Mercury 3 - 50th Anniversary

Beeker

Today marks the 50th anniversary of NASA's first manned spaceflight.
Mercury/Redstone 3 on May 5th 1961. Alan Shepard became the first US man to enter space. It was a short 15 minute sub-orbital flight on board the Freedom 7 spacecraft.

lord lucan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APwntCQ8Iiw

clln

Then he got to play Golf on the Moon,his widow was recently given a piece of Moonrock to place in a museam of her choice.
Delighted he was remembered here today,he had 'the right stuff'
how many people get to have their face on a stamp that actually deserve it?


First American in space and first spacecraft to orbit Mercury got their own stamps!

AugustusMinimus

I find it weird that most people think John Glenn was the first American in space.

SpaceFan

clln wrote: »

Then he got to play Golf on the Moon,his widow was recently given a piece of Moonrock to place in a museam of her choice.
Delighted he was remembered here today,he had 'the right stuff'
how many people get to have their face on a stamp that actually deserve it?

First American in space and first spacecraft to orbit Mercury got their own stamps!

Love it... To this day I still imagine myself sitting in that capsule in '61. Talk about adrenaline... Awesome!

Picked up a few books of the stamps today. I even have guitar equipment named after this historical mission!

Rubecula

AugustusMinimus wrote: »

I find it weird that most people think John Glenn was the first American in space.

Yes that comes up in pub quizzes a lot. If I remember correctly he was the first to ORBIT the earth... but I may be wrong. I remember Sheppherd though and Freedom 7 (Capsule is in a museum somewhere I think???)

clln

SpaceFan wrote: »

Love it... To this day I still imagine myself sitting in that capsule in '61. Talk about adrenaline... Awesome!

Picked up a few books of the stamps today. I even have guitar equipment named after this historical mission!

What a fantastic first post Spacefan!,always nice to have a new nerd , member interested in Spaceflight aboard!

Great set of Photo's of the official Ceremony at link below.(You have to cover your eyes on some of them,Charlie Bolden was there;))

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nasahqphoto/

Two requests:
@ Beeker you posted a video of the NBC reporter that was there from the start one time any chance you could dig it up again?
He still is there for the Shuttle press conference's now and always has great empathy for the team,unlike some of the other idiot reporters!

other one,has anybody got a link to the famous clip of the launch of Mercury 3 were the Commentator says "We're on our way into Space with Alan B Sheperd,i'll join you in just a second on another microphone"?.

Beeker

clln wrote: »

Two requests:
@ Beeker you posted a video of the NBC reporter that was there from the start one time any chance you could dig it up again?
He still is there for the Shuttle press conference's now and always has great empathy for the team,unlike some of the other idiot reporters!

other one,has anybody got a link to the famous clip of the launch of Mercury 3 were the Commentator says "We're on our way into Space with Alan B Sheperd,i'll join you in just a second on another microphone"?.

I will take a look this evening. I have gigabits of data on every US manned spaceflight on a hard drive a home.

Beeker

Rubecula wrote: »

Yes that comes up in pub quizzes a lot. If I remember correctly he was the first to ORBIT the earth... but I may be wrong. I remember Sheppherd though and Freedom 7 (Capsule is in a museum somewhere I think???)

Yeah Shepard was the first from the US to enter space but only on a sub orbital flight. Glenn was the first from the US in orbit.

clln

Beeker wrote: »

Yeah Shepard was the first from the US to enter space

and only 24 days after Gargarin, OUCH!:)

If anybody has not watched the first-orbit re-creation of Gargarins first flight,i highly recommend it !all the excitement of being the first human in space is really obvious from Gargarins voice, with subtitles.
his journey round the Globe footage was taken by the crew of the ISS.
music is really good too!

http://www.youtube.com/user/firstorbit

AugustusMinimus

clln wrote: »

and only 24 days after Gargarin, OUCH!:)

If anybody has not watched the first-orbit re-creation of Gargarins first flight,i highly recommend it !all the excitement of being the first human in space is really obvious from Gargarins voice, with subtitles.
his journey round the Globe footage was taken by the crew of the ISS.
music is really good too!

http://www.youtube.com/user/firstorbit

There are rumours of course that Gargarin wasn't the first person in space, but a previous cosmonaut died on re-entry.

However, it's all speculation and no proof has every surfaced since the end of the cold war. It would be something you could imagine the Soviet's at the time doing to save face though.

clln

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AugustusMinimus wrote: »

There are rumours of course that Gargarin wasn't the first person in space, but a previous cosmonaut died on re-entry.

However, it's all speculation and no proof has every surfaced since the end of the cold war. It would be something you could imagine the Soviet's at the time doing to save face though.

Hi.ya Augustus, i knew that topic had come up for discussion recently but i could not remember which thread,took a while but i found it.:)

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056227527