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Project Mercury 1st Congressional report focuses on Mercury spacecraft development and production.
NEW VERSION with improved video & sound:
Reupload of a previously uploaded film with improved sound and video, and all in one piece instead of parts.
Public domain film from NASA, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and 1-pass exposure & color correction applied (cannot be ideal in all scenes).
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).
PROJECT MERCURY PLAYLIST:
Project Mercury was the first human spaceflight program of the United States. It ran from 1959 through 1963 with two goals: putting a human in orbit around the Earth, and doing it before the Soviet Union, as part of the early space race. It succeeded in the first but not the second: in the first Mercury mission on 5 May 1961, Alan Shepard became the first American in space; however the Soviet Union had put Yuri Gagarin into space one month earlier. John Glenn became the first American (third overall, following Gagarin and Titov) to reach orbit on February 20, 1962, during the third manned Mercury flight.
The program included 20 unmanned launches, followed by two suborbital and four orbital flights with astronaut pilots. Early planning and research were carried out by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), but the program was officially conducted by its successor organization, NASA. It also absorbed the USAF program Man In Space Soonest which had had the same objectives. Mercury laid the groundwork for Project Gemini and the follow-on Apollo moon-landing program…
Spacecraft
Design
Because of their small size, it was said that the Mercury spacecraft were worn, not ridden. With 60 cubic feet (1.7 m3) of habitable volume,[citation needed] the spacecraft was just large enough for the single crew member. Inside were 120 controls: 55 electrical switches, 30 fuses and 35 mechanical levers. The spacecraft was designed by Max Faget and NASA’s Space Task Group.
Despite the astronauts’ test pilot experience NASA at first envisioned them as “minor participants” during their flights, causing many conflicts between the astronauts and engineers during the spacecraft’s design. Nonetheless, contrary to other reports, the project’s leaders always intended for pilots to be able to control their spacecraft, as they valued humans’ ability to contribute to missions’ success. John Glenn’s manual attitude adjustments during the first orbital flight were an example of the value of such control. The astronauts requested—and received—a larger window and manual reentry controls.
Production summary
NASA ordered 20 production spacecraft, numbered 1 through 20, from McDonnell Aircraft Company, St. Louis, Missouri. Five of the 20, Nos. 10, 12, 15, 17, and 19, were not flown. Spacecraft No. 3 and No. 4 were destroyed during unmanned test flights. Spacecraft No. 11 sank and was recovered from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean after 38 years. Some spacecraft were modified after initial production (refurbished after launch abort, modified for longer missions, etc.) and received a letter designation after their number, examples 2B, 15B. Some spacecraft were modified twice; for example, spacecraft 15 became 15A and then 15B.
A number of Mercury boilerplate spacecraft (including mockup/prototype/replica spacecraft, made from non-flight materials or lacking production spacecraft systems and/or hardware) were also made by NASA and McDonnell Aircraft. They were designed and used to test spacecraft recovery systems, and escape tower and rocket motors. Formal tests were done on test pad at Langley and at Wallops Island using the Little Joe and Big Joe rockets…
