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Scott Carpenter’s Mercury Training Manual

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles Start Price:NA Estimated At:4,000.00 - 6,000.00 USD
Scott Carpenter’s Mercury Training Manual

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Auction Date:2015 Apr 23 @ 18:00 (UTC-5 : EST/CDT)
Location:236 Commercial St., Suite 100, Boston, Massachusetts, 02109, United States
ALS - Autograph Letter Signed
ANS - Autograph Note Signed
AQS - Autograph Quotation Signed
AMQS - Autograph Musical Quotation Signed
DS - Document Signed
FDC - First Day Cover
Inscribed - “Personalized”
ISP - Inscribed Signed Photograph
LS - Letter Signed
SP - Signed Photograph
TLS - Typed Letter Signed
Scott Carpenter's Project Mercury training manual bound within brown cardstock sheets, 9 x 11.5, bearing a white label affixed to the front filled out in ballpoint in an unknown hand: "SEDR 103-13, Launch Countdown, Carpenter." The table of contents is headed "Project Mercury," dated December 1961, and lists categories such as "Test Objectives," "Prep Sheets," "Call to Stations," "Power Switch-Up," "Comm Checks," "Escape Rocket Igniter Installation and Hook-Up," "Astronaut Insertion," "T-025 to Liftoff," and "Post Launch Activities." In the left margin on the contents page Carpenter has written and initialed a note in red pencil, "PCN 1 thru 5 Entered, MSC." Several pages throughout the manual have simple lines and marks written in this red pencil, as well as check marks written with a traditional graphite pencil.

On the reverse of a page in the PCN #2 section with a revision date of January 22, 1962, at the top, is a pencil notation, "Friendship 7"; on the reverse of the following page is a similar notation, "Friendships 7," with the "s" boldly emphasized. The first of these, "Friendship 7," was the name John Glenn gave to his MA-6 capsule. A large notation comes in green pencil on a later page anticipating command checks, "Number Film." Several other pages have numbers filled out to report times, voltages, and aircraft dynamics. Two lined sheets of notes in pencil are also inserted at the end of the manual. As one of the famed Mercury 7, Carpenter was in the very first class of astronauts selected by NASA and with his cohort oversaw the development of the Mercury capsule. This is the training manual for Mercury-Atlas 6, for which Carpenter trained alongside John Glenn as the backup pilot. This represented just the third manned American spaceflight and first-ever Earth orbit for a US astronaut. Glenn was able to pilot the mission as the prime crew, making three orbits of Earth, with Carpenter serving as ‘capsule communicator’ or CAPCOM. On the recording of Glenn’s liftoff, Carpenter can be heard saying ‘Godspeed, John Glenn.’ An immensely desirable training manual from the earliest days of the Mercury program.

Accompanied by a signed letter of provenance from Carpenter, in part: "I used the Launch Countdown Training Manual…as John Glenn's back up Pilot for the flight of Friendship 7…The annotations and handwriting found within are all written in my hand. Following John's successful flight I have maintained this historically significant manual as a memento of my role in that mission in my personal space archives."