 Welcome to the first edition of a new TV series entitled The Astronauts. I'm Lynn Bondrant. This first program highlights the U.S. Project Mercury program and documents the historic training activities the first seven astronauts underwent to qualify for the program. We're going back in time to 1959. This is a press conference. April 9, 1959, Washington, D.C. One of these seven young men will be the first American into space. These are the astronauts. United States Project Mercury. A substantial part of the imagination, energy and genius of the United States is being devoted to the scientific exploration of our universe. The launching pads and gantries of the Atlantic Missile Range mount many of our experiments into the very nature of creation. It turns many hundred times, make Missile Range and be hurled headlong into space, where it's risk the unknown, whilst it is unknown. And man's nature is to know that he is a beginning for man in space. It will take him 100 miles from the earth. Here we think there are no radiation belts, solar winds or unknown cosmic forces, but man, the scientist, the explorer, must see for himself. Each component of Project Mercury will be held up and measured in the unbending light of scientific truth. From all of the active duty pilots in the Navy, Marines and Air Force, the service records of 473 test pilots were selected for review. 110 met the basic qualifications. Each must be a graduate of a Navy or Air Force test pilot school, 1500 hours of flight time, qualified in jet aircraft, an engineering background, younger than 40 at the time of selection, and 5 feet 11 or less. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration asked 69 Navy, Marine and Air Force officers of the 110 who qualified to come to Washington for a briefing. Who were interviewed, tested and asked to volunteer for the Project Mercury mission. Hicks were discovered to be too tall. 16 declined and 47 volunteered. 32 were asked to continue through a series of capability tests which would indicate not the best man in the group but the various degrees of qualification of each man. Candidates reported to the Lovelace Clinic in Albuquerque, New Mexico, for an exhaustive series of physical examinations. These tests were divided between those given under normal clinical procedures and a series used for the first time in Project Mercury. A series of dynamic tests designed to measure the candidate's abilities during physical stress. Laboratory studies were made in each physiological area. As military pilots these men had passed yearly flight physicals. Here at the Lovelace Clinic, each measurable reaction of body chemistry, each physical function was measured, probed, diagnosed. What is the specific gravity of his body? What is his blood volume? Water volume? What is his total body radiation count? We are listening to his heart. When the astronaut is orbiting in space, the measure of his heart's contraction and expansion will be telemetered to the Mercury tracking stations. After a week of examinations, the candidates were sent on to the Wright Air Development Center in Dayton for stress evaluation and psychological tests. This Project Mercury candidate is preparing for stress. The weight of eight gravities will thrust upon him as he rides the human centrifuge and are studied. The results will indicate how he fared under multiple gravity forces. Did he show a tendency to pull back? Was his tolerance level low or was it high? Does this affect his pulse and blood pressure? And what about his mental balance, his imagination, his personality, motivation? How does he see the different problems of living? And how his life affected him as an individual? Test his memory, comprehension, perception, visualization. Ask him to describe himself in a hundred different ways with a battery of tests. Now take him up to 65,000 feet for one hour in a pressure chamber. Astronauts, they sat on the cockpit. This is the beginning for each of them. Captain Donald K. Slayton, United States Air Force, age 35 from Sparta, Wisconsin. Lieutenant Commander Allen B. Shepard, United States Navy, age 35 from East Derry, New Hampshire. Lieutenant Commander Walter M. Chirot Jr., United States Navy, age 36 from Wardale, New Jersey. Captain Virgil I. Grissom, United States Air Force, age 33 from Mitchell, Indiana. Lieutenant Colonel John H. Glenn, United States Marine Corps, age 38 from New Concord, Ohio. Captain LaRoy G. Cooper Jr., United States Air Force, age 32 from Carbondale, Colorado. Lieutenant Malcolm Scott Carpenter, United States Navy, age 33 from Boulder, Colorado. These officers were detailed by their services to report to the NASA at Langley Field, Virginia. Here the National Aeronautics and Space Administration space task group under the direction of Robert Gilruth had organized a training program for the astronauts. They were excellent students and they had a realistic and tough-minded approach to Project Mercury. They had to know all the answers. Here they discussed the flight tests. In the flight program they would ride both the Redstone and the Atlas boosters. But a man would not ride either booster until the full test program was a success. The schedule included first instrumented capsules, then capsules with a monkey aboard, and then one of the seven would go into space. The schedule also provided for the problems of flying near the earth. They must maintain a proficiency in high-performance military aircraft. Out of this training together a strong esprit de corps developed. They all felt that this must be a team effort involving all of Project Mercury. Recognition would undoubtedly go to the man who makes the first flight. But the second, third, or fourth flights may produce far more scientific information than the first flight. Astronauts were busy qualifying themselves for a space flight. They rode the human centrifuges of the Air Force and the Navy. Here they trained to increase their resistance to the forces of nature that were pitted against them. New experience. Each small physical or mental victory was backed up by hours of classroom work. The time had come to select the pressurized flight suit they would wear. All of the suits tested were air-conditioned, had an attachable helmet, and would protect the pilot from heat and from the deafening 155 decibel noise of the blast off. The problem was to select a suit which had complete pressure integrity, which was resistant to temperature and was not too bulky, a suit which allowed comparative freedom of movement, yet a suit which was completely reliable. This modified US Navy Mark IV suit worn by Shepard was selected for further testing. These flight controls, this trainer at NASA's Lewis Research Center in Cleveland, demonstrates the possible motions of a capsule in space. While the astronauts perfect themselves for their mission, the hardware of Project Mercury is being tested, evaluated, reshaped, and tested again. Off Wallops Island, Virginia, capsule drops at high altitude, tests the parachute and recovery systems. At 10,000 feet the parachute will open. Riding its capsule will land in the Atlantic recovery area off the coast of Florida. It's learned to tolerate the heating he encounters during its fall back into the atmosphere. These quartz tube lats, Walter Shirai, is charged with the special problem of studying the capsule environment. Some moments of rest for the astronauts. Here they sit in a projection room and watch the films taken of their visit to the Atlantic Missile Range Cape Canaveral. On trips like this, each man gathers information concerning his particular assigned area of individual study. He is then responsible to the rest of the group for this information. The ballistic flights with the redstone missile. Shepard is concerned with tracking and recovery of the capsule. Has the cockpit area, carpenter communication and navigation. Has the responsibility for knowing ATLAS and all of its systems. Philip with the ATLAS or the redstone during the quote squarely in the eye by the astronauts and the engineers behind the projector was not a Mercury vehicle. But imagine the worst possible situation for the astronaut. That his capsule is now mounted on top of this ATLAS. The rocket takes the capsule away from the booster. Human performance and performance. This is the voice of Dr. Theodore Benzinger at the Naval Medical Center Bethesda, Maryland. The astronauts each take their afternoon of sweating it out in this gradient heat calorimeter. A temperature as hot as it is in here now for him and will later be for you. 114 degrees Fahrenheit. Your internal body temperature is protected by a physiological mechanism of very high power and precision. In the submarine carbon dioxide chamber at Bethesda the astronauts learn that space medicine and submarine medicine have common problems. Under emergency conditions there is a danger of the presence of unusual amounts of carbon dioxide in the space capsule or submarine hull. Two hours in the chamber under 3% carbon dioxide these men are tired but they were convinced that they could function for quite a long time. At least long enough to make a complete orbit of the earth and then to make an emergency re-entry and landing. If there's risk in space animals will undergo the same operational stresses. The animal research program connected with project Mercury is an important prerequisite to research with human beings in space. The essay research which created the individually molded couch was another step toward minimizing the hazard of injury during the Mercury mission. This is the same man. John Glenn sitting in his couch under 14 Gs in the centrifuge at the Naval Aviation Medical Acceleration Laboratory, Johnsville, Pennsylvania. This is Gus Grissom. The astronauts consider this experience as probably the most important phase of their space flight environmental training. Alan Shepard as he takes the G load of an emergency abort and landing. To be able to take this physical beating these men must be conditioned like athletes and the astronauts find that the physical discipline of underwater swimming is oddly effective in training toward a space mission. Supervises the instruction of the astronauts. Al Shepard and Wally Shirrah have just completed a half mile swim by compass course to the beach. Underwater swimming aside from being an excellent physical conditioner accustoms the astronaut to a forced breathing discipline and closely approximates the condition of weightlessness which will be encountered in orbital flight. Now you are watching the first project Mercury launching at the Atlantic Missile Range Cape Canaveral. At launch time the man capsule with its escape system is thrust into the sky by the two booster engines and one sustainer engine of the Atlas, about 50 miles. After some two minutes of flight the booster engines are turned off and jettisoned. The sustainer engine continues its thrust toward orbital speed as the escape rocket fires pulling the escape tower free of the capsule. It will be achieved at about 100 miles altitude. Once in orbit explosive boats release the capsule. Separation rockets on the capsule fire pushing the capsule away from the Atlas. Capsule automatic pilot rotates the capsule. If the automatic pilot fails to respond or becomes erratic the pilot has controls to maneuver the capsule into proper orbital attitude through his window. The pilot observes the earth below and the heavens beyond the horizon. Soon as several hundred miles west off the coast of california the signal for re-entry is given. Retro rockets fire causing the capsule to leave its orbital path. Now man and capsule fall and meteor like plunge toward the earth. Plunging through the atmosphere the heat shield glows white hot and must be pointed in the line of fall. Crafts sweep the re-entry area with radar. Floating some 3,000 feet under the ocean provides an accurate face. With this information patrol aircraft and ships converge on the spot where the capsule is expected to land. When the capsule hits the water the parachute is released and sea die marker spreads out on the surface of the water. As the capsule floats in the sea a signal light and automatic radio transmitter indicate the exact position. So before the earth turns many hundred times another booster will rest on the pad of the cape and one of the astronauts will ride here on the shoulders of atlas. This unmanned atlas booster and capsule proved in the flight test experiment named big joe that this vehicle could perform the mission without escape tower. Rocketed to 100 miles and was thrust downward to re-enter the earth's atmosphere at a speed just below the predicted re-entry speed. The capsule was recovered in the Atlantic Ocean. The tests will continue. The experiments and training will go on to put man into orbits are the astronauts. The United States Project Mercury. We hope that you've enjoyed the first edition of The Astronauts. Thank you for joining us. Until next time this is Lynn Bonderand saying goodbye from the NASA Lewis Research Center in Cleveland.