Everything you never knew you wanted to know about the Mercury Project
MA-1
From RixWiki
The Mercury-Atlas 1 (MA-1) vehicle was launched from the Cape Canaveral test site on July 29, 1960. The primary purpose of the MA-1 flight was to test the structural integrity of a production Mercury spacecraft and its heat-protection elements during reentry from an exit abort condition that would provide the maximum heating rate on the afterbody of the spacecraft. The spacecraft involved was production item 4 and was equipped with only those systems which were necessary for the mission. An escape system was not provided for this spacecraft. The mission failed about 60 seconds after lift-off. The spacecraft and launch vehicle impacted in the water east of the launch complex. Because of this failure, an intensive investigation into the probable causes was undertaken. As a result of this investigation modifications were made to the interface area between the launch vehicle and the spacecraft to increase the structural stiffness. This inflight failure and subsequent intensive investigation resulted in a considerable delay in the launch schedule and the next Mercury-Atlas launch was not accomplished until almost 7 months later.
