MR-BD: The Flight that Made the Russians First

Have you ever wondered why the Russians put a man up into space first? Why on April 12, 1961 Russian Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space instead of American Alan Shepard?

Well, I did too, and found the answer much more fascinating than I had anticipated. The answer: Mercury-Redstone Booster Development, a flight inserted between chimp Ham's troublesome blast into the cosmos and Alan Shepard's perfect one. Often shortened to just "MR-BD", rocket designer Wernher von Braun insisted on this flight before a manned one. Why? There were many problems with Ham's flight, and von Braun felt like his Redstone rocket hadn't proved itself safe enough to carry a man. Von Braun wanted a perfect unmanned flight before a manned one.

The Mercury Seven astronauts--and particularly Alan Shepard, who was slated to make the first flight--were furious. Shepard knew he could've survived the chimp's flight, and he was sure he could survive this upcoming one. Hey, von Braun and his team had fixed whatever problems there were with the Redstone, so if they were fixed, why did they need a flight to prove it? Shepard wanted to be first man in space!

But von Braun prevailed, and got his unmanned rocket flight. On March 24, 1961--exactly 50 years ago today--MR-BD blasted off from Cape Canaveral on an perfect 8-minute, 23-second flight. Everything went right--no aborts, the accelerations and apogee was just right, and the velocity was perfect. As the capsule plunged into the Atlantic, von Braun and others knew that NASA was ready to send a man into space. The preparations began, and Shepard's flight was rescheduled for early May.

But the time slip was just what the Russians needed, and three weeks later Yuri Gagarin rocketed into space and secured for himself the title of first man in space. Three more weeks later, Alan Shepard flew in space too, and secured for himself the slightly less glamorous title of first American in space. And all of this "who's first" history was decided by...a flight named MR-BD. Today, on the 50th anniversary of the flight, let us remember another of the crucial steps that NASA took to place an American into space.

~Photobug