Human astronaut was considered briefly for Mercury-Jupiter flights before use of the Jupiter booster on Mercury was cancelled in July 1959 on cost grounds.
In the January 1959 Mercury program plan, flights of the capsule on a Jupiter IRBM were to take place in addition to flights atop the Redstone and Atlas boosters. The second Mercury-Jupiter flight was planned as a maximum dynamic pressure test to qualify a production Mercury capsule with a chimpanzee aboard. A human astronaut was considered briefly before the Mercury-Jupiter flights were cancelled in July 1959 on cost grounds.
First Launch: First quarter 1960.
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Associated Programs
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Mercury Mercury was America's first man-in-space project. Setting the precedent for the later Gemini, Apollo, and Shuttle programs, any capsule configuration proposed by the contractors was acceptable as long as it was the one NASA's Langley facility, and in particular, Max Faget, had developed. McDonnell, at that time a renegade contractor of innovative Navy fighters that had a history of problems in service, received the contract. The capsule had to be as small as possible to match the payload capability of America's first ICBM, the Atlas, which would be used for orbital missions. The resulting design was less than a third of the weight of the Russian Vostok spacecraft, and more limited as a result. More...
Mercury-Jupiter 2 (MJ-2) Chronology
First quarter 1960 - .
- Mercury-Jupiter 2 (MJ-2) (cancelled) - .
Nation: USA. Program: Mercury. Flight: Mercury-Jupiter 2 (MJ-2). Summary: In the January 1959 Mercury program plan, flights of the capsule on a Jupiter IRBM were to take place in addition to flights atop the Redstone and Atlas boosters. The Mercury-Jupiter flights were cancelled in July 1959 on cost grounds..
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