Chapter 12: The first man

Theme: February to May 1961. This chapter covers the preparation and flight of Alan Shepard in Freedom 7.

“Manual control handle; on. Manual pitch; on. Pitching to retro.” Al Shepard’s voice came over our headsets above the whine of the spacecraft inverter noise. The phrases were completely familiar, I had heard them again and again during the course of training. Just the day before he had rehearsed this same voice procedure during four practice runs on the trainer. But today it was different. Excitement seemed to have changed Al’s inflection, or perhaps my ear was affected by my own elation. I could not be sure, but the important and reassuring fact was that the words were the same, the mission was going exactly as rehearsed. None of us had hoped for such a smooth ride or such an uneventful countdown. Only three days before, we had come within twenty minutes of launch and had to scrub the mission. But now everything was moving perfectly, and we were about to have the first successful flight under our belts. We needed it, because just two weeks earlier, Yuri Gagarin had circled the earth in a Russian spaceship.

This first flight, coming after two months in intensive preparation, provided a needed lift to the whole project. In the glow of success following this flight, President Kennedy was able to propose the program to put a man on the moon. The flight provided a verification not only of the spacecraft’s systems but of the astronaut training procedures and the selection program. We all looked forward to the next flight with enthusiasm and confidence. Perhaps a little too much of each, as our experience in the next flight was to show.