A Subject I Almost MISSed, Part 4

What's happening: In this 5-part series I'm writing about the different space books I've read this school year. Right now I'm telling the story of John Glenn, first American in orbit. Mercury Control is receiving telemetry (data) from Glenn's capsule that the heat shield is loose. And if the heat shield is loose...well, American's first man in orbit may not return home alive. ~Photobug

When Glenn and spacecraft got back safely to Earth (the heat shield had, in fact, been just fine) technicians traced the false telemetry signals to a faulty sensor switch. Faulty switches aside, it caused Mercury Control (and later John Glenn) some concern. With this in mind, listen to a line John Glenn said when asked by the doctors if he had any other comments on the flight…He had already answered tons of questions…and again I’m paraphrasing: “No, just another normal day in space.”

Glenn had made three orbits of our mother planet—and made Americans proud. When he back on Earth safely and saw the sunset, he remarked that (I’m paraphrasing) “It’s rare for a man to see four sunsets in one day.” Since Glenn had orbited the Earth 3 times, he had seen 3 sunsets, 3 nights, and 3 sunrises.

After his flight Glenn made a speech before a joint session of Congress. He lauded his appreciation to Shepard and Grissom, and then he told about his flight from Florida up to Washington, D.C. Before Glenn boarded Air Force One, President Kennedy’s daughter, Caroline, met the Mercury astronauts. As Glenn remarked, she put the astronauts in their place when she asked, “Where’s the monkey?” :D :D (Ham and Enos had preceded Shepard and Glenn's flights, respectively.)

Remember I was telling you about Deke Slayton? Well I read his autobiography, Deke! next. 342 pages, Slayton talked about how he grew up on a farm in Wisconsin, then joined the Air Force and flew B-25 bombers in Europe during WWII. Later he worked for NACA (predecessor of NASA) test flying supersonic jets at Edwards Air Force Base.

Well, after many medical tests and interviews, Slayton became one of the original Mercury 7 astronauts. He was scheduled to fly the second orbital mission—right after John Glenn. But in a cruel twist of fate he was grounded because of a heart murmur and shoved off his mission. Making the best of his situation, he would up running the Astronaut Office. Some of his main duties included choosing astronauts to fly different missions. He also had an integral part in astronaut selection process. Some of Slayton’s main rules were to make crews of astronauts who were really good buddies, and also to fly the more experienced astronauts with the newer ones. It was Slayton who instigated the 3-mission rotation, meaning that if you served on a back up crew for Gemini 6, there’s a good chance you’ll actually fly and be on the prime crew of Gemini 9. Stuff like that.

Finally about 1970 Slayton realized that his heart wasn’t murmuring anymore. He got cleared by the doctors to fly again, and before you know it he was on active flight status again! Unfortunately he couldn’t snaggle a seat on Apollo, but Slayton was assigned as part of a prime crew to Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP), the collaborative space mission of the Soviet Union and America. Slayton, along with crewmate Vance Brand and Commander Tom Stafford represented America. Alexei Leonov and Valeri Kubasov represented Russia. Slayton was elated to fly in space. At 51, he was the oldest person to fly in space. This record was not beaten for over 20 years, until John Glenn himself rode the shuttle Discovery in 1998. It was again very interesting learning about the training for ASTP. The Russians came to America, the Americans came to Russia. Slayton revealed in his autobiography that learning Russian was the hardest thing for him. The only consolation was that Leonov and Kubasov had to learn English!

ASTP was a very successful flight, and Apollo and Soyuz docked together and both nationalities of space voyagers floated from spacecraft to spacecraft. Apollo-Soyuz was a time when the Cold War thawed, and while no more joint flights were flown, I think ASTP is a really cool flight!

The next book I read was entitled First on the Moon, and it was written by the Apollo 11 astronauts: Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins. This was an outstanding book. I loved reading the astronaut’s own account of their voyage—in their own words. What it was like, the problems they had. For example, Armstrong and Aldrin almost had to abort the lunar landing. On the lunar decent several alarms had flashed in the LM, almost like they were teasing Mission Control and the astronauts if they could really land a man on the moon. 

And then right at the end Armstrong had to take over manually—the automatic program was taking Eagle’s (the LM) crew right into the heart of a crater! And if Eagle had landed in a crater, slanted, history would have been written very differently. 

So Armstrong took over manually, hovered above the moon, and flew on a little bit to land long of the pre-programmed landing site. The problem was that hovering over the moon ate gas like nothing else did. Armstrong & Aldrin were so concentrated that they couldn’t tell Mission Control why they were hovering. Finally Flight Director Gene Kranz told his flight controlling team that there would be no more callouts except to say how much fuel was left. There was only a minute’s worth left. If Armstrong couldn’t land in a minute, the mission rules called for an immediate abort. And there were no gas stations on the moon!

To be continued...