The Right Stuff

  “Roger, Friendship 7.” This was the capcom on Canton Island out in the Pacific. “Can you hear any impact with the capsule? Over.”

  “Negative, negative. They’re very slow. They’re not going away from me more than maybe three or four miles per hour.”

  They swirled about his capsule like tiny weightless diamonds, little bijoux—no, they were more like fireflies. They had that lazy but erratic motion, and when he focused on one it would seem to be lit up, but the light would go out and he would lose track of it, and then it would light up again. That was like fireflies, too. There used to be thousands of fireflies in the summers, when he was growing up. These things were like fireflies, but they obviously couldn’t be any sort of organism … unless all the astronomers and all the satellite recording mechanisms had been fundamentally wrong … They were undoubtedly particles of some sort, particles that caught the sunlight at a certain angle. They were beautiful, but were they coming from the capsule? That could mean trouble. They must have been coming from the capsule, because they traveled along with him, in the same trajectory, at the same speed. But wait a minute. Some of them were far off, far below … there might be an entire field of them … a minute cosmos … something never seen before! And yet the capcom on Canton Island didn’t seem particularly interested. And then he sailed out of range of Canton and would have to wait to be picked up by the capcom at Guaymas, on the west coast of Mexico. And when the Guaymas capcom picked him up, he didn’t seem to know what he was talking about.

  “This is Friendship 7,” said Glenn. “Just as the sun came up, there were some brilliantly lighted particles that looked luminous that were swirling around the capsule. I don’t have any in sight right now. I did have a couple just a moment ago, when I made the transmission over to you. Over.”

  “Roger, Friendship 7.”

  And that was it. “Roger, Friendship 7.” Silence. They didn’t particularly care.

  Glen kept talking about his fireflies. He was fascinated. It was the first true unknown anyone had encountered out here in the cosmos. At the same time he was faintly apprehensive. Roger, Friendship 7. The capcom finally asked a polite question or two, about the size of the particles and so on. They obviously were not carried away by this celestial discovery.

  All of a sudden the capsule swung out to the right in a yaw, out about twenty degrees. Then it was as if it hit a little wall. It bounced back. Then it swung out again in the yaw and hit the little wall and bounced back. Something had gone out in the automatic attitude control. Never mind the celestial fireflies. He was sailing over California, heading for Florida. Now all the capcoms were coming alive, all right.

  President Kennedy was supposed to come on the radio as Glenn came over the United States. He was going to bless his single-combat warrior as he came over the continental U.S.A. He was going to tell him the hearts of all his fellow citizens were with him. But that all went by the boards in view of the problem with the automatic controls.

  Glenn went sailing over Florida, over the Cape, starting his second orbit. He couldn’t see much of anything down below, because of the clouds. He no longer cared particularly. The attitude control was the main thing. One of the small thrusters seemed to have gone out, so that the capsule would drift to the right, like a car slowly skidding on ice. Then a bigger thruster would correct the motion and bounce it back. That was only the start. Pretty soon other thrusters began acting up when he was on automatic. Then the gyros started going. The dials that showed the angle of the capsule with respect to the earth and the horizon were giving obviously wrong readings. He had to line it up visually with the horizon. Fly by wire! Manual control! It was no emergency, however, at least not yet. As long as he was in orbit, the attitude control of the capsule didn’t particularly matter, so far as his safety was concerned. He could be going forward or backward or could have his head pointed straight at the earth or could be drifting around in circles or pitching head over heels, for that matter, and it wouldn’t change his altitude or trajectory in the slightest. The only critical point was the re-entry. If the capsule was not lined up at the correct angle, with the blunt end and the heat shield down, it might burn up. To line it up correctly, fuel was required, the hydrogen peroxide, no matter whether it was lined up automatically or by the astronaut. If too much fuel was used keeping the capsule stable while it sailed around in orbit, there might not be enough left to line it up before the re-entry. That had been the problem in the ape’s flight. The automatic attitude control had started malfunctioning and was using up so much fuel they brought him down after two orbits.

  Every five minutes he had to shift his radio communications to a new capcom. You couldn’t receive and send at the same time, either. It wasn’t like a telephone hookup. So you spent half the time just making sure you could hear each other.

  “Friendship 7, Friendship 7, this is CYI.” That was the Canary Islands capcom. “The time is now 16:32:26. We are reading you loud and clear; we are reading you loud and clear. CYI.”

  Glenn said: “This is Friendship 7 on UHF. As I went over recovery area that time, I could see a wake, what appeared to be a long wake in the water. I imagine that’s the ships in our recovery area.”

  “Friendship 7 … We do not read you, do not read you. Over.”

  “Friendship 7, this is Kano. At G.M.T. 16:33:00. We do not … This is Kano. Out.”

  “Friendship 7, Friendship 7, this is CYI Com Tech. Over.”

  Glenn said: “Hello, Canary. Friendship 7. Receive you loud and a little garbled. Do you receive me? Over.”

  “Friendship 7, Friendship 7, this is CYI Com Tech. Over.”

  “Hello, Canary, Friendship 7. I read you loud and clear. How me? Over.”

  “Friendship 7, Friendship 7, this is CYI Com Tech. Over.”

  “Hello, CYI Com Tech. Friendship 7. How do you read me? Over.”

  “Friendship 7, Friendship 7, this is CYI, CYI Com Tech. Do you read? Over.”

  “Roger. This is Friendship 7, CYI. I read you loud and clear. Over.”

  “Friendship 7, Friendship 7, this is CYI Com Tech, CYI Com Tech. Do you read? Over.”

  “Hello, CYI Com Tech. Roger, read you loud and clear. Over.”

  “Friendship 7, this is CYI Com Tech. Read you loud and clear also, on UHF, on UHF. Standby.”

  “Roger. Friendship 7.”

  “Friendship 7, Friendship 7, Friendship 7, this is Canary capcom. How do you read? Over.”

  “Hello, Canary capcom. Friendship 7. I read you loud and clear. How me?”

  Finally, the Canary Islands capcom said: “I read you loud and clear. I am instructed to ask you to correlate the actions of the particles surrounding your spacecraft with the actions of your control jets. Do you read? Over.”

  “This is Friendship 7. I did not read you clear. I read you loud but very garbled. Over.”

  “Roger. Cap asks you to correlate the actions of the particles surrounding the vehicle with the reaction of one of your control jets. Do you understand? Over.”

  “This is Friendship 7. I do not think they were from my control jets, negative. Over.”

  There—exactly five minutes to get one question out and one answer. Well, at least they finally showed an interest in the fireflies. They wondered if they might have something to do with the malfunctioning thrusters. Oh, but it was a struggle.

  In any case, he was not particularly worried. He could control the attitude manually if he had to. The fuel seemed to be holding out. Everything hummed and whined and buzzed as usual inside the capsule. The same high background tones came over the radio. He could hear the oxygen coursing through his pressure suit and his helmet. There was no “sensation” of motion speed at all, unless he looked down at the earth. Even then it slid by very slowly. When the thrusters spurted hydrogen peroxide, he could feel the capsule swing this way and that. But it was like the ALFA trainer on earth. He still didn’t feel weightless. He was still sitting straight up in his chair. On the other hand, the camera—w
hen he wanted to reload it, he just parked it in the empty space in front of his eyes. It just floated there in front of him. Way down there were little flashes all over the place. It was lightning in the clouds over the Atlantic. Somehow it was more fascinating than the sunset. Sometimes the lightning was inside the clouds and looked like flashlights going on and off underneath a blanket. Sometimes it was on top of the clouds, and it looked like firecrackers going off. It was extraordinary, and yet there was nothing new about the sight. An Air Force colonel, David Simons, had gone up in a balloon, alone, to 102,000 feet, for thirty-two hours and had seen the same thing.

  Glenn was now over Africa, riding over the dark side of the earth, sailing backward toward Australia. The Indian Ocean capcom said: “We have message from MCC for you to keep your landing-bag switch in off position. Landing-bag switch in off position. Over.”

  “Roger,” said Glenn. “This is Friendship 7.”

  He wanted to ask why. But that was against the code, except in an emergency situation. That fell under the heading of nervous chatter.

  Over Australia old Gordo, Gordo Cooper, got on the same subject: “Will you confirm the landing-bag switch is in the off position? Over.”

  “That is affirmative,” said Glenn. “Landing-bag switch is in the center off position.”

  “You haven’t had any banging noises or anything of this type at higher rates?”

  “Negative.”

  “They wanted this answer.”

  They still didn’t say why, and Glenn entered into no nervous chatter. He now had two red lights on the panel. One was the warning light for the automatic fuel supply. All the little amok action of the yaw thrusters had used it up. Well, it was up to the Pilot now … to aim the capsule correctly for re-entry … The other was a warning about excess cabin water. It built up as a by-product of the oxygen system. Nevertheless, he pressed on with the checklist. He was supposed to exercise by pulling on the bungee cord and then take his blood pressure. The Presbyterian Pilot! He did it without a peep. He was pulling on the bungee and watching the red lights when he began sailing backward into the sunrise again. Two hours and forty-three minutes into the flight, his second sunrise over the Pacific … seen from behind through a periscope. But he hardly watched it. He was looking for the fireflies to light up again. The great rheostat came up, the earth lit up, and now there were thousands of them swirling about the capsule. Some of them seemed to be miles away. A huge field of them, a galaxy, a microuniverse. No question about it, they weren’t coming from the capsule, they were part of the cosmos. He took out the camera again. He had to photograph them while the light was just right.

  “Friendship 7.” The Canton Island capcom was coming in. “This is Canton. We also have no indication that your landing bag might be deployed. Over.”

  Glenn’s first reaction was that this must have something to do with the fireflies. He’s telling them about the fireflies and they come in with something about the landing bag. But who said anything about the landing bag being deployed?

  “Roger,” he said. “Did someone report landing bag could be down? Over.”

  “Negative,” said the capcom. “We had a request to monitor this and to ask you if you heard any flapping, when you had high capsule rates.”

  “Well,” said Glenn, “I think they probably thought these particles I saw might have come from that, but these are … there are thousands of these things, and they go out for it looks like miles in each direction from me, and they move by here very slowly. I saw them at the same spot on the first orbit. Over.”

  And so he thought that explained all the business about the landing bag.

  They gave him the go-ahead for his third and final orbit as he sailed over the United States. He couldn’t see a thing for the clouds. He pitched the capsule down sixty degrees, so he could look straight down. All he could see was the cloud deck. It was just like flying at high altitudes in an airplane. He was really no longer in the mood for sightseeing. He was starting to think about the sequence of events that would lead to the retrofiring over the Atlantic after he had been around the world one more time. He had to fight both the thrusters and the gyros now. He kept releasing and resetting the gyros to see if the automatic attitude control would start functioning again. It was all out of whack. He would have to position the capsule by using the horizon as a reference. He was sailing backward over America. The clouds began to break. He began to see the Mississippi delta. It was like looking at the world from the tail-gun perch of the bombers they used in the Second World War. Then Florida started to slide by. Suddenly he realized he could see the whole state. It was laid out just like it is on a map. He had been around the world twice in three hours and eleven minutes and this was the first sense he had had of how high up he was. He was about 550,000 feet up. He could make out the Cape. By the time he could see the Cape he was already over Bermuda.

  “This is Friendship 7,” he said. “I have the Cape in sight down there. It looks real fine from up here.”

  “Rog. Rog.” That was Gus Grissom on Bermuda.

  “As you know,” said Glenn.

  “Yea, verily, sonny,” said Grissom.

  Oh, it all sounded very fraternal. Glenn was modestly acknowledging that his loyal comrade Grissom was one of the only three Americans ever to see such a sight … and Grissom was calling him “sonny.”

  Twenty minutes later he was sailing backward over Africa again and the sun was going down again, for the third time, and the rheostat was dimming and he … saw blood. It was all over one of the windows. He knew it couldn’t be blood, and yet it was blood. He had never noticed it before. At this particular angle of the setting rheostat sun he could see it. Blood and dirt, a real mess. The dirt must have come from the firing of the escape tower. And the blood … bugs, perhaps … The capsule must have smashed into bugs as it rose from the launch pad … or birds … but he would have heard the thump. It must have been bugs, but bugs didn’t have blood. Or the blood red of the sun going down in front of him diffusing … And then he refused to think about it anymore. He just turned the subject off. Another sunset, another orange band streaking across the rim of the horizon, more yellow bands, blue bands, blackness, thunderstorms, lightning making little sparkles under the blanket. It hardly mattered anymore. The whole thing of lining the capsule up for retrofire kept building up in his mind. In slightly less than an hour the retro-rockets would go off. The capsule kept slipping its angles, swinging this way and that way, drifting. The gyros didn’t seem to mean a thing anymore.

  And he went sailing backward through the night over the Pacific. When he reached the Canton Island tracking point, he swung the capsule around again so that he could see his last sunrise while riding forward, out the window, with his own eyes. The first two he had watched through the periscope because he was going backward. The fireflies were all over the place as the sun came up. It was like watching the sunrise from inside a storm of the things. He began expounding upon them again, about how they couldn’t possibly come from the capsule, because some of them seemed to be miles away. Once again nobody on the ground was interested. They weren’t interested on Canton Island, and pretty soon he was in range of the station on Hawaii, and they weren’t interested, either. They were all wrapped up in something else. They had a little surprise for him. They backed into it, however. It took him a while to catch on.

  He was now four hours and twenty-one minutes into the flight. In twelve minutes the retro-rockets were supposed to fire, to slow him down for re-entry. It took him another minute and forty-five seconds to go through all the “do you reads” and “how me’s” and “overs” and establish contact with the capcom on Hawaii. Then they sprang their surprise.

  “Friendship 7,” said the capcom. “We have been reading an indication on the ground of segment 5–1, which is Landing Bag Deploy. We suspect this is an erroneous signal. However, Cape would like you to check this by putting the landing-bag switch in auto position, and seeing if you get a light. Do yo
u concur with this? Over.”

  It slowly dawned on him … Have been reading … For how long? … Quite a little surprise. And they hadn’t told him! They’d held it back! I am a pilot and they refuse to tell me things they know about the condition of the craft! The insult was worse than the danger! If the landing bag had deployed—and there was no way he could look out and see it, not even with the periscope, because it would be directly behind him—if it had deployed, then the heat shield must be loose and might come off during the re-entry. If the heat shield came off, he would burn up inside the capsule like a steak. If he put the landing-bag switch in the automatic control position, then a green light should come on if the bag was deployed. Then he would know. Slowly it dawned! … That was why they kept asking him if the switch were in the off position!—they didn’t want him to learn the awful truth too quickly! Might as well let him complete his three orbits—then we’ll let him find out about the bad news!

  On top of that, they now wanted him to fool around with the switch. That’s stupid! It might very well be that the bag had not deployed but there was an electrical malfunction somewhere in the circuit and fooling with the automatic switch might then cause it to deploy. But he stopped short of saying anything. Presumably they had taken all that into account. There was no way he could say it without falling into the dread nervous chatter.

  “Okay,” said Glenn. “If that’s what they recommend, we’ll go ahead and try it. Are you ready for it now?”

  “Yes, when you’re ready.”

  “Roger.”

  He reached forward and flipped the switch. Well … this was it—

  No light. He immediately switched it back off.

  “Negative,” he said. “In automatic position did not get a light and I’m back in off position now. Over.”

  “Roger, that’s fine. In this case, we’ll go ahead, and the re-entry sequence will be normal.”

  The retro-rockets would be fired over California, and by the time the retro-rockets brought him down out of his orbit and through the atmosphere, he would be over the Atlantic near Bermuda. That was the plan. Wally Schirra was the capcom in California. Less than a minute before he was supposed to fire the retro-rockets, by pushing a switch, he heard Wally saying: “John, leave your retropack on through your pass over Texas. Do you read?”