Wednesday’s Huntsville Times describes something that sounds at least mildly quixotic: an effort to recreate John Glenn’s historic 1962 spaceflight on the 50th anniversary, using private funding. The project is the brainchild of retired pilot Craig Russell, who has created a nonprofit organization to raise the money needed to refurbish a Mercury capsule and launch it with an astronaut on board. Russell estimates he need to raise $35 million for a Falcon 9 launch, but thinks that either refurbishing an unflown Mercury capsule or building one from scratch could be done for as little as $10 million because all the R&D needed to build the capsule was done decades ago (also, apparently, student labor would be involved.)
Russell is trying to raise money for the project now, but said he would abandon the project if he can’t raise “significant interest and funding” during the course of this year. NASA doesn’t appear to be interested: Russell met with an unnamed NASA associate administrator last June to brief him on the effort but did not get a positive response. “He was not very enthusiastic,” Russell said.
[…] Space enthusiast aims to recreate Glenn flight [Huntsville Times (via Personal Spaceflight)] […]
Nice thought, but the lack of interest so far doesn’t surprise me. Better to use that money to shape up the future than to reminesce about the past, glorious as it is.
A far better honor would be to use the money as a prize for placing a private astronaut in orbit. $45 million would get folks interesed. Call it the Glenn Prize in honor of the flight.
Sounds kinda neat to me… but then I’m young enough that I’ve never seen a capsule launch, and certainly it would be cool to see a Mercury go up.
…But other than the entertainment factor Shuttlegirl is probably right.
I do like the idea of having students work on it.
The coolest part is what can be done in that adapter section – flying many eperiments or smallsats beneith the capsule. After the Mercury capsule commerative flight, a nosecone could be added atop and the adapter could continue to fly future high tech experiments/spacecraft – shaping the future!
Americans in Orbit 50 Years has announced astronaut selections…go to website for details
http://www.aio50.org
Craig Russell