Project Mercury Trivia Quiz

Answer: Freedom 7

Liberty Bell 7 was the name of the next flight (designated MR-2). Friendship 7 was the third Mercury flight and Faith 7 was the final flight of the Mercury series.

Answer: 6

Only six of the astronauts flew during Project Mercury. Deke Slayton was diagnosed with a heart problem and was grounded. He was later cleared to fly in space and was a member of the crew during the Apollo-Soyuz Test Flight in 1975.

Answer: Alan Shepard

Shepard was commander of Apollo 14 and landed in the Fra Mauro highlands on February 9, 1971. He also slipped a golf club head in with his gear and attaching it to the long handle of a tool, became the first man to play a sport on the moon by hitting a golf ball with his improvised club.

Answer: Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom

Grissom maintained that he had done nothing to trigger the hatch's eject mechanism and that it had simply blown on its own. Later testing on similar hatch ejection mechanisms failed to replicate those results. Ironically, Grissom later lost his life in the Apollo 1 fire.

The hatch was designed to open inward due to fears that cabin pressure might cause the hatch to explode outward during a flight. The inward opening hatch could not be opened quickly because of the tremendous pressure caused by the fire which forced it closed.

Answer: Gordon Cooper

Gordon Cooper's flight aboard Faith 7, was the first and only Mercury flight to last longer that 24 hours in duration. His flight lasted 34 hours, 19 minutes and 49 seconds.

Answer: John Glenn

Glenn's flight was also the first use of the Atlas booster for a manned flight. The previously used Redstone booster was not powerful enough to lift the Mercury capsule high enough to acheive earth orbit.

Answer: Wally Schirra

Schirra flew in Sigma 7, (the fifth manned Mercury mission), Gemini 6 (with pilot Thomas P. Stafford, and Apollo 7 (with CSM Pilot Don Eisele and LEM Pilot Walter Cunningham. Shepard was assigned the first Gemini mission, but was grounded and replaced due to his contracting Menieres disease.

He later flew in Apollo 14. Grissom replaced Shepard in Gemini 3. He was also assigned the first Apollo mission (later designated Apollo 1) but died in a cabin fire during a "plugs out" test on the pad in 1967. Glenn retired from NASA in 1964, sometime after his Mercury flight, but returned to space aboard Space Shuttle Discovery (STS-95) October 29 to November 7, 1998.

Answer: John Glenn

Cooper was Air Force while Shepard and Schirra were Navy. Deke Slayton and Gus Grissom were also Air Force veterans while Scott Carpenter was the third Navy flyer.

Answer: Scott Carpenter

Shepard commanded Apollo 14, Cooper commanded Gemini 5 and John Glenn flew as a payload specialist aboard STS-95. Only Carpenter never flew in space again.

Answer: MA-7 ( Aurora 7) -- Scott Carpenter

Wally Schirra had been chosen as the back-up pilot for MA-7, but an administrative decision was made to give the flight to Carpenter who had already put in the necessary training as back-up pilot for John Glenn's flight aboard MA-6.