Product Description

CD-ROM and Book. Project Mercury, America's first manned space flight program, was orchestrated by NASA's Space Task Group and included suborbital and then orbital flights using the Redstone and Atlas boosters. The period from NASA's inception in late 1958 until Shepard's flight in the spring of 1961 was a time of concentrated activity, much of it breaking new ground, both technologically and medically. From concept to concrete results in a mere two and a half years - a truly remarkable achievement. Alan Shepard was chosen from the 'Mercury Seven' - the seven original astronauts selected from all applicants - to fly Freedom 7 into history. The professionalism and apparent confidence with which he performed made him an early astronaut role model. This book gathers together in one place the rare documents and drawings of the Mercury-Redstone 3 mission - the flight of Freedom 7. Presented herein are transcripts and documents from the NASA archives, from a time before the assimilation and reporting of mission data was a developed process. The CD-ROM features: The NASA video documentary Freedom 7, video from the Freedom 7 earth-sky camera, video of the Freedom 7 instrument panel, videos of post-flight press activities, and more.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #770864 in Books
• Published on: 2001-09-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

Review
"I cannot recommend this book and the series highly enough..." -- Spaceflight, January 2001. "An in-depth examination of the man and the mission that began the space race..." -- The Observatory Magazine, June 2002. Reviewed in Astro, the Swedish Amateur Astronomical Society, June 2002.

About the Author
Robert Godwin, Editor

Customer Reviews

More Good Detail + Reference Material From Godwin
I have now eagerly devoured this title, as I have with all the others published so far (yes, I do "have a life!"). I must say that it is a bit peculiar the order in which these interesting little books are coming out - Friendship 7 (Glenn`s orbital Atlas flight) before Freedom 7 (Shepard`s first American Redstone sub-orbital lob) but doubtless there is a method in Mr. Godwin`s somewhat eclectic sequence.

This title follows what will now be a very familiar order for those of you who have seen his books before, with a good mix of general early Mercury material to set the scene, followed by flight specific resources + lots of detail regarding the actual cabin systems, mission profiles + post flight de-briefs, etc. The non-text content of the book itself was not galvanising, but that is to be accepted, given that the purpose of the book is to reproduce comtemporary material for us to consider now.

The CD accompanying the book is different from many of the others in that there is no interview included, but in this case the main protagonist has passed on some years since. It does however contain NASA`s "This New Ocean" critique of the Mercury project - all 319 pages of it! A quick scan shows that this alone in another mine of information. All I need to do now is to smuggle the disc to work to print it!!

The overall impression of the project in retrospect that I have is that it must have been a fantastically exciting + optimistic time, despite the Cold War overtones of the whole space race. By our standards today, + knowing what we do of how much was acheived in so few years, Mercury seems rudimentary + basic indeed, but it is the foundation of all the later efforts in which spectacular strides have been made.

In all, another excellent source book for the space enthusiast.

Another really good book from Apogee
"Freedom 7": The First U.S. Manned Space Flight is part of the Apogee Books Space Series. Yet another great addition - a must be any manned spaceflight fan.

Packed full of information, pictures and plans, this book really does take the reader back to the early 1960's. The read is just as exciting!