The Explorers' Club, № CMXXXIV

Operation AXIOM: The Space Race—The 62nd Anniversary of Mercury-Atlas 2
21 February 1961: Mercury-Atlas 2 lifted off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, carrying an unnamed Mercury capsule atop an Atlas LV-3B rocket; the booster had been reinforced & the suborbital flight flew a more shallow trajectory than Mercury-Atlas 1, to reduce the maximum dynamic pressure (max Q); the capsule withstood the simulated abort re-entry & splashed down in the Atlantic.

Commentary: I freely admit that I made a dunderheaded mistake, a blunder so obvious that it took me forever to see the thing right before my eyes: Gus Grissom's Mercury-Redstone 4 was followed by Enos the Astrochimp's Mercury-Atlas 5 & my mind, enchanted by four naturally following five, was slow to recognize that this was a coincidence not a sequence. There were four Mercury-Atlas test flights—both suborbital & orbital—before Mercury-Atlas 5, conducted in parallel with the suborbital Mercury-Redstone test flights. This year, as we mark the sixtieth annivesary of the final Mercury flight, Gordon Cooper's day-long Mercury-Atlas 9 in 1963, we aim to catch up on 1960-1961's four Mercury-Atlas test flights.

Semper exploro.