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AMELIA EARHART
On July 2, 1937, Amelia Earhart flew away from a town called Lae in the South Pacific. Earhart was attempting to circumnavigate the globe. After taking off from Lae, she disappeared. The Superhero Historians will investigate her life, her final flight, and the possible outcomes to that flight.
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On October 4, 1957 history changed forever. On that day the Soviet Union lauched Sputnik I into space. Find out how a basketball sized satellite changed the world. We will cover a lot, putting more focus on Project Mercury.
Everyone likes a good view. The Mercury 7 astronauts wanted a view too. For the first mission into space, Alan Shepard viewed through a periscope. Well, one of the improvements that the astronauts asked for was a window. They got it! The engineers who worked on Project Mercury didn’t think the window was necessary.
Here was Alan Shepards view of space:
Each of the Mercury astronauts got the opportunity to choose a name. Alan Shepard chose Freedom 7. Let’s go over his flight.
Okay, this is really neat. Have you ever flown in an airplane? Remember the instructions on what do do in case of an emergency? They even have diagrams of what to do. Well, the Project Mercury astronauts had a diagram too! Their capsule came down in the ocean and they had to know how to get out of it safely. They called it “Egress Procedures.” Check it out by clicking here.
Alan Shepard was the first American astronaut in space. He was born on November 18, 1923 and died on July 21, 1998. He graduated Annapolis and became a Navy test pilot and fighter pilot. He logged more than 8,000 hours flying time.
You can imagine that training for Project Mercury would include all sorts of things. Did you know that the Mercury astronauts had to survive in the Nevada desert as part of the training?
First the animals blasted into space, next comes the humans. Colonel Yuri Gagarin entered space on April 12, 1961. The Russian cosmonaut beat the United States by a month! Talk about a race. If this were the hundred-yard dash the Soviet Union would have clipped the tape about a half second before the United States. Awesome.
Project Mercury was NASA’s first program to put man into space. You read a bit about Laika, the Russian dog that launched into space. There were also mice and monkeys who flew into the atmosphere. Now it was time for NASA to have humans fly into space.
You can view a shuttle or rocket launching into space. Sure you can. Watch a launch from the Kennedy Space Center. This website has the schedule of launches. Later on I will tell you more about the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Here is something interesting, the first astronauts used pencils to write in space. Makes sense to me. They needed to write things down and with zero gravity, pens would not work. The story of the space pen is an interesting one where technology and money collide.
First came Sputnik, and then came Laika. What is Laika? Think of man’s best friend. That’s right; Laika was a dog that the Soviet Union sent into space!
What do you think the military has to do with the space race? I know you are wondering what I’m doing here. Space is all about science and technology. Well, let me take you back to the 1950’s and Sputnik 1.
Here is a picture of Sputnik 1:
Pretty cool, huh? It weighed 184.3 pounds. It took a little over 96 minutes to orbit the Earth. It had a 23 inch diameter and transmitted radio signals back to Earth. Very neat. It orbited the Earth 1,440 times.
We got a little excited here at Superhero Historians after we did the post about the flag on the moon. That seemed like a good next topic… well, not the flag on the moon, but space. Space and how we got there.
How did the Space Race start? On October 4, 1957 the Soviet Union put Sputnik I into space, but it started a bit before then. In 1952 the International Council of Scientific Unions declared July 1, 1957 to December 31, 1958 as the International Geophysical Year. In 1954 they called for artificial satellites to be launched that could map the Earth’s surface. The Space Race was on…
