The Mercury Rocket: The Saturn V's Forgotten Forerunner

Dive into the thrilling beginnings of the Space Race! From the Soviet's early triumphs to America's ambitious Mercury Project, discover how the Mercury-Redstone Launch Vehicle became a pivotal force in space exploration history.
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[@franklast7955]

My grandmother was a secretary in space task force group. I got a book with all 7 mercury astronaut autographs

[@ironpurush]

I just said that because I am quite jealous of you🥲

[@ImWearingPantsNow]

I am also jealous. That is awesome.

[@tyler5914]

Wuuut??? Wow!

[@judymarren7148]

So cool ❤

[@murrayscott9546]

Sell it while it's worth something.

[@vonkug]

My dad taught at the school John Glenn's daughter or grandaughter attended, I got to meet him. He said, "I was fully aware that I was sat atop the largest conventional bomb ever built, by the lowest bidder." Brave, even for an experienced test pilot.

[@9169enjoi]

by the lowest bidder? What exactly is that supposed to mean?

[@Asd-tk2if]

@@9169enjoi US government allows government contracts to be bid on. Meaning company that can produce it fastest with the lowest cost gets the contract.

[@cruisinguy6024]

@@9169enjoigovernment contracts are usually awarded to the lowest bidder. Ergo, the rocket was built by the company with the lowest bid

[@ExarchGaming]

@@9169enjoi it's sort of a joke in the military, that you should always remember your weapons/tools/equipment are made by the lowest bidder, which means the cheapest.

[@captainspaulding5963]

​@9169enjoi it's not "supposed" to mean anything. It's common knowledge that the US government is cheap, and gives contracts to companies that produce what they want for the lowest price.

[@pmgn8444]

You skipped over the change from the Redstone rocket (flights up to Mercury Redstone 4) to the Atlas rocket (Mecury-Atlas 5 and later).

[@alanwanchorlytellc194]

I came into the comments to point this out. All of the orbital flights were on Atlas rockets because the Redstone didn't have what it took to get a Mercury capsule into orbit.

[@ixonal8843]

And really, Mercury was the name for the capsule, not the rocket. Same with Gemini, that's the capsule and not the rocket. Now, the Redstone rocket was pretty much a beefed up V2, and only really had enough DV for suborbital hops, while Atlas had just enough to get a capsule into orbit.

[@cruisinguy6024]

They don’t care. They just put up low effort videos now

[@ApolloKid1961]

@@ixonal8843 Mercury, Gemini and Apollo were the project names. Apollo also used 2 different rockets; the Saturn 1B and the Saturn 5.

[@ixonal8843]

@@ApolloKid1961 well, yes, but also the capsule names. Point being, though, not the rockets' names

[@positrondesign6514]

I saw the Mercury capsule at the Queens NY science museum. Those astronauts had balls of steel. That capsule was so tiny and looked about as tough as a trash bin.

[@PaleoWithFries]

that sheet still was thinner than any trash bin I had!

[@Fossillarson]

New ones are just thinner lol

[@tmcb_]

No one calls it the "Mercury Rocket." It was the Mercury program and utilized two distinct rockets. The Redstone was only used for sub-orbital flights. Orbital flights, starting with John Glenn's, utilized the larger Atlas D rocket. The correct flight designations for Shepard and Grissom's flights were MR-3 and MR-4. Glenn's flight was MA-6 (not MR-3).

[@pooryorick831]

The information as presented here is wrong. Three was no Mercury Rocket. The Redstone rocket was only used on the first suborbital flights. It did not have enough power to put a capsule into orbit. Starting with John Glenn's mission, they used the more powerful Mercury Atlas booster. So Mercury missions 6 to 9 were designated MA-6 to MA-9. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that is a glaring error. There is a big difference between the the Redstone and Atlas rocket boosters. This episode tells less than half of the story of the Mercury rockets. 🙂☮️🚀🌙🪐✨️

[@cf3757]

This is my understanding as well. I'm double checking myself right now though because they were apparently too lazy to do a proper video.

[@BrianMoore-tc2xe]

Free Video... ya get what ya pay for.... lol

[@keepingitreal6793]

You are correct. I wasn’t going to knick pick as most people are just happy with the info as presented. That said, the video does contain some errors but I’m sure Simon will eventually release an updated video addressing the inaccuracies. Cheers.

[@JeffUmstead]

Being from Huntsville AL, it is difficult to hear this amount of wrong info. We grew up with all this in our back yards. We thought everyone learned all this as kids. In Simon’s defense, the video.does lable the other rockets as Mercury -Atlas configurations. Fun fact. The static test stand for the main engine of the Saturn 5 was close enough, and the engine powerful enough, that it rattled the garage door on my parent's house hard enough to break a few of the small windows in the upper panel of the door.

[@floyd0604]

From the jump rhis video has inexcusable errors. They got the launch year of Sputnik wrong. It's 1957, not 1956. Its the starting point of the space race.... I know Simon needs a lot of content to keep up the output for all of his channels, but seriously wtf, how does basic shit like this slip through?

[@Strike_Raid]

The Mercury Redstone did not use Alcohol like the PGM-11 version, it used Hydyne which is a hydrazine mixture. Also, both the Redstone and Jupiter really were the forerunner of Saturn since the Saturn 1 and 1b used lengthened Jupiter and Redstone propellant tanks for the Saturn booster propellant tanks.

[@stevenclarke5606]

Yes I agree, you can see this by the exhaust gas being orange

[@Strike_Raid]

@@stevenclarke5606 It is usually described as pink, but definately not the bright yellow of a film cooled alcohol engine.

[@Axonteer]

the PlayStation Icons Sparkle Effect at 7:23 made me smile :D

[@markbock3027]

Umm, guys… the Redstone was only used up through the first two manned launches. As of John Glenn’s orbital flight, Mercury used the more powerful Atlas rocket. You even showed it when discussing the later flights. It looks nothing like the Redstone. Good video, but that’s an important bit of information to leave out.

[@PaleoWithFries]

Yeah, this script is kind of a mess like "the heatshield was deployed". Too much information shoved into too short of time without proofreading.

[@floyd0604]

​@PaleoWithFries they got the year sputnik launched wrong in the first minute of the video. This is some really shoddy work and hard to believe anything if they can't even say sputnik launched and the space race began in 1957 (not 1956) wtf guys....

[@rvboyett]

You said, MR-6? There was no MR-6. It was MA-6. It wasn't a Redstone Rocket. It was an Atlas. Redstone was stricktly used for sub orbital flights while Mercury ATLAS was for orbital insertion. Funny enough, the text on your video says, "Mercury-Atlas 6". I think your researchers may need a rest. You never once talked about Atlas. That was the rocket that got the US into Orbit.

[@Jayjay-qe6um]

In 1964, a monument commemorating Project Mercury was unveiled near Launch Complex 14 at Capa Canaveral, featuring a metal logo combining the symbol of Mercury with number 7. In 1962, the United States Postal Service honored the Mercury-Atlas 6 flight with a Project Mercury commemorative stamp, the first US postal issue to depict a crewed spacecraft.

[@ARWest-bp4yb]

Parts of the Redstone lived on, its fuel and oxidizer tanks were used in the construction of the Saturn 1-B first stage,

[@martinstallard2742]

2:10 development history 6:16 manned launches 12:39 design

[@tyler5914]

Thank you.

[@petesheppard1709]

I watched the Mercury missions on live TV. Had he ended the video with MR-4, the video would have been very accurate. HOWEVER, as others are pointing out, the Atlas was a totally different beast. Both the US and Soviets started out with modified ballistic missiles; the Gemini program used Titan ICBMs. The initial Soviet advantage was that they built big, beefy rockets to carry heavy warheads, while the US focused on developing much lighter nukes that could be launched with smaller rockets. This obviously gave the USSR a large payload advantage early on.

[@jmwoods190]

The original concept of the Atlas ICBM was actually bigger at about the same size as Soviet R-7 ICBM that launched Sputnik & Gagarin- the early warheads were very bulky. However, the US soon realized that high-yield nukes can be built lighter and carried by smaller rockets, so the Atlas design was scaled down to its finalized form, while Korolev stuck with the bigger, bulkier design of the R-7 as he had always intended it to be a powerful space rocket, which ironically made it less practical as a ready-to-go missile than the Atlas!

[@petesheppard1709]

@@jmwoods190 Thanks! I didn't know that--always more to learn.

[@erasmus_locke]

The mercury rocket was a trailblazer for the American space project. I could easily go for an hour long video on this. I'm too lazy to go to NASA's website and read you should just do it for us. Lol

[@SCTimbal]

I saw one of the capsules on the USS Yorktown at Patriot's Point, SC. It's utterly astonishing how tiny those capsules were and how much they were able to do with it.

[@jessovenden]

In Florida, not far from the obvious theme park, is the space museum. I enjoyed it immensely.

[@markhollis5850]

There wasn’t A Mercury rocket. There were two. One, as you pointed out quite well was the Redstone ICBM, which was capable of launching the capsule into space but not capable of reaching orbital velocity. Then, there was the Saturn 1 rocket, which carried Glenn and all later Mercury astronauts into orbit. This was pointed out wonderfully in the film, “Hidden Figures.” The Saturn 5 is the great-grandchild of the Saturn 1, and NOT the Redstone.

[@sjsobol1]

G forces experienced by jet pilots is in a different axis than the G forces felt by astronauts and has different effects. Mercury astronauts did not "float freely inside the capsule" while weightless. There was not enough room to float anywhere and they were securely strapped in. Photos included in the video clearly show that Shepard was hoisted up separately from the capsule. All Project Mercury flights after Grissom's were designated MA not MR (starting with MA-6) because the launch vehicle changed from Redstone to Atlas. The Redstone rocket was direct descendant of the German V-2.

[@wmlukepriest8012]

Love the reference inclusion at the end. Thank you.

[@CptPatch]

It seems like you have some misinformation in this video, most of these launches were Mercury-Atlas (as the text on screen demonstrated), not Mercury-Redstone. And you refer to the missions as "MR" even though they were designated "MA". The Mercury-Redstone that is the topic of the video never went orbital. The reason it isn't called the "Mercury Rocket" is because Mercury used two different rockets...

[@terryrogers6232]

The Vanguard and Redstone groups were not the same. The original idea is that a 'civilian' rocket should be used for satellites. When that failed, the military Jupiter rocket, kinda grown up V2 and designed by the same team, was given the lead. JPL, on the sly, had already designed a satellite, Explorer 1 (we worked day and night, boss, and here it is...I've done that too). It discovered the Van Allen belts.

[@fsj197811]

Hey how about an episode on the Gerald Ford carriers??? And maybe include a comparison to their predecessor the Nimitz class?

[@auroradefae]

With all the tunnels you've covered, you really need an episode doing an overview of all of the tunneling machines used. Especially the machines that can build support structures as they go.

[@9169enjoi]

This is a video on a rocket, not a tunnel 🤦‍♂️

[@Matched32Gaming]

The space stuff is good on this channel I love all the videos on this channel subscribed on the first video I watched keep up the good work

[@ronnie8274]

Hey Simon, I won't go into the things already commented on, fun fact Gordo Cooper (among the other records he holds) was the last man to go into space alone. Love your show 🙂

[@jmwoods190]

Last American to go into space alone actually, as both the Soviet Union and China had subsequent single-crew flights. That doesn't diminish Gordo Cooper's impressive achievements though

[@Chris84409]

1) I once read that given the secrecy surrounding the Soviet space program then it's more than possible Yuri Gagarin wasn't actually the first man into space, he was the first one to come back alive. 2) I would now love to see the story of the Gemini missions, which, as I understand it, pioneered the orbital docking needed for the Apollo missions.

[@PaleoWithFries]

He's done #1 already kzbin.info/www/bejne/d6ClnoOdp6djmbs

[@9169enjoi]

I always wondered about that myself.... how many poor cosmonauts were killed in the race to beat us to space 🤦‍♂️ We know how many were sacrificed in our programs, but how many the Soviets sacrificed will always be a mystery since they loved to tell everyone absolutley nothing 😑

[@Zarcondeegrissom]

"How about sending me a fourth gimbal for Christmas?", lol. Great vid Simon and crew. B)

[@AcmeRacing]

The cautious design of the launch pad is reasonable. The amount of energy stored in the rocket fuel and the newness of the technology meant it had the potential for a spectacular explosion.

[@Sir_Uncle_Ned]

Mercury was the CAPSULE. The rockets were a modified Redstone IRBM for the suborbital flights and Atlas ICBM (Complete with stage and a half configuration) for the orbital flights. The mercury capsule replaced the warhead that would otherwise be launched by those systems

[@jamesbeeching6138]

The Right Stuff!!

[@ignitionfrn2223]

2:15 - Chapter 1 - Development history 6:20 - Chapter 2 - Manned launch 12:45 - Chapter 3 - Design

[@philip5752]

Love your extremely enlightening programs as always. Question?? What role did Katherine Johnson play in the success of the Mercury program? I’d love to see one of your programs focused on her. Thanks for your exceptional talents and staff 😊

[@EmilyJelassi]

Fascinating video!!😊❤❤

[@cheesehands3112]

@3:50 I mean, the Soviets were pretty much just using military/ICBM-based rockets for ALL of their applications. That's why they never could have made it to the moon, that required them constructing a non-military/ICBM-based rocket to reach the moon, which they proved unable to accomplish.

[@heintmeyer2296]

"The Redstone isn't just a scaled up V2, really, I 'm serious guys!!" -WvBraun

[@murrayscott9546]

Ups to all those pioneers ( including the unwitting dog ). Like the first one to eat an oyster. What lies beyond ?

[@mcduvall2000]

More rocket/space videos! Lol

[@competitionglen]

Thunderbirds are GO! But no Virgil?

[@henriroggeman7267]

For those interested, there's a great movie about the Mercury project, titled The Right Stuff. Highly recommended!

[@stevoplex]

Anything about Mercury Atlas, just prior to Gemini ? (Ya know, Atlas booster instead Redstone?)

[@Treblig1969]

ARPA was the Advanced Research Projects Agency not the Army Research Projects Agency.

[@BabyMakR]

7:41 The US didn't repeat the Soviet feat. The Gagarin's flight was orbital. Shepard's flight was sub orbital.

[@rocksnot952]

Mercury was a program. Redstone and Atlas (a subprogram) rockets were used in it.

[@charleselertii6187]

Rats Simon. This video started out with a huge error. Sputnik 1 was October 1957, NOT 1956 !!!! Your author is getting sloppy. Please don't let them do this to you! You Simon, are the face of this channel, and we love you Sir! Chuck in Florida.

[@christopherflouton4525]

Sputnik was launched October of 1957 NOT 1956.

[@johnthompson7420]

mercury was the capsule. it used 2 different boosters... redstone was smaller, suborbital for the 1st few missions, then the ATLAS booster was used for the orbital flights. this is the whole essence of the program. you blew it.

[@richdouglas2311]

Shepard flew in the Redstone because (a) the US was desperate to get someone into space after Gagarin and (b) the Atlas was still very unreliable. That meant Shepard would take a sub-orbital flight, as did Grissom. It wasn't until Glenn's flight that the Atlas was used and he was able to orbit the Earth.

[@tomschmidt381]

As a US baby boomer these early manned space flights were very exciting.

[@nolarobert]

The Redstone missile was the offspring of the German A4/V2. There wasn't much difference between the two. What is amazing is that we went from the primitive Redstone to the mighty Saturn V in such a short time. Led by Wernher von Braun and his German Rocket Team in Huntsville, America was able to fulfill Kennedy's challenge to land on the moon by the end of the decade. It proved that we could accomplish any goal we set as long as the political will and financial resources were present.

[@snapfinger1]

As soon as Sputnik was announced the USA got up off the schneid.

[@venera13]

Mercury was the capsule not the rocket, the first 2 human flights used a Redstone rocket, the rest used an Atlas rocket which where different rockets. Whomever wrote this script did an incredibly poor job.

[@ApolloKid1961]

It was the Mercury program or project. Same for Gemini and Apollo. The capsule always had a name with a 7 in it, such as Friendship 7.

[@davidleider4372]

Simon you made my day

[@epremeaux]

9:09 Implying that Shepard was INSIDE the capsule when the capsule was lifted by helicopter (and presumably he rode inside the capsule all the way to the recovery ship?) meanwhile showing photos of him clearly being recovered out of the craft and lifted into the helicopter before recovering the capsule. This is just factually wrong : the recovery process had always been to remove the astronaut/s from the capsule first, recover them to the helicopter, then connect the capsule and lift it. The errors with Grissom's recovery only re-enforced the need for this order of operations.

[@steveskouson9620]

"...with Shepard still inside." Simon, do you actually "see" the videos? Like the one where Shepard is being lifted BY HIMSELF out of the capsule. I just went back and looked, that IS Shepard being hauled up. (Thought it could have been a different person, but it wasn't. steve

[@PaleoWithFries]

Yeah, this script was 15 minutes that should have been 25 or 8 minutes. Either way would have been better. Plus proofreading.

[@nicholasmaude6906]

There was never a Mercury rocket as such, the first Mercury space-capsules were launched by heavily modified Redstone MRBM rocket-stages.

[@historymakesmesleep]

On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the earth's first artificial satellite, Sputnik I. The successful launch came as a shock to experts and citizens in the United States, who had hoped that the United States would accomplish this scientific advancement first.

[@twilightgryphon]

If memory is serving me correctly, the earliest failures with rockets exploding had to do with the U.S. Navy butting in and insisting they get a first crack at trying to develop a rocket instead of, y'know, actually letting the *ROCKET SCIENTISTS* working for NASA do their job.

[@lorensims4846]

There were two Mercury rockets, just like the Gemini rockets were all repurposed intercontinental ballistic missiles.

[@promxriderfromcanada]

These videos make my day.

[@donsandsii4642]

Blame the writer for errors. Simon is only responsible for Tangents

[@RetinaBurner]

Astronaut paste... Yummy. :P

[@keithwalmsley1830]

Although I don't believe in "never went to the Moon" conspiracies it is an almost unbelievable engineering feat to have gone from first American in space in 1961 to landing on the moon in 1969, considering the Apollo 1 disaster in the meantime, different time and ethos I suppose.

[@ApolloKid1961]

Almost 100 years ago, Robert H. Goddard started using liquid-fueled rockets. In 1945, Wherner von Braun shot a V2 90 km into the air. So people have been working on rocket technology for a long time.

[@richdouglas2311]

Not sure why you're referring to the "Mercury Rocket." There were two rockets: the sub-orbital Redstone and the orbital Atlas.

[@KingZE-V88]

Back when Soviet Efficiency,Competitiveness and Technological prowess was dominant ✅

[@richdouglas2311]

Please note that the Soviets violated the rules about sending a man into space. The rule required that the occupant land with the aircraft. But Gagarin parachuted from the capsule before it landed. This was how the cosmonauts were able to land on land.

[@millistiah874]

Gemini video when

[@thatjeff7550]

"...as Liberty Bell 7 suffered a hatch malfunction...." Wow. Okay then, dude. Way to gloss that over.

[@MrTexasDan]

Thanks for trying, but there was a stupid amount of things wrong with your "research". Most glaringly ... Mercury was the capsule, and the booster was at first a Redstone, then an Atlas. Shepherd and Grissom's sub-orbital flights were Mercury-Redstone MR-3 and MR-4. The remaining 4 orbital flights used a more powerful Atlas booster. These were Mercury-Atlas MA6-MA9. And the US really didn't "catch up" to the Russians until sometime in the Gemini program.

[@borderbrat]

How did rocket money NOT sponsor this video

[@FatManWalking18]

they had the right stuff

[@MichaelRoy-hc3lz]

Amazing that we're still using the same technology to shove stuff into orbit

[@ExperimentIV]

FOUR INCH FLIGHT MENTIONED

[@christianholmstedt8770]

You call all these flights 'MR' which is incorrect. The orbital flights used the Atlas rocket so 'MA' would be correct.

[@alanhelton]

Early like a Mercury Astronaut!

[@BabyMakR]

"Not just to match the Soviets" In other words they just moved the Goal Posts.

[@NickFajardo]

This script really needed a peer review :/

[@joeschmalhofer6109]

The Soviet 1st manned flight was to orbit... NASA didn't do that until the 3rd manned flight...

[@steliospassas8747]

where can one find the book?

[@jimcurt99]

You don't mention the fact that Mercury was the capsule- NOT the rocket- it was used on Redstone and Atlas rockets....

[@kaltenstein7718]

- Calls the Video "Mercury rocket" - Shows Mercury-Atlas on the thumbnail - Talks about the Mercury-Redstone (none of those were ever calld mercury-rockets, mercury was just the capsule/mission name)

[@vernonworsham2363]

Yeah... all mercury manned orbital missions used the atlas rocket.

[@lukebarrett7531]

Boom Boom Boom!!!

[@frankwrogg2515]

Your first

[@jaxmike7]

The US gets a lot of flack for the early failures during the space race but it's not really fair. The Soviets seemed to be far ahead and better than the Americans but we later discovered just how many disasters struck the Soviet program and the massively higher number of casualties they had both in flight and on the ground.

[@madatlas3806]

Didn't even mention the Atlas rocket?

[@davidmohr4606]

completely ignored the Atlas vehicle.

[@LordDustinDeWynd]

Before Apollo was Gemini (the Twins, and a two-person spacecraft), then Mercury. Mercury was ICBMs for lift to orbit.

[@floyd0604]

Skylab is after Apollo. It's the only part lf the Apollo Applications Programs that came to fruition after the moon missions concluded.

[@LordDustinDeWynd]

@@floyd0604 fixed

[@ApolloKid1961]

@@floyd0604 There was also an Apollo Soyuz mission.

[@marcbeebee6969]

😂 other you tubers: get more info on my patreon. Simon: get more Infos in this book. 😂 Great channel, love it

[@wadewilson524]

Sloppy… Glenn was not MR-6, he was Mercury ATLAS 6. Different rocket.

[@altonreeves1854]

.....now again, who forgot this..............................................................................................................................

[@malcolmlindsay6047]

mercury was the name of the program not the rocket.Only the first two manned launches used he redstone rocket the rest of the manned launches used the Atlas rocket . Both were adapted from weapon system programs . the Redstone being developed by Werner Von Braun and his germans.😐

[@fredamber8238]

0:12 4th October 1957

[@leannevandekew1996]

You missed mentioning the Soviet cosmonauts that died before Yuri Gregorian. And again the woman cosmonaut that died and her cries for help as she burned alive.

[@ApolloKid1961]

Do you have any more details about this?

[@leannevandekew1996]

@@ApolloKid1961 The Judica-Cordiglia brothers are two Italian former amateur radio operators who made audio recordings of Soviet space launches and of cosmonaut deaths in the 1960s. The pair recorded several failed secret Soviet space missions.

[@ApolloKid1961]

@@leannevandekew1996 I never heard the name Yuri Gregorian. Did you mean Yuri Gagarin? I will have a look about the The Judica-Cordiglia brothers. Thanks.

[@leannevandekew1996]

@@ApolloKid1961 His name was not Yuri Gagarin, it was Юрий Гагарин.

[@leannevandekew1996]

@@ApolloKid1961 Fool.

[@masterglaizer5918]

Sputnik 1 success. Sputnik 2 not so much. Dog burned up during re-entry. That has to be a bad way to die. I consider that a FAIL.

[@floyd0604]

Laika died way way before reentry. The climate control system in the satellite didnt work, and since direct sunlight heats things to 250 F (120 C) in space, that poor dog basically got heatstroke and was cooked alive pretty early in the journey

[@vernonworsham2363]

The thumbnail image shows an atlas rocket

[@Demonic_Tang]

Omg, redstone rockets? Is that a Minecraft reference

[@mattwallace4458]

This should have been on astrographics right?

[@bhami]

Stop saying "Mercury rocket". You can say "Mercury program" or "Mercury capsule". The rockets were Redstone and then Atlas. Similarly, there is no such thing as "Gemini rocket". There is "Gemini program", "Gemini capsule", and "Titan II rocket".

[@Truck_Company_84]

Same with Apollo rocket. It’s the Saturn rocket. It’s driving me nuts man!

[@AdamtheRed-]

So keep saying mercury rocket to troll sad people. Check!

[@ApolloKid1961]

@@Truck_Company_84 I'd rather hear the sound of nails on a chalkboard.

[@CrazyYog]

Yep, it’s driving me crazy also.

[@MichaelWinter-ss6lx]

And Titan-II was about the heaviest military missile for a long time. The way it looks, it must be a two stage, hot-staging rocket. So, that is not a new feature of Starship. It was done already by US in mid '60s. 🚀🏴‍☠️🎸

[@therichieboy]

Mercury rocket?

[@ApolloKid1961]

@@BeanieTimelapses It was the Mercury program or project. Same for Gemini and Apollo.

[@wadewilson524]

Or… Gagarin was the first survivor…..