October 3, 1963 8:154am
Crew: Wally Schirra
Orbits: 6
Duration: 9 hours 13 minutes 15 seconds
The fifth manned flight of a Mercury spacecraft was crewed by Walter Schirra Jr. The capsule was named Sigma-7. Launch into the blue skies over the Cape was smooth, despite a few small glitches.
“Are you a turtle today?,” Capcom Deke Slayton asked Schirra minutes after launch. It was the first part of a very exclusive joke, and Schirra refused to answer over the radio. Instead, he responded on the capsule’s on-board voice recorder. Among the Mercury 7, failing to give the correct response meant you’d have to buy a round of drinks. Schirra’s response on the recorder, the correct one, was “you bet your sweet ass I am.”
Once in orbit, things started to get hot for Schirra. He reported that his suit was overheating, making it feel like he was mowing a lawn in Texas. Despite concern from the flight surgeon, the decision was made to to ahead to a second orbit. Schirra turned up the cooling adjustment on his suit and the problem cooled off.
During the second orbit, he confirmed seeing John Glenn’s “fireflies”, the bright particles outside the spacecraft’s windows. During the third and fourth orbit, Schirra turned off part of the electrical system and gyroscopes, putting the spacecraft into a drift. In the fifth orbit, he spent time photographing locations in South Africa, the Philippines and Ecuador.
As the sixth orbit came to an end, Schirra fired the retrorockets and made his re-entry into the Central Pacific, landing half-a-mile away from the recovery vessel.
knew that one before I hit the next word, and never thought I'd be missing emoji's? Michael, it has been superb! enjoy each one, the anecdotes, and all - keep em' flyin' Yank! lb