Onboard Mercury with Alan Shepard (MR-3 full flight with annotations)

The full annotated flight of the first american in space, Alan Shepard
Thanks for those who support the channel on Patreon: / frenchspaceguy
Thanks to Ethelshai and all the other contributors for the english translation and correction.
Images credit: NASA

[@waynewilliams8554]

Dad told my brother and me to be late for school so we could see history being made. Thank you Dad!!

[@maxwellcrazycat9204]

My Dad let me stay up late to watch the Moon landing. My Mom wasn't happy about that. She was a Moon landing denier. Eventually accepted that it happened.

[@Ryan-mq2mi]

@@maxwellcrazycat9204 They had those back then, at the time?

[@keithtyler9372]

I was in a factory NCR Dayton ohio .1966 I was at ccafs working on Apollo with IBM

[@keithtyler9372]

4 yrs of College at University of Dayton got me there.

[@RideAcrossTheRiver]

@@maxwellcrazycat9204 Wasn't it at about 9 PM eastern time?

[@user-et2fj8xm5l]

Baddassery on full display here. Never knew this footage existed. Thank you so much for posting..

[@lestercoons3962]

My father and I watched this from our front yard through binoculars. We listened on the radio, we had no television then. I still have the binoculars, we purchased them from Sears Roebuck.

[@gerry4915]

Love that story

[@songjunejohnlee2113]

Back when u could buy high quality items at affordable prices that would last forever, right from the neighborhood

[@w5cdt]

Great job. I’m 70 years old and vividly remember this flight.

[@goodgreyhound]

I'm still mad at Mrs. Neuman, my third grade teacher. She went to the next door classroom and watched the launch on their TV. Then she came back and told us what she saw and drew a pathetic picture of the rocket on the chalkboard.

[@marktuyet]

Now I'm mad at her too. Lousy thing to do.

[@freepadz6241]

The capsule looks like it could be easy to draw. Are you sure the drawing was that bad.

[@goodgreyhound]

@@freepadz6241 Yes, it was that bad. It was white chalk on a black board and the lesson was this is the pointy end and this is the flamey end. Meanwhile my class missed something that was making history.

[@halfishman5028]

mrs. neuman sounds like a commie.

[@alanhoffman683]

I was named after Alan Sheppard. Born in 62 so this was before my time. Cool to see.

[@CatDaddySteve]

I'm born in 63. I remember Apollo 11

[@L-Bone]

My family went to Cape Kennedy in 1969 to see the Moon Shot. Alan Shepard was staying at our motel & we got to meet him in the lobby. It was an amazing experience for a 5 year old. It made following NASA & our space program a lifelong endeavor.

[@stefanodidoni5995]

grazie per la tua testimonianza bellissima

[@MrButtonpresser]

1960s The best time to be a kid! Great video. Merci.

[@davidh9844]

Much longer flight than I remember as an 11 year old boy. He went much higher that I had thought, much greater G load coming down than we had been told. The days of the giants. Rest in peace, Moon Golfer.

[@MarkGardner66Bonnie]

WOW! So cool... I have never seen that before... I wrote a letter to Alan Shepard while in elementary school and he responded.. I still have the letter and pictures he sent back...

[@rodneydavenport4646]

I remember watching this in Mrs Henson’s 2nd grade class. It was so cool, we could watch the entire space flight from school.🎉

[@MrSuzuki1187]

The Redston rocket that Shepard launched Shepard into space had 78,000 lbs of thrust. Both engines combined on the Boeing 767-300 that I flew for United had 120,000 lbs of thrust.

[@maxwellcrazycat9204]

As I recall. The Redstone was originally designed to launch nuclear warheads. A ballistic missile. Modified for the Mercury missions.

[@Wallope]

@@maxwellcrazycat9204 I think a lot of space missions in the 60s used modified ICBMs

[@blakeashley1957]

If I recall correctly the escape tower on top of the Apollo Saturn 5 alone had more thrust than the Redstone. Things escalated quickly.

[@johno9507]

If only a couple of GE CF6-80-C2 turbofans could get you into orbit.

[@ablewindsor1459]

And the Redstone was a direct decendent of the German V-2, made by the same group of engineers in Huntsville Alabama after they moved them Fort Bliss Texas.

[@igorschmidlapp6987]

"Don't f*ck up, Shepard..." Per the man himself, often misquoted as a prayer," Dear Lord, please don't let me f*ck up...", but, Shepard always denied the "prayer" part...

[@ixxxxxxx]

love that you captioned what's happening on the gauges and indicators, thank you

[@colinbarnard6512]

I'm 63, and I've been avidly following NASA Crewed Spaceflight since Gemini 3 in 1965. All this time, hearing 'the clock has started', I had no idea Shepherd had to punch start manually. It may seem trivial, but, after all, the words were a statement of pilot action, rather than just pilot observation. Thanks for the insight, it makes a difference in my understading. Cheers!

[@MWPompert]

Great view of something read in the books for years but never seen for me! 11.5 G…those men were made of something else!

[@lebojay]

After the 11.5g, the mens’ makings were more or less homogenous.

[@sc1338]

Real men I swear

[@user-jk8ez5hq4d]

Yep, and cool as a cucumber. The video it looks like he's dropping through the Dairy Queen drive-thru.

[@wildgoose419]

Wow, look at all those analog instruments!

[@Ryan-mq2mi]

Excellent, excellent video man! Very well done, you should be proud

[@charlesodonnell2993]

My grandmother, mother and I watched his launch on television. It was truly awesome.

[@sly2392]

the early mercury astronauts were extremely brave men. these rockets were not that reliable and blew up quite often. GOD BLESS EVERY ONE OF THEM. THEY DEFINITELY HAD THE RIGHT STUFF.

[@FLORIDIANMILLIONAIRE]

It's not a rocket bro it's called a space capsule, the very top part of a "rocket" carries capsules that house human astronauts, these are two very different things and they used to blow up due to O2 rich environment which the Americans finally realized after Apollo 1 catastrophe and fixed it using a 60-40 O2+N2 mix.

[@freddaugherty7829]

I remember listening to the flight in school on intercom. Very nice

[@derekec]

I watched all the launches on TV with my father right through Apollo 17. Sixty plus years later it's all a blurry yet still vivid cascade of visual memory and events; but each one was at the time a major event and overall the bravery, adventure and professionalism shaped me as a person.

[@MrGruffteddybear]

So cool that Alan Shepard got his Ménière's disease taken care of and was able to go to the moon on Apollo 14. To be grounded after this flight for so many years must have been disappointing for him.

[@davidmangold1838]

I was three years old when Russia launched Sputnik. I vividly remember being in my back yard in Indianapolis and seeing it in the night sky, with my dad.

[@crazyaces4042]

hard to believe this all started the year I was born. Mind blowing how much has happened just in my lifetime. Can you imagine what these guys went through? It was ALL new and everything was taking HUGE chances. No pioneers like that now.. no way.. not with what they had to through just to get to that point let alone taking off on a rocket alone not knowing what was going to really happen. Fantastic. Love these.

[@lebojay]

Imagine Deke seeing all that progress through the eyes of Flight Director! From Alan Shepard to the Apollo missions. Amazing. You’re right, there are no pioneers like that today, but maybe the era of interplanetary exploration that is coming will change that. Somebody, or many somebodies, are gonna have to volunteer for those multi-year missions to Mars and beyond. I wonder how all this would have played out without pressure from the USSR. Would any of this have happened without the space race? Would anyone have taken these risks without Soviet motivation?

[@lestercoons3962]

Alan Shepard was on Apollo 14 and walked on the moon February 5, 1971.

[@crazyaces4042]

@@lestercoons3962 Apollo 14 (January 31 - February 9, 1971 yes and Edgar Mitchell , two walks on the surface. Also, Shepard "hit two golf balls he had brought with him with a makeshift club." ~ Wikipedia. They had a good time up there. '71 what a year... I'll never forget that year for many reasons. They also had some malfunctions that almost ended the program but were resolved and they were successful.

[@WannaB321]

Fantastic video. Felt like I was there with Alan, except I didn't feel the 11.5 g's! Thank you for putting this together. Amazing.

[@winslowleach1835]

Man of Steel. The best of the best.

[@timlong9913]

And Alan eventually got to drive a golf ball on the moon!

[@michaelmcgovern8110]

Wow. I grew up on this stuff and became a professional technical geek. This is wonderful work. Please: do the rest of Project Mercury! Did we go to the Moon? Hell yes we did.

[@jamesmorphe8003]

and in 8 yrs we be walking on the moon. and in 50 yrs, flat earthers think this is all CGI. EVENtho it hasnt been invented yet.

[@jamesmorphe8003]

@@aussieblue7132 Yes they havent been back. But you must have been there in tghe first place to be able to gO BACK.

[@katwashere194]

@@aussieblue7132they found nothing useful and no reason to go back until now to set up for Mars exploration. Wake up, son.

[@mtb416]

Stop giving flat earthers the time of day. It’s the epitome of punching down. It’s like giving air time to people who think aliens built the pyramids. Why waste the time?

[@katwashere194]

We did go back anyway. We went 6 times so…

[@jamesmorphe8003]

@@mtb416 Sometimes seeing people show their idiocy can be entertaining. Tho i think most flerthers arent serious, they enjoy trolling to annoy people.

[@alistairmills7608]

28,000 km/hour, reached 267 km in altitude and descended to 30,000 feet where the chute opened in a very short time. Cruets the size of Coconuts.

[@kingair350]

My grandfather was in charge of all the recovery forces for the Mercury program.

[@The-KP]

Great video, good idea adding capsule visualization based on data.

[@hermitsal4029]

My God! What courage and skill !

[@senatorlainez]

This man flew from Florida to the Indian Ocean in 17 minutes... insane!

[@FrenchSpaceGuy]

Atlantic ocean

[@ablewindsor1459]

And the flight profile is roughly what the Falcon9 first stage does today ..without the return to Landing .

[@fritzlehner9060]

Amazing people ! Thanks god we had this generation !

[@Delatta1961]

Absolutely amazing. I was a few months before being born when this happened. I’m now a retired Military Aviator, and I’m really enjoying these videos. Thanks, and I can’t wait to see more

[@warrenbartlett6405]

Great footage. It is amazing the leaps that NASA had to make from this short journey of Freedom 7 to the Apollo flights to the moon. It is still a great time to be around in space and planetary discoveries currently being made. But for Astronauts to experience their exploration of the Moon and their individual experiences of seeing our beautiful planet out on its own in space. 😊

[@larryczarnecki954]

I like the automotive hose clamp on the large line feeding what appears to be Alan's helmet.

[@ablewindsor1459]

They used what they could get right off the shelf.. When they realized they had no way for the Astros to take a leak, their nurse went out that day and bought a women's panty girdle plus the pick up hose for a leg urine bag and several condoms and made a wearable collection garment on her sewing machine. She did that for each Mercury Astronaut. Only with the Gemini flights did NASA make something better .

[@leechjim8023]

​@@ablewindsor1459I recall, Alan had to use it!😮

[@ablewindsor1459]

@@leechjim8023 From the Movie The Right Stuff " I am a wet back now" then " let's light this candle"

[@aaronboor2818]

Some books I have read that I really liked: Carrying the Fire by Michael Collins, And First Man. Also the newly released photo book Apollo Remastered. I was most struck by Michael Colllins's book released in 1974 and carried a forward by Charles Lindburgh. To think that so much could happen in the span of one life is truly amazing.

[@tinkmarshino]

I remember that flight it was the day before my 11th birthday.. what a ride it was too..

[@winstonsmith478]

Interesting to know that a pad cabin fire just like the Apollo 1 tragedy could have happened with Mercury and Gemini, too: "To save weight, Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo spacecraft were designed to operate at a cabin pressure of 5.5 lbs. per square inch of pure oxygen in space. When the spacecraft were pressurized on the launch pad, however, they had to be a couple of pounds over atmospheric pressure, 14.7 lbs. per square inch, to keep the cabin in pure oxygen."

[@jugheadjones5458]

Expected to see camera vibration on the launch but it was very stable. During the Gemini program, at school we had an assembly for every launch to watch on TV.

[@WilliamDye-willdye]

I appreciate the extra technical details in these videos. I enjoy learning something new.

[@TheGrifter62]

Thankyou. Great edit with really useful captions. I was surprised by how short the flight was

[@canbest7668]

Incroyable! Merci d'avoir fait ça!

[@DaveLennonCopeland]

This is excellent! Good clean images and audio. 😃 I may have been a bit judgemental with my previous comment on another video you published. 🥺

[@Tom_YouTube_stole_my_handle]

Appreciate the effort going to produce this.

[@Capt_OscarMike]

Remarkably well made...Thanks!

[@p7301c]

Ground control was confused; kept calling him Roger!

[@user-iz9rx9ly7e]

Beautiful job. Just the right amount of explanation. Perfect highlights on the instrument panel. Like many, I recall this as yesterday...but never had access to this level of information and video footage. Thank you very much.

[@UCCLdIk6R5ECGtaGm7oqO-TQ]

Very good. Your work deserves many more views.

[@user-gb6re9eg3i]

CAN RECALL THIS FLIGHT SO WELL, IT WAS A VERY BIG DEAL. NEVER SAW THIS DETAIL. GREAT STUFF!!!

[@mensaconservative7887]

In those days, all activity stopped and the space shots were broadcast on the PA. I was in the second grade and we loved it. We had a president who wasn’t a cadaver, at least for a couple of years.

[@KillerKev1961]

Alan Shepard. My boyhood hero. Naval aviator, fantastic pilot. Naval aviators are a breed apart, including Marines. RIP

[@alistairmills7608]

Thanks for sharing this.

[@donjaksa4071]

Neil Armstrong, Buz Aldrin, Pete Conrad, Alan Bean, Alan Shepard, Ed Mitchell, Dave Scott, Jim Irwin, John Young, Charlie Duke, Gene Cernan, Harrison Schmitt

[@johnned4848]

Great video. Just seeing it now. Fascinating

[@KokkiePiet]

Yuri Gagarin’s flight was 1h48m. Amazing how short Alan Shepards flight was

[@dsdy1205]

Gagarin circled the Earth in a near-full orbit, using basically an ICBM. Shepard had a much weaker rocket under him, which meant he was restricted to a quick up and down hop

[@FrancoisLecat]

Super travail, merci !

[@willy_wombat]

Thanks for this video !!!

[@MrU4theChillWind]

Just watching Astronomy Live's coverage of the USSF-67 launch/return. He said all credit for the stabilization goes to you, so I had to leave a comment telling you that was fantastic work!

[@mtb416]

“Is go”, I don’t know how such a simple phrase means “LET’S GET THIS BOYS!!!” Riles me up. Love it.

[@billpugh58]

Fantastic content!

[@shanemeyer9224]

I love watching these old videos, but I never understood how we see no vibrations in the video, I watched the apollo one recently and it was fantastic!

[@argudopa]

Thank you Thank you. Greetings from Ecuador

[@axellesel6005]

Incredible job thx 😃

[@kenkahn138]

My father-in-law worked at the cape from 56 to 75 he knew all those guys I didn't really believe it till we were walking up the tarmac at a little air show fly in , in Three Forks Montana and he slaps me on the shoulder and says ,you know that guy is ? I had no idea my father-in-law says that's Gene Cernan last man to walk on the moon so I got to sit in the shade of his airplane wing and listen to Gene cernan and my father-in-law talk about everything for hours,too cool

[@eniotna5284]

Super vidéo !

[@fraserconnell21]

Very cool film. Thanks 👍🏼

[@mikaelbiilmann6826]

I read the stories about the Mercury Seven when I was 14 back in 1980 and it was such a riveting and interesting read. I read anything that was about astronomy and the Mercury and Gemini projoects.

[@TheNameOfJesus]

@9:40, he experienced 11.5 g? Naturally, I had to check with wikipedia. "Early experiments showed that untrained humans were able to tolerate a range of accelerations depending on the time of exposure. This ranged from as much as 20 g for less than 10 seconds, to 10 g for 1 minute, and 6 g for 10 minutes." No doubt Shepard was well trained. And in this video it doesn't look like he was at 11.5 g for over a minute, although he stopped reading out the numbers after 9. But this could be a max g record for American astronauts. I wonder what the G forces would be if the emergency ejection system was activated during launch, and how long those forces would last.

[@KevinBalch-dt8ot]

The Mercury capsules had almost no lift and had a ballistic reentry trajectory. Later spacecraft had some lift ability and could “fly” so they would reenter more gradually and experience smaller g forces.

[@ImieNazwiskoOK]

Probably few Gs more than the rocket was accelerating at it's peak, but ye I was also surprised at the amount of acceleration(and still looking to be fine, but he quite certainly didn't feel so well)

[@tsfullerton]

@@ImieNazwiskoOK Deceleration on reentry.

[@ImieNazwiskoOK]

@@tsfullerton I was talking about acceleration on launch abort, but ye the 11g was the acceleration on reentry

[@ivct51]

thanks a lot ! ♥♥♥

[@ElBantosClips]

the guy is pulling 11.5g and he just goes "okay"

[@OcotilloTom]

I was 15 and remember watching this in class with the rest of my classmates.

[@danahan01]

Seems like a pretty smooth flight compared to some footage I've seen of the space shuttle or soyuz.....

[@kizentheslayer]

It's becuase the camera is mounted hard to the frame so they can record the instrument cluster. It's shaking with the capsule so it stays still. The poster says this in the video of the apollo block I capsule

[@BuschMarco]

that was awesome!!!

[@RGL01]

Excellent!!!

[@alexbuhmann]

Cool video

[@TheShred118]

Greatest video ever ! Give that man some money, youtube, damn it.

[@max_kl]

yes, do it!

[@lawrencefried5027]

Hero of the people!

[@user-cr2vz5ti4m]

Watched it live as an 8 year old. Shepard leaving the transfer van and looking up at the Redstone still etched in my memory. Alan Shepard and the Mercury 7 indeed had the Right Stuff. America at its finest. I only wish to live long enough to witness our return to the moon. Mars thereafter if I’m really lucky. I thought once we landed the moon in 1968 we would already be on Mars today (54 years later). America and NASA really dropped the ball in manned space. Public interest waned but virtually every device we use today came as a spinoff from science and technology including the importance of manned spaceflight. Elon Musk via SpaceX has jump started our national space program. I doubt without his drive and ingenuity we would be as well placed to restart space exploration. Go USA !

[@paladin0654]

I cut school twice to see the launch on live TV.

[@tigertiger1699]

Still blows my mind

[@CatDaddySteve]

AWESOME 👌

[@omeneto3737]

Ici pour aider, tes chaines youtube méritent la monétisation

[@Ryan-mq2mi]

That re-entry G-Load had me shhhiting bricks as he goes 3, 6, 9 (cuts out) then the display you put up said he was 11.5! Unbelievable man. What was the contingency for this? How long was the load. He apparently said something when he was 11.5g according to your timeline. How's that possible? Did they know exactly what load he was gonna get and for how long, if all was nominal? And if not, I guess he passes out? Not the worst thing in the world, but different angle re-entry could be bad. I guess once you're in and going through it, it's like a motorcycle in that momentum will keep the capsule from turning. Just incredible. Awesome to see how pre-pared, well trained, relaxed and confident he was. Ps. Do you know at about what G-load would it be detrimental beyond lack of normal circulatory function? I imagine there's a stroke or literal heart stopping. load. I've never seen anything that was measured that high, but I've not watched training videos. I know our pilots right now can do 9-10, although they're not supposed to exceed 8, but I don't know at what level its damaging

[@PhantomP63]

Wonder if or what kind of G-compensating equipment the Mercury astronauts had. Fighter pilots have had them available as early as the Navy’s “Z-suits” in 1945 so it would not surprise me to hear of astronauts wearing something similar.

[@davidstepeck2644]

I’m sure Shepard wonders where the button is located to shut off that annoying buzzer.

[@alistairmills7608]

It's just EMF feedback from all the other electronics in the spacecraft and this EMF is inducted into unshielded looms given the large power stored in the batteries.

[@billmadison2032]

Lol what did Mr Sheppard think of the scene in the right stuff? seriously what a brave man

[@TheSlandis]

Such an insane accomplishment.

[@KevinGerhart1701]

It was way more dramatic on the HBO series, From the Earth to the Moon :-)

[@panderson9561]

I'm surprised how smooth the ride was...or appears to be. From what I've heard the Apollo guys say their rides up were rough, lots of shaking and movement.

[@FrenchSpaceGuy]

Shepard was badly shaked. But the camera was solidly attached to the frame, so this is not visible here.

[@HandFromCoffin]

Wow.. what would acceleration like that, for that long be like.. amazing.

[@nuclearrabbit1]

My middle name is Alan, after Commander Sheppard. Very cool video.

[@eniotna5284]

Je commente pour le référencement, pour aller chercher la monétisation

[@scottkozel1519]

I didn't realize that they had a camera in the capsule.

[@sandbridgekid4121]

John Glenn should have been lead Astronaut for Gemini and got to walk on the Moon.

[@pjbth]

They had an actual everything's ok alarm 😂

[@max_kl]

I presume this footage is real? So awesome!

[@antiv]

This is wild 😮