Author Topic: Cancelled Mercury Mission?  (Read 10172 times)

Offline shuttlefan

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Cancelled Mercury Mission?
« on: 06/16/2006 06:20 pm »
Was there one more Mercury Mission tentatively scheduled for after Cooper's MA-9 flight and was it scheduled to be several days in duration? Seems to me I also heard that Shepard was to fly it.... :)  :)

Offline wannamoonbase

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RE: Cancelled Mercury Mission?
« Reply #1 on: 06/16/2006 06:22 pm »
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shuttlefan - 16/6/2006  1:07 PM

Was there one more Mercury Mission tentatively scheduled for after Cooper's MA-9 flight and was it scheduled to be several days in duration? Seems to me I also heard that Shepard was to fly it.... :)  :)

That is what I recall too.  Shepard on a second flight for 48 hours or so.  It supposedly really pushed the batteries, environmental equipment etc.  

I vaguely recall hearing that there were 2 flights (at one point) and that Grissom was going to get an orbital flight as well.  (But that could just be loose writing, or an idea from a meeting that never went anywhere.)
Wildly optimistic prediction, Superheavy recovery on IFT-4 or IFT-5

Offline Jim

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Re: Cancelled Mercury Mission?
« Reply #2 on: 06/16/2006 06:33 pm »
MA-10 was planned at one time.  It was to max out the Mercury systems.  

Also at one time, all the astronauts were to fly Redstones before flying Atlases and even anothe plan had them flying Little Joes

Offline shuttlefan

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Re: Cancelled Mercury Mission?
« Reply #3 on: 06/17/2006 01:20 am »
" Also at one time, all the astronauts were to fly Redstones before flying Atlases and even another plan had them flying Little Joes."

Were there any plans drawn up at the time as to who would have flown the next suborbital after Grissom...Glenn possibly? :)

Offline SpaceCat

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Re: Cancelled Mercury Mission?
« Reply #4 on: 06/17/2006 02:53 am »
(I guess this should be moved to History)
I've heard several different stories here both word of mouth from old-timers and depending on who's book you read......but--
Once the bugs were out of the Atlas I'm sure thoughts of additional suborbitals were shelved in the wake of good data from Shepard & Grissom's flights, and pressure to catch up with the USSR.
It was then intended for each of the original seven to get a Mercury mission- and there was an additional flight-ready (forgive the term) 'capsule' built.  But remember Slayton was scheduled to fly MA-7 until his heart murmur grounded him and Carpenter was bumped up.  So Cooper probably would have flown MA-10 if Deke had not been removed from flight status.

Offline shuttlefan

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Re: Cancelled Mercury Mission?
« Reply #5 on: 06/17/2006 04:11 am »
Yeah, I should have started this thread in Historical Spaceflight.

Anyway, I watched a documentary about the Mercury Program and it seems to me I remember that Schirra was the backup for MA-7, but when Deke was grounded because of his heart fibrilation, Carpenter got the flight. I forget the reason why though....... :)

Offline James Lowe1

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RE: Cancelled Mercury Mission?
« Reply #6 on: 06/18/2006 07:14 pm »
Moved...

Offline shuttlefan

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RE: Cancelled Mercury Mission?
« Reply #7 on: 06/20/2006 01:24 am »
Would Sheperd have been safe launching on the last unmanned test flight of the Redstone, therefore beating Gagarin into space and is it true that Von Braun wanted one more test flight before putting an astronaut aboard?

Offline Jim

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Re: Cancelled Mercury Mission?
« Reply #8 on: 06/20/2006 01:28 am »
That's what all the books says.  Nobody is going to have first hand experience.  We all read the same books.   And since the test flight was successful, then Shepard would have been ok.

Offline shuttlefan

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Re: Cancelled Mercury Mission?
« Reply #9 on: 06/20/2006 03:57 am »
So that was just a real-time call on Von Braun's part--he thought there should be one more unmanned flight and that's what made Gagarin beat Sheperd. :)

Offline DwightM

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Re: Cancelled Mercury Mission?
« Reply #10 on: 06/20/2006 04:09 am »
Hey shuttlefan, here's one possible reason Scott flew instead of Wally on MA-7 from "Deke!" page 113 by Walt Williams:
"It was a choice between Wally Schirra, who was Deke's backup, and Scott Carpenter, who was John's.  I figured that MA-7 was likely to be more a repeat of John's flight than anything groundbreaking, so why not give it to Scott, since he had already trained for something pretty similar?  We were thinking about a seven-orbit flight later in the year, and that would be perfect for Wally.  So I was the one who made the decision to replace Deke with Scott."

Offline shuttlefan

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Re: Cancelled Mercury Mission?
« Reply #11 on: 06/20/2006 04:13 am »
Thanks for the answer, DwightM!  :)

Online Ben E

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Re: Cancelled Mercury Mission?
« Reply #12 on: 06/23/2006 06:43 am »
Purely out of curiosity, were any of the Mercury Seven considered 'stronger' candidates at the time of the first flights? I do recall reading, I think, in Shepard and Slayton's MOONSHOT, that the Shepard-Grissom-Glenn selection was made because they wanted representatives of all three military services in the corps at the time (Navy, Air Force and Marines).

Maybe Gagarin beating Shepard was a good thing - would the race to the Moon have taken on the same urgency in Kennedy's eyes if America HAD been first to put a man in space?

Offline Jim

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Re: Cancelled Mercury Mission?
« Reply #13 on: 06/23/2006 12:30 pm »
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Ben E - 23/6/2006  2:30 AM

Purely out of curiosity, were any of the Mercury Seven considered 'stronger' candidates at the time of the first flights? I do recall reading, I think, in Shepard and Slayton's MOONSHOT, that the Shepard-Grissom-Glenn selection was made because they wanted representatives of all three military services in the corps at the time (Navy, Air Force and Marines).

Maybe Gagarin beating Shepard was a good thing - would the race to the Moon have taken on the same urgency in Kennedy's eyes if America HAD been first to put a man in space?

You read the same books as us.  There isn't going to be anybody with first hand knownledge

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