by Jay Barbree
Settled in, Alan saw a small notice attached to the instrument panel.
NO HANDBALL PLAYING IN HERE.
Glenn looked through the hatch, grinning at Alan reading the sign. Alan returned the notice to him.
They readied the hatch. Alan held up a gloved thumb to Glenn. “See you soon,” he said. Behind Glenn the gantry crew shouted their farewell. “Happy landings, Commander!”
The hatch closed.
Alan Shepard was alone, squeezed into a spacecraft with less room than a telephone booth. He felt butterflies trying to squeeze in with him, reminding him he was sitting atop a great tube of a bomb. He pushed aside the thought, went to work running down his checklists, testing the radios, all switch settings.
The butterflies went elsewhere.
Shepard looked through the periscope viewer in the center of the instrument panel. He saw the crew still at work outside the spacecraft. Then they began to diminish in size as the gantry rolled back on steel rails from the Redstone.
The periscope gave him a view of clouds lit by the morning sun. Far below he watched the launch crew finishing last-minute details at the base of the rocket.
He glanced at his capsule timer. Only fifteen minutes to go in the countdown. The view outside dimmed. Cloud cover rolling in! Damn!
The countdown clock stopped. Everybody sat on tenterhooks, waiting for the sky to clear. Everybody hated countdown delays. It just allowed more time for something to go wrong.
It did. The launch director ordered the gantry rolled back to the rocket. A small electrical part had suffered a glitch. Not much, but it had to be fixed, resulting in an hour-and-twenty-six-minute delay.
The countdown hold was long enough for Gordo Cooper, principal prelaunch communicator in the blockhouse. He had to hunt for things to say. Bill Douglas fretted like a mother hen. Wernher von Braun came on the communications line, as unhappy as Shepard with the delay.
“Gordo?”
“Yeah, Alan.”
“Tell Shorty Powers to call Louise. I want her to hear from us that I’m fine, and explain that I’m going nowhere fast.”
“Got it.”
The delay was taking its toll in a physiological manner as well. Shepard had been seated atop the Redstone for so long that the need to urinate was becoming urgent. And that was a problem. The suborbital flight was scheduled to last only fifteen minutes. No one thought it necessary to equip Shepard or the Mercury with a urine collection system.
“Gordo!”
“Go, Alan.”
“Man, I got to pee.”
“You what?”
“You heard me. I’ve got to pee. I’ve been in here forever. The gantry is still right here, so why don’t you guys let me out of here for a quick stretch?”
“Hold on,” Gordo told him. He came back a few minutes later. “No way, Alan. Wernher says we don’t have the time to reassemble the White Room. He says you’re in there to stay.”
“Gordo, I’ve got to relieve myself!” Shepard shouted. “I could be in here a couple more hours, and by that time my bladder’s gonna burst!”
“Wernher says no.”
Alan’s temper was soaring. “Well, shit, Gordo,” he said, “We have to do something. Dammit, tell ’em I’m going to let it go in my suit.”
“No! No, good God, you can’t do that,” Gordo shouted back. “The medics say you’ll short-circuit all their medical leads!”
“Tell ’em to turn the power off!” Alan snapped.
The solution was that simple. Gordo had a chuckle in his voice. “Okay, Alan, power’s off. Go to it.”
No science fiction writer had ever penned this scenario. Shepard simply couldn’t hold back the urine flow any longer. But since he was in that reclining semi-supine position the liquid pooled in the small of his back. It was as if they’d designed the suit for such an emergency. His heavy undergarment soaked up the urine, and with 100 percent oxygen flowing through the suit he was soon dry.
The countdown resumed.
The gantry was gone.
Alan watched the waves breaking on the beach. Just what the doctor ordered—calming and soothing.
Five minutes.
Three minutes.
Two minutes and forty seconds and counting.
Shepard heard the dreaded word, “Hold.”
Gordo was on the line immediately. “Alan, uh, we’re gonna hold here at this time. We’ve, ah, got a little computer problem here—”
“Shit!” Alan yelled. “I’ve been in here more than three hours. I’m a hell of a lot cooler than you guys. Why don’t you just fix your little problem and light this candle?”
They fixed the problem; the count resumed. At T-minus 2 minutes Alan heard Deke’s voice.
Gordo was in the blockhouse just a stone’s throw from the pad. Deke sat before his console in Mercury Control two miles away. He shared the control room with fifteen men who sat behind three banks of consoles to measure every moment of the flight.
Deke’s voice became a professional monotone as he counted off the final seconds.
Just before liftoff, Shepard had a final message he spoke only to himself. “You volunteered for this Shepard. Get it done. Get in done.”
Vibration rattled the capsule as the Redstone’s internal pumps came alive.
CHAPTER NINE
Freedom Seven
THE INVASION FORCE GATHERED OUTSIDE the home of Louise and Alan Shepard was on its own “hold,” sipping coffee and consuming pastries brought to them by the Shepard’s neighbors. Photographers, television camera crews, reporters and broadcasters, playing the waiting game, hoping Louise Shepard would emerge from her home to talk with them, tell them how she felt, what were her emotions, everything from pride to fear of—
No, she would not admit anything could go wrong to the wolves at the door. The moment was familiar but not the same. She’d waited before when Alan had flown tests closer to the earth. She knew the clammy feelings when he was late, but that was a straight road to a nervous breakdown, and she had pushed all that away from her long before now. Test planes or rockets. It didn’t matter. If danger were real Alan would have told her. They lived by that agreement. No heroics, the truth, plain and simple.
She had unquestioned faith and confidence in her husband. If the metal parts held together and the flame burned bright and true, and success hinged on the performance of Commander Alan Shepard, then he’d do his job.
Now, there was something new. She smiled at the television. They could now do more than listen. Thanks to the box that snatched pictures magically out of air and displayed them on a screen. They could hear and see what was happening.
She understood the pressure on the media to ask her questions and share her thoughts and feelings with readers and viewers and listeners throughout the world. In many ways she spoke for them all. They could transfer their own empathy for whatever it was they thought she was enduring. It was a tug of war between what people wanted to see, hear, and feel, and the intensity of her own desire to retain the integrity and privacy not only of her family but of Alan himself.
The newsmen and women waiting outside were made up of both compassionate beings and story-hungry flacks with no concern for the feelings of others. They represented the broad spectrum of a nation eager for news. But she was Mrs. Alan Shepard, and they would respect that, period. Through the long night she had heard footsteps coming up on her front porch, each time followed by a pause and the sound of retreat as the news people read the note she had left on her door:
THERE ARE NO REPORTERS INSIDE. I WILL HAVE A
STATEMENT FOR THE PRESS AFTER THE FLIGHT.
She was grateful they had chosen to respect her wishes, to accept her word there were no reporters in her home. A rumor had circulated among the gathered press that Life magazine had a reporter and photographer inside.
Louise watched the crowd, then turned from the window, lifting the small transistor radio she’d carried all morning to her ear. The station was carrying
the Cape Canaveral broadcast live. She didn’t want to miss a beat.
“Louise!” Her father called from where the rest of the family was before the TV. “Better get in here! They’ve picked up the countdown!”
She caught the sudden change of voice from the radio. “This should be it,” the broadcaster said quietly. “Everything looks good. The weather is go, and Mercury Control says Alan Shepard and his Freedom Seven are go. . . ”
She joined the family, staring at the slender rocket standing alone. It looked like a marble pillar from some ancient Greek painting and she knelt before it, instinctively reaching forward to touch the live television picture of the Mercury-Redstone and Freedom Seven. She desperately wished to touch her husband.
T-minus seven.
Alan drew strength from Deke’s firm voice.
Six.
Hang in there with me, Deke . . .
Five.
He pushed his feet firmly against the capsule’s floor.
Four.
A finger on the stopwatch—must initiate time at the moment of liftoff in case the automatic clock should fail.
Three.
Hand on the abort handle. The escape tower was loaded.
Two.
Muscles tight.
One.
“Get it done, Shepard. Get it done.”
Zero.
Deke’s voice rose in pitch as he sang out, “Ignition!”
He felt rumbling. Pumps spinning at full speed. Fuel flowing. Combustion. Fire. Before he could think about what came next, a dull roar boomed through the Redstone, rushed through Freedom Seven with a surprisingly gentle touch before it grew, louder and louder.
“Liftoff!” Deke called.
Alan felt movement.
Freedom Seven swayed slightly.
His heart pounded.
He had first motion.
“You’re on your way, Jose!” Deke shouted.
“Roger, liftoff, and the clock has started,” Alan called out as the Redstone came to life gently, a slumbering giant greeting the sky with a yawn and a stretch, and now there was the power—he was on his way . . .
“This is Freedom Seven. Fuel is go. Oxygen is go. Cabin holding at 5.5 PSI.” The hard data came from Alan like a ticker tape.
“I understand, cabin holding at five-point-five,” Deke responded.
How incredible. The calmest two people along the entire space coast this day were Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton.
Even before the first swaying movement of Freedom Seven, other machines were out in force in preparation for Alan Shepard’s liftoff. Military helicopters with rescue teams moved to the west of the launch pad while others skimmed the ocean offshore. Streaking toward the pad in F-106 jets were astronauts Wally Schirra and Scott Carpenter, primed to chase and observe the Redstone as long as they could before it sped from sight. Tracking and search planes cruised from low-level to stratospheric heights, and the sea was dotted with swift crash boats and Navy ships, all coiled to spring to Freedom Seven in the event the unlikely, the unthinkable, might happen.
Every road and pathway leading to and from the launch pad showed the flashing lights of fire trucks, ambulances, crash trucks, security teams, communications teams, and whatever might be needed to back up that one man already slicing into high flight.
At the center of Cape Canaveral’s fifteen thousand acres was a press site thrown together of trailers, television trucks, prefab offices, bleachers, high viewing stands, camera mounts, a blizzard of antennae, and a snake forest of cabling along the ground. Tension on the site was as strained as anywhere else, for the fourth estate was hooked up to receiving facilities not only in the United States but also throughout the world. Of the thousand or so newsmen and women who’d sweated out this first manned launch, working down to split-second timing, proud of their self-discipline in telling the world Alan Shepard was on his way, many simply and plainly blew their cool.
They were screaming, “Go! Go! Go!” without regard for timing or microphones or anything save watching the Redstone liftoff from the ground. Tough and grizzled news veterans lifted faces unashamedly showing tears as they pounded fists on wooden railings, against their equipment, against defenseless backs of their compatriots.
Beyond the Cape, down along the causeways, on the beaches, and lining the roads and highways, a great army had assembled to witness an epochal moment in history. Five hundred thousand men, women, and children, in cars, trucks, motorcycles, trailers, motor homes, anything that would roll and move, had gathered, nudged, pushed, shoved, and squeezed as close as they could get to the security perimeter of the Cape to watch and shout encouragement.
They went mad at the sight of the Redstone breaking above the tree line; their combined chorus of hope and prayer was almost as mighty as the roar of the rocket.
This was pure, naked, uninhibited emotion. It gathered substance over the ocean surface, along the beaches, in the palmetto scrub, from every point in the compass beyond this space community.
In Cocoa Beach, people left their homes to stand outside and look toward the Cape. They went to balconies and front lawns and back lawns. They stood atop cars and trucks and rooftops. They left their morning coffee and bacon and eggs in restaurants to walk outside on the street or on the sands of the beach. They left beauty parlors and barbershops with sheets around their bodies. Policemen stopped their cars and stood outside, the better to see and hear. Along the water, the surfers ceased their pursuit of the waves and stood, transfixed, swept up in the snap of time.
It was a moment when a town stood still.
Fire was born, the dragon howled, and the Redstone levitated with its precious human cargo.
That was but the beginning. When the bright flame came into view, even before the deep pure sound washed across the town, something happened.
Something . . . wonderful.
Men and women sank slowly to their knees. Praying.
Others stood praying.
Crying.
There was no holding back.
All that moved in Cocoa Beach were beating hearts and falling tears.
Flame lifted Freedom Seven higher, faster.
Not bad at all, he thought to himself. Damn, Shepard, this is smoother than anything you ever expected. Hang in there. It’s going beautifully.
“This is Freedom Seven. Two-point-five-g. Cabin five-point-five. Oxygen is go. The main buss is twenty-four, and the isolated battery is twenty-nine.”
A comfortable, assured “Roger” came back from Deke.
Shepard was at two and a half times his normal weight. So far the flight had been a piece of cake. Flame beneath the Redstone grew longer within the thin air.
Shepard was through the smoothest part of powered ascent, and then he reached the rutted road, the barrier he must defeat before he would leave the atmosphere behind.
Redstone was pushing, pulsing, hammering at shock waves gathering stubbornly before its passage. Alan was slicing from below the speed of sound through the barrier to supersonic flight. Now he was in the reefs of Max Q, the zone of maximum dynamic pressure where forces of flight and the need to keep flying straight up challenged the Redstone’s strength.
Buffeting began, an upward dash over invisible deep and jagged potholes. His helmet slammed against his contour couch. He had the mental picture of a terrier shaking a rat in its jaws, and the rat was called Shepard.
Eighteen inches before him the instrument panel became a blur, almost impossible to read.
A thousand pounds of pressure for every square foot of Freedom Seven was trying to crack the capsule like a brittle walnut.
“Hang in there.” His own voice reminding him, “This is what you signed up for.”
He started to call Deke far below, changed his mind. No matter that he was being rattled violently, it was time to keep the mouth shut.
A garbled transmission at this point could send Mercury Control into a wide-eyed flap. It might even trigger an abort by someone overzealously
guarding his safety.
No calls, no mistaken abort. “Shut up. If I need an abort, I’ll tell Deke.”
As if in answer to a silent plea to the flame beneath him, the Redstone slipped through the hammering blows of Max Q into the smoothness beyond. Shepard grinned and keyed his mike.
“Okay, it’s a lot smoother now. A lot smoother.”
If nothing else, Deke was the original laconic man. “Roger,” he said calmly.
Louise Shepard stared at her television, watching the rocket lifting magically from its launch pad. On the screen the flame seemed as tiny as it was bright. She tried desperately to listen to the words being exchanged between Mercury Control and her husband. She would have been grateful to hear the Redstone’s roar, but the girls in the Shepard household were ecstatic, excited, wild, cheering and shrieking at the top of their lungs. Louise didn’t even think of trying to quiet them. That was their father in that rocket. This was their moment, too.
And hers. She smiled to herself welcoming the tears as she brought a hand to her lips. “Go, Alan,” she said quietly, unheard in the din of the room. “Go, sweetheart.”
Mercury Control called out the time hack. “Plus two minutes . . . ”
Alan Shepard was now twenty-five miles high and accelerating through twenty-seven hundred miles an hour.
Increasing g-forces mashed him down into his couch. It hurt and it felt terrific.
What a ride!
“All systems are go,” he called down to Deke.
Every moment of prelaunch and ascent was prime time for news coverage of the flight of Freedom Seven. Merrill Mueller and Jay Barbree of NBC News were broadcasting across the length and breadth of America and through a far-flung international network covering the globe. Mueller was the veteran, the voice of confidence, unflappable, unshakable. Jay Barbree was the neophyte, learning from the master. Mueller had done his newscasts through raging battles of war, and he’d been the voice that issued forth from the deck of the USS Missouri when the Japanese surrendered in Tokyo Bay. He never lost his cool, he was magnificently composed, and now he was describing to the world the launch of America’s first man to hurtle into space.