Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in ... - The Black Vault

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First Steps into Space: Projects Mercury and Gemini
I. Introduction
Project Mercury has reached a stage where manned suborbital flight is being
planned within months and manned orbital flight within a year. Manned flight will
involve great personal risk to the pilot and political risk to the country. The object
of the panel, therefore, was to become as well acquainted with Project Mercury as
possible with a view toward giving advice on the future conduct of the project.
In order to gain some understanding of the project, the panel spent an
intensive five days visiting McDonnell Aircraft (where the capsule is being built),
Cape Canaveral, and Langley Field. We were brief [sic] by McDonnell, the Space Task
Group, representatives of Marshall Space Flight Center (Redstone), BMD (Atlas),
and had two general discussions with NASA personnel. Subsequently, a sub-group of
the panel with biomedical competence met with representatives of CIA, Air Force,
and the Army, and spent two more days at Langley and a day in Washington.
We would like to express our gratitude for the excellent cooperation
we received from everyone. Information was made available to us freely, and the
discussions were frank and to the point. We were impressed by the magnitude of
what has been accomplished and the competence which has been exhibited in
organizing and executing the program. We naturally tend to focus on the areas
about which we are not happy, particularly those which we feel might imperil the
success of the mission, but it must be realized that these are a small number of
items out of an enormous enterprise.
II.
Purpose of Mercury Program
The objective of Project Mercury is to advance the state of the art of
manned space flight technology. In order to achieve this objective, the following
goals have been adopted:
1. Place a manned space capsule in orbital flight around the earth;
2. Investigate man’s performance capabilities and ability to survive in
true space environment; and [2]
3. Recover the capsule and the man safely.
Mercury is an initial step in manned space flight and rests on an article of
faith – that man wants to venture into space and that he will be an essential part
of future space missions. In this sense, it may be likened to the Wright Brother’s
[sic] first flight or Lindbergh’s crossing the Atlantic. In a real sense, it is a national
exploratory program. Its justification lies not in the immediate ends achieved but
in the step it provides toward the future.
III.
The Mercury Program
The Mercury Program is a large one and has several major sub-divisions,
each involving great effort and the solution of complex problems. These include: