A couple of questions about the Mercury 7

Factual Questions
1

Hello Everyone,

A couple of quick questions about our early astronauts:

1: In the movie The Right Stuff they showed a scene where NASA and government brass were trying to decide on who would be best suited to become America’s first astronauts. It seems that this scene was filmed to add a little humor to the movie, for while discussing the issue suggestions were made that perhaps circus performers, professional water skiers and the like would make suitable candidates for the program. Just when the suggestions become absurd Vice President Johnson pounds his fist on the conference table and declares that he wants test pilots, most of the others in the room let out audible groans bemoaning how test pilots can’t be worked with. I find the entire scene laughable and I really wonder if anyone actually considered anything but military test pilots for the job. This was total artistic license on the party of the filmmakers right?

2: As we all know, Gus Grissom lost his capsule during showdown. There was speculation that he panicked and prematurely blew the hatch, causing the capsule to flood. It was only a few years ago that the capsule was recovered and I believe the latest theory is that an exterior access panel came off the ship and a parachute line wrapped around a handle on the outside of the capsule that triggered the hatch, no fault of Gus. While I’m positive that there was extensive inquires at the time and even though Gus was not found of any wrong doing, everything I’ve read seemed to indicate a nagging suspicion by some that because a definitive cause for the blown hatch couldn’t be found that Gus might have panicked.

I’m surprised that there were any doubts about Gus by anyone, especially after he returned to flight status. NASA must have had no doubt that he didn’t trigger the hatch or there is no way they would have let him go back into space again. You certainly wouldn’t send someone into space that you thought might become panicky. Did I misunderstand things that I read? Did anyone at NASA have any doubts about Gus? My thought is that the writers of articles and stories always left that hanging doubt in their pieces to make them more interesting. Even though NASA couldn’t prove what caused the hatch to blow, would I be correct in assuming that they were certain it wasn’t anything to do with the actions of Grissom?

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Nobody knew what characteristics were required/beneficial for astronauts at that point and there were wild theories that continued well into the space program about the effects in space (e.g. can’t swallow without gravity). My recollection, without having reference handy, was it was Eisenhower who said use test pilots - they’re already on the payroll.

There were certainly people who harbored doubts. They just didn’t happen to be the people (well person, Deke Slayton) who assigned flights. Also doubts don’t equal proof, without which it’d have been hard to make a case.
Same with Armstrong, there were those who doubted he made the right move on Gemini 8 and those who thought he was a genius. Slayton’s vote was the only one that really counted.

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You do know that most spaceflight aficionados, not to mention historians, refer to book and movie as “The Wrong Stuff”? As with “Apollo 13,” copious amounts of invented drama were shoveled in to make a better story.

The fact that Grissom flew the next mission series (when not all of the 7 did) and then was selected for the first of the highest-profile missions says everything there is to say about NASA’s opinion of him.

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And the fact that he was the odds-on favorite to be Mission Commander whenever the time came for the first landing mission.

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Just think, instead of “That’s one small step for man…”,

we could have had “Fuckin’ A Bubba!”.

:slight_smile:

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However, not all the Mercury Seven were the epitome of cool calm competence. Scott Carpenter was if anything complacent and dopey, and nearly managed to wreak the mission through shear inattention, and thus become the first US space casualty. He didn’t fly again.

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LOL! I wonder how the NASA censors would have handled that! :wink:

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NASA did not want test pilots for the Mercury missions. They wanted passengers, not pilots. Actually making the capsules manually controllable with a window was a major demand later by The Seven.

That originally all they wanted was “Spam in a can” was well known by the Edwards AFB crowd which is why many top pilots didn’t volunteer for Mercury.

So the early thinking was for gymnasts and such who wouldn’t be upset about zero-G and, most importantly, would just sit there, not push any buttons, and enjoy the ride.

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A monkey’s gonna make the first flight!

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Here’s a book that looks at them from a VERY different perspective. This book is the basis for a miniseries that will air later this summer.

In short, it seemed that a huge percentage of them, if not the outright majority, had no interest in their wives and/or children except for the photo ops, and many of them were huge womanizers too, although that’s not unusual for people who engage in high risk behaviors. I say “people” on purpose because I think we all remember the story a few years ago about the FEMALE astronaut who put on an adult diaper and drove 900 miles to kill a romantic rival.

Yes, many of the men took advantage of “Cape Cookies”, but I do wonder how many of those wives could also have been described as “Togethersville Tarts”. :dubious:

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I can clearly, clearly hear Unca Walter…

“(long, long pause) Well.”

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I’ve had haircuts ruined by that.

13

Deke Slayton addressed Gus’ door in his book, “Deke”. His opinion at the time was that Gus had likely taken off his helmet and had it sitting on his chest while he continued his post flight checklist. The Mercury capsule was very small and with his normal movements and the wave action Deke thought it likely that the helmet accidentally bumped the ejection button which triggered the door. As evidence, every other astronaut that hit that button had received a decent sized bruise on the back of his hand (not sure from what, but something from the hatch opening would hit them) but Gus did not have a bruise.

All of the astronaut biographies I’ve read speak very highly of Gus. The astronauts tend to be honest and they are not afraid to point out personal failings which gives credence to Gus being seen as a very skilled and competent astronaut and engineer.

Based on the biographies I’ve read, this is how the 7 seem to have been perceived behind closed doors.

Alan Shepard. Very skilled and competent Navy pilot which is the reason he was selected to be the first American astronaut to go up. He was somewhat bipolar in that he was either very gregarious and joking, or very icy and serious. Nobody liked the icy side. He was apparently the most unfaithful of the 7 to his wife, and that’s saying something. He was grounded because of an inner ear disease during Gemini and worked in the astronaut office with Deke Slayton. During Apollo he had surgery to fix his ear and received clearance to fly. He’s the only one of the original Mercury 7 to actually walk on the moon.

Gus Grissom. Well liked but very quiet and serious. Was considered an exceptional engineer. As I mentioned above, nobody thought he panicked under pressure.

John Glenn. He’s the only one that acted in public the way he acted in private. He was somewhat of an overgrown boy scout but not really a prude. He had high ambitions and used his astronaut fame to propel himself into public office. In the movie “The Right Stuff” there’s a scene where he confronts Shepard about his philandering. On the surface it looks like it’s a question about morality, but the real truth of the matter is that Glenn and some of NASA’s brass had found out that a reporter was going to go live with a story about Shepard’s affairs. They knew that if that were to be published the scandal would destroy the program so they managed to convince the reporter not to publish but Glenn was furious that Shepard was unrepentant about the mistake and unwilling to keep things discreet.

Deke Slayton. Deke was supposed to go up 4th, but during his training NASA doctors discovered a minor heart defect and grounded him. Deke went on to become the head of the astronaut office and was the one who made all the crew assignments. All of the astronauts and administrators speak very highly of him. Eventually Deke was allowed to fly on Apollo Soyuz.

Scott Carpenter. Scott was very adventurous and a gifted athlete. JFK said in private that Scott’s wife was the prettiest of the 7. But Scott was a dreamer, and not a very good astronaut. He failed to listen to Mission Control on his flight, expended a ridiculous amount of fuel on wasteful maneuvers, and nearly burned up on reentry. Mission Control banned him before he was on the carrier to come home.

Wally Schirra. Efficient to a fault. He wanted a space mission to have very clear goals, and he wanted all of the tasks assigned to the astronauts to be for the purpose of completing those goals. Of those tasks, Wally was excellent and precise. In Mercury and Gemini Wally was able to get the types of missions he wanted and he excelled at them. After Gus died in Apollo 1, Wally was given the honor of taking the first Apollo flight. But Wally was cantankerous, he refused to do many of the “fluff” tasks such as video recording and interviews. And he argued with Mission Control and refused some of their orders. Not only was he banned but his entire crew was banned by extension. I always felt bad for them, any other commander and they would have probably had a better career.

Gordo Cooper. He was a hot shot and unpredictable but an extremely capable pilot. He very nearly didn’t get to go up in Mercury because he made a fly by of an airport so low that the guy in the control tower was actually looking down at Gordo. NASA brass wanted Shepard to fly his mission, but by that time Deke was already in charge. Deke didn’t want to kill Gordo’s career so he kept him on the mission. During the flight, Gordo had serious problems with his spacecraft and expertly brought it back to Earth. He flew again in Gemini but had so many arguments with NASA that he was never assigned to another mission. He quietly left NASA when he realized he wasn’t going to fly again.

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Slayton chose Grissom to lead the first flight of Gemini (admittedly after Shepard was no longer available). He chose Armstrong to be given the dead end job of backing up Gemini XI, position which could not lead to a future flight and also kept him out of getting an Apollo crew and training until very late. Fairly clear whom Slayton thought had messed up.
As for the antics with women from what I have read they were not nearly as commonplace as is believed, I think it was Frank Borman who said that they could not have done much anything if they had actually had as much tail as claimed.

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From my take on my readings, the Mercury astronauts were selected as medical test subjects. Piloting ability didn’t enter into it; as originally envisioned, no piloting would have been necessary. And gymnasts and stock car racers were originally considered as astronauts. Ike specified military test pilots because 1, they were already on the payroll and 2, they already had Top Secret clearances. NASA countered with “How about backseaters, like radar intercept operators.” and Ike shot them down. He wanted pilots.

As for Gus blowing the hatch, well, every Mercury astronaut who blew the hatch ended up with a bruise on their hand from hitting the button. Gus never had that bruise. There was a lanyard or something under a panel that frogmen could use to blow the hatch also. It was never determined what made the hatch blow, but Grissom made the first Gemini flight and was scheduled for the first Apollo mission, so it’s pretty clear he wasn’t blamed for that by NASA, though the press at the time might not have thought so.

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The original Apollo hatch design was reputedly hard to open precisely because of Grissom’s mishap. That’s what killed him, ironically.

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Which doesn’t match with Kraft’s statements after the fact. He blamed the procedures and instructions, not the astronauts. Something like ‘they did the wrong thing because we trained them to do the wrong thing.’

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Could you elaborate?

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During Gemini and Apollo Slayton had a system whereby you were backup in mission and then rotated to prime crew two missions after that. So Armstrong was backup commander of Gemini V went on to command Gemini VIII. Lovell was backup Commander of Gemini IX and commanded Gemini XII (last Gemini mission), Armstrong was backup commander of Apollo 8, went on to command Apollo 11 and so on.

In Gemini, getting backup for the later missions was a dead end job, you had no chance of a future mission as Gemini was ending and had no initial bearing on Apollo selections, and moreover the Apollo project was on throughout Gemini, with astronauts getting transferred to Apollo once done with Gemini. Being stuck with a backup command for a later Gemini mission meant that you would not transfer to Apollo until later and would miss out on the training and chance for crew selections, the early Apollo crew selections had already been made before Gemini ended. It is notable that Armstrong and Cooper were the only early Gemini commanders to be saddled with backup Commands in the later Gemini mission, people like Borman, McDivitt, Schiarra and Grissom went to Apollo pretty quickly after their Gemini missions finished… Grissom was backup for Gemini VI, but that was still an early mission.

[QUOTE=Zakalwe]
Which doesn’t match with Kraft’s statements after the fact. He blamed the procedures and instructions, not the astronauts. Something like ‘they did the wrong thing because we trained them to do the wrong thing.’
[/QUOTE]

Many people involved in the project have stated that Armstrong did a fantastic job on Gemini VIII and the anamoly was not his fault. However, others such as APollo 7 LMP Walt Cunningham in his book, stated that the malfunction that occurred was something that was a known problem of the spacecraft and the astronaut office thought that Armstrong erred by initially attributing it to the Agena not the spacecraft.

Whatever the issue, everything I have read is that he did an excellent job in recovering once the situation had gotten out of hand, but his late transfer to Apollo is striking.

It should be noted that from selection to training and through missions, Slayton and the PTB changed their assessments of astronauts constantly. Some like Armstrong, Cooper, White and Bean went down and in Armstrong and Bean’s case went up again after performing well. Some people were thought of highly at the start, but ended up disappointing (Aldrin) while others began with eyebrows raised at their selection and ended up rising high, like Gene Cernan.

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Well, at least he had a good singing career with his sister to sustain him.