Evening star., 1963-05-17
COOPER
Training INDICATED
In Astronout's Return

to determine its velocity. The
speed proved to be constant
and sufficient to keep the craft
in orbit.
This proved one thing: That
the capsule was not really slow
ing down and beginning an un-
scheduled re-entry. The pilot
confirmed he felt no gravita-
tional effects.
Was Switch Fooled?
This being the case, the
problem arose to find out why
the ".05g" light was on If there
was no actual deceleration.
One thought was that CEN
trifugal force, possibly from a
slow roll of the capsule, had
fooled" the ".05g" switch into
thinking" the craft was slow
ing down.
Over Canaveral at about 8
O'Clock at the start of the goth
orbit, Astronaut Alan B. Shep-
ard got in touch with Mai.
Cooper. Comdr. Shepard told
the pilot to start a slow roll
in order to what would happen.
While these maneuvers, actu-
ally diagnostic tricks, were
going on, the wiring was being
checked here. A tentative de-
cision was made to have Maj.
Cooper do the first part Of the
re-entry sequence manually
and then switch to automatic
for the portion scheduled to
occur after the ".05g" light
would normally come on.
This means that Maj. Cooper
would manually get his capsule
into the proper position for
firing the retro-rockets by
using his fly-by-wire (power-
steering) control to put its
blunt forward end up exactly
"a degrees above the horizon.
Then he would fire the retro
rockets and reorient the space
craft until its main axis was
exactly horizontal. This having
been done, the Mercury tech
nicians felt, he could safely
switch to automatic for the rest
Of the re-entry sequence.
All Seemed In Order
Although this was q nom
standard procedure, it was by
no means a cause for great
alarm. Astronaut Scott Car
penter, on his three-orbit MAT
flight a year ago next week,
prepared his spacecraft for re-
entry manually because he had
used up too much Of his auto
matte fuel supply earlier in the
flight.
This was the situation as it
appeared to Mercury officials
about $50 pm, some four
hours after it had been dis
covered. The condition seemed
to be "no-sweat," as flyers say,
and all was in apparent order
for a practically normal re-
entry.
Then, over the Zanzibar
tracking station in East Africa
on the 22d and final orbit, new
trouble reared its head. Two
inverters which supply electric
power to the steering system,
were found to be out Of order.
A First" Failure
This was the first time that
% redundant" system-one in
which two or more identical
elements are geared to back
each other up-had failed In q
Mercury flight.
The heat-shield indicator in
the Glenn flight Of February,
1862, was triggered by a lack
Of redundant switches, and
when the one switch gave a
wrong signal there was no
duplicate aboard to correct the
misinformation. g
With this new difficulty
emerging, time was ticking
away on the countdown clock
all too fast. From the time
the new trouble was discovered
until the retro-rockets would
have to be fired, there we're
now only 26 minutes left.
/ In this brief period, a whole
new non-standard procedure
would have to be devised, re-
hearsed and put into effect.
Faith-7 was approaching the
retrofire point inexorably at
the rate Of 295 miles a minute.
Cooper Gets Orders
Mr.. Williams. as operations
chief, and Mr.. Kraft decided to
order Mai. Cooper to fly the
whole re-entry mission manu-
ally, since the automatic sys-
tenn was out.
Col. Glenn filled the pilot
in on the new procedure, re-
ceiving a series of Rogers" In
reply. each Roger" delivered
in a steady and apparently
calm voice.
A few seconds later, Mai.
Cooper's voice faded, and
there was no news for a little
more than four minutes. It
was a case Of no news being
good news-the standard COM
munications blackout which
tells the ground that all is
going according TO plan.
1t came within a second Of
| the time that had hanr, r,lnn,nnA