Scrapbook 2: May 1962 — Scott Carpenter

3 Orbits Planned for Astronaut

Scott Carpenter Ready to Ride ‘Sky High’ Saturday

By HOWARD BENEDICT

CAPE CANAVERAL (AP)—Lean, handsome Scott Carpenter is about to embark on a journey whose dangers and fascination are known to only three men—a pulsating orbit ride more than 100 miles above the earth.

If the present schedule holds, Carpenter, outfitted in a silver space suit, will ride an elevator to the 11th level of a red and white rocket service tower on launch pad 14 early Saturday morning.

He will wiggle into a cramped space capsule—which he personally has named “Aurora 7”—and sometime between 7 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. he will be shot into space by an Atlas missile.

Astronaut John H. Glenn Jr. took the same dramatic steps last Feb. 20. His successful flight is now history. He circled the earth three times and became a new hero whom the United States ecstatically embraced as a symbol of this nation’s great pride—a symbol of America’s intent to be the first to land a man on the moon.

Two other men have experienced orbital flight, the Russians Yuri Gagarin and Gherman Titov.

Glenn’s flight proved that man can survive for at least short periods in the eerie weightless environment of space, and that he can operate under stress in this strange new world.

Carpenter is to expand on the knowledge gained from Glenn’s ride. What he and other astronauts learn in the next few years will ease the path which future American spacemen will take to the moon late in this decade—and eventually to the moon, Mars, Venus and other planets.

Carpenter’s assignment basically is the same as Glenn’s. The flight profile calls for him to whirl three times around the globe in 4 hours 56 minutes at the speed of 17,500 miles an hour.

But many changes have been introduced, some of them to correct problems which cropped up on Glenn’s flight. Others give Carpenter, 37-year-old navy lieutenant commander, a number of unique assignments—including observation of a trailing balloon, ejection of man-made luminous particles, study of liquid in weightlessness and several photographic duties.

Near the end of Glenn’s first orbit, the automatic control system in his capsule malfunctioned slightly. Two small jets which emit streams of hydrogen peroxide gas to help keep the spacecraft properly oriented became clogged.

This caused the capsule to drift off the planned attitude and Glenn took over manual control of the craft the last two orbits, conclusively demonstrating that man is better than machine in space. Without a human pilot, the capsule would have been ordered to the ground after the second orbit, just as Enos the chimpanzee was when his craft developed similar problems in a preliminary Project Mercury flight last November.

The fault was traced to the breaking up under excessive heat of a stainless steel screen at the mouth of the jet fuel line, with pieces of the screen being sucked into the line. Platinum wire, which is highly heat resistant, has been substituted for the stainless steel on Carpenter’s capsule.

Carpenter will try many experiments Glenn was unable to carry out because of his occupation with the manual controls. Among them are observation of the stars, exercising, eating more frequently, and preplanned manual control tests.

Actually, about half the flight is planned to be automatic and half manually directed. At times, “Aurora 7” will be permitted to drift off its intended attitude course to determine what happens to communications. This could afford a hint to the type of radio antennas which will be needed on moonbound spaceships.

Spaceman waits—to hear GO!

By Ronald Bedford

PLANS to blast America’s second Spaceman into orbit tomorrow are being speeded up.

Although the weather situation does not look too good, the signal at Cape Canaveral was still set at “Go” for Commander Malcolm Scott Carpenter, pictured left.

The 37-year-old Commander was the standby pilot when Colonel John Glenn was waiting to make his triple orbit.

Carpenter’s two-ton Aurora Seven Spaceship is already mated to the 107D Atlas rocket that will carry it into orbit.

His flight, like Glenn’s, is planned as a three-orbit mission.

Astronaut Malcolm Scott Carpenter pictured in a machine which reproduces the colossal strain of blast-off and re-entry.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP)—The intended orbital flight of astronaut Scott Carpenter—scheduled for Saturday—has been postponed until Tuesday so additional sensing equipment can be installed in his Aurora 7 spacecraft.

The sensing equipment dictates when two parachutes open after re-entry through the Earth’s atmosphere to ease the capsule to Earth.

At 21,000 feet on the way down, the sensors automatically unfurl a small parachute to stabilize the craft—and at 10,000 feet the 63-foot main chute unfolds.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced the decision to install the additional equipment was based on an analysis of data from the orbital flight last Feb. 20 of astronaut John H. Glenn Jr., a Marine lieutenant colonel.

The analysis showed the parachutes on Glenn’s Friendship 7 spacecraft opened too soon, the announcement said.

The postponement announcement came as preparations for the flight were marred by a plane crash in Africa which killed 14 Air Force personnel, mostly mechanics, who were ferrying parts to be used on planes involved in emergency rescue work as part of the worldwide network set up to recover Carpenter. (See story on Page 2.)

Better Weather Possible

The postponement may give threatening weather in the Atlantic a chance to clear.

A NASA spokesman said Carpenter took the delay calmly and was quoted as saying: “This is part of the continuing process toward attaining reliability—taking advantage of past flight experience—and it gives us a better chance to work with confidence.”

Lt Col John A. Powers, Mercury astronaut spokesman, reported detailed analysis of Glenn’s flight showed the parachutes deployed too quickly. He did not elaborate nor did he say whether this situation affected Glenn’s flight adversely.

Glenn landed safely, although several miles from his intended drop zone, and was recovered by a destroyer.

Powers said a second sensing system is being installed to eliminate the possibility of early parachute deployment.

Asked why the problem came up less than two days before Carpenter was to blast off, Powers replied:

“In evaluating a flight, there are 90 million things to do. When it comes down to the countdown, this is the time people toe the mark and ask why this or that didn’t work before.”