Everything you never knew you wanted to know about the Mercury Project
MR-BD
From RixWiki
| Project Mercury Missions | ||
| [[{{{1}}}|140px|{{{2}}}]] | ||
| Flight Order | ||
| LJ-1 | 12 Aug 1959 | |
| BJ-1 | 9 Sep 1959 | |
| LJ-1A | 4 Nov 1959 | |
| LJ-2 | 4 Dec 1959 | |
| LJ-1B | 21 Jan 1960 | |
| Beach Abort | 9 May 1960 | |
| MA-1 | 29 Jul 1960 | |
| LJ-5 | 8 Nov 1960 | |
| MR-1 | 21 Nov 1960 | |
| MR-1A | 19 Dec 1960 | |
| MR-2 | 31 Jan 1961 | |
| MA-2 | 21 Feb 1961 | |
| LJ-5A | 18 Mar 1961 | |
| MR-BD | 24 Mar 1961 | |
| MA-3 | 25 Apr 1961 | |
| LJ-5B | 28 Apr 1961 | |
| MR-3 | 5 May 1961 | |
| MR-4 | 21 Jul 1961 | |
| MA-4 | 12 Sep 1961 | |
| MA-5 | 29 Nov 1961 | |
| MA-6 | 20 Feb 1962 | |
| MA-7 | 24 May 1962 | |
| MA-8 | 3 Oct 1962 | |
| MA-9 | 15-16 May 1962 | |
The Mercury-Redstone-Booster Development (MR-BD) mission was made on March 24, 1961 from the Cape Canaveral launch site, with a Mercury-Redstone launch-vehicle and the refurbished and ballasted Little Joe 1A research and-development spacecraft. This flight was made as the result of the analyses of the performance of the launch vehicles on the Mercury-Redstone 1A and Mercury-Redstone 2 flights, which showed that there were some launch vehicle problems that required correction and requalification. Most of these problems had to do with the overspeed performance that was attained during those missions. The flight was successful and analyses of the launch-vehicle data indicated that the launch-vehicle corrections were entirely satisfactory. No recovery of the spacecraft was attempted since it was used only as a payload of the proper size, shape, and weight, and no provisions were made to separate it from the launch-vehicle during the mission.
The MR-BD flight was pushed for by Wernher von Braun. The interposition of this flight delayed the launch of the first manned Mercury spaceflight MR-3, which allowed the Soviet Union to launch Vostok 1 making Yuri Gagarin the first man in space.
