Photos: (Far left) Technicians position the NASA-designed “Little Joe” booster rocket with a Mercury capsule and escape rocket motor on top. The booster provided valuable test-flight data for the Mercury program. (Above) McDonnell workers assemble Mercury capsules in a St. Louis white room designed to keep the capsules free of contaminants and other debris. BOEING DECEMBER 2015–JANUARY 2016 59 experienced the capsule tilt sharply against its vertical reference to Earth, a pitch gyro, as he tried to go forward. Convinced the autopilot had malfunctioned, he flew the spacecraft manually the rest of the way. Later in a training simulator, Schepp said, he gently demonstrated to the astronaut what had happened: Glenn had failed to deploy the new switch. The autopilot worked just fine. “He admitted to that,” Schepp said with a smile. “Biggest day of my life.” The engineers said they worked long and hard hours, as many as 18 a day. Tucker said he once spent 37 consecutive hours making sure cables were properly connected from the blockhouse to a Redstone rocket. They couldn’t go home until a problem was fully explained and resolved. Any mishaps might set the program back months, or even years, Tucker explained. The demanding pace was worth it. Many of the engineers worked on the ensuing manned space projects, such as Gemini, Sky Lab, Manned Orbiting Laboratory, Space Shuttle and the International Space Station. Some of them turned to missile projects such as Tomahawk and Harpoon. The six Mercury engineers said they felt as responsible as anyone for getting the American space program up and running and catching the Soviet Union and winning the space race. “End of story, we got a man on the moon,” Beckel said. “They still haven’t been able to do that.” The Mercury engineers worked in relative anonymity as the astronauts became storied figures who were later depicted in films and documented in countless books. However, Glenn made sure to thank them publicly—in 2012 at a Florida celebration for retired Project Mercury employees, one titled “On the Shoulders of Giants.” His gesture, Roberts said, was deeply appreciated. “John pointed at us and said, ‘You guys are the giants. You are the celebrities. You had our backs,’ ” Roberts said. “It was the first time I had heard an astronaut say that. It was very emotional. I will never forget that moment.” The six engineers have differing opinions on what might come next for space travel: Direct flights to Mars or missions to Mars via the moon? Will it be in the 2020s or 2030s? Because of their experiences, they couldn’t guess at how it might be accomplished. They had dream jobs, the engineers said, but they realize that dreams only go so far. “When I came into the industry and hired on in 1958, do you think I could have envisioned having something like this iPhone?” Beckel said, holding up his mobile device. “Twenty to 30 years from now, what’s the next step going to be? We have no concept. The breakthrough will come from the experiences in the lab. “These iPhones will be obsolete then—and I just learned how to use mine.” n DANIEL.W.RALEY@BOEING.COM
Frontiers December 2015 - January 2016 Issue
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