| THE MERCURY PROGRAM | ||
In hopes of achieving an American manned space flight into the Earth’s orbit, two projects (Project Adam: the First Man in Space, which proposed sealing a human atop a Redstone rocket, and Man In Space Soonest (MISS), that relied on an Atlas rocket) were combined to become Project Mercury, America’s first man-in-space program. The very first Mercury spaceship was a cone-shaped, one-man capsule with a cylinder mounted on top. An escape tower fastened to the cylinder. The blunt end was covered with a heat shield to protect it against the 3000 degree heat of entry into the atmosphere. |
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