Freedom 7 flight from episode 1 of "From The Earth To The Moon"

[francais70]

Did they have any module guidance computer for the Mercury Project as Apollo did ?. (Colossus Program) . What's about  the guidance Navigation and Control System for Mercury.

Thanks by advance for our replies, and will you forgive my English, which is not my native one !

[deathrooster14]

Wrex: Shepard.

Shepard: Wrex.

[07yenisd]

"We're at MAX Q"

[Moh1Z]

Can somebody explain why there's over 11 G's in the descent? Shouldn't the maximum in freefall be 1 G?

[laakeri84]

@Moh1Z It's the deceleration caused by the air drag, not the acceleration caused by the gravity.

[Moh1Z]

@laakeri84 Niinpä tietenkin. Kiitti.

[olderanddecrepit]

@laakeri84 Yes, and technically it's called "negative acceleration". So it actually is acceleration. Peace.

[gre8]

@Moh1Z I dunno, but I would guess that he must've been very fast in space, upon reentry he had to decelerate...

[Moh1Z]

@gre8 Check laakeri84's answer, I think he's right.

[gre8]

@Moh1Z close enough hahaha. Thanks for the heads-up, I should've taken my time to read the answers.

[baillou2]

@Moh1Z He's going from several miles per second down to a couple miles per hour. When the capsule hits the atmosphere it slows down very rapidly like a belly flop on the air. This has the effect of excessive G's. Imagine your car going 200 mph backwards and you suddenly slam on the breaks. You'll be pushed into your seat.

[Moh1Z]

@baillou2 yeah, I didn't realize they were slowing DOWN, I thought they were accelerating towards the Earth, lol :D

[observer9670]

The actor playing Shepard looked and sounded nothing like him. Scott Glenn in The Right Stuff had a much better resemblance. Even Shepard thought so, although he joked that he is much better looking than Scott Glenn!

[Entei2000]

The music is so good.

[Entei2000]

Can't wait till hearin about the landin in Mars!

[Entei2000]

RIP Alan Shepard

[noonedude101]

I see so many graphical errors... Retro 1 was only a firing of the top right retro, then retro 2 was of the lower center, then retro 3 opposite of retro 1, then all 3 fire...

[H123Laci]

"Man, what a ride!"

he sure was a big rollercoaster fan... :-))

why did he make a retro burn?

it wasn't an orbital flight, "only" a suborbital "space jump" far bellow the orbital speed...

[trollolololololo]

@H123Laci reenter too fast, and you'll roast like a delicious marshmallow. Keep in mind that throughout the craft's trajectory, the capsule was gaining speed, especially near the end of the flight.

[nasastronaut]

why do they call him jose?any body knows

[OhSnapMoni]

@nasastronaut because it was about one of their friends named jose that was verry afraid of rockets and that whole thing so it was just kind of alittle joke.

[A86]

@nasastronaut - Because of a friend who did a standup playing a Mexican named "Jose Jiminez" who was afraid of rockets and spaceflight. Shepard thought it was funny as hell.

[wildkrrd]

@nasastronaut In the '60s, there was a character that a guy named Bill Dana did on the Ed Sullivan Show called Jose Jiminez. He was portrayed by Dana as an incompetent and fearful astronaut and made the very idea of launching a man into space a joke. Commander Shepard thought it was particularly funny.

[helljumpr5150]

Please let Project Mercury Rising come to be, so we can ALL do this some day!

[noonedude101]

I always start clapping when Shepherd gives the call, "Main cute is green! Main cute is good!"

Am I the only one?

[H123Laci]

@noonedude101  yeah, that's so cute... or chute? :-)

[khal007]

HAPPY 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THIS FLIGHT! WOOT!

[skywaymanaz]

If you take a good look at Florida you will see several things that clearly did not exist in 1961. The shuttle landing runway, VAB, launch pads 39A & B. Very well rendered though in CGI.

[PSUee2009]

50th Anniversary today!

[WithDoubleBass]

the music for this series is just mind melting

[Mulkurul808]

Thanks so much, zoeconnolly, for posting this. This scene is a personal favorite of mine amongst the entire series of episodes. It juxtaposes perfectly with the entire episode 9, about Shepards overcoming a decade of being grounded for illness to commanding Apollo 14, walking on the moon. Against all odds. Astonishing great true story.

[Mulkurul808]

Likewise, NASAs recent triumphant success of MESSENGER to explore Planet Mercury will soon be followed by the ESAs deployment of solar powered ion drive propulsion to explore Mercury further, instead of using conventional rocket power. This is humankind's destiny of exploration done right, cause for celebration.

[Mulkurul808]

Constellation is NOT a revisiting of old glory, it is a shining beacon of hope that humankind is furthering it's manned exploration of space, FINALLY breaking free of the Earth orbital limits of the STS flights.

[Mulkurul808]

In addition, using SSTO rockets for Earth orbit rendezvous is also unprecedented, allowing a full 4 person crew for each lunar landing. While some critics compare it to Apollo, it is the too long dormant extension of Apollos legacy

[Mulkurul808]

@wikdkrrd please disregard room temperature IQ trolls like poor cblevins, whose negativity is so pointless and small mindedly political. Constellations main objective is to establish unprecedented six month duration lunar stays to lay the foundation for a permanent lunar base and a jump off point for a manned Mars mission.

[wildkrrd]

@cblevins0720 Yes I did. And sorry. I meant to say I agreed with Captainh, until I did some research. I most certainly don't think he or any other President is a retard. It's the toughest job on the planet, and only a select few are cut out for it.

[wildkrrd]

@cblevins0720 I actually agreed with you until I did a little research. He inherited a Constellation program that was over budget and behind schedule. As far as turning over spacecraft construction to the private sector, Boeing, Lockheed and Grumman built all the machines, not NASA. Also, Obama has set a deadline of 2015 for choosing a new heavy lift launch vehicle and for construction to commence. That means people are working on it now. And he increased NASA's budget by $1.5B a year.

[A86]

@wildkrrd - "Boeing, Lockheed and Grumman built all the machines, not NASA"

No, but NASA funding DOES. Do you think they all just came up with the money to build these wonderful spacecraft on their own and just started launching them for fun? No. Space exploration is not very profitable in the short-run, it takes years to profit from it. Why do you think so many private spacers went out of business?

NASA also provides infrastructure, some equipment, some scientists and regulations.

[wildkrrd]

@A86 Thanks for the public finance lesson, but I didn't need it. I know how the procurement process works. I enforce it. As to long term profits, you're right. But some of the technologies that are developed lead to advances in other areas from which private companies profit handsomely, not to mention patents and licensing rights.

[A86]

@wildkrrd - "some of the technologies that are developed lead to advances in other areas from which private companies profit handsomely"

Sure, and I agree whole-heartedly. The number of technological items in the hospital and in most American households that come from the space program are almost innumerable. But, capitalist companies being what they are that's why government funding is still key for ULA, ATK/Alliance, LM, SpaceX and Bigelow Aerospace getting off the ground.

[wildkrrd]

@A86 OK... So where's the disagreement? We both seem to be making the same point? The Soviet program (other then Mir) wasn't as successful as the American program. And I thing that was because of their centralized, so-called planned economy.

[A86]

@wildkrrd - Oh, we don't disagree on how public finances or space exploration works, I was just saying I think Obama's space plan is as badly planned as Bush's while earlier you seemed to think Obama's plan sounds feasible. To be honest even though I like some parts of Obama's plan like handing the LEO business over to companies like SpaceX, Bigelow and The Spaceship Company and funding the ISS until at least 2020 I think his new HLV and plan to skip the Moon is a boondoggle.

[wildkrrd]

@A86 OK. Point taken. What are your thoughts on Buzz Aldrin's support for the current plan. And I seriously am asking. I'm not saying that his support makes it sound, but I am interested in what you think.

[A86]

@wildkrrd - I wasn't as supportive of CxP as Neil Armstrong and Jim Lovell, I thought it needed some overhaul. I'm not as supportive of Obama's plan as Buzz Aldrin was but I do support some elements of it just like I support some elements of CxP. It's interesting to hear Buzz Aldrin's perspective as a rocket scientist though even if I don't agree with all of it. In recent months Buzz's support of Obama's space plan seems to have wavered and he seems to have changed his mind on some things.

[wildkrrd]

@A86 I agree with a lot of what you're saying. I think there should have been some middle ground, particularly when the fact that we now have to rely on other programs (read: Europe, Russia, etc...) to get us up and back from the ISS. I think that Obama should have extended the Shuttle program for at least 2 more years unitil a solid, viable, sustainable program was put into place. I was just at KSC in March and as I understand it, they are going to keep Orion for logistic flights to the ISS.

[A86]

@wildkrrd - The problem with Obama's plan is that it's even more idealistic than Bush's "Vision For Space Exploration" in that it plans to go directly to BEOs and Mars after over 40 years of inactivity in terms of traveling beyond LEO and our last trips beyond LEO consisting only of 3-day flags and footprints missions on the Moon. It's also idealistic in that Obama's plan sounds like little more than flags and footprints. There is no logistic or scientific reason given for an asteroid trip.

[A86]

@wildkrrd - The problem is Obama has donated nowhere near enough funding to make this possible. A $1.5 billion/year increase is not enough, NASA has other things to do other than building an arbitrary new HLV. The problem is even if he does cough up the funding it won't got anywhere until 2017, and where will this HLV go? We're not going to the Moon and no vehicle can take anyone to Mars or an asteroid.

The "over budget and behind schedule" criticism of CxP applies just as much to Obamas plan.

[Mulkurul808]

Nonetheless, the dream is alive and future generations will enjoy its destiny back to the moon and beyond. X-prize is the shining beacon of this hope, and thats what we should focus on. EX LUNA SCIENTIA = Latin, "from the Moon, knowledge" - Apollo 13. Plutarch: "the mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be lighted". I wish someone would post all the FTTETM segments of the Apollo 15 episode. ...and the Apollo 17 episode... and the other segments from this Episode 1.. thanx zoeconolly

[Mulkurul808]

I only regret Robert Goddard didnt live long enough to witness this. But it proves that with our tecnologies and these achievements we have blazed the trail for future generations to follow. At the time of Apollo we were on a realistic timeline for a manned Mars mission before yr 2000, but thanks to blatant fiscal irresponsibility of our government and public apathy from short attention spans it didnt happen. My heart leaped with joy of hearing the news of Constellation, & crushed when stillborn

[Mulkurul808]

@zeoconnolly BTW, the captions contain many errors. the most glaring being approaching apogee on Freedom 7, it should read "retro jet off" instead of "i'll turn jett off" but these are nitpicks, please forgive them. Episode 9, For Miles and Miles, detailing Alan Shepards Apollo 14 stunning achievement is a perfect juxtaposition to this clip, which YT member AtlantisSaturn has all six parts of this episode featured. I wish someone would post the clip of Gemini 12, which I cant find anywhere on YT

[Mulkurul808]

it may have its historical roots as a "space race" endeavor with our Cold War "communist evil empire" Soviet nemesis, but those archaic narrow minded views should be rendered into the fossil record as quickly as the fall of the Berlin Wall. Political ideologies & xenophobia are immeasurably counterproductive thought models that are outmoded at best and only serve to impede our abilities to pursue our dreams of reaching out to the stars, in peace, as fellow inhabitants of Earth. EX LUNA SCIENTIA!

[Mulkurul808]

@captainh321, I was devastated to hear Obama killed Constellation (oddly to the day of Apollo 1's tragic plugs out test incident) for budgetary reasons, but Google's Lunar Explorer X-Prize more than makes up for it. People have to stop being so neanderthal with their nationalistic us vs. them thinking about space exploration, they have to be open minded and accept a paradigm shift in thinking about space exploration as a global collective endeavor for humankind as a species, not nations/politics

[Mulkurul808]

my birthday was exactly a week before Neil made his bootprint in the regolith on that July 20th, and ive had a lifelong obsession with every aspect of the adventures of space exploration and the immeasurable wealth of human knowledge and experience that results from these endeavors. FTTETTM is a glorious tribute to this landmark achievement of human talent, of materializing these dreams, and Alan Shepard is my personal hero, outstanding in an ocean of collective talent that made this possible.

[Mulkurul808]

zeoconolly, most sincere thanks for posting this clip!! FTETTM is my all time favorite TV series, a very faithful and artistically diverse screen adaptation of Andy Chaikin's novel. It combines a diversity of tremendous collaboration of talent in acting, production, and design reflective of the the collective efforts of those 400,000 team members that made project Apollo the pinnacle of mankinds efforts to achieve the impossible, within a decade of Kennedy's speech at Rice University.

[skycurmudgeon]

I have flown as captain on several flights for ATK in their flare conformity program and these guys have got it together. They are now, here in Utah, beginning their commercial rocket program and just wait, you will see what can be done without beauracratic interference within the capitalist system and with SRB's no less!

[HotRodOtis]

Watching these clips always makes me sad....back in the days of America's "can do" spirit.....those days are long gone.....

[kandiys]

I didn't understand why the capcom says CAPCOM CAN YOU READ? at 6:18. Montage error?

[drey4lyfee]

Obama is putting us behind in the space race. Someone wake me when the next 2 years are up so I can not vote for him.

[toddsmitts]

@drey4lyfee There's no guarantee a Republican president will be any more supportive. Nixon, for instance, was happy to reap the rewards of Apollo started by his predecessors, yet he did very little to champion it compared to them.

[joshatkins94]

@toddsmitts Not only that, he canceled Apollo and appointed his idiot vice president to decide where to go next.

[UdallIn72]

While this was the second human spaceflight, and only a sub-orbital one at that, it was actually the first successful landing of a manned spacecraft.

Gagarin ejected from his Vostok capsule.

That fact didn't become clear until Glasnsot.

[nickyp28]

the soundtrack is abseloutely perfect in FTETTM. I'm from Scotland and it makes me feel proud to be american haha!

[DumbYankies]

Compare kennedy A clear objective. A clear deadline. A clear purpose. To the Moon, by 1970, not because it is easy but because it is hard.

To Obama, no real objective, no deadline, no purpose. Maybe some space taxi, but now the russians, and maybe oneday around 2030 mars. And scrap constellation, but turn orion into a lifeboat (with nothing to launch it), and no real mention of an on-going US launched manned program. Complete disgrace, almost treason.

[NowhereMan1966]

@DumbYankies I was born in 1966 so I feel good to have seen the landings on the Moon. It musth ave been something to be a kid in the 1960s if you were interested in science to have watched the space program from Project Mercury onward. When I watch scenes like this, I get goosebumps in my skin and tears in my eyes, despite Vietnam and other problems, this was a good time in America if you were into science and space. I want to feel proud for my country again.

[DumbYankies]

@NowhereMan1966 amen. I was also born in 66. Im not american but Apollo was my early youth and thanks for the fantasic show. We played our own little bit part in it. I too want to feel proud for mankind again. Lets get back there and this time lets stay.

[UdallIn72]

@DumbYankies

Well, Kennedy also had a spaceworthy geopolitical adversary and a much stronger economy than Obama.

Also, Kennedy was working at a time when most people sort of trusted the government.

[DumbYankies]

@UdallIn72 Obama does have three spaceworthy adversaries russia, china and europe. The battle is now economic rather than prestige and the US is failing to even leave the starting box.

As for trust I will give you that. The media has become far too judgmental and will be the death of the US, and the west with it. Noone seems to realise the other bastard (i.e. china) dont play by the rules, they just constantly bend them and lie whilst doing so. We need to man up and beat them at their own game

[Naoviotaire]

"9,000 feet," then, "the drogue is freed at 21,000 feet"

[CrowServo3000]

@Naoviotaire i think he said "90,000 but the caption is wrong

[joshatkins94]

@Naoviotaire He sounded like he said 30,000 feet.

[skatepunkzero]

Gordo I gotta pee

[george7378]

A lovely scene, from the best series of programmes I have ever seen. This is how i feel spaceflight should be represented.

Did anyone else notice the Shuttle runway at 1:35?

[captainh321]

This is where American manned spaceflight began. Sadly, we will see it end this year with the last shuttle flight. All thanks to President's Obama appalling lack of vision, he is killing NASA's manned space program. Funny, he said in the State of the Union he would not accept 2nd place for America. I guess he didn't mean in an area of technological advancement we, along with the Russians, pioneered. Al Shepard himself is turning over in his grave, I'm sure.

[austenbosten]

@captainh321

If you actually took the time to read and learn something, instead of making biased ignorant observations, you'd realize that Constellation was seriously under-funded from the start and there was no way for NASA to put astronauts on the Moon by 2020. Cutting Constellation would free up money to invest in a new rocket and not a chop-shop that was the Ares. Besides Obama has boosted funding for NASA, so how is that killing it. Please read and stop making idiotic comments.

[captainh321]

Actually, Obama has farmed out manned space flight to private companies, who probably won't be able to put U.S. astronauts into orbit for ten years. In the meantime, we rely on the Russians to get us to a space station we spent millions to help build. If our relations with them go south, we're cut off. Besides the corporate space taxi, there is no proposed system to replace Constellation. As I said, Al Shepard is probably turning over in his grave.

[joshatkins94]

Al Shepard flew on a corporate built rocket. NASA has never, and will never, build rockets for human spaceflight. They have always contracted out to aerospace companies. The only difference now is that they're the customer, not the one contracting customers.

[DumbYankies]

@captainh321 Yes it is a sad day. Come probably janurary 2011, Sir Richard Branson will have more manned launch capability that the entire US establishment (NASA, space taxi's, USAF, whatever). Falcon 9 is fine and dandy but there seems to be NO coordinated manned spaceflight plan around it, atlas 5 or any other launcher. If Obama or someone was kicking butt to accelerate man rating of it and putting an Orion-lite on top, it wouldnt be so bad. But to date I SEE NO DRIVE in this direction.

[SuperTennis3]

@captainh321 I don't think anybody would have dared make such a ludicrous move if he were still with us.

[websuspect]

@captainh321 We need to keep the pressure up on our government to get out of receivership. Elect our leaders. reduce the national deficet.  Restore the US shuttle space program. Cut military defense spending overseas. and increase job growth. We are americans. We can do it.

[piratesmvp]

@websuspect I agree with you on everything except the defense spending.

[captainh321]

Some more of what you would probably call "idiotic comments", but not from me:

"If the administration's proposal is followed, the United States will no longer be a space-faring nation." --Robert "Hoot" Gibson, Shuttle Astronaut/Commander.

"I don't care how people want to sugarcoat it--we are no longer a space faring nation." --Gene Cernan, Apollo 17 Commander, Last Man on the Moon.

Do you think their comments are "idiotic"?

[austenbosten]

@captainh321

To a point yes, they are too short-sighted. NASA was not a space fairing nation from 1974-1981, yet we got through it. Still like I said before the Ares/Orion carries less astronauts, no payload, has no EVA or Canada arm, and has a slower recovery time, so how is this a step forward for NASA. Frankly I think the STS program should be revamped and improved, to go longer and farther. (The payload doors could easily hold a LM)

[captainh321]

Yet the Constellation system's heavy life capability was going to take us back to the Moon. Shuttle can't do that. I'll go with Gibson and Cernan on this, and considering they've actually flown in space, and one's flown to the Moon twice, I feel theire assessment comes from solid experience and concern. And I can't think of a man like Cernan, who stood and looked at Earth from the Moon at Taurus-Littrow, as being short-sighted. Heck, he wants to give up the title of "last man on the Moon."

[austenbosten]

@captainh321

Yes but do you see the fallacy in doing so? We seem to have this inability to think beyond the present. We think the only way to get to the moon is through a costly, inefficient heavy-launch vehicle like the Sat V. Yet Apollo never had the ISS. We could use the ISS as a means to travel to the moon and mars and bypass the costly inefficient HL vehicles. Also the STS did more in terms of science than Apollo ever did. What could an astronaut do, that a robot couldn't do better?

[toddsmitts]

@austenbosten Do you have any idea how big a booster would have to be to put something the size of a shuttle into lunar orbit? The shuttle was NEVER designed for anything but low earth orbit.

And for the record, the US was a space-faring nation in 1975, with the Apollo-Soyuz mission.

[DumbYankies]

@toddsmitts Saturn 5 puts 45 tons into lunar orbit, 15 tons to lunar surface. Shuttle weights about 70 tons for the orbiter with consumerables. So something with about twice the grunt of a saturn 5s three stages. But also the shuttle is about as aero dynamic as a barn door so it has much more drag going up. And on top of that would need much better insulation to survive trans lunar reentry on the way back. That aside from the 70 tons not including fuel the brake in or boost out of lunar orbit

[svirrsvarr]

@captainh321 They most probably have stuff out there, it's just that they don't tell most of us about it because they put the projects under the military instead, hence, no insight. The US black budget was estimated $50 billion in 2009 for classified programs. There are Americans up there now and even so after the shuttle.

[joshatkins94]

@captainh321 As Buzz Aldrin said on Fox News in April, the decision to end American shuttle flights was made in January 2004 by the previous administration. It's not the current President's fault that President Bush and Congress decided to underfund Constellation.

[SilentHunter7]

@joshatkins94 Constellation was doomed by politics right from the start. I mean, just look at the fact that they decided to go with an expensive, unsafe, and inefficient Solid Rocket Booster as the booster for the crew capsule. The reason? Because they didn't want to alienate the contractor who makes the space shuttle SRBs.

Yeah, it's sad to see the space program gutted like that, but there may be a silver lining in that the whole program can get a reboot now.

[Mulkurul808]

@SilentHunter7 Constellation may have appeared stillborn by budget cuts. The astonishing irony of that is that news announcement came on the day (Jan 27 2010) that NASAs picture of the day was the small ceremonial gathering at Arlington Cemetery commemorating the deaths of Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee during the plugs out test fire incident of Apollo 1. Many, even in NASA itself, thought this tragedy would stop Apollo dead in its tracks, period. But 8 through 17 made history.

[wildkrrd]

@Mulkurul808 Yeah the timing was a little bit insensitive. I just got back from Florida and visited the KSC. I took the tour that brings you out to LC-34. Very solemn. As far as Constellation... If Buzz Aldrin says it's not a good use of money or effort. As he says, going back to the moon right now would be revisiting past glory instead of forging into new teritory.

[wildkrrd]

@joshatkins94 THANK YOU for a well informed, researched post. I remember Bush's "vision for space" speech a few years back. I wished I had been in the audience so I could have asked, "Where are you going to cut the budget to raise the money to fund all the stuff you say you want to do?"

[A86]

@wildkrrd - Not to mention the specs of Obama's HLV show that it's weaker than the Saturn V. How would humans get to a BEO or Mars from a launch vehicle with less lifting power than the Saturn V which could only push 100,000 lbs to the Moon? The Ares V could at least push 160,000 lbs or more (possibly up to 180,000 lbs or so) to the Moon. Any vehicle that carries humans to an asteroid or Mars would have to weigh more than Apollo.

Like CxP Obama's plan reeks of being designed by politicians.

[websuspect]

@captainh321 The US has been put into receiver ship. NASA could develop an in house cad cam shuttle system and the shuttle 2.0 COuld be revised to launch off a 747 at very low cost...

[funtimecthulhu]

Great clip! Love that series! I was at KSC about 2 weeks ago and toured the old Cape Canaveral launch sites. Got to stand on the same pad where Freedom 7 launched. For some reason, I could hear the music from this clip playing in my head while I was standing there! LOL Awesome place!

[RTSiciliano]

I had a similar experience 20 years ago when standing in the same place, only the music in my head was a tune from a NASA video, not as good as this theme song, I must say.

[tkhuang]

Wow this really brings back my childhood memory..... I watched this episode on TV back in 1998 and I was only Grade 9 at the time (in fact, I watched all the episodes on TV).

[Franciszek64]

A little "mistake" at 1:07 and 1:37.. there´s no launch pad 39 complex and space shuttle runway exist in 1961

[cburns0x0]

I like this clip from the miniseries, but the captions are really distracting - and incorrect.

It's max Q, not max speed.

It's 24 is the main bus voltage, not the main vessel.

[zoeconnolly]

I left the captions on during the video capture for the hearing impaired.

[Kargaroc286]

@zoeconnolly then maybe you could redo the video and make the captions with youtube

[Airking4321]

@zoeconnolly Yeah, but if you were deaf, how would you hear or rather imagine the series's beautiful music?

[Seesfar1]

@zoeconnolly

Good for you, My mother is hard of hearing. Thank you.

[Naoviotaire]

The chatter fidelity is what makes this an excellent recreation.

[toddsmitts]

WAAAAAY better than the movie "The Right Stuff"!

[EndeavourLaunch]

bitchin!