Word: orbiters
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...same way. Gone from the Florida beaches were the jostling crowds of jittery, prayerful and sometimes ghoulish spectators who watched earlier Mercury flights. Newsmen on the spot neither applauded nor cheered, as before, as the rocket lifted easily into a clear blue sky. Even after Sigma 7 went into orbit, many Americans preferred to watch the Giants and the Dodgers slug it out in their final play-off game...
Dutiful Flying. Everything went right from the beginning. Sigma 7 bobbed into a beautifully circular orbit, and calm, cool Navy Commander Walter Marty ("Wally") Schirra, 39, was in buoyant good humor. "Sayonara!" he cried when the escape tower separated, and soon he reported "all systems green and go." Then he settled down to cheerful, competent and dutiful space flying. He watched the instruments closely and talked with each control station as he passed near it. Like the other astronauts, Schirra ran into trouble with the water boil-off system of his space suit, and its temperature became so high...
Drifting & Dreaming. The Sigma 7 was equipped for a few scientific experiments, including some star observations for Schirra to make. But the main purpose of the six-orbit flight was to check the performance of the capsule's oxygen, electrical-and attitude-control systems. Considered critical was the amount of fuel needed. Schirra proved, as the technicians had suspected, that both Glenn and Carpenter could have managed with much less fuel if they had done less aimless maneuvering...
...fourth orbit, Schirra shut off all control systems and went into drifting flight, his capsule turning slowly as it swept around the earth. Sometimes he rode backwards, sometimes upside down, but since he was weightless anyway, this did not bother him at all. "Drifting and dreaming," he radioed cheerfully to the ground. He drifted for three hours and 26 minutes, burning no fuel. Astronauts Glenn and Carpenter used nearly all their fuel before reentry, but Schirra approached the critical moment with 80% of his fuel still untouched...
Nevertheless, the experiment was carried out, and Westford scientists assured the government that the possible bad effects would be negligible--foreshadowing future statements about high altitude nuclear explosions. Perhaps unfortunately, the needles falled to orbit, so we cannot be absolutely certain that the effects would have been as bad as anticipated...