decisions along that line, of course, we want to review a lot of the data much more thoroughly than we have so far. These things are all step-by-step items. [The above extracts are taken from the opening address at the press conference, in which the astronaut gave an overall outline of his flight and his impressions. Following this, there was a period of general questioning, from which the following quotations have been extracted.] 375 What did the stars and Earth look like up there ?—About the stars, I was a little bit surprised. I expected to see the stars in greater quantities and greater numbers than I had seen them before ... I don't think I saw any greater number of stars. They were not blinking. They came through very clear and straight shining light. There was no flickering on or off. It looked very similar to looking at the sky on a very, very clear night in the desert. Is there anything that stands out in your mind as the most interesting thing that you saw of the surface of the earth ?—Well, number one, it is all very spectacular from up there. You can see a tremendous distance. You are up above the atmosphere. You see this little horizon band of very brilliant blue colours. Even on the day side. It would be difficult to pin down any one thing as being more spec tacular than others. Certainly one of the most beautiful things is to be on the dark side with a full moon out and see this coming off the clouds down below and then running over and seeing a very sharp demarcation line to where the stars keep coming down below the horizon. It is interesting to note that your sunset and the stars Astronaut Glenn indicates the relative height above the Earth of his orbital flight; l±in, compared with some 80in for the Earth's diameter (rough scale of 100 miles to the inch) moving down behind the horizon occur at approximately 18 times their normal speed. This makes for pretty speedy sunsets, very rapid. You mentioned . . . being able to tell the difference between land masses.—You can see different patterns in the ocean current, like the Gulf Stream, for instance. You can see the changing colours there. You can see on the Earth one area that I could observe very clearly, the area northwest of El Paso, Texas, and that is an area where there is a lot of desert with a big irrigated area that comes down the valley northwest of El Paso. Did you have any trouble figuring out where the booster was when it started leaving the capsule?—lias is quite a sight. I was separated from the booster. The capsule then started to turn around and as it swung around the booster was setting there probably within 100yd, very visible, very clear . . . Could I have manoeuvred toward it? I think very definitely you could. I don't think this would be any problem at all, from that distance. The booster, because of its different velocity, assumes a little different orbit than I had, and it went slightly under me and was passing ahead of me and under in a lower orbit the last time I saw it. This was out pretty well over toward the coast of Africa. Didn't see it again after that. [Continued overleaf
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