Freedom 7: The Historic Flight of Alan B. Shepard, Jr. (Springer Praxis Books / Space Exploration) by Burgess Colin

Author:Burgess, Colin [Burgess, Colin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Published: 2013-09-27T00:00:00+00:00

Then the voice of CapCom Deke Slayton came through. “José? Do you read me, José?”

“I read you loud and clear, Deke,” Shepard replied.

“Don’t cry too much,” Deke said as part of the Bill Dana routine.

“All right,” came the more sober response.

Physician Bill Douglas gives Shepard a final “okay” sign in front of the periscope. (Photo: NASA)

At 6:34 a.m., some 24 minutes after Shepard had been sealed into Freedom 7, the enclosing service structure slowly began to roll away from the Redstone, leaving the impressive white-and-black painted rocket poised pencil-like on the launch pedestal, pointed ambitiously towards the rapidly lightening dawn sky, ready to lunge free on command.

There was now an air of hope and expectation among the delay-weary hordes of reporters and members of the public who were again on the beaches and every other vantage point, listening to bulletins on their transistor radios. They had endured three frustrating and exhausting days of storms sweeping up and down the coast, thunder and lightning, and the dispiriting announcements of continued postponements. Now, as they assembled beneath a relatively cloudless dawn sky, they began to believe that this might, finally, be the day on which Alan Shepard would make history.

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