“Why don’t you fix your little problem and light this candle?” radioed astronaut Alan B. Shepard Jr. impatiently from atop his Redstone rocket at Launch Complex 5, Cape Canaveral, Florida. The 37-year-old Navy test pilot from Derry, New Hampshire, had endured weeks of launch delays, and now a series of weather and mechanical problems that morning of May 5, 1961. He had been strapped on his back in his cramped Mercury spacecraft for more than three hours; the frustration of the man his colleagues called “the Icy Commander” mirrored the nation’s anxiety over the Soviet Union’s decided advantage in the contest to put humans into space. Just three weeks earlier, 27-year-old Yuri Gagarin, a Russian air force flier, had become not only the first man in space but also the first to orbit the planet. Shepard’s planned suborbital hop could not remotely match Gagarin’s complete Earth orbit, but it would at least get America off the ground, an important step forward in overtaking the USSR on this highest frontier. At that point, it was by no means certain that the United States could catch up with the Soviets.

Origins

Full Story >>