Chapter 19: A day in space

Theme: November 1962 to May 1963. The Mercury program comes to a climax with Cooper spending a day and a half in space. By bringing home a crippled spaceship he provides a dramatic example of what man can do in space.

“At 28:59 my .05 g telelight is on.” Gordon Cooper has been in space more than a day. There have been no major problems, just the annoyance of trying to live in a straitjacket strapped inside a phone booth, where anything that is not tied down floats away. The primary irritations have involved plumbing. In an attempt to avoid the cooling problems that troubled Schirra, a new water collection system had been developed for the suit, but getting it to drain effectively proved to be difficult.

Nevertheless, life in space was reasonably comfortable. Gordo has eaten on time, and most of his scheduled activities are proceeding smoothly.

But this report startles everyone. The .05 g light comes on to mark the beginning of reentry. But reentry is not due for five hours. Maybe it is a false alarm, like John Glenn’s heat shield indication. Deke Slayton, Walt Williams, and John Yardley huddle around flight director Chris Kraft. Quickly they come to a decision.

“Let’s have Gordo try his auto pilot to see if it is in the reentry mode.” Now begins a globe girdling game of twenty questions. Unlike the early flights, in which the longest periods between stations were twenty minutes, on this flight there are some periods when Gordon is out of communication range for as long as forty minutes. This is one of them.

It is nearly an hour after Gordo first noticed the problem before Deke is able to call Gordon asking him to try the first of a series of auto pilot tests. Hurriedly, Deke explains what is needed. Gordon agrees to try the test, but before they get under way, the spacecraft is out of range. Another hour passes before the spacecraft is back over the Quebec, a ship near the coast of Japan, where John Glenn waits eagerly to hear the results of the test.

“Hello, Faith 7. We read you very weak … If you can read, give me status of your ASCS check, please. Over.”

“Roger, John. This is Faith 7. I do not have ASCS. Over.”

The tests have shown that his attitude indicators are not working. Over Hawaii Deke can talk directly to Cooper through a relay at the Hawaii station. They discuss the problem, trying two or three more tests. And then the conversation must be interrupted momentarily while the relay is transferred, to the Guaymas station. A few minutes more and Gordo is gone, sailing over South America and the South Atlantic, out of radio range.

Now it is clear to everyone in the control center that Gordo is on his own. The autopilot clearly will not function. If he is to come home, Gordon Cooper must initiate the retrofire and control the spacecraft himself. With Gordon out of range, most of the flight controllers are crowding around flight director Chris Kraft’s desk, working out a special procedure for the manual retrofire and reentry. They review the special check-off list again and again. Finally it appears to be foolproof.

“Send it out on the teletype to the Quebec,” Chris Kraft orders. A messenger picks up the slip of paper and heads for the teletype room. Chris reaches for a switch on his desk and calls John Glenn on the Quebec.

“John, this is the flight director. How do you read? Over.”

“Loud and clear, Chris.”

“John, we are sending you by TWX a special retrofire check list that we want you to relay to Gordo when he comes over on the twenty-first pass. When you receive it I’d like to go over it with you.”

“Roger, Chris. Standing by for the TWX now. Over.”

With one orbit to go, an hour and a half before his crucial test, Gordon Cooper comes over the Quebec again. In the control center we can hear John read off the special check list.

“Retro rocket arm switch manual.”

“Roger, got that.”

“Fly-by-wire thrust select switch, high and low.”

“Roger, got it.”

“Retro sequence fuse switch, number 2.”

The list seems interminable. In my mind I can follow Gordon reaching here and there within his spacecraft to check the position of a switch. Finally the list is complete. He is ready for reentry if nothing goes wrong in the meantime.

But now, as so often happens, the emergency is complicated by a number of small annoying failures. Over Hawaii there is an indication that the amount of carbon dioxide in the cabin is increasing. As he leaves Hawaii on his final orbit Gordon reports in an amazingly calm voice, “Well, things are beginning to stack up a little. ACS inverter is acting up, and my CO2 is building up in the suit. Partial pressure of O2 is decreasing in the cabin. Stand-by inverter won’t come on the line. Other than that, things are fine.”

Other than that? To those of us in the control center it almost seems that the spacecraft must be coming apart.

A half hour passes before we have another report, this time to Zanzibar. He is still in good shape. The increase in CO2 has leveled off. The final preparations for the reentry are made. For the next half hour we will hear no more, but no one leaves his seat at the control center. The VIP room is full. Everyone is seated quietly, glancing from time to time at the clock, waiting for Gordon to come back over the Quebec where the retro rockets will be fired.

Finally we hear him talking to John again. His auto pilot is still not working. One of his inverters has failed. Will his retro rockets fire?

“Four, three, two, one.” John counts down to the time for the ignition of retro rockets.

“Roger, I think I got all three.” Watching the horizon carefully, Gordo’s hand moves quickly to keep the spacecraft in proper alignment as the retro rockets pull first one way and then another.

“How did your attitude hold, Gordo?”

“Well, pretty fine.”

In the control center all sigh with relief. The critical point is passed. He is headed back to earth. His control of the spacecraft attitude during retrofire was so precise that he will land within five miles of the main recovery vessel, the carrier Kearsarge.

For all of us who set out four years before to prove that man could live and perform effectively in space, this is the culmination of our efforts. Gordon has spent nearly a day and a half in space, travelled more than the distance to the moon and back, and has hit his intended landing point with precision equivalent to dropping a pea into a thimble from the top of the Empire State Building.

While many human and mechanical problems remain to be solved before man will truly have found a home in space, as a result of Cooper’s flight no one can doubt that man will eventually explore the planets. The ultimate conquest of space is certain. Only the timing is in doubt. In this century a few highly selected individuals will cross the space threshold. Our lives may be little affected by what they do, but the lives of our children will be profoundly changed.