Gus Grissom had just entered the history books. A mere 10 weeks after Alan Shepard made America’s first human flight into space, Grissom followed w

Gus Grissom taught NASA a hard lesson: “You can hurt yourself in the ocean”

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2021-07-17 23:00:06

Gus Grissom had just entered the history books. A mere 10 weeks after Alan Shepard made America’s first human flight into space, Grissom followed with the second one, a 15-minute suborbital hop that took him to an altitude of 189km above the blue planet. After the small Mercury capsule’s parachutes deployed, Grissom splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean, seemingly bringing a flawless mission to a close.

It was July 21, 1961, toward the end of the second Mercury mission, and the hatch to Grissom's spacecraft blew early. The ocean flooded in. The astronaut responded by jumping free of the Liberty Bell 7 capsule. He struggled for five minutes to remain above the churning waves even as his spacesuit, already 22 pounds when dry, filled with water.

This incident has gone down in history amid controversy. Some renditions of it, including the famous The Right Stuff novel and movie from Tom Wolfe, portray Grissom as “screwing the pooch.” Such accounts argue that the astronaut panicked and fired his hatch before it was time, essentially inviting the water in.