Long time lurker\first time poster.

I watched an excellent program on the Discovery Channel entitled In Search of Liberty Bell 7, which documents the capsule's recovery and some great background on the Mercury program and that heart-wrenching parallel concerning the hatches.

A notable quote from the program was one of the ground controllers (I believe) who attributed to the A1 fire to the ultimate success of Apollo. Something to the effect of "Without the accident, we would not have landed in the 60s. That accident refocused our attention on lessons learned from Gemini in the redesign of Apollo." Anyone see this program who can identify the speaker?

Also Wally Schirra cleared up my misconception that Gus actually botched the recovery (of Liberty Bell). Schirra stated that it was pretty much impossible to activate the explosive bolts without incurring some tell-tale bruising from the trigger's recoil, which Grissom did not exhibit.

Comments welcome and thanks for the entertaining/educational threads.

Randy DeSoto

Also, I got the impression from that program the the 15lb. overpressure was a test condition, not a flight condition. Did I get that bit right?

Yes you are correct.

There is a book that accompanies the search for Liberty Bell 7, called Lost Spacecraft: The Search for Liberty Bell 7 by Curt Newport. I read it and found it to be very good. Had a lot on Grissom too.

The 17 psi cabin pressure was the launch condition as well as the test condition. The system was set to maintain internal pressure 3-5 psi greater than outside pressure.

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