(Shenandoah) – Wednesday marks one of those milestone anniversaries of an important event in history.
But, you have to be a huge history buff or old enough to remember the significance of May 5th, 1961. It was on that date that Alan Shepard became the first to go where no American had gone before. Placed on top of a Redstone rocket, Shepard’s Mercury spacecraft, dubbed Freedom 7, was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida on a suborbital spaceflight. True, it was a short mission lasting 15 minutes, and it never achieved orbit. But, the flight was the response the U.S. needed after the Soviet Union became the first country to put an astronaut into space, with Yuri Gagarin’s flight a month earlier. And, it broke the Russian stranglehold on space that began when the launch of the satellite Sputnik stunned the world in 1957.
Sixty years ago, Shepard was a member of the Original Seven – the U.S.’ first group of astronauts. Their Project Mercury flights marked the nation’s initial thrust in the space race, and set the tone for meeting President John F. Kennedy’s goal of landing men on the moon by the end of the 1960’s.
Back then, the astronauts were national heroes and celebrities. Americans followed their exploits with keen interest, glued to their TV sets or radios during long hours of coverage. Life magazine (remember magazines?) offered additional public exposure, with exclusive stories about the astronauts and their families (for which they were handsomely compensated).
As the interest in spaceflight began to decline after the last Apollo mission in 1972, the first astronauts became forgotten heroes. Arguably, Tom Wolfe’s book, “The Right Stuff,” and the accompanying movie in 1983, tarnished their reputations, making the astronaut corps look like a space-age version of “National Lampoon’s Animal House.” Other, uh, works like the tasteless book, “the Astronauts’ Wives Club,” followed by the horrible TV series adaptation a few years back, sullied their reputations even further.
True, the astronauts were human, and they liked having fun. But, they were also serious, tremendously skilled individuals who risked their lives in the advancement of science, and to reestablish the U.S. as a world power in the face of the communist challenge in the post-World War II era.
Of the first seven, John Glenn is the most remembered besides Shepard. After becoming the first American to orbit the earth aboard Friendship 7 in February, 1962, Glenn was hailed as an example of this country’s greatness. Glenn parlayed his space experience into a long stint as a U.S. senator from Ohio, and eventually returned to space aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery as the nation’s first geriatric astronaut in 1998.
Other Original Seven members are lesser-known, but deserve recognition. Scott Carpenter, who followed Glenn into space in May, 1962, scared NASA and the nation by overshooting his landing. Americans held their breath for almost an hour before recovery forces found him bobbing safely in the ocean, in a life raft next to his Aurora 7 spacecraft.
Wally Schirra, American’s fifth astronaut, accomplished six earth orbits. Schirra would later command Gemini 6, which joined Gemini 7 in achieving the first rendezvous between two spaceships in 1965. And, he would oversee the first manned – pardon me, CREWED Apollo mission in 1968 become becoming Walter Cronkite’s color commentator on CBS’ Apollo moonshot coverage. Then, there was Gordon Cooper, whose marathon Mercury flight in 1963 proved astronauts could survive in space beyond a day.
One astronaut who would not fly a Mercury mission was Donald K. “Deke” Slayton. Grounded due to a heart ailment, Slayton became NASA’s first chief of the astronauts before eventually making it into space as a crew member with the Apollo-Soyuz mission, the first joint American-Russian flight that, for all intents and purposes, ended the space race, and led to future cooperation between the two countries.
Sadly, Virgil I “Gus” Grissom suffered the cruelest twists of fate. As the nation’s second man in space, Grissom nearly drowned when the hatch of his Liberty Bell 7 capsule blew early, filling the cabin with water. He went on to fly the first two-man Gemini mission with John Young in 1965, only to perish with Ed White and Roger Chaffee in that infamous fire during a ground test of the Apollo 1 mission in January, 1967.
This brief summary only scratches the surface of their heroic exploits, and the distinguished lives that they led. Sadly, more people today are interested in the exploits of Kim Kardashian and in the contestants of “Dancing with the Stars” than those of the astronauts. But, two recent events may help reawaken the awareness of the service men and women in space provide for the nation, and the world. The first was Wednesday’s passing of Michael Collins, the command module pilot of Apollo 11. It was Collins who orbited the moon, as Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin made the first crewed lunar landing in 1969. Event number two happened early Sunday morning—the successful splashdown of the second Space X Crew Dragon mission after a six-month stay before the International Space Station.
Hopefully, as the 60th anniversary of Shepard’s first Mercury flight takes place this week, people will take some time to remember the contributions and sacrifices the first seven and all astronauts have made in the advancement of space travel and humanity, in general. With the U.S. and the world once again aiming toward the moon –and beyond – Shepard, Glenn, Grissom, Carpenter, Schirra, Cooper and Slayton should loom large as historic figures in charting the human path to the stars, and helping people look to the skies with wonderment.
Mike Peterson is senior news anchor/reporter with KMA News. The opinions expressed in this blog are not necessarily those of this station, its management or its ownership.
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