The US was in something of a terror after the Soviets put Sputnik in range . There was already a planet program in the employment , but Wernher von Braun proposed something more salient . He suggest that an astronaut be set in motion on a suborbital , ballistic flight .
The pilot would take a nigh - duplicate of the ejector seat used in the Air Force ’s Man High stratosphere balloon flights , which had successfully carried fender to height of near 30 miles .
The idea was very similar to the British Megaroc that had been project shortly after the warfare . This would have use a German V-2 to launch a original on a sub - orbital ballistic trajectory .
Von Braun ’s capsule would be contained in a sealed cylinder which in turn would be carry in a horizontal position in the rocket ’s nose cone cell . In the case of an emergency during launch , the cylinder could be ejected into a nearby pond of water . The olfactory organ strobilus also turn back the recovery chute and living support equipment .
This assembly would be placed atop an Army Redstone projectile , which would work as the takeoff rocket . By using almost entirely off - the - shelf equipment , von Braun trust the trajectory could be made before the final stage of 1959 at a cost of less than $ 12 million .
“ Project Adam ” would launch an astronaut to an EL of 150 miles . After experiencing well-nigh 6 minutes of free fall , he would splash down into the Atlantic , 150 miles away from the launch site at Cape Canaveral .
The entire project would demand the cooperation of the Army , which had developed the Redstone projectile , the Air Force , which had develop the capsule , and the Navy , which would supply the convalescence . unluckily , one of the major factors in the downfall of Project Adam rise to be resistance from the Air Force , which was advertize funding for its own man space flight projection , the $ 100 million Man - in - outer space - Soonest broadcast . Von Braun then pitch the idea as an Army - only project , with the Navy still providing recovery , and boil down the price ticket to $ 4.75 million .
Although Hugh Dryden , the film director of NACA ( which became NASA when the Mercury program was created curtly thereafter ) , sneer that “ tossing a man up in the air and letting him come back . . . is about the same technical value as the carnival stunt of tear a new dame from a carom . . . . ” it is precisely what go on only a couple of years subsequently , when a Redstone garden rocket launched Alan Shepard on a subocular flight … only a few weeks after the Russians placed the first adult male in eye socket . Shepard ’s flight of stairs cost $ 360 million .
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