By: Steve Wood
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Not long before Yuri Gagarin made his historic flight into space, there was an American that went nearly 5 months before. This was never known before now.
In November 1960, a rocket was launched from Vandenburg AFB, California carrying an astronaut by the name of Ellis Conner. The spacecraft in which he rode looked very similar to the Mercury capsule that is so known today. The rocket, a Redstone rocket, the same used to launch Alan Sheppard and Gus Grissom into their sub-orbital flights. The fuel mixture was very different than the one used for the other launches. It was a bit too powerful due to a miscalculation using kilograms instead of pounds for the weight of the completely loaded vehicle, much like the recent Mars mission failure due to one group using feet and the other group using meters for their units of measures. What was supposed to be a sub-orbital flight of 16 minutes and 350 miles downrange, ended up as a flight of 40 minutes nearly 6000 miles away. Communication was lost during the flight for unknown reasons. The capsule, and Ellis, were lost and a major search and recovery effort was launched. The original "Mercury 7" astronauts knew of this disaster and requested a window, manuvering controls, explosive hatch bolts, and redundant communications for the capsule in which they would ride. Survival schooling was also added to their preparation for space flight. They were not recovered at that time. |
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