Mercury-Redstone BD

Mercury Redstone Booster Development (MR -BD) was the last unmanned mission to test the Redstone rocket under the U.S. Mercury program. Here, a dummy capsule was used in an escape rocket dummy.

Before a manned launch with a Redstone rocket you wanted to have the problems that had occurred at Mercury - Redstone 2 solved.

The reason for the excessive acceleration when the previous flight was a defective valve, which regulated the flow of hydrogen to the steam generator, whereby the fuel pumps were running too fast. Therefore, the missile was modified to resolve this problem in this and the following Mercury - Redstone missions. In addition, the missile was made ​​by four reinforcements less sensitive to vibrations. The capsule as foreseen, not separated from the rocket. The team reached a maximum speed of about 8,200 km / h and a peak altitude of about 180 km. It struck 494 km from the launch site in the Atlantic and sank there.

Since all the set objectives of the mission were achieved, the rocket for manned flights was released.

Swell

• Http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraftDisplay.do?id=MERCRBD
• Http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/history/mercury/mr-bd/mr-bd.htm