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Aviation History
1962
1962 - 0415.PDF
FLIGHT International, 15 March 1962 415 helmet and had to be replaced. I closed the faceplate on the helmet and we checked the pressure in the suit. We ran through a series of checks on the switches in the capsule. It's my impression that some of this activity was thrown into the count-down just to keep me too busy to worry. But as far as I'm concerned, if you're so shook up that you have to work to stay calm, you don't belong there. They started to put the hatch on. And this is the moment, as Al Shepard and Gus Grissom would agree, when things begin to come home to you. Up to this point, people are reaching into the capsule and working all around you and there's no real feeling of being on your own. Suddenly, as people began to pat you on the shoulder, wink at you, shake your hand and wave goodbye, it changes. You know how strongly they feel and you feel very strongly too as the hatch is lifted into place. Then one of the hatch bolts broke, and we held to fix it. I began to get a little apprehensive here. By this time the weather was beginning to show signs of clearing, and I was afraid we might wind up with a clear sky and still a scrubbed mission because of the hatch. But the crews fixed the bolt in about 25 minutes and finished securing the hatch. This was just before 8 o'clock, and a few minutes later the loud horns began to blow, warning everyone off the gantry. Through the periscope I could see people leaving, one of the last of my friends to depart was Bill Douglas. He came over to look in through the scope and gave me a smiling salute. We were in the last hour of the count now, and Scott, back at the blockhouse, put through a call to Annie for me. While it was going through on a private channel, the gantry moved away enough so that I could see a big patch of blue sky among the clouds. I felt sure we were going to go. When Annie came on the line, I told her about the sky. I had wanted to buck her up, but she sounded firm as a rock as she told me how the children were and what was happening in our home in Arlington. I felt confident that she was in good shape. The Atlas is an eerie thing to sit on top of when the gantry is gone. I could hear the sound of pipes whining below me as the liquid oxygen flowed into the tanks and hear a vibrant hissing noise as they were supercooled by the lox. The Atlas is so tall and limber that it sways slightly in heavy gusts of wind, and in fact I could set the whole structure to rocking a bit by moving back and forth in the couch. I could look at the whole sky now with its fast- growing patches of blue. Through a mirror mounted near the window I could see the blockhouse and across the Cape. Through the periscope I looked east at the Atlantic along the track I would follow. I waited through two more brief holds, one called to fix a valve in the fuelling system, the other because there was a power failure in the computer system at the Bermuda tracking station. Bermuda serves as a back-up for the Cape Canaveral control centre, and I knew that I would not be launched unless this station was in perfect shape. I was greatly relieved when the power was restored. At about T minus 6 the count was resumed. We were getting down to the short rows now. Over the radio I could hear the people responsible for each of the systems reporting in. "Communications, go," "ASCS, go," "Aeromed, go," "Range, go." The astronaut was one of the last items on the list, and when my turn came I said, "Ready." About a minute and a half before lift-off I did a few quick exer cises to make sure that my body was toned and ready. I put my left hand on the abort handle. At T minus 35 seconds the umbilical cord which had been providing the capsule's power until then dropped away and the periscope retracted. The moment was here. I could hear it in the voices in my earphones. As the count we had practised so often ran down for this final time, I shared their excite ment. Then we were at zero. The engines started. I could feel them light-off as the capsule vibrated from their ignition. And I could hear the roar. While the engines built to their proper thrust, the booster remained on the pad, and then the big hold-down clamps dropped away and I could feel us go. I had always thought that it would seem slow, even smooth, like an elevator rising. Well, I was wrong. It wasn't like that at all. It was a solid and exhilarating surge of up and away. Al Shepard and I began checking my progress over the radio. This was the first of four hurdles I had to jump to get properly into space and it was a big one. The booster had to function perfectly. Pad 14, where we took off, is lined up with the Atlantic Missile Range to the south-east. But in order to get into the correct '"With the help of Joe Schmitt, our hard-working suit technician, I started to climb into the pressure suit..." orbital path we had to head off in a slightly different direction almost immediately. For the first two seconds the Atlas went straight up. Then, for the next 13 seconds, the automatic guidance system that was built into it made it roll to the north-west heading. I could feel the motion and see it take place by watching out the window through the mirror. I reported by radio that the flight was a little bumpy during this first stage of flight. This was something we had predicted by study ing the pattern of previous Atlas launches, and it was nothing to worry about. It was just that I could feel a little roughness and vibration and wanted the control centre to know what was happen ing. I found out later that my voice was vibrating over the radio as I called in. We got over that first hurdle in good shape. I got the back-up clock on my wrist started at T plus 20 seconds. And then I started ticking-off a list of items—cabin pressure, oxygen and fuel supply "It was a procedure we'd all been through many times... we were checking the suit for leaks..."
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