Before the Appollo 11 moon landing, there were other spaceflights paving the way to the sucessfull moon landing. One of them was Gus Grissom's Liberty Bell 7 flight that almost got him drowned.

Gus got the short end of the stick, in my opinion, when his capsule sank. Plenty of details in the story below.

And you should check out the link to see the pictures of it when it was found and brought back to the surface.

I saw picutes of it while it was being restored in Kansas. The pictures were on the website of the Kansas shop that was restoring it. Very interesting to see the inside constuction of the Liberty Bell 7 Mercury capsule.

Danged if I can find them. Too many upgrades and hard drive failures ago.

Enjoy!!

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/missions/liberty_bell_000617.html

 Gus Grissom didn't sink the Liberty Bell 7 Mercury capsule
By Jim Banke
Senior Producer,
posted: 07:00 am ET
17 June 2000

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Gus Grissom didn't do it.

And those who were close to Gus say they have had it with the stories that America's second astronaut panicked at splashdown, accidentally blew his hatch and caused Liberty Bell 7 to sink.

Backing up the sentiment is a theory -- you can't quite call it new -- about why the hatch with explosive bolts suddenly detonated, filling the Mercury spacecraft with water as Grissom bailed out.

"We cannot prove what happened. It was an unexplained anomaly. But we know that Grissom did not blow the hatch," Guenter Wendt, the man who helped Grissom board his Mercury capsule 39 years ago, told SPACE.com.

On July 21, 1961 a Mercury/Redstone rocket carried Grissom on a 15-minute trip through space, successfully repeating the feat performed by Alan Shepard two months earlier.

But unlike Shepard's Freedom 7 spacecraft, Grissom's Liberty Bell 7 was equipped with a window and a new hatch design capable of being thrown clear by explosive charges as needed after splashdown.

Don't blow it

To detonate the ordnance, either Grissom would have to firmly bang his wrist on a plunger inside the capsule, or a diver greeting the spacecraft in the water could move a small panel on the outside and pull on a T-shaped handle.

Later experience would show that if a Mercury astronaut were to detonate the hatch from the inside, the amount of force necessary to hit and activate the plunger would leave a nasty bruise, which Grissom didn't have.

Nevertheless, rumors began to circulate that Grissom was somehow at fault, leaving a blemish on his career that continued even after he perished in 1967 during the Apollo 1 fire along with Ed White and Roger Chaffee.

The 1983 movie The Right Stuff, based on the Tom Wolfe novel, further tarnished Grissom's legacy by its characterization of Gus as a "squirming hatch blower" who didn't have, well, the right stuff.

All because of the hatch on Liberty Bell 7.

"But I know darn well," said Wendt, with fire and determination in his still-present German accent. "I can give you all the data -- what he did and all that j***. Anybody who comes up with some Klondike thing..."

Wendt pauses for a moment and then begins listing and dismissing the theories.

Static charge? No way, Wendt said.

The only way there could be a detonation from unwanted static is if the helicopter had connected its cable to the capsule, but the hatch had already blown by the time the helicopters arrived.

Gus accidentally hit the inside switch? Uh, uh, Wendt said.

To hit the switch so that it would work took all of an astronaut's strength and focus to make it happen. The switch just couldn't be accidentally brushed by an elbow and activated.

Maybe the switch on the outside was accidentally pulled?

It's a theory that's been around quite a few years but has received little public attention.

The T-shaped handle made of steel was hidden behind a small panel on the outside of the capsule, put there in case a recovery diver had to blow the hatch to get at a disabled astronaut.

The thinking is that the small panel fell off the capsule either as Liberty Bell Seven deployed its main parachute or shortly after. Grissom himself reported seeing a small hole in the chute that Wendt said approximated the size of the access panel, or shingle.

Once the capsule splashed down, Wendt believes something pulled on the handle just enough to blow the hatch, perhaps a parachute line, or a line associated with one of the green-dye markers the capsule deployed after splashdown.

Others have theorized that the sudden change in temperature of the handle once the hot capsule hit the cooler Atlantic water might have triggered the switch as the metal cooled and shrunk a bit.

Whatever the cause, the hatch blew, the rescue helicopter couldn't save the capsule and Liberty Bell 7 spent the next 38 years at the bottom of the Atlantic until it was found and recovered last summer during two expeditions led by diving expert Curt Newport.

Experts at the Kansas Cosmosphere since have restored the capsule to near pristine condition, and in the process did not find anything to indict or clear Grissom's reputation.

On Wednesday the capsule debuted at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, beginning a three-year national tour that will take Liberty Bell Seven to 12 museums and science centers from coast to coast.

The spacecraft is the centerpiece of an extremely touching and nostalgic exhibit that begins by introducing visitors to a 1961-era living room surviving the Cold War and includes several hands-on displays that allow kids of all ages to fly a Mercury capsule, feel what the astronauts felt during launch and test their flying skills as they attempt to retrieve Liberty Bell 7 from the water.

Most importantly, the exhibit re-introduces Gus Grissom to the public as an important contributor to the early days of the space program.

"It puts Gus Grissom in the right perspective," said Max Ary, director of the Kansas Cosmosphere. "Gus was one of our great astronauts and I don't think he got his just due. And I hope that as this exhibit travels around the country, he is going to be remembered for who he was, and that was truly one of our great space pioneers."