Sport Rocketry

even potential strategic "bomber" back in the early 1950s. Clearly there were a lot of technologies, techniques, and human fac- tors development that were needed. While X-15 pilots were beginning to touch the high Mach speeds needed, actual space operations needed real human experi- ence. e first chapter covers much of the early efforts by the USAF, ARPA, the U.S. Army to get a "Man in Space Soon- est—MISS," "Project Adam," and even the British "Megarock" (great name!) that led to the 28 June 1958 selection of—and read this carefully—Neil Armstrong, William Bridgeman, Scott Crossfield, Even Kinche- loe, John McKay, Robert Rushwork, Rob- ert Walker, and Alvin White as the world's first astronaut selection! Not all the names you were expecting—and this was seven months before the much more public and famous "Mercury Seven!" Hence, much of the book covers things that you simply will not find anywhere else in one worthwhile and detailed read. en comes the design of the well known capsule shape, except there were a lot of different iterations by various compa- nies competing for the job. You will easily see Vostok like configurations in the Devel- opment chapters. Simply said, a sphere is easier to pressurize in space to protect the occupant. Once the "final" configuration was cho- sen, McDonnell had to really design it, test it, fail, re-design it, build newer configura- SPORT ROCKETRY MAY/JUNE 2022 35 Book Review by Dave Newill NAR 6139 Can you name the FIRST seven American astronaut candidates—really? Why did the Mercury capsule carry a bomb? Might Mercury have ever had a Photo-reconnaissance Mission? Are YOU a Mercury mission MASTER? In getting ready to build a stand-off scale Mercury Redstone for the 5 May 2021 60th anniversary flights, I started doing research in many corners—all the typical scale aficionados locations—when I ran into David Bakers book, "NASA MER- CURY 1956 to 1963 (all models) Owners Workshop Manual." is is not a "how to build a Mercury" capsule—nor the Little Joe, Big Joe, Redstone, and Atlas boost- ers book. One could not use this to "turn a wrench" on this rocket! But, if you want a very detailed and technical historic book— for example you want to understand the differences between nearly every build of a Mercury capsule (as it says 1956 to 1963)— then this is your go-to reference. I consider myself to be a pretty good aerospace historian, having run a small museum devoted to the subject, but WOW! Mr. Baker has "Did you know this?!" sorts of facts literally from page one to 201. I will get to a few of those in a moment. Hardcover, with glossy pages covered with very clear black and white images and technical drawings, as well as color graph- ics, this is a near coffee table sized book, but you will want to do more than just look at nice images. e Mercury program information is followed by very complete chapters on: Structure, Electrical Power Systems, Envi- ronmental Control Systems, Attitude Con- trol Systems, Rocket Systems (check out the retrograde rockets and the posigrade rockets—what is posigrade? Look it up), Recovery Equipment, Astronaut Systems, Communications, and Instrumentation. But step back to the actual reason for Project Mercury—and it is not what you probably recall! Dyna-soar, the black or- biting mini-shuttle, was conceived by the USAF as a reconnaissance vehicle and Book Review: NASA Mercury tions, test them—again and again. As com- ponents and systems failed, they had to be re-thought and newer parts retrofitted into a tiny "tin can"—actually fabricated from exotics like René 41. ere is more to this section than just excellent component drawings and photographs. e astronauts participated in the design and made a lot of changes—these stories put the human part to the program. ose of you wanting to make the de- tails of the launch escape tower exactly cor- rect will want the graphics on pages 61 and 114 of the book (see Figures 1 and 2 ac- companying this article). ese images are typical of the work that fills the technical parts of the book. Let's get to the solid fuel rocket motors! Retrograde, Posigrade, Escape and Tow- er jettison motors are precisely described in the Rocket Systems chapter, to include photos, cross section drawings, igniters, heaters (it gets cold up there!) insulation (it gets lots of solar radiation heating up there as well !) Here too, great engineering draw- ings abound (see Figure 3 and Figure 4). A bit of calculating thrusts and burn times of various solid fuel motors gets you up into the upper level of the alphabet sized motors, if classified by NAR and TRA defi- nitions. Did you know the fat little Retro rockets were adapted from the early Dis- cover spy camera capsule motors? e detailed thinking of what could go wrong with a launch, and when, covers several very well written pages. e reader would be challenged to have to mentally work through all these possible emergency situations with which explosive bolts need to be fired and in what sequence along with Author: David Baker - 2017 Publisher: Haynes Publishing

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