Following are exerpts from a NASA book entitled, NASA SP-45, "Mercury
Project Summary, Including Results of the Fourth Manned Orbital Flight, May
15 and 16, 1963.  The publication date is October 1963.
 
PROJECT REVIEW
 
By Walter C. Williams, Deputy Director for Mission Requirements and Flight
Operations, NASA Manned Spacecraft Center; Kenneth S. Kleinknecht, Manager,
Mercury Project, NASA Manned Spacecraft Center; William M. Bland, Jr.,
Deputy Manager, Mercury Project, NASA Manned Spacecraft Center; and James E.
Bost, Chief, Engineering Operations Office, Mercury Project Office, NASA
Manned Spacecraft Center.
 
SUMMARY
 
    The United States' first manned space flight project was successfully
accomplished in a 4 2/3 year period of dynamic activity which saw more than
2,000,000 people from many major government agencies and much of the
aerospace industry combine their skills, initiative, and experience into a
national effort.  In this period, six manned space flights were accomplished
as part of a 25-flight program.  These manned space flights were
accomplished with complete pilot safety and without change to the basic
Mercury concepts.  It was shown that man can function ably as a
pilot-engineer-experimenter without undesirable reactions or deteriorations
of normal body functions for periods up to 34 hours of weightless flight.
    Directing this large and fast moving project required the development of
a management structure and operating mode that satisfied the requirement to
mold the many different entities into a workable structure.  The management
methods and techniques so developed are discussed.  Other facets of the
Mercury experience such as techniques and philosophies developed to insure
well-trained flight and ground crews and correctly prepared space vehicles
are discussed.  Also, those technical areas of general application to
aerospace activities that presented obstacles to the accomplishment of the
project are briefly discussed.  Emphasis is placed on the need for improved
detail design guidelines and philosophy, complete and appropriate hardware
qualification programs, more rigorous standards, accurate and detailed test
procedures, and more responsive configuration control techniques.
 
INTRODUCTION
 
    The actual beginning of the effort that resulted in manned space flight
cannot be pinpointed although it is known that the thought has been in the
mind of man throughout recorded history.  It was only in the last decade,
however, that technology had developed to the point where man could actually
transform his ideas into hardware to achieve space flight.  Specific studies
and tests conducted by government and industry culminating in 1958 indicated
the feasibility of manned space flight.  Implementation was initiated to
establish a national manned space-flight project, later named Project
Mercury, on October 7, 1958.
    The life of Project Mercury was about 4 2/3 years, from the time of its
official go-ahead to the completion of the 34-hour orbital mission of
Astronaut Cooper.  During this period, much has been learned about man's
capabilities in the space environment and his capabilities in earthbound
activities which enabled the successful accomplishment of the objectives of
the Mercury Project in this relatively short period.  It is the purpose of
this paper to review the more significant facets of the project beginning
with the objectives of the project and the guidelines which were established
to govern the activity.  As in any form of human endeavor, there are certain
signs which serve as the outward indication of activity and progress.  For
the Mercury Project, these signs were the major full-scale flight tests. 
These tests will be reviewed with particular emphasis on schedule, the
individual mission objectives, and the results from each mission.  Then, the
organization with which management directed the 
activities of Project Mercury will be explained, particularly with respect
to those internal interfaces between major segments of NASA and those
external interfaces with contractors and other governmental departments. 
The resources expended during the project will be explained with discussions
on manpower and cost.  In addition, the major results of the project will be
discussed as will those areas which presented severe obstacles to technical
progress.
 
                           OBJECTIVES AND GUIDELINES
 
    The objectives of the Mercury Project, as stated at the time of project
go-ahead, were as follows:
    (1) Place a manned spacecraft in orbital flight around the earth.
    (2) Investigate man's performance capabilities and his ability to
function in the environment of space.
    (3) Recover the man and the spacecraft safely.
    After the objectives were established for the project, a number of
guidelines were established to insure that the most expedient and safest
approach for attainment of the objectives was followed.  The basic
guidelines that were established are as follows:
    (1) Existing technology and off-the-shelf equipment should be used
wherever practical.
    (2) The simplest and most reliable approach to system design would be
followed.
    (3) An existing launch vehicle would be employed to place the spacecraft
into orbit.
    (4) A progressive and logical test program would be conducted.
    More detailed requirements for the spacecraft were established as
follows:
     (1) The spacecraft must be fitted with a reliable launch-escape system
to separate the spacecraft and its crew from the launch vehicle in case of
impending failure.
    (2) The pilot must be given the capability of manually controlling
spacecraft attitude.
    (3) The spacecraft must carry a retrorocket system capable of reliably
providing the necessary impulse to bring the spacecraft out of orbit.
    (4) A zero-lift body utilizing drag braking would be used for reentry.
    (5) The spacecraft design must satisfy the requirements for a water
landing.
 
    It is obvious by a casual look at the spacecraft 
that requirements (1), (3), and (4) were followed as
evidenced by the escape tower, the retrorocket system on the  
blunt end of the spacecraft, and the simple
blunt-body shape without wings.  Items (2) and (5) have been made apparent
by the manner in which the astronaut has manually controlled the attitude of
the spacecraft during orbital maneuvers, retrofire, and reentry, and by the
recovery of the spacecraft and astronauts after each flight by recovery
forces which included aircraft carriers and destroyers.
    Basically, the equipment used in the spacecraft was derived form
off-the-shelf equipment or through the direct application of existing
technology, although some notable exceptions were made in order to improve
reliability and flight safety.  These exceptions include:
    (1) An automatic blood-pressure measuring system for use in flight.
    (2) Instruments for sensing the partial pressures of oxygen and carbon
dioxide in the oxygen atmosphere of the cabin and suit, respectively.
    Some may argue with the detailed way in which the second basic guideline
of simplicity was carried out; however, this guideline was carried out to
the extent possible within the volume, weight, and redundancy requirements
imposed upon the overall system.  The effect of the weight and volume
constraints, of course, resulted in smaller and lighter equipment that could
not always be packaged in an optimum way for simplicity.
    Redundancy probably increased the complexity of the systems more than
any other requirement.  Because the spacecraft had to be qualified by space
flight first without a man onboard and then because the reactions of man and
his capabilities in the space environment were unknown, provisions for a
completely automatic operation for the critical spacraft functions were
provided.  To insure reliable operation, these automatic systems were backed
up by redundant automatic systems.
    The third guideline was satified by an adaptation of an existing
missile, the Atlas.  The modifications to this launch vehicle for use in the
Mercury Project included the addition of a means to sense automatically
impending catastrophic failure of the launch vehicle and provisions to
accommodate a new structure that would form the transition between the upper
section of the launch vehicle and the spacecraft.  Also, the pilot-safety
program was initiated to insure the selection of quality components.
 
 
 
 
(NOTE FROM TRANSCRIBER:  FOLLOWING ARE EXERPTS FROM 
"This New Ocean, A History of Project
Mercury," NASA SP-4201, by Loyd S. Swenson, Jr., James M. Grimwood, and
Charles C. Alexander.  This book was printed in 1966, and it was for sale by
the U.S. Government Printing Office.  Library of Congress Catalog Card
Number is 66-62424.)
 
 
    We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained,
and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of
all people.  For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has
no conscience of its own.
    Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only
if the United States occupies a position of preeminence can we help decide
whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new, terrifying theater
of war.
 
    John F. Kennedy
    Rice University Stadium
    Houston, Texas
    September 12, 1962
 
CHAPTER TWO, "Exploring the Human Factor" (1948-1958)
 
    The development of the large liquid-fueled rocket made the dazzling
prospect of manned flight beyond Earth's atmosphere and into the vacuum of
space increasingly feasible from the standpoint of propulsion.  By 1950,
however, only instrumented sounding rockets, fired to ever higher altitudes
in both the United States and the Soviet Union, had reached into space
before falling earthward.  Although a number of these experimental shots
carried living organisms--everything from fungus spores to monkeys in the
United States, mainly dogs in the U.S.S.R.--the data acquired from telemetry
and from occasional recovery of rocket nose cones had not shown conclusively
how long organisms could live in space, or indeed whether man could survive
at all outside the protective confines of his atmosphere.  Scientists still
were hesitant to predict how a human being would behave under conditions to
be encountered in space flight.  Thus while space flight became
technologically practicable, physiologically and psychologically it remained
an enigma.
    In the early 1950s an acceleration of efforts in upper-atmospheric and
space medical research accompanied the quickened pace of rocket development

in this country and in the Soviet Union.  During the next few years medical
specialists, profiting from substantial progress in telemetering clinical
data, learned a great deal about what a man could expect when he went into
the forbidding arena of space.  Much of the confidence with which the
engineers of Project Mercury in 1958 approached the job of putting a man
into orbit and recovering him stemmed from the findings of hundreds of
studies made in previous years on the human factors in space flight.
    Since the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics was interested
almost exclusively in the technology of flight, research in the medical
problems of space flight, like aviation medicine in previous decades, was
the province primarily of the military services and of some civilian
research organizations receiving funds from the military.  Of the three
services, the United States Air Force, rich in background in aeromedical
research and assuming that space medicine was but an 
extension of aviation medicine, undertook most of the early inquiry into the
psycho-physiological problems of extra-atmospheric flight.
 
ASTRONAUT SELECTION
 
    Now that men had been chosen to serve as the focal points for all this
effort, new spirits animated the Space Task Group (STG).  Indeed, the Nation
as a whole began to participate vicariously in Project
Mercury when, on April 9, 1959, at a press conference in Washington, Glennan
(NASA ADMINISTRATOR) introduced to the public the seven men chosen to be
this Nation's nominees for the first human voyagers into space.
    They were to be called "astronauts," as the pioneers of ballooning had
been called "Argonauts," for they were to sail into a new, uncharted ocean.
These personable pilots were introduced in civilian dress; many people in
their audience forgot that they were volunteer test subjects and military
officers.  Their public comments did not class them with any elite
intelligencia.  Rather they were a contingent of mature Americans, average
in build and visage, family men all, college-educated as engineers,
possessing excellent health, and professionally committed to flying advanced
aircraft.
    Compared with the average, white, middle-class American male, they
enjoyed better health, physically and pyschologically, and they had far more
experience among and above the clouds.  Slightly short of average in
stature, they were above average in seriousness of purpose.  Otherwise these
seven seemed almost random samples of average American manhood.  Yet the
names of Carpenter, Cooper, Glenn, Grissom, Schirra, Shepard, and Slayton
were perhaps to become as familiar in American history as those of any
actor, soldier, or athlete.
    Despite the wishes of NASA Headquarters, and particularly of Dryden,
Silverstein, and Gilruth, the fame of the astronauts quickly grew beyond all
proportion to their current activities and their preflight mission
assignments.  Perhaps it was inevitable that the "crew-pool" members of STG
were destined for premature adulation, what with the enormous public
curiosity about them, the risk they would take in space flight, and their
exotic training activities.  But the power of commercial competition for
publicity and the pressure for political prestige in the space race also
whetted an insatiable public appetite for this new kind of celebrity. 
Walter T. Bonney, long a public information officer for NACA and now
Glennan's adviser on these matters, foresaw the public and press attention,
asked for an enlarged staff, and laid the guidelines for public affairs
policy in close accord with that of other Government agencies.
    The astronauts were first and foremost test pilots, men accustomed to
flying along in the newest, most advanced, and most powerful vehicles this
civilization had produced.  They were talented specialists who loved to fly
high-performance aircraft and who had survived the natural selection process
in their profession.  The demand for excellence in piloting skills, in
physical health, and psychological adaptability becomes ever more stringent
as one ascends the ladder toward the elite among military aviators, those
senior test pilots with upwards of 1500 hours' total flying time.
    Eisenhower's decision that the military services could provide the
pilots greatly simplified the astronaut selection procedure.  From a total
of 508 service records screened in January 1959 by Stanley C. White, Robert
B. Voas, and William S. Augerson at the military personnel bureaus in
Washington, 110 men were found to meet the minimum
standards specified earlier.  This list of names included five Marines, 47
Navy men, and 58 Air Force pilots.  Several Army pilots' records had been
screened earlier, but none was a graduate of a test pilot school.  The
selection process began while the possibility of manned Redstone flights in
late 1959 still existed on paper.
    The evaluation committee at Headquarters, headed by the Assistant
Director of STG, Charles J. Donlan, decided to divide the list of 110
arbitrarily into three groups and to issue invitations for the first group
of 35 to come to Washington at the beginning of February for briefings and
interviews.  Donlan was pleased to learn from his staff, White, Voas, and
Augerson, that 24 of the first group interviewed were happy with the
prospects of participating in the Mercury program.  Every one of the first
10 men interrogated on February 2 agreed to continue through the elimination
process.  The next week another group of possible pilot-candidates arrived
in Washington.  The high rate of volunteering made it unnecessary to extend
the invitations to the third group.  Justifying this action, George Low
reported:
    
    During the briefings and interviews it became apparent that the final
    number of pilots should be smaller than the twelve originally planned
    for.  The high rate of interest in the project indicates that few, if
    any, of the men will drop out during the training program.  It would,
    therefore, not be fair to the men to carry along some who would not be
    able to participate in the flight program.  Consequently, a
    recommendation has been made to name only six finalists.
 
    Sixty-nine men had reported to Washington in two groups by the middle of
February.  Of these, six were found to have grown too tall.  Fify-six pilots
took the initial battery of written tests, technical interviews, psychiatric
interviews, and medical history reviews.  Those who declined or were
eliminated reduced the total at the beginning of March to 36 men.  They were
invited to undergo the extraordinary physical examinations planned for them
at the Lovelace Clinic in Albuquerque.  Thirty-two accepted and became
candidates, knowing also that they were scheduled to pass through extreme
mental and physical environmental tests at the Wright Air Development
Center, in Dayton, Ohio, after being certified as physically qualified by
the Lovelace Clinic.  The 32 candidates were assured that the data derived
from these special examinations in New Mexico and Ohio would not jeopardize
their military careers, since none of the findings was to go into their
service records.
    Although the psychophysiological criteria for the selection of the best
possible pilots for manned space flight had been under discussion for
several years, the actual arrangement of the selection procedures for
Mercury was directed by a NASA selection committee consisting of a senior
management engineer, Donlan; a test pilot engineer, North; two flight
surgeons, White and Augerson; two psychologists, Allen O. Gamble and Voas;
and two psychiatrists, George E. Ruff and Edwin Z. Levy.  Thse seven men had
done the screening of records and the interviews and testing in Washington,
constituting phases one and two of the selection program,
before remanding their pool of 32 candidates to the medical examiners at the
Lovelace Foundation.
    Individually each candidate arrived at Albuquerque to undergo
approximately a week of medical evaluations under each of five different
schedules.  In this third phase of the program, over 30 different laboratory
tests collected chemical, encephalographic, and cardiographic data.  X-ray
examinations thoroughly mapped each man's body.  The ophthalmology section
and the otolaryngology sections likewise learned almost everything about
each candidate's eyes, and his ears, nose, and throat.  Special
physiological examinations included bicycle ergometer tests, a total-body
radiation count, total-body water determination, and the specific gravity of
the whole body.  Heart specialists made complete cartiological examinations,
and other clinicians worked out more complete medical histories on these men
than probably had ever before been attempted on human beings.  Nevertheless
the selectees were so healthy that only one of the 32 was found to have a
medical problem potentially serious enough to eliminate him from the
subsequent tests at the Wright Aeromedical Laboratory.
    Phase four of the selection program was an amazingly elaborate set of
environmental studies, physical endurance tests, anthropometric
measurements, and psychiatric studies conducted at the Aeromedical
Laboratory of the Wright Air Development Center.  During March each of the
31 subjects spent another week experiencing a wide range of stressful
conditions.  Voas explained phases three and four:  "While the purpose of
the medical examinations at Lovelace Clinic had been to determine the
general health status of the candidates, the purpose of the testing program
at Wright Field was to determine the physical and psychological capability
of the individual to respond effectively and appropriately to the various
types of stresses associated with space missions."  In addition to pressure
suit tests, acceleration tests, vibration tests, heat tests, and loud noise
tests, each candidate had to prove his physical endurance on treadmills,
tilt tables, with his feet in ice water, and by blowing up ballons until
exhausted.  Continuous psychiatric interviews, the necessity of living with
two psychologists throughout the week, and extensive self-examination
through a battery of 13 psychological tests for personality and motivation,
and another dozen different tests on intellectual functions and special
aptitudes--these were all part of the week of truth at Dayton.
    Two of the more interesting personality and motivation studies seemed
like parlor games at first, until it became evident how profound an exercise
in Socratic introspection was implied by conscientious answers to the test
questions "Who am I?" and "Whom would you assign to the mission if you could
not go yourself?"  In the first case, by requiring the subject to write down
20 definitional identifications of himself, ranked in order of significance,
and interpreted projectively, the psychologists elicited information on
identity and perception of social roles.  In the peer ratings, each
candidate was asked which of the other members of the group of five
accompanying him through this phase of the program he liked best,
which one he would like to accompany him on a two-man mission, and
whom he would substitute for himself.  Candidates who had proceeded this far
in the selection process all agreed with one who complained, "Nothing is
sacred any more."
    Back at STG headquarters at Langley, late in March 1959, phase five
began.  The final evaluation of data was made by correlating clinical and
statistical information from New Mexico and Ohio.  Eighteen of the 31
candidates came recommended without medical reservations for final
consideration by Donlan and North.  According to Donlan, although the
physicians, psychiatrists, psychologists, and physiologists had done their
best to establish gradations, the attrition rate was too low.  So the final
criteria for selecting the candidates reverted to the technical
qualifications of the men and the technical requirements of the program, as
judged by Donlan, North, White, and finally Gilruth.  "We looked for real
men and valuable experience," said Donlan.  The selection tests, as it
turned out, were largely tests of tests, "conducted as much for the research
value in trying to formulate the characteristics of astronauts as for
determining any deficiencies of the group being examined."  The verbal
responses at the interviews, before and after the psychophysiological
testing, therefore, seem to have been as important final determinants as the
candidates' test scores.
    Sitting in judgement over 18 finalists, Donlan, White, and North pared
down the final pool of selectees, choosing each to complement the rest of
the group.  The going was so difficult that they could not reach the magic
number six, so Gilruth decided to recommend seven.  Donlan then telephoned
each of the seven individually to ask whether he was still willing to accept
a position as a Mercury astronaut.  Each one gladly volunteered again.  The
24 who were passed over were notified and asked to reapply for
reconsideration in some future program.  Gilruth's endorsement of the final
list was passed upward to Silverstein and Glennan for final review, and by
mid-April the faces of America's original seven spacemen were shown to the
world.
    As the astronauts lost their private lives, Project Mercury found its
first great public notice.  An eighth military officer and pilot came aboard
STG about the same time to manage the public information and press relations
that were already threatening to intrude on the time and talent of STG.  The
eighth personality was an experienced Air Force pilot who had flown
extensively in World War II, on the Berlin Airlift, and in Korea, and who
also had proven himself as a public information officer after 1954, when he
was charged with ameliorating public fears and complaints over jet noises,
sonic booms, and the ballistic missile programs.  Lieutenant Colonel John A.
Powers, USAF, came on board the STG staff in early April 1959.  Thereafter
the mellifluous voice and impish grin of "Shorty" Powers made his reputation
as the primary buffer for STG in its relations with the press and the
public.  Throughout the Mercury program, he stood before the news media and
the people of the world as the one living symbol of all the anonymous human
effort behind the astronaut of the moment.
    Powers propagated some oversimplified images in many instances, as it
was his job to do, but no one man then or now could
completely understand or communicate the complexity of the myriad research,
development, and operations activities that lay behind a launch.  Then, too,
the caliber of the questions determined the quality of his answers, and all
too often the questions asked were simple.  What was an astronaut really
like?  What did he eat for breakfast?  Which ones had been Boy Scouts?  How
did their wives take their commitment?  Such questions provoked many to
abandon asking how these seven came to be chosen and for what purpose they
were entering training.
    From the United States Marine Corps, Lieutenant Colonel John Herschel
Glenn, Jr., received orders to report to the Space Task Group at Langley
Field, on the first of May.  He then found himself the senior astropilot in
age and date of rank.  From the Navy, Walter Marty Schirra, Jr., and Alan
Bartlett Shepard, Jr., both lieutenant commanders, and Lieutenant Malcolm
Scott Carpenter reported aboard STG.  And the Air Force assigned three
captains, Donald Kent Slayton, Leroy Gordon Cooper, Jr., and Virgil I.
Grissom, to duty with NASA as test pilots, alias Mercury astronauts.
    On May 28, 1959, the astronauts were brought before the House Committee
on Science and Astronautics in executive session.  They were asked to
reassure the Congressmen that they were content with the orderliness,
safety, and seriousness of Project Mercury.  This they did vigorously,
together and separately, before Schirra mentioned the "seven-sided coin" of
competition over which one should get the first flight.
    The first seven American astronauts were an admirable group of
individuals chosen to sit at the apex of a pyramid of human effort.  In
training to transcend gravity they became a team of
personalities as well as a crew of pilots.  They were lionized by laymen and
adored by youth as heroes before their courage was truly tested.  In
volunteering to entrust their lives to Mercury's spirit and Atlas' strength
to blaze a trail for man into the empyrean, they chose to lead by following
the opportunity that chance, circumstance, technology, and history had
prepared for them.  Influential 20th-century philosphers as diverse as
Bertrand Russell, Teilhard de Chardin, and Walter Kaufmann tell us that
man's profoundest aspiration is to know himself and his universe and that
life's deepest passion is a desire to become godlike.  All men must balance
their hubris with their humility, but, as one of those aspiring astronauts
said, "How could anyone turn down a chance to be a part of something like
this?"
    Shortly after the astronauts were introduced to the public, a literate
layman asked directions of Mercury for mankind in general:
    Which way will heaven be then?
    Up?
    Down?
    Across?
    Or far within?