Project Mercury [4K]

Video from the channel Homemade Documentaries about Project Mercury, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 2:32:15. Language: English. Video type: Documentary.

A recent production documentary covering the Mercury program, the first American manned spaceflight program, from its antecedents in World War II rockets to the final flight, Faith 7. It combines archival material — newsreels, interviews with Gene Kranz and Christopher Kraft, and speeches by Kennedy — with narration of each mission.

The story begins with the V-2 (A-4) of Dornberger and Wernher von Braun, whose MW 18014 unit reached an altitude of 176 km. Through Operation Paperclip, more than 1,200 German specialists arrived in the United States, and between 1946 and 1951, 67 captured V-2s were launched from White Sands, while Project Bumper tested staging. The Redstone, the Jupiter C, and Mary Sherman Morgan's hydyne fuel followed. During the International Geophysical Year, Sputnik (4 October 1957), Sputnik 2 with the dog Laika, and the Vanguard's failure in December pushed the United States to launch Explorer 1 (1 February 1958), whose Van Allen instruments revealed the belts that bear his name. The 1958 Space Act created NASA, led by Glennan, which absorbed NACA with its 8,000 employees. Gilruth's Space Task Group, with Faget leading the design, adopted H. Julian Allen's blunt body and an ablative shield. The capsule contract was awarded to McDonnell in January 1959.

Of 508 volunteers, 32 finalists went through the Lovelace Clinic and seven were chosen: Carpenter, Cooper, Glenn, Grissom, Schirra, Shepard, and Slayton. Thirteen women passed the same tests. The astronauts won manual control and a window. After MR-1's failure and MR-1A's success, the chimpanzee Ham flew on MR-2. After Gagarin's flight, Shepard flew Freedom 7 (5 May 1961, 15 min 22 s), and the hatch of Grissom's Liberty Bell 7 blew after splashdown. The capsule sank and was not recovered until 1999. The Atlas, a stage-and-a-half rocket with pressurized steel balloon tanks, carried Enos through two orbits and then Glenn aboard Friendship 7 (20 February 1962): three orbits, a thruster failure, and a false shield alarm caused by a microswitch. Carpenter, aboard Aurora 7, splashed down about 200 nautical miles beyond the planned point. Schirra completed six orbits on Sigma 7, and Cooper closed out the program with 22 orbits on Faith 7, the first American television broadcast from space, and a precise manual retrofire after an electrical failure.