Great questions, Bob.
I don't know how much of the following are as-built or how much detail was for planning purposes only, but the following two links have a lot of very interesting details:
http://www.angelfire.com/space2/sp425/26.html
http://www.angelfire.com/space2/sp425/21.html
-Scott, K4KDR
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-----Original Message----- From: Robert Bruninga Sent: Monday, January 09, 2017 3:24 PM To: AMSAT Subject: [amsat-bb] Friendship 7 details?
After seeing the great movie “hidden figures” last night, I had lots of questions from my faded memory of the time (it was the same year I got my ham license and was 14 years old). This Wiki page has a lot… but the questions lingering in my mind were:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Mercury
1) Was his mission planned at 3 orbits? (I thought it was more and then cut to three).
2) If #1, then they must have had to have recovery ships at a different spot for every potential orbit since he could not maneuver anything other than when to fire the retros. If it was 7 cut to three, then I guess they only needed two ship areas…
3) What frequency was CAPCOM? Was it the 108 MHz? I think the tracking stations all relayed the voice via HF?
4) Also related to #1, if something happened to the pilot, I assume ground control could fire the retros. _______________________________________________