This evening I completed three more Mercury career missions. I did record them on video, but won't upload unless requested,
since I haven't gotten any feedback on my previous videos
The first was just a dress rehearsal, bringing the Mercury spacecraft from a T-90m C&D (Cold and Dark) configuration to a T-5m configuration. The next mission was an actual sub-orbital flight, from pre-launch through launch, ascent, a short sub-orbital arc, then a retro-fire, entry and landing.
The third mission was the
fun one. Instead of launching on the simpler Redstone rocket, we launched the Florida Explorer I spacecraft
![Wink :wink:](./images/smilies/icon/wink.gif)
on an Atlas rocket for an orbital flight. From pre-launch to launch and ascent, which of course was longer than the sub-orbital flight. Ascent was fine and interesting, this being a "stage and a half" rocket.
Once on orbit we had a bit of a hiccup, as ground control believed I might be having a problem with my number two battery. I had to do troubleshooting to verify it was dead and do some switch throwing to take it off-line. Fun stuff!
Once on orbit I did some manual flying to point the spacecraft towards the booster to practice station keeping. Then some more pointing around with the thrusters which I wasn't very good at. And I managed to almost run out of fuel for the automatic system, leaving me almost at the point of having to do an Apollo 13 and manual point the spacecraft for the reentry burn. Happily I had just enough fuel and all went well... almost.
The reentry looked good:
But instead of landing well off the east coast of Florida, I landed off the west coast up in the Big Bend area near Tallahassee. If you take a good look at the screenshot, you'll notice where I landed.
But it is all a lot of fun for a space nut like myself
![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/icon/biggrin.gif)