STEVE EMBER: There were some concerns about the safety of the huge Redstone rocket that was to carry the spacecraft. The launch had been delayed several times while more tests were done. By the time the rocket was ready for launch, Yuri Gagarin had already gone into space for the Soviet Union.

The choice of Alan Shepard to be the first American to fly in space was announced just a few days before the launch. Flights planned for May second and May fourth had to be halted because of bad weather.

On May fifth, nineteen sixty-one, a Friday, Alan Shepard struggled once again into his Mercury capsule. The vehicle was named Freedom Seven. There was almost no room to move. Shepard waited inside for four hours. Weather was partly the cause of the delay. There were clouds that would prevent filming the launch. Also some last-minute repairs had to be made to his radio.

Shepard was tired of waiting. So he told the ground crew to hurry to solve the problems and fire the rocket. Finally, they did.

SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: The rocket slowly began climbing. Millions of radio listeners heard a voice from the Cape Canaveral control room say: "This is it, Alan Shepard, there's no turning back. Good luck from all of us here at the Cape."

The rocket rose higher and higher. For five minutes, Alan Shepard felt the weightlessness of space. He felt himself floating.

Freedom Seven flew one hundred eighty-five kilometers high. Then it re-entered the atmosphere and the spacecraft slowed. The fifteen-minute flight ended with a soft splash into the ocean about five hundred kilometers from Cape Canaveral.