Sport Rocketry

motor ignitions at specific times to keep the astronaut alive! Read the detail of an actual launch escape motor firing prema- turely on MR-1 (everything worked—but did they re-use the cap- sule?). Frankly, with the number of explosive bolts, rocket motors, parachute charges, etc., an astronaut was surrounded by pyrotech- nics and energetics. ere is even a bomb on board! e SOFAR bomb would deto- nate at a prescribed depth aer impact in the ocean to send out a sonic pulse, hopefully to be heard by some distant ship or subma- rine to locate an errant capsule that had gone well off course. Astronaut systems, Suits, Electronic systems, Environmental systems, Communication systems, and on and on are needed for a completely successful flight. All are covered in wonderful detail. I found you could skip around, but as the systems are interlinked, you do need to get through other sections to get the whole picture. Chapter Four, "Performance analysis 1959-63" is the really neat part for space history nerds—as if the rest of the book was not enough. Flight by flight, every launch, or attempt, is document- ed. Did you know a "Big Joe" boilerplate was the second Mercury flown? How about a beach launch of just the capsule from Wallops Island (no Little Joe under it)? Can you name all the chimpanzees that rode the rocket before Alan Shepard—or aer? Did you know that two men flew and then a chimp flew again? Read through these missions carefully. Start with Little Joe 1 with its 20-second flight in August 1956. e flight is detailed to include all the items that did not work—which is why you test, test, test. At a peak altitude of only 2,100 feet, you could fly an Estes 1/34 Little Joe 1 to scale altitude…but the scale lawn dart aer- wards would not be pretty. Eleven more unmanned missions were 36 MAY/JUNE 2022 SPORT ROCKETRY Figure 1. Escape tower details. Note: Although this figure is used in the book, this NASA image comes from NASA Project Mercury Familiarization Manual 20 May 1962 p. 55. Figure 2. More escape tower details. Note: Although this figure is used in the book, this NASA image comes from NASA Project Mercury Maintenance Manual 1959 p. 44. flown on Little Joe, Redstone, and Atlas (Big Joe) boosters before chimpanzee "Ham" rode his Mercury "MR-2" to 157 miles of alti- tude and 5,857 MPH in January 1961. Counting MR-2, five more "unmanned" rounds were flown on Little Joe, Redstone, and At- las before MR-3, spacecra 7, launched on 5 May 1961 with Alan Shepard, USN, becoming the first American in space at 116 miles altitude and 5,134 MPH—historic, but lower and slower than Ham (maybe he was heavier.) Spacecra #11—Liberty Bell 7—followed (learn about the numbering system as well) with "Gus" Grissom only two miles higher and 34 MPH faster. America was edging its way toward or- bital flight. And that is important! While those of us who watched these flights on little black & white TVs assumed we were "racing the Russians"—and we were—thousands of engineers and scien- tists were carefully detailing every step of the way so that no astro- naut—or astrochimp—was harmed. How about all the little things that did go "wrong" or less than perfect on mission aer mission as we learned our way into space? Which astronaut ran out of attitude control propellant—and how did he get back? Was there ever a glitch-free flight? What about the four approved but never launched flights? What other missions were Mercury capsules proposed to accomplish? It is all here in wondrous writing in Chapter Four. e Launch Vehicles (1959-63), chapter five, does a very good job of describing the Little Joe, Big Joe, Redstone, and Atlas boost- ers. It is not a place for competition scale data, but there are again great photos and drawings. And the purpose of the book is to de-

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