Last week I headed south to Indiana’s Lincolnland for book research (and a few future articles). On the way back home I stopped at Spring Mill State Park to visit a museum dedicated to the hero of many Hoosier Baby Boomers (myself included): NASA astronaut Gus Grissom. Lieutenant Colonel Virgil Ivan “Gus” Grissom (April 3, 1926 – January 27, 1967) was a U.S. Air Force pilot and one of the original Mercury Seven astronauts selected by NASA to be the first Americans in outer space. Grissom has the distinction of being the second American to fly in space on July 21, 1961. Gus was also a Project Gemini and an Apollo program astronaut.
Although Gus has been described as “America’s hard-luck astronaut hero, always in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he does not deserve that sobriquet. After visiting the Grissom Memorial (Spring Mill State Park. 3333 Hwy. 60 East, Mitchell, IN,) you quickly realize that Grissom was much more: a pilot, an engineer, a husband, a father, and an all-Hoosier. I spoke with Mark Young, Property Manager at Spring Mill State Park, on a crisp early spring morning. Young, who has been at the museum for 30 years, clearly loves his job and is pretty much a walking encyclopedia when it comes to Lt. Col. Grissom and the artifacts contained here. “We’re lucky to have Gus’s Gemini Space Capsule, spacesuit, and NASA glove molds on display as well as many personal artifacts from the Grissom family.” And what a display it is.
The Gemini capsule is awesome. The first thing you notice is how small the cockpit is. At five feet seven inches tall Gus Grissom was the shortest of the original seven astronauts. His size made him the perfect fit for the tiny capsules he would pilot. By July 1963 NASA discovered 14 out of its 16 astronauts could not fit themselves into the space capsules comfortably which led to cockpit modifications for future astronauts. In early 1964, after the first man in space Alan Shepard was grounded after being diagnosed with Ménière’s disease, Grissom was designated command pilot for Gemini 3, the first crewed Project Gemini flight. The March 23, 1965 mission made Gus the first NASA astronaut to fly into space twice. The two-man flight (with John Young) made three revolutions of the Earth and lasted for 4 hours, 52 minutes, and 31 seconds. Although the flight went well, after his Gemini mission, Grissom ominously said, “If we die, we want people to accept it. We are in a risky business and we hope that if anything happens to us it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life.”
Gus worked very closely with the engineers and technicians from McDonnell Aircraft who built the Gemini spacecraft. Gus, a Purdue engineer himself, often sparred with the NASA engineers when it came to capsule design. Gus ruminated on the design of the spaceship and the ridicule from fellow test pilots that the Mercury Seven were not flying the spacecraft and were mere “Spam-in-a-can.” Because of his involvement in the redesign of the capsule, his fellow astronauts humorously referred to the Gemini spacecraft as the “Gusmobile.” It was Grissom who invented the multi-axis translation thruster rotational hand controller used to push the Gemini and Apollo spacecraft in linear directions for rendezvous and docking. In other words, Gus insisted on, and ultimately implemented, pilot control of the spaceship.
Grissom jokingly named his Gemini spacecraft Molly Brown. Officially, it was a nod to the popular Broadway show, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, but everyone knew it was a double entendre aimed at an incident from three years earlier. NASA, famously devoid of a sense of humor about their program, was unhappy with this name and asked Grissom and his pilot, John Young, to come up with a new one. When they offered Titanic as an alternate, NASA execs acquiesced to the use of the name but were careful not to use it in official references. Much to NASA’s chagrin, on March 23, 1965 CAPCOM Gordon Cooper (a fellow Mercury astronaut and close friend of Grissom’s) gave Gemini 3 a send-off by saying, “You’re on your way, Molly Brown!” Ground controllers, mostly made up of fellow astronauts, used the nickname throughout the flight. The two-man flight made three revolutions of the Earth and lasted for 4 hours, 52 minutes and 31 seconds. After the safe return of Gemini 3, NASA announced that future spacecraft would not be nicknamed.
Why was NASA so uptight? NASA’s nervousness centered around the America’s second manned space flight and the aftermath. On July 21, 1961, Grissom piloted the second Project Mercury flight, Mercury-Redstone 4. Grissom’s spacecraft, which he named Liberty Bell 7, launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Grissom announced the name on July 15, 1961 stating it was an appropriate call sign for the bell-shaped spacecraft. As a tribute to the original Liberty Bell, a “crack” was painted on the side of the spacecraft. There were signs that the stars were not aligning for this flight before it ever got off the launchpad.
The launch of Liberty Bell 7, first scheduled for July 16, 1961 was scrapped due to heavy cloud cover. The second launch, scheduled for July 18, was again postponed due to bad weather. Both times, Gus had not yet boarded the spacecraft. On July 19, 1961, Grissom was on board when the flight was again delayed 10 minutes 30 seconds before launch due to weather. On the morning of July 21, Gus entered the capsule at 8:58 UTC and the 70 hatch bolts were put in place. Liberty Bell 7 was equipped with a new explosive hatch release designed to allow an astronaut to exit the spacecraft quickly in the event of an emergency. The hatch could also be triggered from outside the spacecraft by pulling on an external lanyard once a protective panel was removed — both standard features of ejection seats used in military aircraft. In the first Mercury design, the original exit procedure was to climb out through the antenna compartment, after removing the small pressure bulkhead, a difficult and slow procedure.
NASA’s bad luck launch continued when, 45 minutes prior to the scheduled launch, a pad technician discovered that one of the hatch bolts was misaligned. This discovery prompted yet another 30-minute delay. NASA engineers decided that the 69 remaining hatch bolts should be sufficient to hold it in place and blow it at the appropriate time; the misaligned bolt was not replaced. Grissom successfully piloted his Liberty Bell 7, the second American suborbital flight, launched at 12:20:36 UTC, July 21, 1961. The Gemini 3/Molly Brown flight was a successful three-orbit mission. The spaceflight lasted 15 minutes 30 seconds, reached an altitude of more than 102.8 nautical miles, and flew 262.5 nautical miles downrange, landing in the Atlantic Ocean. The trouble came just after splashdown when the hatch cover accidentally blew. Grissom was at risk of drowning but was recovered safely via a U.S. Navy helicopter. As the spacecraft sank into the Atlantic Ocean, Gus Grissom became the only NASA astronaut to lose his capsule to the sea.
Despite criticism by those seeking to place blame for the loss of a capsule, Gus was defended by his fellow Mercury astronauts. The Astronaut Office left no doubt of their support by maintaining Grissom in the prime rotation spot for commanding the first Gemini flight and the first planned Apollo flight. In solidarity, three Mercury flights later, Astronaut Wally Schirra manually blew Sigma 7′s hatch after recovery while his spacecraft was on the deck of the recovery ship. It was a deliberate attempt to prove Grissom’s defense that he had not blown the hatch deliberately. As anticipated, the kickback from the manual trigger left Schirra with a visible injury to his right hand, a wound that Grissom never had. In a 1965 interview, Grissom said that he believed the external release lanyard came loose, triggering the hatch release. On the Liberty Bell 7, this release lanyard panel was held in place by a single screw.
In 2021, an analysis of the recovery video suggested that static electricity may have caused the premature detonation of the hatch bolts. Gus Grissom was finally exonerated. After several unsuccessful attempts in 1992 and 1993, Gus’s lost capsule was retrieved off the floor of the Atlantic Ocean on July 20, 1999, the 30th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing. Liberty Bell 7 was recovered and the restored spacecraft is on display at the Cosmosphere in Hutchinson, Kansas.
As I have detailed in previous columns, during a simulated launch of Apollo 1 on January 27, 1967, the combination of a cabin fire and an inward-opening hatch would take the life of Gus Grissom along with fellow Apollo astronauts Ed White and Roger B. Chaffee. Damaged wiring, a 100% pressurized oxygen atmosphere, flammable materials in the cockpit and astronauts’ flight suits, and a hatch that could not be opened in an internally pressurized atmosphere, combined to cause the catastrophe. Gus knew the danger involved and never shied away from the duty he signed up for. One of his quotes, found at the memorial, states prophetically, “If we fail, let the world know that we died as test pilots in the risky business of exploring outer space.” Although Gus Grissom died on launchpad 34 at Cape Kennedy, there is much more to learn about Virgil I. Grissom, Hoosier. And the classroom is located in Spring Mill State Park in Mitchell, Indiana.
Next Week: Part 2
Al Hunter is the author of the “Haunted Indianapolis” and co-author of the “Haunted Irvington” and “Indiana National Road” book series. His newest books are “Bumps in the Night. Stories from the Weekly View,” “Irvington Haunts. The Tour Guide,” and “The Mystery of the H.H. Holmes Collection.” Contact Al directly at Huntvault@aol.com or become a friend on Facebook.
