Beyond

2021 Stephen Walker BvLib 629.45 WAL

I was a small child when this history occured:

• p003 1955, railway from Moscow to Tashkent, small stop at Tyuratam
• p017 1958 end, project Mercury begun
• p021 1959 April 9 Mercury astronaut first press conference
• p016 1960 October 24 R-16 rocket explosion killed 74 including strategic missile chief Mitrofan Nedelin
• p009 1960 December 24 . . . recovery of 2m diameter 2500 kg capsule with two dogs, 5th flight, barely survived
  • most dog fights failed, 1960 August third flight Belka and Strelka survived
• p016 two further dog tests
• p021 1961 Mercury astronauts in Langley building 60, Glenn and Shepard front runners

• p024 Glenn(1929) 57 WW2 missions, 59 Korea missions, 3 kills, 5 DFCs 1957 fastest cross country, Name That Tune

• p024 Shepard(1923) Navy test pilot, no combat, looped Chesapeake Bay bridge ~1952
• p026 Carpenter(1925) hobby playing guitar
• p004 1961 6000 km2 ellipse Baikonur Cosmodrome ready for Vostok 1
• p004 R-7 rocket type 8K27K 28.4 meters tall 280 tonnes, 3 (RDS-37) to 5 MT (RDS-46) warhead (5300 kg?)
  • 3x more powerful than 118 tonne Atlas . . . US Mk 4 RV with 3.75MT W-38 warhead massed 1840 kg
• p029 Tsentr Podgotovki Kosmonavtov Military Unit 26266, Shchyolkovsky district 41 km NE of Moscow

  • p030 later Zvyozdny Godorok, Star City, near Chkalovsky Air Base

  • named after Valery Chkalov, who flew nonstop from Moscow to Vancouver WA in 1937

• p030 6 cosmonauts, shorter ( < 170cm ) and in 20s, not 30s like Mercury, Vanguard 6

  • Gagarin, Bykovskiy, Nelyubov, Nikolayev, Popovich, and Titov.

• p030 Vostok simulator in LII Gromov Flight Research Institute in Zhukovsky, 45 km SE of Moscow

• p031 14 more in training, top secret, relatives unaware, wives knew a little

• p038 Gagarin born 1934 in Klushino, Smolensk Oblast 190 km west of Moscow, carpenter father Aleksey, literate mother Anna

• p039 German occupation 1941 October 2, evicted from house, lived in dugout, homeschooled. p040 Younger brother Boris hanged, survived with damage p040 liberated 1943 spring

• p041 moved to Gzhatsk (now Gagarin) ~20 km south

• p041 Gagarin studied foundry work at Saratov technical college

• p041 Road to the Stars by "Yuri Gagarin" 2002 english printing

• p042 Gagarin graduated with top marks in 31/32 subjects, chose jet pilot rather than smelting specialist.
• p042 Titov: Gagarin 'could talk to anybody ... in every situation he would find the key to people'
• p046 Johnson: 'control of space means control of the world'.
• p047 Kennedy: both sides ... explore the stars ... (embedded in a long laundry list of platitudes)
• p048 MIT's Wiesner advised Kennedy to modify or cancel Mercury, then made science advisor
• p050 Shame and Danger: reactions to the Sputniks
• p055 navy Vanguard's TV-3 failure on December 6, 1957
• p057 von Braun's Juno (modified Jupiter-C) launches Explorer 1 on January 31, 1958 / Cover of Time, Feb 17
• p058 May 1958 Sputnik 3, 3000 pound orbiting science laboratory
• p059 US better H-bombs meant smaller rockets, though Saturn was on the drawing board
• p065 Scott Carpenter, relatively inexperienced pilot but superb physical shape.
• p067 philandering Gordon Cooper was (secretly) separated, but reconciled to improve his chances
• p068 Glenn was cheerful and charming
• p071 KC-135 vomit comet, 30 seconds of weightlessness
• p072 1960 Nov 21, Mercury Redstone MR-1 lifted 3.8 inches, escape tower launched itself, Mercury parachutes deployed.

  • modification led to miswired connector separating in wrong order.

• p075 1960 Dec 19, MR-1A mission completely successful

• p076 1959: Yuri Gagarin and wife Valentina at Luostari air base

• p079 2461 pilots considered, 352 candidates interviewed by doctors,134 tested at Moscow aviation hospital
• p084 Gherman Titov secretly told wife Tamara (violating rules)
• p086 First 12 of 20 inducted into Military Unit 26266 in March 1960; younger than US, healthier, inexperienced

• p090 Korolev Chief Designer of OKB-1 long range missiles

• p092 1938 June 27 arrested by Stalin's NKVD, confession extracted, broken jaw, prison, 1938 Kolyma Siberia gold mine

  • 1939 to sharashka to design ricket engines, released in July 1944

• p095 1950 2xV-2 R-2, 1953 750 mi range R-5. 1957 R-7 ICBM
• p097 Korolev left first wive Kseniya and daughter Natalya, married second wife Nina in 1949
• p101 1960 Russians displayed R-7 upper stage in Mexico City, CIA disassembled and copied it overnight
• p107 1961/01/31 MR02 Subject 65 Ham
• p108 Psychomotor - Light flashes, ham presses lever or is zapped
• p113 Gee-Whizz rocket sled at Holloman
• p117 Alan Shepard on gantry watching Ham's box strapped into Mercury capsule "Spacecraft Number 5" (7 assigned to Shepard)
• p119 blunt bottom capsule attributed to Maxime Faget (probably Eggers), "more slowly(???) and more coolly"
• p120 Glenn joked, "You don't climb into a Mercury capsule, you put it on."
• p120 Soviet throw-weight got them to space first, but delayed technology development
• p121 Hatch closed with 70 bolts 140 minutes before launch
• p123 continuous prep for three weeks, blockhouse 750 feet from pad, Mercury Flight Director Chris Kraft "Flight"

• p129 1154 launch, Thrust controller? stuck, too fast, 4400mph -> 5857mph, Ham heart rate from 94 to 126 beats/min

• p131 Redstone depletes fuel, shuts down half second early, triggers escape tower, 17gees to 156 mile altitude, heart rate 158 bpm
• p131 41 miles too high, 130 miles beyond the recovery ships, 3 hours away. 14.7 gees, Ham heart rate 204 bpm
• p133 splashdown 1212pm, 422 miles out. Capsule let in 800 pounds of water before first helicopter arrived
• p135 von Braun withholds next Redstone until investigation made,
• p148 Feb 22, Glenn, Grissom, and Shepard introduced as first three astronauts by press officer Shorty Powers
• p153 summer 1960, cosmonaut wives told of husband's missions
• p156 Parachute training, up to 65 jumps in 5 weeks, ten day isolation test
• not in book: textile worker and parachutist Valentina Tereshkova Vostok 6, 16 June 1963, 48 orbits almost 3 days