Talk:Mercury-Redstone 3

Untitled
An anonymous user first moved this (Freedom 7) here from Mercury 3; I only re-moved it such that the edit history would be preserved. Where should it be at? -- Grunt 🇪🇺 21:29, 2004 Sep 24 (UTC)
 * Should be at Mercury 3, with Freedom 7 as a redirect to Mercury 3. Also, redirects should be made for all the call signs to point to their respective Mercury missions. CryptoDerk 21:31, Sep 24, 2004 (UTC)


 * Mercury 3. The article encompasses the whole mission, not just the spacecraft. Deleted revision history shows that Freedom 7 was previously a redirect to Mercury 3. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 21:36, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)


 * ARRGH. The anon's copy/paste moving the others as well! I'm reverting the other copy/paste moves until this is settled. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 21:38, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I've reverted it to keep with naming conventions. --GW_Simulations 19:26, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

On a completely unrelated note, these articles are not structured very well. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 21:40, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

There's another problem with Mercury Missions on Wikipedia
The Mercury flight articles are misnamed on Wikipedia. Mission names like "Mercury 3" don't coorespond with how the missions were named by NASA and are ambiguous. There were several sub-projects under Project Mercury, each with their own numbering sequences. For example, there were both MR-3 (Mercury Redstone 3), and MA-3 (Mercury Atlas 3) flights. see my comment on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Space missions.

My vote would be to rename the article on this mission/flight as Mercury Redstone 3

Proposed Move
I have proposed that all Mercury missions are re-named. This will affect this page. So they can be discussed together on one page, I've set up a subpage of my user talk page for discussion of the moves. -- GW_Simulations |User Page 20:35, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Mission Duration and Landing Point
According to one NASA website, the flight lasted 15 minutes, 28 seconds: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mercury/missions/freedom7.html

But, according to several other NASA sources, it lasted 15 minutes, 22 seconds:
 * http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4201/ch11-1.htm
 * http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraftDisplay.do?id=MERCR3
 * http://www-lib.ksc.nasa.gov/lib/archives/Mercury/MR3.PDF
 * http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19640052551_1964052551.pdf

There's a bit of discrepancy, then. But, those last two are primary documents written at the time, and on the whole I think the balance is for 15 min 22 seconds. I'm changing the duration (and hence landing time) to 15:22 for now.

Also, as for the touchdown location, the article gives 27°23′0″N, 75°88′00″W currently. However, four of the five sources cited above give 27°13.7'N, 75°53'W. Source #2 just doesn't say anything. So, I'll change that, too.

ADDENDUM: I think I know how the coordinates were entered wrong. 27°13.7' = 27.23°, and likewise for the longitude. Someone took the decimal notation and converted it non-mathematically into DMS.

Munion (talk) 04:06, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi, I agree and fixed accordingly --Golan&#39;s mom (talk) 10:50, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

Another source
There's a decent article in a contemporary journal here; aside from its usefulness in citing this article it makes the claim that Shepard introduced the phrase "A-OK" to the public during this flight. jhf (talk) 16:57, 14 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't believe the part about Shepard saying "A-OK" is correct. FWIW, I recall hearing on a recorded documentary (TIME-LIFE records, Man on the Moon, 1969, unfortunately probably a collectible today) that Gen. "Shorty" Powers, "voice of Mercury Control", was responsible for "A-OK" and that Shepard himself never said it. JustinTime55 (talk) 15:53, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Urination?
The movie "The Right Stuff" depicts Shepard having to urinate in his spacesuit due to the launch being delayed - as do many other non-authoratitive sources. This incident is not described in the official NASA report, so I can see why we don't mention it here at the moment. However, in this video, Shepard himself describes it; is this a sufficiently Reliable Source for us to add it to the article? Tevildo (talk) 20:07, 1 September 2009 (UTC)


 * It's not in This New Ocean, either; I believe it was something that was generally kept quiet about until later. It certainly happened, I believe - though I'm not sure how accurate Wolfe's claim of it messing up the telemetry was - but it might be best to see if one of the more recent history books mentions it, rather than the slightly hacky approach of citing a video. Shimgray | talk | 20:30, 1 September 2009 (UTC)


 * It's explicitly mentioned in DeGroot's Dark side of the moon, which seems a reliable enough source. I'll footnote it accordingly. Shimgray | talk | 19:20, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Image of Shepard, supposedly a "crew image", titled "before MR-3" is dated September 9, 1963


If the date is correct, this image is not of Shepard before the flight. MR-3 launched and landed May 5, 1961. The image is dated September 9, 1963, according to NASA's Image eXchange (NIX), MSFC, and NASAimages.org. Either the date is incorrect or this is an image of him after the flight (over 2 years and 4 months after the flight) posing for a photo in his old flight suit.--Jatkins (talk - contribs) 18:58, 12 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I found a handful of NASA images from the Mercury period were mislabelled like this when I was organising images for Mercury-Atlas 8 - I think what happened is that the date of image accession was recorded instead of the date the image was taken, so we end up with a launch test dated a week after the flight, and pilot training date thirteen years later. So it is quite possible the image is misdated.
 * On the other hand, the description doesn't say (or imply) that it's before MR-3; if it's September '63, it would be just as he was being taken off flight status, which might explain the odd "posed in a hotel room" quality of it - it's a last snapshot... (Remember, he was backup crew for MA-9, which flew in May, and prime crew for MA-10, which was only cancelled in June. So it makes sense he'd still have a suit available.)
 * So, hum. Rephrase as "Shepherd in Mercury flight suit", and evade the date? Shimgray | talk | 19:16, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay, makes sense. I'd move the image myself, but it's on the Commons and there's currently a new version of the move function being tested, only available to administrators, which I'm not. Like you say, it's fine to keep it as the crew photo. Interestingly, the MSFC description doesn't say it was taken before the flight, so it must just have been an assumption made by the uploader. --Jatkins (talk - contribs) 17:21, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

To do list
A hasty reworking for the fiftieth anniversary...

Things to do:


 * Add a background section briefly outlining the troubled and delayed history of Project Mercury, why suborbital and not orbital, and the political effects of Gagarin's flight
 * Incorporate some of Shepard's comments (from the flight transcript or from interviews) into the main description
 * Add a post-flight analysis - technical aspects, medical results, political aspects (including the 25 May moon speech), and notes about how this led on to subsequent missions

There's currently a large table showing the exact timeline of the mission - I'm not sure we need this, but I'm in two minds about it - it may as well stay for the time being, at least. Shimgray | talk | 01:06, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Chunk of unreferenced text
Here's a large chunk of text from near the end of the article. commented-out for months if not years. I assume it is awaiting references...72.244.204.108 (talk) 08:29, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

About two seconds after liftoff Alan Shepard reported, "Ahh, Roger; lift-off and the clock is started... Yes, sir, reading you loud and clear. This is Freedom 7. The fuel is go; 1.2 g [12 m/s²]; cabin at 14 psi; oxygen is go... Freedom 7 is still go!" He was riding on Redstone MRLV-7 and in Mercury spacecraft #7. In all subsequent Mercury flights, the number 7 was appended to the astronaut-chosen spacecraft/mission name and call sign in honor of the fact that there were seven original Mercury astronauts. At T+16 seconds (where T is the time of launch) the pitch program started and the Redstone began a 2 deg/s pitch over, from 90 to 45 degrees. At about T+40 seconds, the pitch program was complete. Max-Q was reached at one minute 24 seconds into the flight when Freedom 7 experienced a maximum dynamic pressure of 2.9 kPa. During ascent the cabin pressure sealed off at 38 kPa of pure oxygen. At two minutes into the flight, Shepard experienced 6 g (59 m/s²) of acceleration.

The Redstone's engine shut down on schedule at two minutes, 21.8 seconds. Outside the spacecraft, its shingle temperature reached 220 °F. The cabin temperature was 91 °F. The temperature inside Shepard's pressure suit was 75 °F. Escape tower separation occurred two minutes, 22.2 seconds after launch. This is one second earlier than nominal and there was some indication from the recovered escape tower that the jettison rockets had been fired manually. Shepard said he did not remember pulling the manual "JETT TOWER" override ring.

Three posigrade rockets with 400 lbf thrust each fired for one second and separated the spacecraft from the Redstone booster at a rate of 15 ft/s at two minutes, 32.3 seconds after launch. At three minutes the automatic attitude control system (AACS) rotated the spacecraft 180 degrees to a heatshield-forward position. The spacecraft remained in this position for the remainder of the flight. The spacecraft had almost reached apogee in its ballistic flight.

Shepard took manual control of the spacecraft attitude one axis at a time from the automatic attitude control system. The first thing he did was position the spacecraft to its retrofire attitude of 34 degrees pitch (nose of spacecraft pitched down 34 degrees.) He then tested manual control of yaw and roll. When he took control of all three axes, he found that the spacecraft response was about the same as that of the Mercury simulator.

He then made observations outside the spacecraft using the two porthole windows and the periscope. He saw the outlines of the west coast of Florida and the Gulf of Mexico. Lake Okeechobee in central Florida was also visible, but he could not see any city. Andros Island and the Bahamas were also observed in the periscope.

The retrorockets were fired at about T+5 minutes and 15 seconds into the flight, shortly after the spacecraft reached an apogee of 116.5 mi. The three 1000 lbf thrust retrograde rockets ripple-fired to provide a 510 ft/s delta-V in the opposite direction of travel. Each retrorocket fired for a total of 10 seconds. They were fired five seconds apart so they overlap in burning (retro #1 fired at 5:14.1, retro #2 fired at 5:18.8 and retro #3 fired at 5:23.6 MET.) The retrorocket firing could be easily heard, but the noise was not as loud as the sound of the jet trainers Shepard had flown. The periscope was retracted at T+5 minutes and 45 seconds and the retropack was jettisoned at about T+6 minutes and 13.6 seconds. After retrofire the nose of the spacecraft was pitched up to a 14 degree from Earth-vertical attitude for reentry. This happened at about T+6 minutes and 20 seconds.

During the descent, Shepard tried to look out the awkwardly-placed porthole windows to observe the stars. He could see nothing, not even the horizon. At about T+7 minutes and 48.2 seconds, the 0.05 g (0.5 m/s²) light came on, an indication that the acceleration buildup was about to start. The Automatic Stabilization and Control System (ASCS) detected the beginning of reentry and initiated a 10 deg/s roll. This maneuver makes the spacecraft more stable during reentry. During reentry a peak of 11.6 g (114 m/s²) was reached.

At 21000 ft about T+9 minutes and 38.1 seconds after launch, the drogue parachute came out. At 15000 ft a snorkel valve opened to equalize cabin pressure with the outside air. At 10000 ft, about T+10 minutes and 14.8 seconds into the flight, the antenna canister at the top of the spacecraft jettisoned as planned, pulling out the main parachute. About five seconds later, the beryllium heatshield dropped down 4 ft, extending the landing bag under the spacecraft. Freedom 7 was descending under the parachute at 35 ft/s.

A recovery helicopter that watched Freedom 7 for five minutes of its descent now came overhead and hooked a cable to the top of the spacecraft. The helicopter crew was in radio communications with Shepard. The astronaut indicated he would release the spacecraft hatch when it cleared the water. The helicopter pulled the spacecraft a couple of feet (about 1 m) higher in the water and Shepard released the hatch. A sling was lowered to the astronaut and he was lifted into the helicopter. Both Shepard and the Freedom 7 were then flown to the deck of the nearby recovery carrier, the USS Lake Champlain. They were on board the carrier 11 minutes after landing in the water. The astronaut and spacecraft came through the flight in fine shape.

One Source, needs more sources
This article is in many ways, a mess. The biggest issue is the fact that it relies on one source primarily, the NASA publication This New Ocean : A History of Project Mercury. Really, folks haven't bothered to look at contemporary newspapers like the The New York Times, The Montreal Gazette, or other newspaper that can be accessed online? I can think of at least twenty books that would be authoritative and could describe these events. I would deal with this, but I'm too involved in other articles to deal with this. But come on, this is one of the most reported and written about American space missions in the 1960s, there's lots of source to make this a well written article. I'm demoting it to start due to its reliance on essentially one source.--Abebenjoe (talk) 03:17, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I originally thought that relying on the "official" NASA history This New Ocean, as opposed to newspapers whose reporting of technical matters can be of questionable accuracy, would be a good thing, but now having read it all the way through, I've had to sadly abandon that belief. This New Ocean is presumably fine when it comes to describing the organizational and social matters around Project Mercury, it does go into some neglected technical aspects, and it generally gets the basic story of each mission correct, but I've found too many examples where it has screwed up details. Mercury-Redstone 3 is one of those—there are specific details of this mission cited in This New Ocean which are simply incorrect. It needs to be verified against other, more reliable sources, like the papers in the official "results" conference and the "postlaunch report", and ignored when it comes in conflict with those. --Colin Douglas Howell (talk) 23:20, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

Spacecraft name
I've not edited a Wikipedia page before, so I wanted to bring this up on the talk page before doing anything else. I recently purchased the Right Stuff on Blu Ray and the bonus disc includes interviews with Mercury astronauts. I'll have to go back to it for specifics, but I believe it was Wally Schirra who said that the 7 in the name Freedom 7 came from the fact that it was the seventh Mercury spacecraft built and had nothing to do with the seven Mercury astronauts. How reliable a source are we going to consider Wally Schirra on this subject and what's the best way to go about adding this information (how to cite, etc)? Hmmcnally (talk) 04:23, 24 April 2015 (UTC)hmmcnally

Source for part of its life as a museum exhibit
http://journal.sciencemuseum.ac.uk/browse/2014/something-simple-and-striking/

©Geni (talk) 17:33, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

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Spacecraft mass?
The infobox says,

Launch mass	4,040 pounds (1,830 kg) Landing mass	2,316 pounds (1,051 kg)

But, that doesn't jive with what we say at Space capsule: The heaviest spacecraft, Mercury-Atlas 9, weighed 3,000 pounds (1,400 kg) fully loaded. In any case, what accounts for the 1700 lbs lost between launch and spashdown? You ditch the escape tower, the retro pack, and the descent parachutes. You use up a little bit of propellent for attitude control. It doesn't seem plausible that adds up to 43% of the original mass. -- RoySmith (talk) 00:21, 7 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment Unfortunately, it looks like someone damaged the Space capsule page by removing the source documents, therefore we can't verify where the 3,000 pounds number came from. Also, bear in mind also that there were two different versions of the capsule (suborbital and orbital). Also, Mercury-Atlas 9, the 3,000-pound capsule, carried a day's worth of added "equipment" and consumables. JustinTime55 (talk) 14:40, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Though the infobox doesn't say so (it definitely should), that launch mass does include the escape tower. The tower with its rocket was quite heavy, since it had to be strong enough to bear the escape rocket's full pull of 58,500 pounds of force. The Postlaunch Report for MR-3 confirms the launch mass was 4040 pounds and the landing mass was 2316 pounds. That report says the "orbit" mass (mass after separation from the booster) was 2855 pounds, giving 1185 pounds for the escape tower, and that re-entry mass was 2579 pounds, giving 276 pounds for the retro pack and 263 pounds for the antenna fairing, its attached hardware (like the horizon scanners), and perhaps the parachutes. This all seems reasonable to me. --Colin Douglas Howell (talk) 22:18, 27 July 2021 (UTC)