America's Response: Building NASA From Nothing

The United States didn't have a civilian space agency in 1957. The Army had rockets. The Navy had rockets. The Air Force had rockets. What it didn't have was a coordinated national program.

Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act on July 29, 1958. NASA opened its doors on October 1, 1958, absorbing the existing National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) along with its 8,000 employees and research facilities. The agency was civilian from the start — Eisenhower was determined that space would not be purely a military operation, partly for propaganda reasons.

**Project Mercury**

Seven astronauts were selected in April 1959: Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard, and Deke Slayton. The press called them the Mercury Seven, and they became the country's first space celebrities — profiled in Life magazine, backed by a media apparatus that made their families seem like perfect American households.

The Mercury capsule was a conical spacecraft barely large enough for one person. Engineers had argued about whether the occupant should be called an astronaut or a "passenger," given the limited control available. The capsule was unmanned and tested repeatedly, including missions with a chimpanzee named Ham in January 1961, who survived a suborbital flight and was recovered from the Atlantic.

The first crewed Mercury flight was scheduled for early 1961. But on April 12, 1961, the Soviets moved first.

Yuri Gagarin orbited the Earth. Mercury hadn't flown a human yet.

**Alan Shepard's 15 minutes**

Alan Shepard launched on May 5, 1961, on a Redstone rocket — a much smaller, less powerful vehicle than the R-7 that had carried Gagarin. His flight was suborbital: Freedom 7 reached an altitude of 187 kilometers and splashed down 487 kilometers downrange, 15 minutes and 22 seconds after launch.

It was not an orbit. But it was American, it was public, and it was broadcast live. Gagarin's flight had been confirmed only after landing; the Soviets didn't broadcast in real time. Shepard's flight was watched by millions of Americans on television.

John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth on February 20, 1962, aboard Friendship 7. His three-orbit flight lasted four hours and 55 minutes. Glenn's flight was so symbolically important that NASA grounded him afterward — he was considered too valuable to risk losing.

Mercury ended in May 1963 after six crewed flights. It had demonstrated that humans could fly in space, that orbital mechanics worked as predicted, and that recovery from the ocean was feasible. What it hadn't demonstrated was the capability to reach the Moon. That would require an entirely new program — built around a goal that hadn't been officially announced yet.

America's Response: Building NASA From Nothing

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