 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 are 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. An Earth satellite into orbit. Soon before the Earth turns many hundred times, a man will climb into a capsule at the Atlantic Missile Range and be hurled headlong into space. Why must he attempt this new and forbidding environment? Space with its belts of radiation, meteorites, solar winds, unknown cosmic forces. To explore his world, man has always risked the unknown. Because it is unknown and man's nature is to know. Project Mercury 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 scientists, the explorer must see for himself. Each component of Project Mercury will be held up and measured in the unbending light of scientific truth. Will it work? Why? Does it work under load? Why not? The problem of selecting pilots to represent the United States in space was approached from the same uncompromising direction. 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. They were interviewed, tested and asked to volunteer for the Project Mercury mission. Six 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. 32 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 candidates' abilities during physical stress. Laboratory studies were made in each physiological area. As military pilots, these men had passed yearly flight physicals. But 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. Three actions are studied. The results will indicate how he fared under multiple gravity forces. Did he show a tendency to pull back? No. Was his tolerance level low or was it high? Now, can we shake his equilibrium? How 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. Now have him do this for five minutes. Ask him to take a walk. Walk until his heart beats 180 times a minute. Elevate the incline one degree every minute. These tests continued until all 32 men had been evaluated. Seven men emerged from this competitive purgatory as the Project Mercury astronauts. At McDonnell aircraft, they saw a model of the space capsule they would ride into orbit. They sat in the cockpit for the first time. This is the beginning for each of them. Captain Donald K. Slayton, United States Air Force, age 35 from Sparta, Wisconsin. Lieutenant Commander Alan B. Sheppard, United States Navy, age 35 from East Derry, New Hampshire. Lieutenant Commander Walter M. Shearar, 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 Leroy 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. 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 their proficiency in high-performance military aircraft. Out of this training together, a strong esprit de corps 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. Soon, all of the 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 nature that were pitted against them. But each 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. To get the feel of space 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. The astronaut riding his capsule will land in the Atlantic Recovery Area off the coast of Florida. The astronaut must learn to tolerate the heating he encounters during his fall back into the atmosphere. These quartz tube lamps produce great heat. Among the astronauts, Walter Shirrah is charged with the special problem of studying the capsule environment, but there are 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. Grissom's area of responsibility is the control system, including the automatic pilot. Cooper's area concerns the ballistic flights with the Redstone missile. Shepard is concerned with tracking and recovery of the capsule. Glenn has the cockpit area, carpenter communication and navigation, and Slayton has the responsibility for knowing Atlas and all of its systems. The possibility that trouble may develop with the Atlas or the Redstone during the countdown or during the takeoff is looked squarely in the eye and the engineers behind Project Mercury. This booster 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, parachute opens, and the capsule lands in the sea. Success in a pioneer mission depends on optimal 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. In 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. After 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 and re-entry and landing. But before a man's life is risked 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 NASA 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. And 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. Navy underwater demolition team 21 of Little Creek, Virginia, supervises the instruction of the astronauts. Alan 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. Imagine, if you will, that 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. At an altitude of 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. Orbital speed will be achieved at about 100 miles altitude. Once in orbit, explosive bolts release the capsule. Separation rockets on the capsule fire, pushing the capsule away from the Atlas. Now the 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 a periscope or through his window, the pilot observes the Earth below and the heavens beyond the horizon. When the capsule is 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 meet here like plunge toward the Earth. Plunging through the atmosphere, the heat shield glows white hot. The blunt end must be pointed in the line of fall. Below patrol aircraft sweep the re-entry area with radar. One thousand feet, the main parachute extends and a so far bomb is released. The bomb exploding some three thousand feet under the ocean provides an accurate fix. 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. And 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 are proved in the flight test experiment named Big Joe that this vehicle could perform the mission. So 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 orbit. These are the astronauts. United States Project Mercury.