Mercury 7 Astronauts Introduced

"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn) 04/10/2014 at 09:39 • Filed to: spacelopnik

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On April 9, 1959, NASA introduced its first astronaut class, the Mercury 7. Project Mercury was the first human spaceflight program of the United States led by its newly created space agency NASA. It ran from 1959 through 1963 with the goal of putting a human in orbit around the Earth, and doing it before the Soviet Union, as part of the early space race. The astronauts are, from left to right:

Front Row:

Walter "Wally" Schirra : He flew the six-orbit, nine-hour Mercury-Atlas 8 mission on October 3, 1962, becoming the fifth American, and the ninth human, to ride a rocket into space. In the two-man Gemini program, he achieved the first space rendezvous, station-keeping his Gemini 6A spacecraft within 1 foot (30 cm) of the sister Gemini 7 spacecraft in December 1965. In October 1968, he commanded Apollo 7, an 11-day low Earth orbit shakedown test of the three-man Apollo Command/Service Module. He was the first person to go into space three times, and the only person to have flown in Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, logging a total of 295 hours and 15 minutes in space.

Donald K. "Deke" Slayton : After joining NASA, Slayton was selected to pilot the second U.S. manned orbital spaceflight, but was grounded in 1962 by a heart murmur. He then served as NASA's director of flight crew operations, making him responsible for crew assignments at NASA from November 1963 until March 1972. At that time he was granted medical clearance to fly, and was assigned as the docking module pilot of the 1975 Apollo–Soyuz Test Project, becoming the oldest person to fly in space at age 51 until surpassed in 1983 by 53 year old John Young and in 1998 by his fellow Project Mercury astronaut John Glenn, who at the age of 77 flew on Space Shuttle mission STS-95.

John H. Glenn, Jr. : On February 20, 1962, Glenn flew the Friendship 7 mission and became the first American to orbit the Earth and the fifth person in space, after cosmonauts Yuri Gagarin and Gherman Titov and the suborbital missions of fellow Mercury Seven astronauts Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom. In 1965, Glenn retired from the military and resigned from NASA so he could be eligible to stand for election to public office. As a member of the Democratic Party he was elected to represent Ohio in the U.S. Senate from 1974 to 1999.

M. Scott Carpenter : Carpenter was the second American (after John Glenn) to orbit the Earth and the fourth American in space, following Alan Shepard, Gus Grissom, and John Glenn. In July 1964 in Bermuda, Carpenter sustained a grounding injury from a motorbike accident while on leave from NASA to train for the Navy's SEALAB project. In 1965, for SEALAB II, he spent 28 days living on the ocean floor off the coast of California.

Back row:

Alan B. Shepard : in 1961 became the second person, and the first American, to travel into space. This Mercury flight was designed to enter space, but not to achieve orbit. Ten years later, at age 47 the oldest astronaut in the program, Shepard commanded the Apollo 14 mission, piloting the lander to the most accurate landing of the Apollo missions. He became the fifth and oldest person to walk on the Moon, and the only astronaut of the Mercury Seven to walk on the Moon. During the mission, he hit two golf balls on the lunar surface.

Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom : Grissom was the second American to fly in space, and the first member of the NASA Astronaut Corps to fly in space twice. Grissom was killed along with fellow astronauts Ed White and Roger Chaffee during a pre-launch test for the Apollo 1 mission at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (then known as Cape Kennedy), Florida. He was the first of the Mercury Seven to die. He was also a recipient of the Distinguished Flying Cross and, posthumously, the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.

L. Gordon Cooper, Jr. : Cooper piloted the longest and final Mercury spaceflight in 1963. He was the first American to sleep in space during that 34-hour mission and was the last American to be launched alone to conduct an entirely solo orbital mission. In 1965, Cooper flew as command pilot of Gemini 5.

Photo: !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Text: Wikipedia

MontegoMan562 is a Capri RS Owner > ttyymmnn 04/10/2014 at 09:40

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did you say MERCURY?!

Oh wait....wrong Mercury...

McMike > ttyymmnn 04/10/2014 at 09:54

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Fuckin'A, Bubba.

McMike > ttyymmnn 04/10/2014 at 09:54

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"Who's the greatest pilot you ever saw?"