Fwd: Remembering Gordon Cooper's Faith 7 Mission

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From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: May 18, 2015 at 7:41:41 PM CDT
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: Remembering Gordon Cooper's Faith 7 Mission

 

 

AmericaSpace

For a nation that explores
May 16th, 2015

'How About Now?' Remembering Gordon Cooper's Faith 7 Mission (Part 1)

By Ben Evans

 

Gordon Cooper is extracted from the Faith 7 capsule, on the deck of the USS Kearsarge on 16 May 1963. The astronaut's 34-hour, 22-orbit mission proved as colorful as Cooper himself. Photo Credit: NASA

More than a half-century ago, on 15 May 1963, America launched astronaut Gordon Cooper on its longest manned space mission to date. In doing so, NASA began to take strides toward meeting President John F. Kennedy's goal of landing a man on the Moon before the end of the decade. The humiliation of Yuri Gagarin's orbital flight had been met by two suborbital missions and three Earth-circling voyages. When Wally Schirra ended his nine-hour, six-orbit flight in October 1962, it was considered so successful that some voices within NASA advised ending Project Mercury immediately and pressing on with the two-man Project Gemini. Others countered that one of Mercury's goals was to fly an astronaut for more than a day and long-duration experience was highly desirable in the run-up to Gemini. By the end of the year, the space agency was thus hard at work preparing to close out Mercury in style with a "Manned One-Day Mission" (MODM). To history, it would be known as "Faith 7", and around the colorful man who flew it would grow a legend which endures to this very day.

Originally planned for April 1963, the scope of the mission expanded in the wake of Schirra's success from 18 to 22 orbits, producing a flight time of around 34 hours in space. To be fair, the MODM would fly for barely a quarter of the Soviet Union's four-day Vostok 3 mission in August 1962, but its preparations were stupendous. It would demand massive tracking support, including 28 ships, 171 aircraft, 18,000 military personnel, and around-the-clock control operations, headed by veteran flight directors Chris Kraft and John Hodge. Finally, on 14 November 1962, NASA announced that astronaut Gordon Cooper would fly the MODM, with Alan Shepard as his backup.

Yet the months before the flight were marred with difficulty. The military "F-series" version of its Atlas rocket had suffered two inexplicable failures, and when Cooper's "D-series" booster rolled out of the factory in January 1963 it did not pass its initial inspection. After extensive rewiring of its flight controls, NASA reluctantly announced on 12 February that the launch would be delayed from mid-April until mid-May. To support the astronaut for more than a day in orbit, the Mercury capsule carried better batteries, additional oxygen, extra cooling and drinking water, more hydrogen peroxide fuel, a full load of life-support consumables, and an expansive scientific payload. One plan even called for the replacement of Cooper's fiberglass couch with a lightweight hammock, but fears that it might stretch and the astronaut might "bounce" meant that the proposal was never approved.

During training, Gordon Cooper (right) discusses one of the mission's cameras with his backup, Alan Shepard. Photo Credit: NASA

Speaking at a press conference on 8 February, Cooper described his mission as "practically a flying camera". Firstly, a slow-scan television had been installed into the capsule to monitor the astronaut and his instruments and a battery of other cameras would be aboard: a 70 mm Hasselblad, a specially modified 35 mm device to observe the "zodiacal light" and a 16 mm all-purpose motion picture unit. Cooper himself would wear an upgraded space suit, with a mechanical seal for his helmet, together with new gloves and a more mobile torso. His boots were integrated to make them more comfortable and the whole ensemble was much less bulky than earlier suits.

By the middle of March, the mission—officially dubbed "Mercury-Atlas-9"—appeared to be back on track, when the Atlas booster passed its acceptance trials without a single minor discrepancy. Several weeks later, on 22 April, the capsule itself was attached to the top of the rocket. After much consideration, Cooper had named his spacecraft "Faith 7" to symbolize "my trust in God, my country, and my teammates." Within the higher echelons of NASA, concerns were raised about the name. (A mission failure, the Washington Post told its readers, could yield unfortunate headlines, such as "The United States today lost Faith".)

In tandem with Cooper's preparations, there was also consideration given to attempting a "Mercury-Atlas-10" mission, flown by Alan Shepard for up to three days, to slightly close the space-endurance gap with the Soviets. As part of NASA's Project Orbit in February 1963, tests had already demonstrated that the Mercury capsule could theoretically support a four-day mission, although the effects of freezing or sluggishness in its hydrogen peroxide thrusters remained unknown. Shepard, of course, was in favour of a three-day flight, and had already named his spacecraft "Freedom 7-II". Had it gone ahead, it would have launched sometime in October 1963, and Shepard even went so far as to lobby President John F. Kennedy for support, although the president rightly deferred the issue to NASA Administrator Jim Webb. "After Cooper finished his mission," Shepard reflected in a February 1998 NASA Oral History interview, "there was another spacecraft, ready to go. My thought was to put me up there and just let me stay until something ran out—until the batteries ran down, until the oxygen ran out, or until we lost a control or something; just an open-ended kind of a mission."

As history has shown, Freedom 7-II would never fly. On 11 May 1963, Julian Scheer, NASA Deputy Assistant Administrator for Public Affairs, emphatically declared this fact and Jim Webb endorsed it, arguing that Gemini was already primed for long-duration missions. His rationale was that it was pointless to demonstrate a capability just once, with an obsolete system. Moreover, an accident on Shepard's flight could set Project Gemini back in its tracks. In mid-June, the flight officially vanished from consideration and its spacecraft was put into storage. By then, Gordon Cooper had flown his 34-orbit mission, marking an end of the beginning in America's conquest of space.

Cooper was the sixth and final astronaut to fly a Mercury mission. Photo Credit: NASA

Cooper had almost missed out flying in Project Mercury entirely. Since his selection as one of the nation's first seven astronauts in April 1959, he had gained a reputation as something of a hotshot—a daredevil pilot with a passion for fast cars—balanced against criticisms that he was a complainer who pulled dangerous stunts. (On one occasion, his F-106 Delta Dart jet screamed right outside, and below, the office window of Project Mercury Operations Director Walt Williams.) Even fellow astronaut Deke Slayton wrote of his personal surprise that Cooper had even been picked as an astronaut. "My first reaction was, something's wrong," Slayton wrote in his autobiography, Deke, co-authored with Michael Cassutt. "Either he's on the wrong list, or I am." Cooper was an engineer at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., and was not even a test pilot.

Still, the man who would fly the final Mercury mission was all but born in a pilot's seat. His father, an Air Force lawyer and county court judge, frequently plopped his young son on his lap in the cockpit of an old Command-Aire biplane and Cooper took the controls for the first time aged only six. By his teens, the boy was taking lessons in a J-3 Piper Cub and soloed, "officially", at 16. The story of Cooper's life was very much a story of his love affair with aviation. Even in his mid-seventies, he told an interviewer that "I get cranky if I don't fly at least three times a month!"

His love of fast cars was also legendary, as flight director Gene Kranz, arriving at Cape Canaveral for his first day at work, related. "After the plane rolled to a stop," Kranz wrote, "a shiny new Chevrolet convertible wheeled to a halt just beyond the wing tip. An Air Force enlisted man popped out, saluted and held open the car's door for a curly-haired guy in civilian clothes, a fellow passenger who deplaned ahead of me." The curly-haired man offered Kranz a lift to the Cape. Quickly, he "peeled into a 180-degree turn and raced along the ramp for a hundred yards, my neck snapping back as he floored the Chevy. I had never driven this fast on a military base in my life!" For a few minutes, Kranz wondered if he had a madman behind the wheel, as the guy seemed to break every rule in the book and had no fear of being pulled over by the Air Police. Hitting the highway, he made a wide turn and took a hard left, burning rubber. After joyfully yelling Eeee-hah at the top of his lungs, he turned and offered his hand to Kranz.

"Hi, I'm Gordo Cooper."

Kranz had not only met his first Mercury astronaut, but perhaps the most controversial Mercury astronaut of them all.

With a background in the Marine Corps, the Army and the Air Force and a wife, Trudy, who was also a qualified pilot, Cooper flew F-84 Thunderjet and F-8 Crusader jets in West Germany and served as a project engineer for the F-102 Delta Dagger and F-106 Delta Dart. On one occasion, several years before they became astronauts, he and another Air Force pilot, Virgil "Gus" Grissom, were aboard a T-33 together when it crashed off the end of the runway at Lowry Air Force Base in Denver, Colo. Thankfully, neither man was hurt. In early 1959, both men received mysterious classified orders to attend a briefing in Washington, D.C. After completing a battery of punishing physical and psychological tests for Project Mercury, Cooper was so confident that he would be chosen that he told his boss to start looking for a replacement and requested two weeks' leave to move his family across country to Langley, Va. When NASA called him to ask how soon he could get to Langley, Cooper's response was "How about now?"

In the months before launch, opinion was divided amongst NASA managers over whether Cooper (right) or his backup, Alan Shepard (left), should fly the final Mercury mission. In this training image from February 1963, the pair examine one of the spacecraft's instrument panels. Photo Credit: NASA

As an astronaut, though, his early days were somewhat less illustrious and led several senior managers to consider bypassing him for a space mission. They regarded him as an unpredictable complainer, with a seemingly indifferent stance toward the public image that NASA wanted its astronauts to extol. Cooper protested about the lengthy periods away from his family, about the lack of opportunity to fly fast jets and collect flight pay, and he even threatened to leave the program when Deke Slayton was dropped from his own Mercury mission by a heart murmur. Flying a chase aircraft over the Cape during Gus Grissom's launch in July 1961, Cooper buzzed the launch site, momentarily disrupted communications traffic and earned himself a ticking-off from his boss. On another occasion, flying to Huntsville, Ala., he landed on a runway that was too short and asked to be refueled. When the ground crews told him that it was too dangerous for him to take off again, Cooper shrugged, took off regardless, and made it to his destination with fumes in his tanks!

Even in the weeks preceding Faith 7, there were persistent stories in the press that Cooper might be pushed aside in favour of his backup, Alan Shepard. So shaky was Walt Williams' "faith" in Cooper that he approached Shepard, several months earlier, and strongly hinted that he might be tipped to fly instead. Believing the mission to be his, Shepard trained feverishly, but Deke Slayton—removed from his own flight only months earlier—felt that Faith 7 belonged to Cooper. Others agreed that it would look bad for NASA if the astronauts were swapped so soon before launch. A timely intervention by Wally Schirra (who threatened to raise the roof if Cooper was overlooked) certainly helped matters, but Walt Williams was convinced that Shepard could do a better job.

As partial compensation, Williams half-promised Shepard a three-day Mercury mission, which ultimately never transpired. Shepard later gained his revenge on the operations director, by lending him the keys to his Corvette. As Williams drove away, Shepard phoned the base's security office to tell them that "someone" had just stolen his car…

Despite having finally secured the mission as his own Cooper was possibly reacting to pent-up frustration when he took a flight in an F-106, two days before his scheduled 14 May 1963 liftoff. To the great surprise of Williams and Chris Kraft, the astronaut made a very low pass over the Cape. "We were talking," Kraft recalled of that quiet Sunday afternoon in Williams' office, "and a sudden roar came upon us. The roar was a jet airplane diving onto the Cape at a very high rate of speed, which was forbidden." Glancing out of the window, they saw Cooper in the pilot's seat, as he flew beneath the second-floor office window. Since the Cape was restricted airspace, the switchboard quickly lit up with frantic emergency calls. Williams went berserk and threatened to have Cooper's "ass on a plate".

The furious operations director called Slayton, who was by now in charge of the astronaut corps and Cooper's immediate boss, to demand action. He had to shout to be heard over the din of the F-106. (Williams even phoned Alan Shepard to ask if he was ready for launch.) For his part, Slayton harbored severe reservations about Cooper, but refused to yank him off the mission. Both he and Williams allowed the astronaut to sweat about his flight status for 24 hours, and not until the evening of the 13th did the operations director finally relent and agree to let him fly. Cooper's supporters regarded the incident as the action of a good, smart pilot and a man with a mission "to go a little bit higher and a little bit faster".

On Faith 7, he would fly higher and faster than ever before.

 

Copyright © 2015 AmericaSpace - All Rights Reserved

 

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AmericaSpace

For a nation that explores
May 17th, 2015

'The Right Man': Remembering Gordon Cooper's Faith 7 Mission (Part 2)

By Ben Evans

 

Faith 7 descends to a splashdown on 16 May 1963, after Project Mercury's longest mission of 34 hours. Photo Credit: NASA

Early on 14 May 1963, a hotshot pilot lay on his back in a tiny capsule, atop a converted ballistic missile, and steeled himself to be blasted into space. On Project Mercury's final mission, Gordon Cooper would spend 34 hours in space, circle the globe 22 times, and establish NASA's first real baseline of long-duration experience as the space agency and the nation prepared to land a man on the Moon before the end of the decade. To be fair, the flight would last barely a quarter as long as the Soviet Union's four-day Vostok 3 mission a year earlier, but for NASA it would mark an important step forward. Yet, as described in yesterday's AmericaSpace history article, there were many senior managers who doubted that Cooper was the right man for the job. Two days earlier, he had buzzed the administration building at Cape Canaveral in his F-106 jet, sparking a flurry of frantic emergency calls and maddening Project Mercury Operations Director Walt Williams to the extent that he almost grounded Cooper in favor of his backup, Alan Shepard. Cooper had much ground to make up in order to restore faith in his abilities.

On launch morning, Cooper breakfasted with Shepard. Only hours earlier, Shepard had convinced himself that the mission was his for the taking. He could not believe that Cooper could possibly be so rash as to buzz the very building in which his bosses were holding a meeting and was frustrated at the lost opportunity to fly himself, to the extent that he planned a somewhat mean-spirited joke. Press spokesman John "Shorty" Powers had arrived early that morning with two cameramen, who would shoot behind-the-scenes footage of Cooper as he prepared for launch. To their shock, they discovered that none of the overhead lights were working, nor were the electrical sockets. Someone had cut the wires, removed every light bulb, inserted thick tape into the sockets, and replaced the bulbs. No one pointed any fingers, but Powers recognized Shepard's grin. It was typical of him, said Powers, "when he has a mouse under his hat."

Another gift from Shepard awaited Cooper when he boarded the spacecraft he had named "Faith 7" at 6:36 a.m. EDT: a small suction-cup pump on the seat, labeled Remove Before Flight, in honor of the new urine-collection device. (Cooper would become the first Mercury astronaut to urinate in a manner other than "in his suit.") At this stage, the only indication of doubt that the mission would fly came from meteorologist Ernest Amman, although the trouble increased when a radar at the secondary control center in Bermuda malfunctioned. Next, at 8 a.m. EDT, with an hour remaining in the countdown, a diesel engine stubbornly refused to work. It was supposed to move the gantry away from the Atlas rocket, and two hours were wasted trying to fix a fouled fuel injector pump. The countdown resumed around midday and the gantry was successfully retracted, but a computer converter failed at the Bermuda station and the launch attempt had to be scrubbed.

Cooper departs the transport van for Pad 14 on launch morning. Photo Credit: NASA

Despite having spent six hours on his back, Gordon Cooper was upbeat and managed to summon a wry grin when he was extracted from Faith 7. "I was just getting to the real fun part," he said. "It was a very real simulation!" As the astronaut spent the afternoon fishing, technicians readied the Atlas and the spacecraft for another attempt, early on 15 May.

Arriving at the capsule for the second time, he saluted McDonnell pad leader Guenter Wendt with mock formality, reporting in as "Private Fifth Class Cooper," to which the German pad "fuehrer" responded in kind. The roots of the joke came two years earlier, when Cooper stood in for Alan Shepard in a practice countdown session. His mock terror—begging Wendt not to make him climb aboard the primed rocket—had so annoyed a number of NASA managers that a couple even threatened to bust him to Private Fifth Class. Ironically, Cooper and Wendt liked the idea and ran with it.

Despite a problem with the Atlas' guidance equipment, which necessitated a brief hold, the countdown marched crisply on this second attempt; so crisply, in fact, that Cooper fell asleep. It took fellow astronaut Wally Schirra several efforts to bellow his name over the communications link to awaken him. Then, with just 19 seconds to go, another halt was called in order to allow launch controllers to ascertain that the rocket's systems had properly assumed their automatic sequence. Shortly after 8 a.m. on 15 May 1963, America's sixth man in space thundered off the pad in what Cooper would later describe as "a smooth, but definite push." Within minutes, Faith 7 was inserted into an orbit so good that its heading was 0.0002 degrees from perfect and its velocity "right on the money" at 17,550 mph (28,240 km/h). "Smack-dab in the middle of the plot," an admiring Schirra told him.

So rapid was Cooper's passage across the Atlantic Ocean that he expressed astonishment when called by the tracking stations in the Canaries and Kano in Nigeria. The first day of the mission went extraordinarily well—at one stage, the astronaut's heart rate surged during a sleep period, suggesting that he was experiencing an exciting dream—and he moved swiftly through his many tasks. Earth observations, photography, collection of urine samples, and monitoring his ship's health occupied his time, although he did grab a few moments to chew some brownies, fruit cake, and bacon chunks. Cooper's use of the cabin's oxygen supply was so efficient that Alan Shepard jokingly asked him to "stop holding your breath." The astronaut responded that—as the only non-smoker amongst the Mercury Seven—his lungs were in better shape than those of his comrades. If his oxygen usage was minimal, so too was his fuel expenditure, to such an extent that controllers nicknamed him "The Miser."

Faith 7 thunders into orbit on 15 May 1963. Photo Credit: NASA

One of Cooper's most important experiments was the deployment of a 6-inch (15-cm) sphere, instrumented with xenon strobe lights, part of an effort to track a flashing beacon in space. Three hours after launch, the astronaut clicked a squib switch and felt the experiment separate from Faith 7, but he was only able to see it very occasionally, at orbital sunset, pulsing in the darkness. Another experiment involved the release of a 30-inch (76-cm) Mylar balloon, painted fluorescent orange. Nine hours into the mission, Cooper set cameras, attitude, and switches to deploy the balloon, but it refused to move. Another attempt was also fruitless. The intent was for the balloon to inflate with nitrogen and extend on a 100-foot (30-meter) tether, after which a strain gauge would measure differences in "pull" at Faith 7's 168-mile (270 km) apogee and 99-mile (160 km) perigee. Sadly, the cause of the balloon's failure was never ascertained.

Evaluating an astronaut's ability to make observations from space achieved more success when Cooper spotted a 3-million-candlepower xenon light at Bloemfontein in South Africa. He also made detailed notes as he flew over cities, large oil refineries, roads, rivers, and small villages, and even saw smoke twirling from the chimneys of Himalayan houses. Lighting conditions had to be appropriate for such observations, but in the wake of the mission Cooper's claims were disputed, until two visibility researchers from the University of California at San Diego verified that in one instance the astronaut had seen a Border Patrol vehicle's dust cloud, kicked up on a dirt road near El Centro on the U.S.-Mexican border. The researchers argued that the vehicle and dust cloud were more visible from Cooper's vantage point than from the road itself.

Ten hours after launch, the astronaut was advised that he had exceeded Wally Schirra's endurance record for the longest American manned mission and that his orbital parameters were good enough for at least 17 circuits of the globe. The phenomenal speed of his flight path was amply illustrated when he spoke to fellow astronaut John Glenn, based on the Coastal Sentry tracking ship, near Kyushu, Japan, then swept south-eastwards, over the empty Pacific Ocean, to speak to a controller near Pitcairn Island, more than 6,800 miles (11,000 km) distant, just 10 minutes later.

Sleeping in space was virtually impossible, so spectacular was the view. As Cooper passed over South America, then Africa, northern India, and into Tibet, the photographic opportunities were priceless. Using the direction of chimney smoke from the Himalayan houses, he was even able to make a few rudimentary estimates about his velocity and the ground winds. Despite the difficulty, he pulled Faith 7's window shades around 13 hours after launch to catch some sleep. He dozed intermittently, but found himself having to anchor his thumbs into his helmet restraint strap to keep his arms from floating freely. Every so often, he would lift the shade to take photographs or make status reports or curse quietly to himself when his body-heat exchanger crept too high or too low.

Faith 7 is lowered gently onto the deck of the USS Kearsarge, with Gordon Cooper aboard. Photo Credit: NASA

With the exception of niggling glitches, everything seemed to be going well. Cooper's oxygen supply was plentiful and his fuel gauges for both automatic and manual tanks looked good. During a brief spell of quiet time, he paused for a short prayer. He thanked God for the privileged opportunity to fly the mission, for being in space, and for seeing such wondrous sights. That prayer marked the beginning of Faith 7's troubles. Early on his 19th orbit, around 30 hours after launch, he was over the western Pacific Ocean and out of radio contact with the ground, when his attention was arrested by the eerie green glow of one of his instrument panel lights. It was the "0.05 G" indicator, and it should normally have illuminated after retrofire, as Faith 7 commenced its descent from orbit. Moreover, it should have been quickly followed by the autopilot placing the capsule into a slow roll.

Had Cooper inadvertently "slipped" out of orbit?

This suspicion was quickly refuted by orbital data from the ground, which suggested either that the indicator was at fault or that the autopilot's re-entry circuitry had been tripped out of its normal sequence. An orbit later, Cooper was advised to switch to autopilot and Faith 7 began a slow roll. This presented its own issues. For proper flight, the autopilot had to perform other functions before retrofire, and, since each function was sequentially linked, Mission Control knew that several earlier steps had not been executed. This meant that the astronaut might be forced to control those steps by hand. Worse was to come. On his 20th orbit, Cooper lost all attitude readings and, a revolution later, one of three power inverters went dead. He tried to switch to a second inverter, but it would not respond. The third was needed to run cooling equipment during re-entry, so the astronaut was now left with an autopilot devoid of electrical power.

On the ground, the options centred on bringing Cooper home on batteries alone. The astronaut could not rely on his gyroscope or clock to properly position Faith 7 for re-entry, since both depended on electrical power, and he watched with dismay as carbon dioxide levels began to rise both in the cabin and within his space suit. In true Right Stuff fashion, his comment over the radio to fellow astronaut Scott Carpenter was nonchalant: "Things are beginning to stack up a little!"

Gordon Cooper, the hotshot final pilot of Project Mercury, grins at recovery personnel after his 34-hour mission. Faith 7 would prove one of the high points of his astronaut career. Photo Credit: NASA

At length, on his 22nd orbit, Cooper made his way smoothly through the pre-retrofire checklist, steadying Faith 7 with his hand controller and lining up a horizontal mark on his window with Earth's horizon; this dipped the capsule's nose to the desired 34-degree angle. Next, he lined up a vertical mark with pre-determined stars to acquire his correct heading and astronaut John Glenn counted him down to retrofire. Cooper hit the button once—receiving no light signals, due to his electrical system problems—and verified that he could feel the punch of the three small engines igniting behind him. During the descent from orbit, he periodically damped out unwanted motions with his hand controller and manually deployed both his drogue and main parachutes. Faith 7 hit the Pacific, about 80 miles (130 km) southeast of Midway Island, within sight of the recovery ship USS Kearsarge.

The capsule floundered for an instant, then righted itself. Cooper's 34-hour mission had concluded just as each of the Mercury Seven would have wanted: with a pilot in full control of his craft. Two years later, in August 1965, Cooper would command Gemini V, which seized the space endurance record from the Soviets, and many have speculated that if circumstances played out differently he may have been the first member of the Mercury Seven to walk on the Moon. Certainly, as late as 1968, Cooper was in active training as backup commander for the Apollo 10 mission and, judging by Deke Slayton's crew rotation cycle, some have argued that this would have made him a contender to lead Apollo 13.

Others have cast doubt on this assumption, noting Cooper's strap-it-on-and-go attitude, his aversion to the simulators, and his desire to pursue other interests, including a 24-hour road race. Slayton certainly felt sentimental toward his friend, but admitted that he "didn't feel any obligation, moral or otherwise" to stick to the rotation cycle. Ultimately, command of Apollo 13 went to Jim Lovell and Cooper left NASA in 1970.

Yet all that was in the future on 16 May 1963, as Gordon Cooper basked in the success of his first mission. He had spent more time in space than all of the other members of the Mercury Seven, put together. As for Walt Williams, the disgruntled Project Mercury Operations Director, who had tried to have Cooper removed from Faith 7, it was a case of having been proved wrong. When the pair met at Cape Canaveral, Williams warmly shook Cooper's hand. "Gordo," he said, "you were the right man for the mission!" 

 

Copyright © 2015 AmericaSpace - All Rights Reserved

 

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