Onboard Mercury with Alan Shepard (MR-3 full flight with annotations) 

the guy is pulling 11.5g and he just goes "okay"

Dad told my brother and me to be late for school so we could see history being made. Thank you Dad!!

Baddassery on full display here. Never knew this footage existed. Thank you so much for posting..

My father and I watched this from our front yard through binoculars. We listened on the radio, we had no television then. I still have the binoculars, we purchased them from Sears Roebuck.

And Alan eventually got to drive a golf ball on the moon!

I'm still mad at Mrs. Neuman, my third grade teacher. She went to the next door classroom and watched the launch on their TV. Then she came back and told us what she saw and drew a pathetic picture of the rocket on the chalkboard.

My family went to Cape Kennedy in 1969 to see the Moon Shot. Alan Shepard was staying at our motel & we got to meet him in the lobby. It was an amazing experience for a 5 year old. It made following NASA & our space program a lifelong endeavor.

Born in 1957, I got to see it. Great time to be alive!

I was named after Alan Sheppard. Born in 62 so this was before my time. Cool to see.

So cool that Alan Shepard got his Ménière's disease taken care of and was able to go to the moon on Apollo 14. To be grounded after this flight for so many years must have been disappointing for him.

Great job. I’m 70 years old and vividly remember this flight.

1960s The best time to be a kid! Great video. Merci.

Much longer flight than I remember as an 11 year old boy. He went much higher that I had thought, much greater G load coming down than we had been told. The days of the giants. Rest in peace, Moon Golfer.

I'm 63, and I've been avidly following NASA Crewed Spaceflight since Gemini 3 in 1965. All this time, hearing 'the clock has started', I had no idea Shepherd had to punch start manually. It may seem trivial, but, after all, the words were a statement of pilot action, rather than just pilot observation. Thanks for the insight, it makes a difference in my understading. Cheers!

Ya had to be there. My Uncle was an engineer for the fuel control valves on the Atlas Booster in the late 50's. My Brother, Sister and I did multiple walk-thru's at NASA in Huntsville, Alabama during those formative years. We had the opportunity to check out the Mercury Space Capsule. I couldn't fit, my Sister has claustrophobia, but my Brother (4th grader) was allowed to climb into it. Among other things, Shepard's size was a factor in his flight selection. John Glenn was selected for the multiple orbit trip primarily because he was small and could withstand 12g's without blacking out. Talk about "irony". My Uncle was waive 2 at Omaha Beach (Normandie Invasion) and ended up reporting to the man who invented the V1 and VII rockets (Wernher Von Braun). If you look up Operation Paperclip you will see how.

WOW! So cool... I have never seen that before... I wrote a letter to Alan Shepard while in elementary school and he responded.. I still have the letter and pictures he sent back...

I remember watching this in Mrs Henson’s 2nd grade class. It was so cool, we could watch the entire space flight from school.🎉

The Redston rocket that Shepard launched Shepard into space had 78,000 lbs of thrust. Both engines combined on the Boeing 767-300 that I flew for United had 120,000 lbs of thrust.

Great view of something read in the books for years but never seen for me! 11.5 G…those men were made of something else!

"Don't f*ck up, Shepard..." Per the man himself, often misquoted as a prayer," Dear Lord, please don't let me f*ck up...", but, Shepard always denied the "prayer" part...

I was in 5th grade and they brought a TV into the classroom so we could watch the launch.

I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Shepard on his book tour for Moon Shot. Written with Deke Slayton about the race to the moon. He was very gracious as he signed his book. I loved thd space program and it was an honor to meet him. Great video of this flight.

My grandmother, mother and I watched his launch on television. It was truly awesome.

Wow, look at all those analog instruments!

love that you captioned what's happening on the gauges and indicators, thank you

Awe inspiring as a child growing up in the 1960's

hard to believe this all started the year I was born. Mind blowing how much has happened just in my lifetime. Can you imagine what these guys went through? It was ALL new and everything was taking HUGE chances. No pioneers like that now.. no way.. not with what they had to through just to get to that point let alone taking off on a rocket alone not knowing what was going to really happen. Fantastic. Love these.

I'd never seen the entire flight before. Absolutely fascinating! Thanks for putting this on RU-vid!

11.5G's! And the man says "ok, ok" Omg. Apollo 11's crew had a max of 6.4G's during their reentry. That's like a sunday trip in comparison. Mr. Shepard, what a baller!

and in 8 yrs we be walking on the moon. and in 50 yrs, flat earthers think this is all CGI. EVENtho it hasnt been invented yet.

the early mercury astronauts were extremely brave men. these rockets were not that reliable and blew up quite often. GOD BLESS EVERY ONE OF THEM. THEY DEFINITELY HAD THE RIGHT STUFF.

Never saw this video before. Thanks for posting it. Still shaking my head at the bravery of those pioneering astronauts. I ask myself, would I be this brave?

I don't know how he or any of the rest of them got in those capsules with balls that big. Alan was my first space hero and he just oozed confidence and was a man's man. Military/test pilot, and had the ego to match, because if you weren't supremely confident and did not feel like you could handle anything, you didn't have the right stuff.

This is an amazing piece of space aviation history. Thank you so much for sharing.

Wow. I grew up on this stuff and became a professional technical geek. This is wonderful work. Please: do the rest of Project Mercury! Did we go to the Moon? Hell yes we did.

Absolutely amazing. I was a few months before being born when this happened. I’m now a retired Military Aviator, and I’m really enjoying these videos. Thanks, and I can’t wait to see more

Fantastic video. Felt like I was there with Alan, except I didn't feel the 11.5 g's! Thank you for putting this together. Amazing.

Excellent, excellent video man! Very well done, you should be proud

I watched all the launches on TV with my father right through Apollo 17. Sixty plus years later it's all a blurry yet still vivid cascade of visual memory and events; but each one was at the time a major event and overall the bravery, adventure and professionalism shaped me as a person.

I appreciate the extra technical details in these videos. I enjoy learning something new.

That re-entry G-Load had me shhhiting bricks as he goes 3, 6, 9 (cuts out) then the display you put up said he was 11.5! Unbelievable man. What was the contingency for this? How long was the load. He apparently said something when he was 11.5g according to your timeline. How's that possible? Did they know exactly what load he was gonna get and for how long, if all was nominal? And if not, I guess he passes out? Not the worst thing in the world, but different angle re-entry could be bad. I guess once you're in and going through it, it's like a motorcycle in that momentum will keep the capsule from turning. Just incredible. Awesome to see how pre-pared, well trained, relaxed and confident he was. Ps. Do you know at about what G-load would it be detrimental beyond lack of normal circulatory function? I imagine there's a stroke or literal heart stopping. load. I've never seen anything that was measured that high, but I've not watched training videos. I know our pilots right now can do 9-10, although they're not supposed to exceed 8, but I don't know at what level its damaging

Interesting to know that a pad cabin fire just like the Apollo 1 tragedy could have happened with Mercury and Gemini, too: "To save weight, Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo spacecraft were designed to operate at a cabin pressure of 5.5 lbs. per square inch of pure oxygen in space. When the spacecraft were pressurized on the launch pad, however, they had to be a couple of pounds over atmospheric pressure, 14.7 lbs. per square inch, to keep the cabin in pure oxygen."

I like the automotive hose clamp on the large line feeding what appears to be Alan's helmet.

I remember watching this with my Mom, as she explained how we were watching history taking place. I remember for days after, when my Mom asked me to do something, I would reply with a Roger, Over. It drove her crazy. 😂

This is excellent! Good clean images and audio. 😃 I may have been a bit judgemental with my previous comment on another video you published. 🥺

Alan Shepard. My boyhood hero. Naval aviator, fantastic pilot. Naval aviators are a breed apart, including Marines. RIP

My grandfather was in charge of all the recovery forces for the Mercury program.

My father-in-law worked at the cape from 56 to 75 he knew all those guys I didn't really believe it till we were walking up the tarmac at a little air show fly in , in Three Forks Montana and he slaps me on the shoulder and says ,you know that guy is ? I had no idea my father-in-law says that's Gene Cernan last man to walk on the moon so I got to sit in the shade of his airplane wing and listen to Gene cernan and my father-in-law talk about everything for hours,too cool

I remember that flight it was the day before my 11th birthday.. what a ride it was too..

Man of Steel. The best of the best.

Beautiful job. Just the right amount of explanation. Perfect highlights on the instrument panel. Like many, I recall this as yesterday...but never had access to this level of information and video footage. Thank you very much.

28,000 km/hour, reached 267 km in altitude and descended to 30,000 feet where the chute opened in a very short time. Cruets the size of Coconuts.

Great video, good idea adding capsule visualization based on data.

Some books I have read that I really liked: Carrying the Fire by Michael Collins, And First Man. Also the newly released photo book Apollo Remastered. I was most struck by Michael Colllins's book released in 1974 and carried a forward by Charles Lindburgh. To think that so much could happen in the span of one life is truly amazing.

My dad was one of the Pad leaders for Alan Shepard, it was a stress engineer for McDonnell aircraft. I went to Cocoa Beach Elementary school second grade our class watch the launch from the beach. Great memories

Yuri Gagarin’s flight was 1h48m. Amazing how short Alan Shepards flight was

Greatest video ever ! Give that man some money, youtube, damn it.

My middle name is Alan, after Commander Sheppard. Very cool video.

Thankyou. Great edit with really useful captions. I was surprised by how short the flight was

This has to be one of the most fascinating, compelling and informative videos I’ve ever seen. Just WOW great work 👏. Got a new subscriber here!

Very good. Your work deserves many more views.

My God! What courage and skill !

Amazing people ! Thanks god we had this generation !

“Is go”, I don’t know how such a simple phrase means “LET’S GET THIS BOYS!!!” Riles me up. Love it.

Appreciate the effort going to produce this.

Alan was basically from the town I grew up in. I've never heard him speak before, and it's neat to hear a twinge of the local accent in his voice.

In those days, all activity stopped and the space shots were broadcast on the PA. I was in the second grade and we loved it. We had a president who wasn’t a cadaver, at least for a couple of years.

Just watching Astronomy Live's coverage of the USSF-67 launch/return. He said all credit for the stabilization goes to you, so I had to leave a comment telling you that was fantastic work!

This man flew from Florida to the Indian Ocean in 17 minutes... insane!

CAN RECALL THIS FLIGHT SO WELL, IT WAS A VERY BIG DEAL. NEVER SAW THIS DETAIL. GREAT STUFF!!!

Incroyable! Merci d'avoir fait ça!

Remarkably well made...Thanks!

@9:40, he experienced 11.5 g? Naturally, I had to check with wikipedia. "Early experiments showed that untrained humans were able to tolerate a range of accelerations depending on the time of exposure. This ranged from as much as 20 g for less than 10 seconds, to 10 g for 1 minute, and 6 g for 10 minutes." No doubt Shepard was well trained. And in this video it doesn't look like he was at 11.5 g for over a minute, although he stopped reading out the numbers after 9. But this could be a max g record for American astronauts. I wonder what the G forces would be if the emergency ejection system was activated during launch, and how long those forces would last.

I remember listening to the flight in school on intercom. Very nice

Those knee straps really did their job holding him in place while riding on an explosion without a bump, shake or anything. The camera probably went up and down with the seat to help stabilize the picture as well. They thought of everything.

Watched it live as an 8 year old. Shepard leaving the transfer van and looking up at the Redstone still etched in my memory. Alan Shepard and the Mercury 7 indeed had the Right Stuff. America at its finest. I only wish to live long enough to witness our return to the moon. Mars thereafter if I’m really lucky. I thought once we landed the moon in 1968 we would already be on Mars today (54 years later). America and NASA really dropped the ball in manned space. Public interest waned but virtually every device we use today came as a spinoff from science and technology including the importance of manned spaceflight. Elon Musk via SpaceX has jump started our national space program. I doubt without his drive and ingenuity we would be as well placed to restart space exploration. Go USA !

Neil Armstrong, Buz Aldrin, Pete Conrad, Alan Bean, Alan Shepard, Ed Mitchell, Dave Scott, Jim Irwin, John Young, Charlie Duke, Gene Cernan, Harrison Schmitt

I remember this like it was yesterday! We early sixties kids lived through amazing history. I got the Mercury Astronaut G.I. Joe and the Mercury Capsule that following Christmas!!

My uncle Max designed the capsule for Mercury! Wish I'd gotten to meet him.

I was three years old when Russia launched Sputnik. I vividly remember being in my back yard in Indianapolis and seeing it in the night sky, with my dad.

Great video. Just seeing it now. Fascinating

Thanks for sharing this.

I love watching these old videos, but I never understood how we see no vibrations in the video, I watched the apollo one recently and it was fantastic!

Super travail, merci !

Thank you Thank you. Greetings from Ecuador

Thanks for this video !!!

That's pretty much a New Shepard flight, crazy to think how we can just yet people on suborbital spaceflights for tourism nowadays and what took to get a man on a suborbital flight back then...

Ich werde es nie verstehen dass man solch gute Nerven besitzt! Einfach Wahnsinn 😬

Very cool film. Thanks 👍🏼

thank you for this

I’m sure Shepard wonders where the button is located to shut off that annoying buzzer.

I'm amazed there wasn't any vibration in the camera! This was so impressive to watch.

I was 15 and remember watching this in class with the rest of my classmates.

I cut school twice to see the launch on live TV.

I was in 2nd grade when Shephard went up. My dad worked for NASA at the time. I’m 74 now.

Expected to see camera vibration on the launch but it was very stable. During the Gemini program, at school we had an assembly for every launch to watch on TV.

Incredible job thx 😃

Fantastic content!

Great footage. It is amazing the leaps that NASA had to make from this short journey of Freedom 7 to the Apollo flights to the moon. It is still a great time to be around in space and planetary discoveries currently being made. But for Astronauts to experience their exploration of the Moon and their individual experiences of seeing our beautiful planet out on its own in space. 😊

Very professional, yet you can hear the stress in his voice...