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

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First Steps into Space: Projects Mercury and Gemini
have to be used, wherever practical, and I think, although it was expected to find
much equipment on the shelf, I think many of our problems were really finding
which shelf this equipment was on, because, in almost every area, because of the
design constraints, some new development had to be undertaken to meet the new
requirements that [2] a manned spacecraft would place on a system. Obviously,
we wanted to use as simple an approach because this, indeed, would give the
most reliable approach. The simplicity, again, is a relative term. Because of the
question about man’s ability to perform, it was required that this spacecraft be
capable of fully automatic flight as well as a flight were the man participated as
part of the system. Well, when you automate the system and, indeed, then provide
redundancy in the automation, you come out with a rather complex system. The
existing launch vehicle would be employed; yes, we felt that we should use a
launch vehicle that was well along in its development as a weapons system for this
job, and we had some interesting experiences along the way in developing and
working with the Space Systems Division in converting from a weapons systems to
a man-mated booster and, of course as always, we felt this should be a progressive
and logical test program and we will discuss that progression.
We were able, or the team at that time was able, to give some detailed
requirements for the spacecraft, in a general sense, and these are shown in the
next slide.
[Slide 3]
We knew that the state-of-art of the large rockets, the reliable launch
escape system was required. We did feel, even though there was a question mark
about the pilot’s performance, that he should be able to manually control the
spacecraft attitude, and I think it’s well-known how much this paid off during the
life of the program. Obviously, it had to have a reliable retrorocket system, but it
was also a question that this spacecraft [3] should be deorbited by retrorockets,
that it just wasn’t a short life-time orbit; that the spacecraft would truly be in space
flight. The zero-lift shape for reentry was chosen as the least difficult and still meet
the mission objectives that we had in mind, and obviously, we had to provide a
water-landing capability because, even though we would have good—take on the
task of providing land capability for the end of successful missions, the vehicle still
had to be amphibious in order to cover the abort cases.
Well this – this was about the way the program got started five years ago.
Concepts were available; in fact, considerable research-and-development work
had been done on these concepts, but there lay ahead the job of translating these
concepts into real hardware, into systems that could be used in manned flight.
There was the detailed mission planning that was yet to be done. There was the
defining and implementing the world network. There were many of these things.
Developing the recovery techniques. All of this was still ahead.
[Slide 4]
Scheduling, I think, is about the best way to describe the progress of the
flights and of the program since these are, indeed, tangible milestones. And,
although there were many schedules, and you could call them success schedules,