_Live From Cape Canaveral_ - Jay Barbree [27]
Feeling a historic milestone in the making, I covered Kennedy’s congressional address by closed-circuit television from the Cape Canaveral site where future astronauts would lift off for the moon. In ringing tones, the energetic President told an attentive Congress the nation should take longer strides, America should become the leading player in space, and the country should lead the world into a better future:
I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space, and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.
John F. Kennedy spoke, and Congress leapt to its feet with thundering applause. If the congressional reaction was any sign of the future, then his “new frontier” had absorbed new life and vitality. Despite the “Bay of Pigs” debacle and a rough start, Kennedy was on his way back. He had absolute confidence that this was a gamble his administration could not lose. Americans would be the first on the moon.
Two months later, Gus Grissom had his Liberty Bell Seven Mercury capsule loaded with one more item than Alan Shepard had had: a parachute.
“Damn, Gus,” argued NASA engineer Sam Beddingfield. “If you need it, you won’t have time to use it.”
“Get me the parachute, Sam,” Grissom demanded. “If something goes wrong, it’ll give me something to do until I hit.”
Beddingfield shook his head but stuffed a parachute in Liberty Bell Seven, and Grissom lifted off from the Mercury-Redstone launch pad on July 21, 1961. His flight was a photocopy of Alan Shepard’s suborbital flight—115 miles up, 300 miles down range. But that’s where any similarities to Shepard’s mission ended.
Following splashdown, Grissom prepared his Mercury capsule for helicopter recovery. He was lying back, waiting for hookup, when an explosion blasted away his hatch. The hatch, modified to use an explosive primer cord instead of the mechanical locks of Shepard’s capsule, had ignited.
Water rolled in and Grissom rolled out. He had to swim for his life as he watched the three-thousand-pound spacecraft slip beneath the waves.
Engineers scratched their heads. Some said the design of the capsule’s hatch made an accidental explosion impossible. They covered their asses by suggesting Grissom had panicked and triggered the hatch release. Grissom denied the charge repeatedly, insisting, “The damn thing just blew.” His fellow astronauts backed him all the way, and an accident review board cleared him of any wrongdoing.
Nevertheless, it left a bad taste in Grissom’s mouth that refused to go away.
The sinking of Liberty Bell Seven would not be the only event to throw cold water on Grissom’s perfect spaceflight. Sixteen days later, the Russians gave what was left of NASA’s pride another swift kick. A second Vostok spaceship, this one named Eagle, carried Major Gherman Titov, Yuri Gagarin’s backup pilot, into Earth orbit, where he played around in weightlessness a full day.
Project Mercury managers and the astronauts threw up their hands. They agreed that Redstone had done its job. But if there was to be any hope of keeping up with the Russians, it was time to get on with launching an American into orbit. And, most important, to get the job done before the end of 1961. History would record the Russians and Americans did it the same year.
But there was only one rocket in America’s stable capable of lifting the Mercury spacecraft into orbit. That was the Atlas ICBM. Atlas worked well with a nuclear warhead on its nose, but its thin stainless-steel skin collapsed under the weight of the Mercury spacecraft. Three times Atlas had left its launch pad with an unmanned Mercury spacecraft on its nose, two of those rockets exploded, dumping chunks of fiery debris into the Atlantic.
The White House told Mercury Operations director Walt Williams to fix it. The President wanted an American in orbit, and Williams was told, in