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Mercury-Redstone 1 (MR-1) was the first Mercury-Redstone unmanned flight test in the Mercury program and the first attempt to launch a Mercury spacecraft with the Mercury-Redstone launch vehicle. Intended to be an unmanned sub-orbital flight, it was launched on November 21, 1960 from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The launch failed in a peculiar fashion which has been referred to as the "four-inch flight".〔"MR-1: The Four-Inch Flight", p. 293.〕 ==Test background and launch failure== The purpose of the MR-1 flight was to qualify the Mercury spacecraft and the Mercury-Redstone launch vehicle for the sub-orbital Mercury mission. It would also qualify the spacecraft's automated flight control and recovery systems, as well as the launch, tracking, and recovery operations on the ground.〔''The Mercury-Redstone Project'', p. 8-2.〕〔NSSDC Master Catalog page.〕 The flight would also test the Mercury-Redstone's automatic inflight abort sensing system, which would be operating in "open-loop" mode. This meant that the abort sensing system could report a condition requiring an abort, but it would be unable to actually trigger an abort itself. Since the flight did not have a living passenger, this would not pose a safety problem, and it would prevent a faulty abort signal from prematurely ending the flight.〔 The test used Mercury spacecraft #2 together with Redstone MR-1; its launch location was Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Launch Complex 5. An early launch attempt on November 7 was canceled due to last-minute problems with the capsule, so launching was rescheduled for November 21.〔''The Mercury-Redstone Project'', p. 8-3.〕〔"MR-1: The Four-Inch Flight", pp. 293-294.〕 On that day, following a normal countdown, the Mercury-Redstone's engine ignited on schedule at 9:00 a.m. Eastern Standard Time (14:00 GMT). However, the engine shut down immediately after lift-off from the launch pad. The rocket only rose about before settling back onto the pad. Alarms were immediately sounded at LC-5, but the Redstone didn't explode. Instead it merely sat in place, after which a strange sequence of events happened.〔〔〔"MR-1: The Four-Inch Flight", p. 294.〕 Immediately after the Redstone's engine shut down, the Mercury capsule's escape rocket jettisoned itself, leaving the capsule attached to the Redstone booster. The escape rocket rose to an altitude of and landed about away. Three seconds after the escape rocket fired, the capsule deployed its drogue parachute; it then deployed the main and reserve parachutes, ejecting the radio antenna fairing in the process.〔〔〔 In the end, all that had been launched was the escape rocket. However, the fully fueled and powered-up Redstone was now sitting on LC-5 with nothing securing it to the pad. Various other dangers existed as well such as the capsule's retrorocket package and the range safety destruct charges. Furthermore, the capsule's main and reserve parachutes were hanging down the side of the rocket, threatening to tip it over if they caught enough wind. Fortunately, the weather conditions were favorable. Amid the panicked atmosphere in the control room, the launch team was unable to come up with quick and viable options to rectify the situation. Chris Kraft, the now-frustrated flight director, rejected several unsafe interventions, including getting a rifle and shooting holes in the booster's propellant tanks to depressurize them. He eventually took the advice of one of the test engineers to simply wait out the battery discharge and let the oxidizer boil off. This early test failure and subsequent panic led Kraft to declare "That is the first rule of flight control. If you don't know what to do, don't do anything." Technicians therefore waited until the next morning, when the flight batteries in the rocket and capsule had run down and the Redstone's liquid oxygen had boiled off, before they could work on the rocket and render it safe.〔〔"MR-1: The Four-Inch Flight", pp. 294-296.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Mercury-Redstone 1」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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