OT: 60 Years Ago Liberty Bell 7

[91Joe95]

They think they've figured out what caused the hatch on Gus Grissom's Gemini capsule to open prematurely.

New Evidence Shows That Gus Grissom Did Not Accidentally Sink His Own Spacecraft 60 Years Ago

Careful analysis of the recovery film showed it was static electricity that doomed the Liberty Bell 7.

www.airspacemag.com

Also, a little history on how they recovered the spacecraft 30 years ago.

Liberty Bell 7: The Peril and Promise of Space Exploration

On July 21, 1961, with a 15-minute suborbital flight of the Mercury spacecraft Liberty Bell 7, Gus Grissom became the second American in space.

cosmo.org

 

[The Spin Meister]

Cool stuff. Is Grissom still alive to hear the news?

 

[Tom McAndrew]

Cool stuff. Is Grissom still alive to hear the news?

Really? smh

 

[mmp121]

Cool stuff. Is Grissom still alive to hear the news?

Gus died in the Apollo 1 pad test fire in 1967.

 

[LionJim]

Cool stuff. Is Grissom still alive to hear the news?

If you go by what is in The Right Stuff, he took a whole lot of flack about this, had a rough go at it.

 

[Waste Management Consultant]

It’s amazing how many astronauts had close brushes with death or met their demise in training/missions. Grissom was apparently the choice of NASA to be the first man on the moon....Neil Armstrong had crashed a practice Lunar Lander...Gemini 9 crew Elliot see and Charlie Bassett were killed in a plane crash a few months before launch. Gene Cernan was a 9 Lives guy, he walked away from a helicopter crash among other things... Apollo 13....
The risks these guys took were truly remarkable, and to think there was a line of guys a mile long waiting for the opportunity.

 

[LionJim]

It’s amazing how many astronauts had close brushes with death or met their demise in training/missions. Grissom was apparently the choice of NASA to be the first man on the moon....Neil Armstrong had crashed a practice Lunar Lander...Gemini 9 crew Elliot see and Charlie Bassett were killed in a plane crash a few months before launch. Gene Cernan was a 9 Lives guy, he walked away from a helicopter crash among other things... Apollo 13....
The risks these guys took were truly remarkable, and to think there was a line of guys a mile long waiting for the opportunity.

Has someone written a serious history about the Mercury program? The Right Stuff is entertaining but not where I would go for the history.

 

[Waste Management Consultant]

Has someone written a serious history about the Mercury program? The Right Stuff is entertaining but not where I would go for the history.

One of the better video overview of the highlights/ history from the beginning is “When We Left Earth”. Gary Sinese narrated. “The Last Man on the Moon” is basically an old man Gene Cernan reflecting on his life. What struck me is he just can’t believe no one else has been to the moon since. How serious he is about that burden.
Book Failure is Not an Option by Gene Kranz details Mercury to Apollo 13 from his Flight Director position. Great read, good details.

 

[Nitt1300]

It's amazing how little progress has been made in space travel since the flights to the moon.

 

[ApexLion]

Really? smh

Lol

 

[LionJim]

It's amazing how little progress has been made in space travel since the flights to the moon.

It’s really expensive, for one thing. Another is: if you want to take a step beyond Armstrong and Aldrin, either you start building a long-term moon base or you go to Mars.

 

[LemonEars]

One of the better video overview of the highlights/ history from the beginning is “When We Left Earth”. Gary Sinese narrated. “The Last Man on the Moon” is basically an old man Gene Cernan reflecting on his life. What struck me is he just can’t believe no one else has been to the moon since. How serious he is about that burden.
Book Failure is Not an Option by Gene Kranz details Mercury to Apollo 13 from his Flight Director position. Great read, good details.

I read Failure Is Not an Option last year and agree it is a great book about the space program. One of the most interesting of the 7 original astronauts was Scott Carpenter. He was a superb test pilot with great credentials. However, he was a bit of a hippie type and was into photography. He flew the 4th Mercury flight - an orbital flight right after John Glenn's. Carpenter got so enraptured by the beauty of the earth that he refused to work on his mission duties and just continually took pictures. When it came time to prepare for reentry he was slow to flip the right switches and the capsule came down hundereds of miles off target. He was quietly fired as an astronaut shortly after his mission.

 

[Waste Management Consultant]

Agree, Carpenter was a different breed of cat as far as the early Astronauts go....Carpenter’s quote on being hundreds of miles off target was hilarious “They didn’t know where I was, but I knew exactly where I was.”

 

[Waste Management Consultant]

Not to mention, Carpenter almost ran out of fuel turning the spacecraft to take the pictures.