Real legendary men...called astronauts for the first time in the history of mankind along with the cosmonaut Gagarin riding a rocket into the unknown of the limitless space! The true understatement of being a Hero! True pioneers...
Yes, it did take guts to go up in this. But the Redstone rocket was known as old reliable more so than the more powerful Atlas that was used for orbital flights. Part of the reason that the less spectacular sub orbital flights were done first could have been the safety factor. I have heard this was the case.
CusterFlux This Redstone rocket did put in orbit the 1st satellite of the U.S.A. though. Of course the Mercury capsule was 12 times heavier than that 1st ever satellite , and the Redstone could not boost the capsule into orbit. But it was a reliable machine. On the contrary, the Atlas was a risky rocket to fly with...
It launched Australia's [my country] first satellite, however it was not a stock Redstone. the one used to send the satellite into orbit used two upper stages. Currently there is not, and never has been, a single stage to orbit launch vehicle. The delta-velocity needed for that single stage would be close to, or in excess of, 9,000 meters per second. Which is an infeasible situation due to the self defeating nature of current propulsion technology.
SairousClaou The Atlas was still somewhat reliable in that it only needed to be topped off with its cryogenic fuel+oxidizer and as long as nothing failed (which by pure bad luck occurred often in reality) it would (and did from 1980 until Atlas III used hard tanks and not balloon tanks) reliably launch payloads into orbit. My point: the booster itself was not unreliable but hampered by a lot of small problems which proved its fragility to errors.
from what I can remember, he pissed himself before launch because he was in the capsule for some time because of delay. This delay is also why he called out 'lets light this candle' Cant confirm this is true, but apparently the delay was so long because nobody at the ground wanted the responsibility to actually call a go.
The launch was delayed for a few hours. So he was in the capsule for far longer than expected. Eventually, he had to pee so he asked permission (to make sure it was safe) and they gave him the go-ahead. So yes, he did.
yes its reported they actually had to shut the suit down completely, let him urinate in his suit (because no one thought that would be an issue funny enough), check all of the electrical systems, then reboot the suits systems and he in fact, during this video, is wet in is own urine.
La mission mercury-redstone 3 fue la mission que puso en el espacio al primer estadunidense en el espacio alan shepard. Quien mas adelante se combirtio en el quinto hombre en pisar la luna
Note that Alan is ripping through 5 g's -- which even Apollo crews topped out at. No wonder NASA put the boys through the hoops. Atlas was even MORE intense.
Redstone was worse. Because they weren't able to extend their lateral velocity into orbit, the capsule basically plummeted right back down. Shepard was pushing TWELVE Gs during re-entry.
A lot of people dont remember. Shepard didn't actually orbit (John Glenn did). He was the 1st American to go up. He basically just went up and came back down.
Gagarin flew in an Intercontinental ballistic missile. Shepard flew in a short range ballistic missile. Little wonder the USSR scrabled to develop ICBMs first - US had bases almost at USSRs borders from which it could hit all important urban centers of the USSR with SRBMs MRBMs or even fast nuclear armed bombers. USSR's only deterrence delivery option was to develop an ICBM as it had no bases close enough to the USA proper to hit almost any of its important urban centers with anything that had less than intercontinental range. They also developed intercontinental bombers (Tu-95) but those were slow and vulnerable to interception.
The US and USSR both pursued ramping up production of intercontinental ballistic missiles after the Cuban Missile Crisis because they could no longer put intermediate range ballistic missiles right on each other's borders through their allies, Turkey and Cuba respectively.
