Word: schirras
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Into Houston to visit the new, $90-million Manned Spacecraft Center that will be their headquarters by 1964 wheeled the seven Mercury astronauts. By way of welcome, 150,000 Texans lined a 1½-mile route as the seven-John Glenn, Scott Carpenter, Walter Schirra, Alan Shepard, Virgil Grissom, Leroy Cooper and Donald Slayton-drove by with their families. To Walt Schirra, hundreds held up six fingers for the number of orbits he is to make in the next U.S. space flight. The parade led to the Sam Houston Coliseum for a neighborly cookout at which 1,500 chickens...
After two successful three-orbit flights National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientists decided that a six-orbit spin, probably in September, would be "well within the capability of the capsule" and of the man who flies it. Tagged for the job: Navy Commander Walter M. Schirra Jr., 39, whose parents were both pilots. Outgoing, witty and completely self-possessed, Schirra (rhymes with hurrah) is married to an admiral's step daughter, has two children. Because of the flight's length, he will be brought down in the Pacific off Midway, not in the Atlantic...
...flight. Said he with a grin: "Maybe I'm a link between Ham the Space Chimp and man." Whatever the reasons, it was Shepard who was chosen by National Aeronautics and Space Administration officials for the first, historic hop. Slayton and Cooper busied themselves with communications; Schirra and Carpenter flew jet chase planes over the range; Slayton and Grissom were on hand to greet their buddy at Grand Bahama Island; John Glenn was the back-up man and checked out the capsule...
...Lieut. Commander M. Scott Carpenter, U.S.N., Captain L. Gordon Cooper Jr., U.S.A.F., Lieut. Colonel John H. Glenn Jr., U.S.M.C., Captain Virgil I. Grissom, U.S.A.F., Lieut. Commander Walter M. Schirra Jr., U.S.N., Captain Donald K. Slayton, U.S.A.F...
...SCIENCE). But far beyond that lay a plain but wondrous fact: if a pair of monkeys, subject to the same physical stresses as man, could return safely from space, so could man. The first human to break the chains of the planet might be named Glenn or Carpenter or Schirra or Shepard or Cooper or Grissom or Slayton. These were the U.S. Astronauts, one of them to be selected as their nation's first space traveler. But whoever the man who returns from space, the way had been broken for him by a monkey named Able and another called...