"When We Left The Earth" Episode 1 a Mercury Program Tutorial

[polaris149Tiberius]

"When We Left The Earth" Episode 1 a Mercury Program TutorialBy Adam RodrigueZ (polaris149Tiberius)
Date of release: 06-27-2008 at 13:04 CST (GMT-6)
Revision 1.00 06-27-2008 at 13:04 CST (GMT-6)
Launch platforms: The Mercury-Redstone 4 and the Mercury-Atlas 6


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Forward: When man was in his 20th century, he looked upon the moon in his century and asked himself, "why not"? The computer age has set its service upon us and shown us what can be done mathmatically and in the physical world when used in certain circles of knowledge and has joined forces with the world's best and fastest "Air-Jockys". How we approached Kennedy's challenge was less important than weather or not we accepted his bid to reach Earth's Moon in a single decade, and we won the bet. The Mercury Space Program was the pinnicle of aironautics and dealing with astronautics as its final goal. It would catapult the US Space Program known as NASA into an age of rocketry and safe return for a Manned Space Program that would co-exist with the agency's endevours.​

This tutorial will address the United States first steps into space and the need for a launch program that allowed for humans to return to Earth safe and sound in the arms of an already deployed recovery element. The recovery process is perhapse the most important of all the objectives NASA was tasked with achieving in Mercury accept for possibly the re-entry program, but was also deeply entrenched with the need for the whole program to becme an exact science. Along with the constant possibility that a mission could simply go wrong and kill an entire crew, it's elite "gung-ho" type Mercury 7 Astronauts took on the challenge and danger with a cowboy-like grin and confedance in the space program that hurled us into the pre-Apollo Gemini Program. ​

We will study in this tutorial, the elements of orbital mechanics, and trajectory mechanics for astronautical normallity. Our look into the process of overcomming Earth's gravity shoule be done, and should be able to be calculated on something as simple as a graphing calculator. ​

A further look into how to study, and test these calcualtions will be the basis for understanding the physics of orbital mechanics and possibly delv into portions of aerodynamics for our launch phase.
I hope that this tutorial will not only spark interest, but conversation and discussion on the testable environment we are in possession of -Orbiter 2006 P1.​