The Mammoth Book of Space Exploration and Disasters

At this point in the flight, over Canton, I was scheduled to take a xylose pill (which is a biomedically traceable sugar pill for later analysis in my collected urine). I could feel the melted Pillsbury mess in the plastic bag and said, “I hate to do this,” more to myself than to the Canton Capcom. Then, surprise, when I opened it: “It didn’t melt!” I found the xylose pill, but all my cookies had crumbled. Chocolate morsels escaped their confines to float, weightless, around my tiny workspace. The rest of the stuff in the bag was a mess. The Nestle concoction, more fruit and nougat than heat-sensitive chocolate, held up far better.

I was approaching Hawaii, and my second sunrise in space. Referring to the flight plan, the Canton Capcom prompted me, before LOS, for an update on the balloon experiment: “Which of the five colors was most visible?”

Carpenter reported: “I would say that the day-glow orange is best.”

Capcom replied: “Roger. For your information, the second sunrise should be expected in approximately 3 to 4 minutes.”

“The Surgeon is after me here,” he added, for another blood pressure check. “Is this convenient?” My in-flight duties at sunrise called for vigorous physical activity, so I waved him off:

“Negative. I won’t be able to hold still for it now. I’ve got the sunrise to worry about.”

He let me alone.

Sunrises and sunsets were extremely busy time-blocks during Mercury flights. There were important measurements to make of the airglow and other celestial phenomena and innumerable photographs to take.

John O’Keefe had some solid hypotheses about the “fireflies” John had seen during his flight. But they remained unexplained. Whatever the critters were, they were particularly active, or at least visible, at dawn, adding to the scientist-pilot’s burden. At 02 49 00 I reported the arrival of a beautiful dawn in space: “I’ll record it,” I told the Canton Capcom, “so you can see it.” As a patrol plane pilot, I had trained to serve as the U.S. Navy’s eyes and ears – a militarily indispensable role. In space, as a Mercury astronaut, I was now the eyes and ears for an entire nation. I felt an obligation to record what few would ever have a chance to see.

I was just beginning to go through my crowded schedule of sunrise-related work when Hawaii took over from Canton, announcing, “Hawaii Com Tech. How do you read me?” prompting me for a short report. The Navy has a one-through-five scale for grading the volume and clarity of voice transmissions. An old Navy quip came to mind, “I read you two by two” – a voice-report short-hand for “too loud and too often.” But I reserved the smart answer and said only, “Stand by one. My status is good. My capsule status is good. I want to get some pictures of the sunrise. Over.”

Capcom asked for a fuel consumption report. Carpenter reported that his fuel supplies were 45–62.

The 45–62 figures were the percentages of Aurora 7’s fuel supply. I had less than half my manual fuel supply left; my automatic fuel supplies stood at 62 percent. Not alarmingly low yet, but low enough. Still Kraft, directing the flight from the Cape, later reported that he wasn’t worried: “except for some overexpenditure of hydrogen peroxide fuel,” he wrote in his own postflight analysis of MA-7, “everything had gone perfectly.” I still had 40 percent of my manual fuel, which, “according to the mission rules,” Kraft figured, “ought to be quite enough hydrogen peroxide… to thrust the capsule into the retrofire attitude, hold it, and then to reenter the atmosphere using either the automatic or the manual control system.”

But I myself was running low on water – hadn’t drunk any even after the prompting over Woomera. This was a mistake. I was in good physical condition and could tolerate dehydration, but I still should have been drinking copious amounts of water to compensate for what I was losing through sweat and respiration. Someone, the flight surgeon, directed the Hawaii Capcom to inquire about my water intake:

“Did you drink over Canton? Did you drink any water over Canton?”

Carpenter replied: “That is negative. I will do, shortly.”

The water would have to wait. But Hawaii Capcom persisted: “Roger. Surgeon feels this is advisable.” More cabin and suit temperature readings were asked for and given. It was at this time that Mercury Control, alert to potential problems, had pondered one of my earlier voice reports (at capsule elapsed 02 08 46) about the difficulty I was having, not with the thrusters, but with the ASCS. It directed Hawaii Capcom to have me conduct an ASCS check:

“Aurora 7. This is Capcom. Would like for you to return gyros to normal and see what kind of indication we have: whether or not your window view agrees with your gyros.”

Sixteen seconds passed. I was feverishly working through the sunrise-related scientific work, too busy to drink water, too busy to send a telemetered blood pressure reading, and ground control had just asked me to perform an attitude check. “Roger. Wait one,” I replied.