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Old 03-14-2017, 09:22 AM
Brent Brent is offline
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Default Mercury Redstone

Freedom 7 flew on MR-3. The photos on the NASA dot gov website have MR7 on the booster. Is this correct.
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Old 03-14-2017, 09:25 AM
Rob Campbell Rob Campbell is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Brent
Freedom 7 flew on MR-3. The photos on the NASA dot gov website have MR7 on the booster. Is this correct.


The combination of the Mercury capsule and Redstone booster was designated MR (Mercury Redstone)-3 as it was the third launch of this hardware configuration. The NASA site is a typo as there never was a MR-7. Mercury flights received MA designations beginning with John Glenn's flight since the Atlas booster was used and not the Redstone.
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Old 03-14-2017, 12:53 PM
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RocketRohde RocketRohde is offline
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Actually there was a MR-7 on the original NASA schedule for June 1960, but was cancelled somewhere along the way when the schedule apparently slipped some.
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Old 03-14-2017, 02:54 PM
Rob Campbell Rob Campbell is offline
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I stand corrected! BOTH are valid designations for Alan Shepard's spacecraft. The flight was designated MR-3, but the rocket was designated MR-7. Now that's just plain confusing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercu..._Launch_Vehicle
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Old 03-14-2017, 08:03 PM
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Earl Earl is offline
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I think where some of the confusion comes in is that (as I recall) Shepard's Mercury spacecraft (the capsule) was production #7. The *mission* designation however was MR-3.

Because it was production spacecraft #7, Shepard chose the name "Freedom 7" as his official *spcaecraft* name.

However (yep, it gets a little more confusing), because there were seven Mercury astronauts, when Gus flew the next mission (as a gesture of teamwork and fraternity), he kept the "7" designation in the naming of his capsule, calling it, as we all remember, "Liberty Bell 7", even though it had to be, one would assume, spacecraft #8 to come off the assembly line.

And so, each following Mercury astronaut used the number 7 in the naming of their *spacecraft*, though Shepard's was actually the only one that really was capsule #7.

The *mission* designations however did run MR-3, MR-4, then the MA series missions for the Mercury-Atlas orbital flights.

I think I got that right....


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Old 03-15-2017, 07:23 AM
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mojo1986 mojo1986 is offline
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I'll bet there was a little superstition there..............7 is a 'lucky' number.

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