Free "Live From Cape Canaveral": Covering the Space Race, From Sputnik to Today by Jay Barbree

time to go flying. He wrapped his gloved right hand around the three-axis control stick.
    “Switching to manual pitch,” he radioed Mercury Control.
    “Roger.”
    He moved the stick. Small jets of hydrogen peroxide gas shot into space from exterior nozzles. Instantly he felt the reaction as the capsule’s blunt end raised and lowered in response to his commands. He couldn’t believe how easy Freedom Seven was to fly. It was doing precisely what he asked.
    “Pitch is okay,” he reported. “Switching to manual yaw.”
    “Roger. Roll.”
    Again Seven moved on invisible rails. Shepard wasn’t just a passenger. He was flying his spacecraft, controlling its attitude. “Finally,” he shouted aloud, “we’re first with something!”
    He checked his flight plan.
    Fun time, he smiled, moving to look through the periscope at the Earth below.
    Damn , he cursed.
    While on the launch pad he had checked the periscope and stared into a bright sky. Immediately he had moved in filters and now, looking through the scope, instead of a brilliant blue Earth, he saw only a gray planet.
    He reached for the filter knob and as he did, the pressure gauge on his left wrist bumped against the abort handle. He chastised himself. Sure, the escape tower was gone, and hitting the abort handle might not be a problem, but this was not the time to play guessing games.
    Shepard looked again through the periscope. Even through the gray, the sun’s reflection from Earth below was enough to give him a picture.
    “On the periscope,” he radioed. “What a beautiful view!”
    “Roger.”
    “Cloud cover over Florida, three to four-tenths on the eastern coast, obscured up through Hatteras.”
    Shepard spoke of the rich green of Lake Okeechobee’s shores and the spindly curve of the Florida Keys. He shifted his eyes to see the Florida panhandle extending west and saw Pensacola clearly. On the horizon he caught a glimpse of Mobile and said, “There, just beyond, just out of my view is New Orleans.” He gazed across Georgia, to the Carolinas, and saw the coastline of Cape Hatteras and beyond.
    Then he looked straight down and studied the Bahamian islands through broken cloud cover. “What I’d give,” he said, “to have that filter out of there so I could see the beautiful green Bahamian waters and coral formations around those islands.”
    He was now at his highest point, 116 miles. He reminded himself he had duties. Freedom Seven , obeying the intractable laws of celestial mechanics, was swinging into its downward curve, calculated to carry Shepard directly to the navy recovery teams waiting for him in the waters near Grand Bahama Island.
    He was on the stick again, moving Freedom Seven to the proper angle to test-fire the three retro-rockets. “Five, four, three, two, one, retro angle,” Mercury Control confirmed.
    “In retro attitude,” Shepard reported. “All green.”
    “Roger.”
    “Control is smooth.”
    “Roger, understand. All going smooth.”
    “Retro one,” Shepard shouted. The first rocket fired and shoved him back against his seat. “Very smooth,” he added.
    “Roger, roger.”
    “Retro two.” Another shove backward.
    “Retro three. All three retros have fired.”
    “All fired on the button,” Mercury Control confirmed.
    The weightless wonderland vanished. Gravity was back. Freedom Seven was plunging into the atmosphere.
    “Okay. This is Freedom Seven… my g-buildup is three…six…” His voice began to falter. “Nine…” he grunted, using the proven system of body-tightening and muscle rigidity to force the words through his throat.
    “Roger,” Slayton acknowledged.
    “Okay…Okay…” Shepard’s voice rose as the intensity of the struggle increased. Eleven times the normal force of gravity, getting close to “weighing” a full Earth ton. But he had pulled eleven-g loads in the centrifuge, and he knew he could keep right on working now.
    He did.
    “Coming through loud and clear, Seven.