Word: shepards
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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After 28 months of bickering. and breakdowns, of painful delays and wrecked plans, the U.S. Mercury man-in-space project had finally achieved its first objective: an American astronaut had been shot out of the earth's atmosphere and had returned alive. Shepard's trip, to be sure, had been brief (15 min.). Top speed of his capsule had been only 4,500 m.p.h., not significantly faster than the design speed of the U.S.'s piloted rocket plane X-15. Though his capsule had curved along its course with infinite precision, its ballistic trajectory could...
...press, the U.S. could take special satisfaction in the fact that its spacemen did not keep secrets from science. They had worked in the open, unafraid of failure, unshielded by the compulsive secrecy that still surrounds much of the voyage of Yuri Gagarin's Vostok. Now, like Kilroy, Shepard had been there-and while he traveled, the world had watched...
...Residue. In his silvered pressure suit, Astronaut Shepard seemed a creature from another planet as he stepped out of a white van into the baleful Florida dawn last week. He glittered under the searchlights that surrounded the rocket pad as he made his long-legged walk to the gantry elevator that would lift him to his capsule. When he rose to the "greenhouse," an enclosed platform at the gantry's 65-ft. level, technicians helped him squeeze through a hatch in the squat, black space capsule perched atop a Redstone rocket. Then he submitted to the time-consuming business...
...Shepard himself had already put in even longer hours of preparation. That morning, he had been awakened at i a.m. After a shower and shave he had break fast: orange juice, eggs, tea and a y-oz. filet mignon wrapped in bacon was characteristic of the substantial but lowresidue diet that astronauts stick to when about to make a flight. After eating, Shepard got an elaborate physical examination. Everything was normal; so he moved to the suiting room to get into his space gear...
...chest. Then came a respirometer (to measure breathing) taped to his neck and a rectal thermometer to measure deep body temperature. Wires from all these instruments were gathered at a metal plug that would be fitted later into the space suit. After all wires and instruments were checked, Shepard donned long underwear with built-in spongy pads to aid air circulation. Then he was helped into his 30-lb. space suit made of aluminized nylon outside and rubberized nylon inside. It was a tight squeeze. Before all Zippers, straps and metal fittings were set properly in place, Shepard was sweating...