Gagarin and Shepard

[artwleb]

Listen to Kennedy talk about large Russian boosters in April

1961. USA actually had Atlas D available in late 1959 if we

so desired but other elements prevented a "rush" effort at

that time plus good judgement.

[artwleb]

A little deceptive with the 3 sounds of MR-1 at 0:24. Cute

humor I suppose. Nice video for the history of the early days.

[ugowar]

Yep, definitely humor. You gotta admit, that was the funniest abort ever, especially the parachute popping!

[artwleb]

Actually the events after the engine shutdown went as "planned" since the Redstone was in effect in flight. The

tower jettison was planned at engine cutoff and the chute

was deployed due to "air pressure readings. It seems there

should have been a built in delay after ? seconds of actual

flight.

[ugowar]

Not to mention the LES tower was supposed to actually *take* the capsule with it in case of a in-flight abort. I didn't exactly see that happening. This should have been an abort tower firing, not MECO induced jettison.

[artwleb]

Apparently this was not an abort to Redstone programming

events but rather a "flight" that was late in jettisoning the tower and found itself so low the chute sequence was activated. Some failures are fascinating in how they occurred and why...the second missile in the video was destroyed by vibration closing the relays for the first stage destruct package.

[drVitall]

Awesome video. Thank you for uploading it.