"This is the launch of the Mercury-Redstone 3 (MR-3) spacecraft from Cape Canaveral on a suborbital mission -- the first U.S. manned spaceflight. The spacecraft is already headed towards its suborbital mission." "The spacecraft attained a maximum speed of 5,180 miles per hour (mph), reached an altitude of 116 1/2 statute miles, and landed 302 statute miles downrange from Cape Canaveral, Florida."
Date: May 5, 1961
NASA ID: S61-01927, LOC-61C-883, JSC2007-E-046477, S61-01908
May 7, 1961 post-flight MR-3 "Freedom 7"
63 years ago, Mercury 7 astronauts US Navy Lt Scott Carpenter, US Marine Corps LtCol John Glenn and US Navy LtCmdr Alan Shepard still discussed the suborbital Mercury-Redstone 3 flight "Freedom 7" which made Shepard the first NASA astronaut in space.
Two days earliern after 15 minutes 22 seconds, Alan Shepard splashed down 110 kilometers northeast of the Abaco islands in the Bahamas - Atlantic Ocean. Recovery was performed by US Navy aircraft carrier USS Lake Champlain after which Shepard and a few Mercury 7 colleagues spent two days of debriefings at Grand Bahama island.
Since the summer of 1959, the Mercury 7 astronauts were wearing a bespoke LeCoultre "astronaut" watch with black 24 hours dial as NASA STG decided a military-inspired 24 hours time awareness was optimal for manned spacecraft. A 33.5 mm stainless steel wrist watch on lightweight Jacoby Bender bracelet, they wore during training & special events between September 1959 and October 1963.
(Photo: NASA)
i think that in small tightknit communities, all residents should receive a coupon book on their bday that allows them to commit [x] number of nonviolent crimes per year
It is my sincerest and unironic belief that we must invest in preserving "old technology." The more we move to a hegemonic, easily-surveilled way of living, the worse we will find this world to be.
Letters, public phones and transport, cash, and so much more are key to ensuring both freedom of movement and information, but also to combat the surveillance state. We need to preserve the ability to both access the world but also to be untraceable. I truly hope more people start to recognize this. It isn't about nostalgia for the past. It is about ensuring that we are actually afforded freedom, from the richest person to the person who lives on the sidewalk.
A huge problem with antizionist activists at the moment is that so many of them are just absolutely itching to see more violence. They don’t want to stop the violence. They don’t call for a ceasefire and peace anymore. Instead they call for Israelis/Jewish people to be ethnically cleansed from the region instead of Palestinians. Like they literally just think the “wrong people” are being murdered right now. They’re a bunch of western spectators with nothing on the line agitating for more violence in a region thousands of miles away so they can root for their “team.” It’s a game to so many of these people, and a game they want to end in even more violence than has already been perpetrated by the Israeli government and Hamas.
Launched from Cape Canaveral 62 years ago today Astronaut Alan B. Shepard, Jr. became the first American in Space, during a fifteen minute suborbital flight aboard the Mercury Redstone 4 capsule Freedom 7. After a successful mission Shepard's capsule splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean and was recovered aboard a waiting Aircraft Carrier the USS Lake Champlain; Taking America's earliest steps in the Space Race which would eventually led to American Astronauts walking on the moon eight years later.