Rocket Man by Ruth Ashby

Author:Ruth Ashby
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: JUVENILE NONFICTION / Technology / Aeronautics, Astronautics & Space Science
Publisher: Holiday House
Published: 2004-10-30T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

Into the Space Age

The news was devastating. Not only the Mercury astronauts, but all Americans felt disappointment. When a reporter asked Glenn for his reaction, he tried to sound realistic but upbeat. “Well, they just beat the pants off us, that’s all, and there’s no use kidding ourselves about that,” he said. “But now that that space age has begun, there’s going to be plenty of work for everybody.”

Luckily, no one had a chance to dwell on the missed opportunity. Al Shepard’s real launch date was coming up, and fast.

Early on the morning of May 5, 1961, Glenn woke up with Shepard in the crew quarters at Cape Canaveral. As mission backup, Glenn rode the elevator up the side of the Redstone rocket to give the capsule one last check before launch. Before he finished, he left a sign in the tiny space: “No Handball Playing in This Area.” He was sure Al would get a chuckle out of it.

Shortly after 5:00 a.m., Glenn helped squeeze Al feet-first into his capsule, Freedom 7. Then Glenn went back to Mercury Control Center to help oversee the countdown. Four times the launch was put on hold, and four times the clock started again. Hours slipped by.

Through his earphones, Glenn heard Shepard make an urgent request. He had to urinate—immediately—and didn’t know what to do. The suborbital flight was short, only fifteen minutes, and no one had bothered to plan for a rest stop on the spacecraft.

“Do it in your suit,” Glenn was forced to say.

A minute later, Shepard chuckled. ”Well, I’m a wetback now,” he reported.

At T minus 2 minutes and 40 seconds, the clock stopped again. This time engineers were worried about pressure on the liquid oxygen. Shepard got back on the mike. “I’m cooler than you are,” Al said. Glenn could hear the impatience in his voice. “Why don’t you fix your little problem and light this candle?”

The countdown resumed.

At 9:34 A.M., the rockets fired. The Redstone rocket lifted into the air. “Roger, liftoff and the clock is started,” Shepard announced.

In its historic fifteen-minute flight, Freedom 7 soared to an altitude of 115,696 miles above Earth. After just a few minutes of weightlessness, Shepard rode the capsule back down to Earth. Freedom 7 splashed into the Atlantic Ocean just 302 miles from Cape Canaveral. It was a near-perfect mission.

Tense and excited, Americans watched every suspenseful moment on TV, anxiously sweating it out along with the team at Mission Control. In the White House, President John F. Kennedy and his wife Jackie kept their eyes glued to the black-and-white TV in the Oval Office. After Shepard was located at sea and brought aboard a waiting aircraft carrier, Kennedy phoned to offer his congratulations.

From coast to coast, America celebrated. Finally, as Glenn wrote later, “the United States had entered the space age.”

Two weeks later, on May 25, Kennedy delivered an important speech to Congress. “Now is the time to take longer strides,” he declared, “time for a great new American enterprise. .

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