![]() Eventually the helicopter pilot gave up, realizing he wouldn’t be able to tow the capsule to shore, and noticing that Grissom was minutes from drowning. Meanwhile, the capsule itself, which was supposed to be recovered, started taking on water, making it way too heavy to be hoisted out of the ocean by helicopter. Grissom immediately jumped out without making the necessary adjustments to prevent water from seeping into his already 22 lb. Grissom landed in the Atlantic in choppy waters, whereupon his hatch door blew open prematurely. ![]() ![]() Thus, started the controversy in Grissom’s career, as he narrowly escaped death from what initially appeared to be a botched landing from his failure to execute protocol, but what actually turned out to be a faulty mechanism in the capsule’s hatch release. On July 21st, 1961, Grissom reached a suborbital altitude of about 118 miles above the Earth’s surface in a 15 minute flight, before making his descent in the Mercury capsule, which he dubbed the Liberty Bell 7. history to fly in space, preceded only by Alan Shepard and cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. Virgil Ivan “Gus” Grissom was the second man in U.S. ![]()
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