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Shepard

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24 March 1961 00:00 GMT. (Cancelled flight). Call Sign: Freedom 7. Crew: Shepard. Backup Crew: Grissom. Program: Mercury. After booster problems on the Mercury MR-2 chimp test flight, Von Braun insisted on a further unmanned booster test flight, against the wishes of Shepard and others at NASA. A Mercury boilerplate capsule was launched on a flawless test on 24 March. If NASA had overruled Von Braun, the manned Freedom 7 capsule would have flown instead. Shepard would have been the first man in space (though not in orbit), beating Gagarin's flight by three weeks.

• 1961 Mar 24 - Mercury MR-3A (cancelled)  Crew: Shepard. Spacecraft: Mercury. Payload: Mercury SC7.

  After booster problems on the Mercury MR-2 chimp test flight, Von Braun insisted on a further unmanned booster test flight, against the wishes of Shepard and others at NASA. A Mercury boilerplate capsule was launched on a flawless test on 24 March. If NASA had overruled Von Braun, the manned Freedom 7 capsule would have flown instead. Shepard would have been the first man in space (though not in orbit), beating Gagarin's flight by three weeks.

• Baker, David, The History of Manned Spaceflight, Crown, New York, 1981. The best overview of America's manned space programs up to Skylab. Information and details not available anywhere else. Unfortunately out of print and difficult to locate.

• Swenson, Grimwood, Alexander, Charles C, This New Ocean, Government Printing Office, 1966. The official version - NASA's history of the Mercury Program. Accessed at: http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/SP-4201/cover.htm.

• Turnill, Reginald,, The Observer's Spaceflight Directory, Frederick Warne, London, 1978. ISBN: 0723220514. Good miniature encyclopaedia of space programs just before the shuttle started flying. More at amazon.com...

• Krebs, Gunter, Gunter's Space Page, University of Frankfurt, 1996. Accessed at: http://www.skyrocket.de/space.

• Furniss, Tim, Manned Spaceflight Log, Jane's, London, 1986. ISBN: 0710604025. Summary of all manned spaceflights up to 1986. Pre-Glasnost, so many 'war stories' of Soviet manned spaceflight are not included. More at amazon.com...