62) Liberty Bell 7

[00:00:01] The Rambler Network.

[00:00:48] The Liberty Bell 7. I am pretty sure probably 99% of the people listening to this has never heard of Liberty Bell 7. It is only the second manned space flight ever. Well, at least in the US.

[00:01:14] The very first one was on May 5th, 1961. Alan Shepard, he piloted a Mercury spacecraft called the Freedom 7. It was a suborbital flight. He went up, came back down, did not orbit. And then, a couple months later, on July 21st, 1961, Virgil Gus Grissom.

[00:01:44] He's more commonly known as Gus Grissom. His name is Virgil. Sometimes he's known as Virgil Grissom. But I wrote it down as Virgil Gus Grissom. I don't know why I explained that. Anyway, he became the second person to go into space. The second American to go into space, I might add. Because Russia did it first. Yuri did it earlier. I didn't write that one down.

[00:02:12] So, I don't know the date. Uh, yeah. He went up on Liberty Bell 7. On July 21st, 1961. It was also a suborbital flight. I can't words. The name of the spacecraft was actually Mercury Redstone 4. But Grissom nicknamed it Liberty Bell 7. And that's, you know, I think that was a tradition.

[00:02:39] Uh, it launched into space on that day. And it was his first ever flight. So, the flight actually only lasted 15 minutes and 30 seconds. It reached an altitude of 102.8 nautical miles. And the whole thing went according to plan. He, you know, he went up suborbital. Suborbital. Um, basically just...

[00:03:07] They didn't really do anything. Like, the first two flights up there. They just went suborbital. Subblerbadoo. Um, flipped a few switches. Like, hey, I made it. And then they went back down. So, it's just more of a... It can we even do this type of thing. And so, yeah. That's why it only lasted 15 minutes. You went up, came down. And the whole thing went entirely to plan.

[00:03:33] And it probably wouldn't have even really made much of a dent in history. Because it was the second flight. Do you remember the second... Uh... Ones to make it into the moon? Onto the moon. You don't go into the moon. Uh, yeah, no. Um, but the reason we're talking about this now... Is that... After the capsule made splashdown...

[00:04:03] After the mission was over... The hatch actually blew too early. And water began to flood into the capsule. And Grissom... Luckily, he was rescued in time. And there's actually footage of... Um, like... He's... You know... There's the helicopter. It comes over. Picks him up. And, like, after it picks him up... The... The capsule actually flips over into the water... And then sinks.

[00:04:35] So, like... The helicopter did try... To carry... You know... Because they were trying to save the capsules. So the helicopter did make an attempt to save the capsule. But the water pouring in... It was too heavy. And, uh... Unfortunately... The... The... The tether snapped... From all the extra weight. And... Liberty Bill 7... Sank to the bottom of... The sea. Uh... There was an investigation... Afterwards.

[00:05:05] They initially tried to blame Grissom for the loss of the capsule. There was... Uh... There was an emergency... Hatch... Explosion... Immersion... Button thing that... Um... He could... You know... You could hit the button... In case there was an emergency... To... Make the... The capsule hatch blow out. And... They thought maybe he did that. Like, maybe he panicked... And he pressed the button... And made it... Made it go. But...

[00:05:34] In order to press the button... You have to... Have a lot of force. You have to, like... Really... Hit the button. And... That would leave a bruise. And he didn't have that bruise. And... So... They... They ended up saying... Okay, maybe it wasn't him. And... I don't know if they would have charged him for anything. But I guess... Um... In a matter of speaking... All charges were dropped. I don't think they actually really charged him with anything. That'd be weird. But... Yeah, I mean... It was like a million dollar...

[00:06:04] Investment... On their part for the capsule. But... Yeah... It was this lost sea forever... Or... Was it? No. No, actually it wasn't. In 1999... A crew... Actually went searching for... Liberty Bill 7... And... They tried to write... They tried to raise it... And they were successful. It is now... There's actually a two hour documentary... On...

[00:06:34] On the... The search... And discovery... And raising... Of the Liberty Bill 7... It's on YouTube. The whole documentary. It's... It's really interesting. I saw it a long time ago. Um... A long time ago. It is... Uh... Remember how I said... That in my earlier episodes... I had a blog a long ago... And I had a lot of... Fun... Like a bunch of random facts... I would post about... This was one of them. Most of what I talked about here...

[00:07:03] I was actually... Just reading... From that. I actually had... I did a little more research... And expanded on it. Um... But yeah... The... The documentary... Is on YouTube. There's a 1983 film... Called The Right Stuff... Where... Fred... Board... Plays... Gus Grissom... And it includes... A dramatization... Of Liberty Bill 7. The film came out in 1983. I... Unfortunately have not seen that.

[00:07:33] I can't find it anywhere. I was gonna watch it... Before recording this. Instead I watched... The first episode... Of... Uh... From the Earth to the Moon. Because I read somewhere... That it includes it. Uh... It does not. It does not include it. I don't know why... They would say that. However... Mark... Uh... Rolston... Does play Gus Grissom... In... From Earth to the Moon. And...

[00:08:02] Just watching the first episode... I actually... It was interesting. Like... It's not like... I was watching it like... Hi! Get to the... Get to the Liberty Bill 7! And like... It... It wasn't like that. It was... I only saw the first episode. I do plan on watching the whole thing. That's really unrelated to this. It's just... I... I was only watching it... Just to watch that. And then it didn't play it. And I'm like... Hmm... Okay. I'm actually invested. I'm gonna keep watching this. Hi! Me and editing. Uh... Yeah.

[00:08:32] I forgot to point out... That... The... The Right Stuff... The movie that I mentioned before... It was remade... A couple years ago... For Disney Plus. As a TV show. Uh... But... Don't go looking for it. I went looking for it. I couldn't find it on Disney Plus. I thought... Oh! That's weird that... It's made for Disney Plus. It should be on Disney Plus. No. Um... Apparently Disney hated it. And they cancelled it after the first season. And then... Removed it. Because...

[00:09:01] They did not like it. I... I... I wanted to see it. It looked interesting. I saw a little clip of it. And it looked interesting. But... Nope. They made a remake. And it did include the Liberty Bill 7. And they left it out. They... Uh... Cut it from... The streaming service. Also... Um... The movie... The 2016 film Hidden Figures. It also has Dwayne McGee as Gus Grissom as a character in the movie.

[00:09:31] Which... I saw that movie when it came out and I really liked it. And I highly recommend it. Uh... There is one more bit of info on here. I was saving to the end. Gus Grissom was one of the astronauts that was on Apollo 1. And if you don't know the story of the Apollo 1 mission, it ended up not actually happening.

[00:10:00] Because while they were still on the launch pad, uh... The capsule caught fire. And the hatch was unable to open. And all of the astronauts in the capsule were killed. So... It's just a few years after he survived the Liberty Bill 7, he was killed on Apollo 1 before it even launched. Ironically, it was also a faulty hatch. So...

[00:10:30] Yeah, that was a little odd. Looking back at it now that I think about it. As for where the capsule is now, it is currently on permanent display at the Cosmosphere in Hutchinson, Kansas. And I've heard of it. I've seen pictures and videos and stuff. It looks really interesting. It's like the largest collection of... Wow, like space... History...

[00:11:00] Stuff. And it looks really interesting. And I want to go. And especially just to see this. And they like cleaned it up. There's... You see... You see the Liberty Bill 7 and they raise it up. And it's all dirty and grimy. And it has like all like the sea stuff on it. And it's rusty. Because it's been underwater for like 30 something years. And then you see the pictures and videos of it on display now. And it's all shiny and silver and cleaned up. And it's all cool.

[00:11:29] And I like... I like it. I want to go see it. But I digress.

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