Good morning, all. Work continues on my latest book for Prometheus Books, "Space Oddities: Forgotten Tales of Mankind's Exploration of Space". I can't tell you how much I'm enjoying the research and writing on this one.
I'm currently working on a chapter that introduces us to the lighter side of space and proves that astronauts and engineers are humans who love a good joke. Wally Schirra tells a great story about the splashdown and recovery of his Mercury capsule - Sigma 7 - in 1962 (an excerpt from the chapter, photo courtesy of NASA):
After successfully completing six orbits, the capsule’s retrorockets fired and Schirra made a textbook landing in the Atlantic Ocean only a half mile away from the recovery ship, the USS Kearsarge. Schirra jokingly radioed to mission control that he was so close that he thought they were “gonna put me on the number three elevator.”
The plan was for a team of Navy Underwater Demolition Team (UDT) swimmers (now known as Seals) to swim up to the capsule and secure a floatation collar around it to prevent it from sinking with the astronaut aboard. This was in response to the near tragic incident during the second Mercury flight in which the hatch of Gus Grissom’s Liberty Bell 7 capsule was blown, causing the capsule to fill with water and sink leaving the astronaut helpless in the ocean until help could arrive.
Panels had been removed from the top of the capsule to let fresh air in and from which Schirra could hear the swimmers outside.
“I hear this unbelievable splashing, yelling and screaming,” Schirra says. “All of a sudden everything lurches and this…guy in the water leaps up on the top [of the capsule] and I said, ‘What in the hell is going on out there?’”
"What color was it?" Schirra asks.
"Orange and white!" the swimmer replies.
Schirra laughs, "You never saw a parachute under water before?"
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