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Type keyword(s) to search I Lived With the Astronauts : PM at the Beginning of U.S. Spaceflight
In December 1959, Popular Mechanics spent a week with the Mercury 7 astronauts and witnessed the beginning of U.S. human spaceflight.
By Joseph N. Bell CorbisGetty Images
On this day 60 years ago, Alan Shepard packed into the cramped Freedom 7 capsule atop a Mercury-Redstone rocket and blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The NASA astronaut climbed to an altitude of 116 miles above Earth s surface and became the first American to reach space. His flight lasted just 15 minutes, but it cemented his legendary status as one of the most daring explorers in our nation s history.
Sixty years ago, on May 5, 1961, a Redstone rocket hurled Alan Shepard’s Mercury capsule,
Freedom 7, 116 miles (187 km) high and 302 miles (486 km) downrange from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Freedom 7 parachuted into the Atlantic just 15 minutes and 22 seconds later, after attaining a maximum velocity of 5,180 mph (8,336 km/h). Shepard, a Navy test pilot and NASA astronaut, became the first American to fly in space.
Shepard’s flight was a triumph, not least because it had been conducted live on national television and in front of the world press. It was a notable contrast to the secretive ways of the Communist-led Soviet Union. But 25 days earlier on April 12, 1961, Soviet Air Force pilot Yuri Gagarin had made a single orbit of the Earth, becoming the first human to travel beyond the atmosphere. It was just the latest Soviet space first, going back to Sputnik, the first artificial Earth satellite, in October 1957. Gagarin’s flight was yet another stunning propaganda success i
NASA
On May 5, 1961, about 45 million US television viewers watched a single-stage Redstone rocket lift off from Launch Complex 5 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on their black and white sets. Atop the rocket was a tiny capsule less than 7 ft (2 m) tall. As it rose into the sky at 9:34 am EST, Mercury Redstone 3 carried Alan Shepard on a 15-minute flight to become America s first man in space.
When the news broke on April 12, 1961, that Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin aboard Vostok 1 had successfully orbited the Earth for the first time, one person who reacted with anger and disappointment was Alan Shepard. One of the famous Mercury 7 astronauts selected to fly America s first crewed spacecraft, he had trained hard for 21 weeks and claimed the top spot to be the first person in history to enter outer space, only to end up being relegated to second place. Worse, Gagarin had orbited the Earth while Shepard was only going on a sub-orbital flight before a splashdown in the Atlan
A NEWPORT man about to be let free by the police following an altercation with two other men, instead decided to direct drunken insults at the officers, an Isle of Wight court was told. Unemployed Harry Rae White, of Atkinson Drive, was handed a six-month conditional discharge after he admitted being drunk and disorderly in Newport High Street on the evening of April 12. Police officers were called to the junction of Sea Street and the Quay in Newport, amid reports of an incident, in which White had allegedly attacked two other men. He was arrested initially on suspicion of assault occasioning actual bodily harm. But he was not charged and the officers prepared to let him go.