posted 05-06-2020 08:26 PM               

Slayton told me, for example, that it wasn't a given that John Glenn would fly the first orbital mission because Gilruth and Williams wondered if prior experience on a Redstone was necessary. "If Al or Gus had said it was, I guarantee you one of them would have had it. But they said, hell no, you just needed training."

If Slayton had flown MA-7, Carpenter would almost surely have had 8 and Schirra 9. That was the planned completion of Mercury -- further missions might have been scheduled if there had been a failure.

posted 05-07-2020 12:28 AM               

It seems that the selection for each mission was partially based on the results of the previous mission. Additionally, each astronaut was designing the flight plan for their mission and submitting it for approval, whilst undertaking the training as a backup for another flight.

Well, okay. The flight after John's, which was MA-6, was MA-7; and Deke Slayton was assigned that flight. On the centrifuge during the training period for that flight Deke had an anomaly in his heart which in conventional medical wisdom of that time was considered disqualifying. We recognize now that it was no more serious than a hiccup, but Deke was scratched and he wouldn't fly again for a long time, until Apollo-Soyuz [Test Project]. It was a destructive thing for Deke.

Wally was his backup and by rights should have gotten the flight. But Walt Williams again, I think (I don't know who made the decision), but it was a NASA decision that since I had had such an intimate relationship with the MA-6, getting John ready to go, that I was better prepared to take the next flight than Wally was, the standby.

That was very destructive to Wally, too, and we've survived that; but he was angry, and with reason. Anyway, I got the flight. And Wally became not only backup as he had been for Deke, but my backup; and he got the flight following.

posted 05-07-2020 06:34 PM               

If that had happened the mission would have needed to have been tried again — assuming, of course, the program did not get cancelled on the basis that it was just too dangerous. I doubt the latter would have happened, but there likely would have been some politicians saying just that.

posted 05-09-2020 04:42 AM               

Gilruth said to me that as of March 1st 1962, (the day of Deke's grounding), "it was felt that Carpenter was better trained than Schirra to take on the flight."