Description

The successful Apollo 11 mission was certainly an astonishing technological triumph but what is less well remembered now are that many programs preceded Apollo and were essential to its success Project Mercury was one of those and in many ways it represented the greatest step forward in terms of the conquest of space Before Project Mercury there was no certainty that a human could survive the rigors of a space launch or live outside Earths atmosphere There was no agreement on just what an astronaut should be and various individuals involved debated whether they should be pilots technicians scientists or even merely observers in an automated craft Before Project Mercury no one was entirely certain what a rocket capable of taking a person into space would look like or even whether building such a craft was within the capabilities of engineering in the 1950s