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

Exploring the Unknown 203
of the scope where some distortion occurs. We talked about the horizon.
Essentially, there was only the one haze layer between the cloud cover and
the deep blue.
34. “Weightlessness gave me no problem at all. The last question:
‘Describe any sound, smell, or sensory impressions associated with the
flight experienced.’ Sounds? Of course, the booster sounds, the pyros
firing, the escape tower jettisoning and the retros firing. Of course all
these sounds were new, although none of them were really loud enough
to be upsetting. They were definitely noticeable. The only unusual smell
in the capsule was a gunpowder smell after – it seems to me – after main
chute deploy. I think this was after the main antenna can [page A34-35]
went off. I don’t remember smelling it before, but I did get it after main
chute and, of course, I didn’t get it until after I opened my face plate. It
didn’t appear to be disturbing to me, so I didn’t close the face plate. No
other sensory impressions that I noticed that I can recall at this time that
we did not have in training. The g-load, the onset and relief of g were
familiar during reentry and powered flight. They were not upsetting.
They were not unusual.
35. “I am sorry that I did forget to work the hand controller under g-
load during powered flight as we had discussed, but I thought that I was
operating fairly well during powered flight. I think the fact that I forgot
this is not too significant. Well, I think that’s just about the size of it for
now. We will continue this on a more quantitative basis later on. This is
Shepard, off.”
Document I-36
Document Title: Joachim P. Kuettner, Chief, Mercury-Redstone Project, NASA,
to Dr. von Braun, 18 May 1961.
Source: Folder 18674, NASA Historical Reference Collection, NASA History
Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington DC.
In 1958 Joachim P. Kuettner joined NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center at Huntsville,
Alabama, and became the Center’s Director of the Mercury-Redstone Project, overseeing efforts
at the center for the first spaceflights of U.S. astronauts. Subsequently, he became Director
of the Apollo Systems Office, responsible for the integration of the Apollo spacecraft and the
Saturn V rocket for the lunar landing. The euphoria surrounding the flight of Alan Shepard
on 5 May 1961 prompted him to prepare this bold memorandum to Center Director Wernher
von Braun advocating a circumlunar mission using a spacecraft under development. He
had found that with a follow-on space capsule, which became the Gemini spacecraft, it might
be feasible to undertake the truly significant “space spectacular” of a circumlunar flight.
Such an endeavor would steal the march on the Soviet Union and significantly advance
U.S. prestige in the space race. At the time Kuettner made this proposal President John F.
Kennedy had not yet made his famous Apollo landing speech. That would come only a week