The Mammoth Book of Space Exploration and Disasters

The launch date was originally set for 16 January but due to bad weather it was postponed until 23 January. Glenn:

I woke up at about one-thirty on the morning of February 20, 1962. It was the eleventh date that had been scheduled for the flight. I lay there and went through flight procedures, and tried not to think about an eleventh postponement. Bill Douglas came in a little after two and leaned on my bunk and talked. He said the weather was fifty-fifty and that Scott had already been up to check out the capsule and called to say it was ready to go. I showered, shaved, and wore a bathrobe while I ate the now-familiar low-residue breakfast with Bill, Walt Williams, NASA’s preflight operations director, Merritt Preston, and Deke Slayton who was scheduled to make the next flight.

Bill gave me a once-over with a stethoscope and shone a light into my eyes, ears, and throat. “You’re fit to go,” he said and started to attach the biosensors. Joe Schmitt laid out the pressure suit’s various components, the suit itself, the helmet, and the gloves, which contained fingertip flashlights for reading the instruments when I orbited from day into night. I put on the urine collection device that was a version of the one Gus and I had devised the night before his flight, then the heavy mesh underliner with its two layers separated by wire coils that allowed air to circulate. I put the silver suit on – one leg at a time, like everybody else, I reminded myself. In a pocket in addition to the small pins I had designed, I carried five small silk American flags. I planned to present them to the President, the commandant of the Marine Corps, the Smithsonian Institution, and Dave and Lyn.

Joe gave the suit a pressure check, and Bill ran a hose into his fish tank to check the purity of the air supply; dead fish would mean bad air. I was putting on the silver boots and the dust covers that would come off once I was through the dust-free “white room” outside the capsule at the top of the gantry when I said casually, “Bill, did you know a couple of those fish are floating belly-up?”

“What?” He rushed over to the tank and looked inside before he realized I was kidding.

I put my white helmet on, left Hangar S carrying the portable air blower; waved at the technicians, and got into the transfer van. In the van, I looked over weather data and flight plans. About two hundred technicians were gathered around Launch Complex 14 when I got out of the van. Searchlights lit the silvery Atlas much as they had the night we had watched it blow to pieces. I thought instead of the successful tests since then. Clouds rolled overhead in the predawn light. It was six o’clock when I rode the elevator up the gantry. Scott was waiting in the white room to help me into the capsule. In addition to white coveralls and dust covers on your shoes, you had to wear a paper cap in the white room. It made the highly trained capsule insertion crew look like drugstore soda jerks. I bantered with Guenter Wendt, the “pad führer” who ran the white room with precision, before wriggling feet first into the capsule and settling in to await the countdown.

The original launch time passed as a weather hold delayed the countdown. Then a microphone bracket in my helmet broke. Joe Schmitt fixed that, I said goodbye to everybody, and the crew bolted the hatch into place. They sheared a bolt in the process, so they unbolted the hatch, replaced the bolt, and secured it back into place. That took another forty minutes. I still didn’t believe I would actually go.

I heard a steady stream of conversation on my helmet headset, weather and technical details passed between the blockhouse and the control center in NASA’s technical patois. A voice said the clouds were thinning. Up and down the beaches and on roadsides around the Cape, I knew thousands of people were assembled for the launch. Some of them had been there for a month. The countdown would resume, then stop. I just waited. Then the gantry pulled away, and I could see patches of blue sky through the window. The steady patter of blockhouse communications continued. Scott, in the blockhouse, made a call and let me know he had patched me through to Arlington so I could talk privately with Annie. “How are you doing?” I said.

“We’re fine. How are you doing?”

“Well, I’m all strapped in. The gantry’s back. If we can just get a break on the weather, it looks like I might finally go. How are the kids?”

“They’re right here.” I spoke first to Lyn, then Dave. They told me they were watching all three networks and the preparations looked exciting. Then Annie came back on the line.

“Hey, honey, don’t be scared,” I said. “Remember; I’m just going down to the corner store to get a pack of gum.”

Her breath caught. “Don’t be long,” she said.