Word: grissoms
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...held its breath when Alan Shepard led the way into space. It suffered anxiety as Gus Grissom swam for his life in the Atlantic. It thrilled to the historic adventure of John Glenn. Now, as Astronaut Malcolm Scott Carpenter, 37, a wiry, laconic Navy lieutenant commander, hurtled three times around the earth, there was interest, but little of the intense excitement that had focused on previous flights. The nation seemed to be getting sophisticated about space travel-until, at the end, a harrowing, wildly suspenseful 57 minutes showed just how thin the veneer of sophistication...
...Sweet Words." To watching Americans, the flight began uneventfully. Sitting in the control center at Cape Canaveral, Gus Grissom, handling the ground-to-space communication, told Carpenter that Aurora 7 was in a near-perfect orbit. "Sweet words," replied Carpenter. "I have the moon in the center of the window, and the booster is off to the right slightly." During his flight, Carpenter was supposed to complete several experiments that Glenn had been unable to carry out because of attitude-control system problems. He was scheduled to photograph cloud formations, test for the polarization of sunlight, look for comets close...
...centrifuge that multiplied gravitational pull to simulate the strains of take-off and landing. Despite his years, Glenn showed the least heart fluctuation of any astronaut. (At lift-off last week, Glenn's pulse rate was a relatively placid no beats per minute. Shepard's rate was 139 and Grissom's was 170 during their lift-offs. All three men normally register between 60 and 70 beats a minute.) At Glenn's suggestion, the astronauts received 5½ days of desert-survival instruction, just in case a capsule came down in the wrong place. Still not satisfied, Glenn went without water...
Minimum Risk. Each of the seven astronauts was given a special responsibility in Project Mercury. Shepard studied the technique of getting the astronaut out of the capsule after landing in the sea. Grissom was in charge of the capsule control system. Glenn specialized in the capsule's cockpit layout, contributed substantially to its design. Among other things, he suggested an auxiliary power system that was adopted by McDonnell Aircraft Corp., designer and builder of the spacecraft. Glenn's own Friendship 7 (which he named himself after consulting his family) was tailor-made to his specifications. He color-coded his instrument...
Other recipients of citations include astronaut Virgil (Gus) Grissom; Newton N. Minow, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, and Theodore C. Sorenson, special counsel to the President. All the winners are under...