The Mercury Rocket: The Saturn V's Forgotten Forerunner

Mercury was a program. Redstone and Atlas (a subprogram) rockets were used in it.

"Not just to match the Soviets" In other words they just moved the Goal Posts.

"How about sending me a fourth gimbal for Christmas?", lol.
Great vid Simon and crew. B)

Ups to all those pioneers ( including the unwitting dog ). Like the first one to eat an oyster. What lies beyond ?

Simon should either add a corrective addendum to this one, or remove it completely as the embarrassing mashup of incorrect information it is. Definitely not up to the usual standards - did nobody on his team do any actual research or fact-checking before releasing this thing?

If you'd like to watch a really really good documentary about Project Mercury, I highly recommend you check out "Homemade Documentary"
His work on Space is so well written and easy to listen to. I've watched his stuff multiple times and even play something of his every night to fall asleep to. It's so good!

This is riddled with errors. Not MR5, MA6, for John Glenn. Other goofs as well.

Hey how about an episode on the Gerald Ford carriers??? And maybe include a comparison to their predecessor the Nimitz class?

You don't mention the fact that Mercury was the capsule- NOT the rocket- it was used on Redstone and Atlas rockets....

This should have been on astrographics right?

ARPA was the Advanced Research Projects Agency not the Army Research Projects Agency.

I watched the Mercury missions on live TV.
Had he ended the video with MR-4, the video would have been very accurate. HOWEVER, as others are pointing out, the Atlas was a totally different beast.
Both the US and Soviets started out with modified ballistic missiles; the Gemini program used Titan ICBMs. The initial Soviet advantage was that they built big, beefy rockets to carry heavy warheads, while the US focused on developing much lighter nukes that could be launched with smaller rockets. This obviously gave the USSR a large payload advantage early on.

Didn't even mention the Atlas rocket?

Who cares, it's well in the past like England winning the World Cup in 1966 forget about it.

Not really the US could have beat Russia to orbit if us let von braun launch his rocket

Yeah... all mercury manned orbital missions used the atlas rocket.

The thumbnail image shows an atlas rocket

The Soviet 1st manned flight was to orbit... NASA didn't do that until the 3rd manned flight...

It seems like you have some misinformation in this video, most of these launches were Mercury-Atlas (as the text on screen demonstrated), not Mercury-Redstone. And you refer to the missions as "MR" even though they were designated "MA". The Mercury-Redstone that is the topic of the video never went orbital. The reason it isn't called the "Mercury Rocket" is because Mercury used two different rockets...

mercury was the name of the program not the rocket.Only the first two manned launches used he redstone rocket the rest of the manned launches used the Atlas rocket . Both were adapted from weapon system programs . the Redstone being developed by Werner Von Braun and his germans.😐

There wasn’t A Mercury rocket. There were two. One, as you pointed out quite well was the Redstone ICBM, which was capable of launching the capsule into space but not capable of reaching orbital velocity. Then, there was the Saturn 1 rocket, which carried Glenn and all later Mercury astronauts into orbit. This was pointed out wonderfully in the film, “Hidden Figures.” The Saturn 5 is the great-grandchild of the Saturn 1, and NOT the Redstone.

they had the right stuff

As a US baby boomer these early manned space flights were very exciting.

Mercury was the CAPSULE. The rockets were a modified Redstone IRBM for the suborbital flights and Atlas ICBM (Complete with stage and a half configuration) for the orbital flights. The mercury capsule replaced the warhead that would otherwise be launched by those systems

I saw one of the capsules on the USS Yorktown at Patriot's Point, SC. It's utterly astonishing how tiny those capsules were and how much they were able to do with it.

Amazing that we're still using the same technology to shove stuff into orbit

In Florida, not far from the obvious theme park, is the space museum.
I enjoyed it immensely.

Love the reference inclusion at the end. Thank you.

Sputnik was 1957...first 14 seconds and based on the comments here, im not going any further. Thanks though!

Right off the bat, 1957. Not watching any more.

On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the earth's first artificial satellite, Sputnik I. The successful launch came as a shock to experts and citizens in the United States, who had hoped that the United States would accomplish this scientific advancement first.

There was never a Mercury rocket as such, the first Mercury space-capsules were launched by heavily modified Redstone MRBM rocket-stages.

mercury was the capsule. it used 2 different boosters... redstone was smaller, suborbital for the 1st few missions, then the ATLAS booster was used for the orbital flights. this is the whole essence of the program. you blew it.

Please note that the Soviets violated the rules about sending a man into space. The rule required that the occupant land with the aircraft. But Gagarin parachuted from the capsule before it landed. This was how the cosmonauts were able to land on land.

Shepard flew in the Redstone because (a) the US was desperate to get someone into space after Gagarin and (b) the Atlas was still very unreliable. That meant Shepard would take a sub-orbital flight, as did Grissom. It wasn't until Glenn's flight that the Atlas was used and he was able to orbit the Earth.

Not sure why you're referring to the "Mercury Rocket." There were two rockets: the sub-orbital Redstone and the orbital Atlas.

- Calls the Video "Mercury rocket"
- Shows Mercury-Atlas on the thumbnail
- Talks about the Mercury-Redstone
(none of those were ever calld mercury-rockets, mercury was just the capsule/mission name)

Sputnik was launched October of 1957 NOT 1956.

.....now again, who forgot this..............................................................................................................................

How did rocket money NOT sponsor this video

That was mercury Redstone, only 2 manned sub orbital 15 minite flight each. What about Mercury Atlas? The reat of project mercury manned missions? When are you going to talk about Project Gemini were we moved ahead and stayed on top? . And you talk realy fast take a breath in-between some of your words dude or as they say in your country chap.

Monkey or ape?

"...as Liberty Bell 7 suffered a hatch malfunction...." Wow. Okay then, dude. Way to gloss that over.

Wait wait…. I just watched another Simon video from a couple months ago(ish) and there is much less beard! Did your wife threaten to divorce you since you had more hair on your face than the rest of you body (combined)?

Maybe we need to stick to less channels and more facts. Not a great look when the comments are nothing but pointing out errors

Sad to see the history of the Mercury Project botched. The Atlas was the rocket used after MR3/4
The missions became MA missions
Makes me wonder about yourquality control regarding the telling of historical events
This was botched

completely ignored the Atlas vehicle.