The Eagle Has Landed: The Story of Apollo 11 by Jeffrey Smith Page A

a Bell Lab engineer groused.
    In the end, NASA needed heroes as much as it needed spacecraft, if for nothing more than propaganda purposes. Dissatisfied with their roles as passive capsule occupants, the Mercury 7 successfully lobbied to modify the spacecraft, including installation of a back-up manual navigation system, a cockpit window, and an escape hatch with explosive bolts. The latter feature was deemed a necessity, as the astronauts did not want to be dependent on others to get them out of the capsule, in the event of an emergency.
    Before a manned Mercury spacecraft ever took flight, the Soviet Union scored another first. On April 12, 1961, Cosmonaut Yuri A. Gagarin became the first person to orbit the Earth. A former fighter pilot, the 27-year-old Gagarin completed a single orbit, lasting 1- hour and 48-minutes, aboard the Vostok 1 spacecraft. While in orbit, the Soviet cosmonaut ate, drank, and wrote on a note pad, proving that digestive, metabolic, and neurological functions were not seriously impaired by weightlessness.
    After returning to Earth, Gagarin earned effusive praise from Nikita Khrushchev: “You have made yourself immortal.” Adding fuel to the propaganda fire, Gagarin boasted: “Let the Capitalist countries catch up to our country.”
    The Soviet newspaper and Communist mouthpiece Pravda boasted that Gagarin’s space flight was a “great event in the history of humanity.” At the same time, the Washington Post echoed the angst of many Americans: “The fact of the Soviet space feat must be faced for what it is, and it is a psychological victory of the first magnitude for the Soviet Union.” Over the next 26 months, the Soviets successfully launched five more manned space flights, convincing many that America was hopelessly mired in second place in the Space Race.
    After the retrorocket malfunction during the chimp Ham’s flight, Wernher von Braun insisted on another unmanned test flight, much to the chagrin of the Mercury astronauts. The flight proved successful, with the spacecraft following the correct trajectory and landing 307 miles down range in the Atlantic Ocean. Ever cautious, NASA officials had originally planned to send more chimps into space, but after the Soviets launched Yuri Gagarin into orbit, the United States was pressured into launching its own manned spacecraft.
    On May 5, 1961, Alan B. Shepard, Jr. became the first American to travel into space. On the morning of the historic launch, Shepard breakfasted on filet mignon, scrambled eggs, and orange juice, before donning cotton underwear and his spacesuit. The latter, manufactured by B. F. Goodrich in Akron, Ohio, was made of plastic and aluminized nylon; a modified version of the Navy Mark IV pressurized suit. Inside the space suit, Shepard’s core temperature was carefully regulated and his body odor was drawn away through an activated charcoal filter. Life-sustaining oxygen entered the protective garment at the thorax and exited through the helmet. To complete his launch attire, Shepard wore custom-designed gloves, boots, and a helmet—the entire 22-pound outfit cost $5,000.00.
    High above the launch pad, aided by back-up pilot John Glenn, Shepard squeezed inside the 4,300-pound space capsule, christened Freedom 7; each Mercury spacecraft would bear the same number, in honor of America’s first seven astronauts. Intermittently obscured by cloud cover, a half-Moon overlooked Cape Canaveral, as Shepard sat atop the Redstone rocket, an upgraded version of the famed V-2, which was capable of generating 367,000 pounds of thrust. Twin movie cameras were mounted inside the capsule—one to monitor the instrument panel and the other to record Shepard’s physiological and emotional responses during the space flight.
    Fellow astronaut, Deke Slayton, stationed at the launch control center, was designated as the capsule communicator (Cap Com)—the individual who would maintain a direct radio link with Shepard during his flight. Just