(2 of 4)
On the third try, dark thunderheads lined the eastern horizon, threatening to postpone the flight again. But the morning sky cleared as the launching time (7:20 a.m.) approached. The crowds of official and unofficial spectators grew tense with excitement, even though most of them had already witnessed Shepard's successful flight last May; they knew that the odds against success increased with each try. Least excited was Grissom. Strapped to his contour couch, he talked by telephone with his wife in Newport News, Va. He told her that he felt fine.
Bright Sun, Black Sky. At T minus 3, the "cherry picker" escape crane drew slowly away from the capsule. Away snapped the umbilical cord that had supplied oxygen, power and communication. The rocket was on its own. As it waited for the starter's button, a cloud of white vapor from the liquid oxygen spread like a puddle over its pad. The crowd fell silent. Exactly at T, the rocket roared, rose off the ground and, standing on its tail of flame, climbed smoothly into the sky.
News from Grissom began to be relayed over the control-room loudspeaker. He felt fine, and all systems were working properly. At T plus 141 sec., officials told the waiting crowd that Liberty Bell 7 had separated successfully from the Redstone booster. The crowd clapped and yelled. Grissom looked out through his four-pane "picture window"—a new feature of the capsule—but was at first too dazzled to see much. "Boy," he reported, "that sun is really bright." Later he saw the clouded coastline far below, watched the sky grow blacker—and became so fascinated with the view that he could hardly drag himself back to his duties.
As Liberty Bell 7 approached its apogee, traveling at 5,310 miles per hour, Grissom took manual control with a new and hopefully more precise set of controls. Weightless by now, he found the manual controls sluggish, had difficulty turning his capsule by means of its small hydrogen peroxide rocket nozzles. "Having a little bit of trouble with the manual controls," he reported. Seven minutes after launch, he managed to point the capsule and fire the retrorockets. They slowed his speed only slightly, but if he had been in full orbital flight, they would have curved him down into the atmosphere. Grissom's movements—he was running behind schedule in his work—were hampered as dust and bigger unidentified pieces floated around in the capsule.
Coming Down. Back at Canaveral, the electronic computers carefully watched the capsule's trajectory. They announced (through human intermediaries) that it would take Grissom to almost exactly the chosen impact point (302 miles down range)—though wind finally blew him six miles off target. Excitement rose on the aircraft carrier Randolph, whose helicopters were hovering to pluck the capsule out of the water. Second-by-second reports came down from space, Grissom chatting over his radio with Shepard.