Art by Steve Ditko
When the evil mutant Magneto decided it was time to reveal himself to the human race in X-Men #1 – “to show my power, to make homo sapiens bow to homo superior” – he targeted the latest rocket launch by the U.S. government. With Cape Citadel under maximum security and the belief that nothing could prevent a successful launch, Magneto considered it the perfect opportunity to demonstrate his ability to manipulate magnetic energy. Thus shortly after the craft launches, the rocket suddenly changes direction, loses altitude, and crashes into the Atlantic Ocean.
The next day, a newspaper boy exclaims, “Extra, extra! Another missile fails! Extra!” The headline of the Daily Globe likewise notes that it was the sixth consecutive U.S. missile launch that ended in failure.
When the real-world Mariner 1 satellite was launched on July 22, 1962, the corresponding Atlas-Agena rocket operated flawlessly for three minutes and thirty-two seconds before it suddenly changed trajectory. It then went further off course, spiraling out of control and headed towards the shipping lanes of the North Atlantic. Fearing a catastrophe if it continued on its current path, mission control remotely self-destructed the Atlas-Agena rocket and its cargo.
It took NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory just five days to figure out what went wrong – an R, standing for “radius,” was missing a corresponding bar over it, indicating a “smoothing” function, in one of the many lines of computer programming. Had it been there, the bar would have instructed the guidance system to continue on its current course if it lost a guidance-lock on the ground. Since the bar was not present over the R, the system assumed it was off course when the lock was lost and the rocket began changing directions at random in a futile attempt to relocate the ground lock.
The Los Angeles Times ran the headline “‘Hyphen’ Blows Up Rocket” but the incident demonstrated just how vulnerable the American space program was to the slightest human error and not just the villainy of a mutant like Magneto.
In the New York City of the Marvel Comic Universe, Peter Parker – aka Spider-Man – is having difficulty adjusting to life as a superhero. Part of the problem is J. Jonah Jameson, editor of the Daily Bugle, who has deemed Spider-Man a menace to society. “I say that Spider-Man must be outlawed!” he shouts in The Amazing Spider-Man #1. “There is no place for such a dangerous creature in our fair city. The youth of this nation must learn to respect real heroes – men such as my son, John Jameson, the test pilot – not selfish freaks such as Spider-Man!”
As James Donovon notes in his 2019 book Shoot for the Moon: The Space Race and the Extraordinary Voyage of Apollo 11, the Mercury Seven astronauts – Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Walter Schirra, Alan Shepard, and Donald “Deke” Slayton – were hailed as heroes from the moment that they were introduced to the public, modern-day mavericks willing to strap themselves on top of a rocket originally designed to carry nuclear warheads and travel into the vastness of space.
On May 18, 1959, the Mercury Seven traveled to Cape Canaveral to watch their first rocket launch. One minute after takeoff, the missile exploded. As the astronauts blankly stared at each other, Alan Shepard quipped to John Glenn, “Well, I’m glad they got that one out of the way.” It was the fifth straight failure of an Atlas rocket. By December, only one out of every three launches had been successful. When another Atlas exploded in July 1960, the failure rate climbed to forty-five percent.
Despite such dangers, John Jameson is ready to make his first journey into space and practically everyone in New York City has turned out for the historic launch, including Peter Parker. Although the blastoff goes off without a hitch, disaster strikes the Mercury-like capsule when a small section of the forward guidance system breaks loose, causing it to descend into an erratic, out-of-control orbit that will eventually result in the craft crashing to Earth instead of safely returning from space.
Clinging to an outside wall of the Missile Control Center in order to eavesdrop, Spider-Man overhears that a replacement guidance unit exists but there is no way of getting it to the spacecraft, which is still spiraling downward through Earth’s atmosphere. Entering through the window, the superhero announces that he can deliver it to John Jameson and the military official in charge accepts the offer.
Having secured a replacement guidance unit, Spider-Man’s next step is to find a way to reach the crippled capsule. He immediately heads to the nearest military base and commandeers both a pilot and a jet plane. “I’ll probably be grounded forever for this,” the pilot tells Spider-Man as the two head for the skies. “But I got a hunch that if anyone can save that poor joker, it’s you.”
The pair quickly spot the spiraling spacecraft, but it is traveling too fast for even a military jet to overtake. Spider-Man’s plan, however, is for the jet to simply get close enough for him to attach his webbing onto the capsule and then be pulled in its direction. Despite the incredible speed that he suddenly finds himself traveling and wind resistance that puts his superstrength to the test, Spider-Man achieves the impossible and connects the new guidance unit into place.
With control of the spacecraft now back in the hands of John Jameson, the astronaut straightens its path and ejects the parachute designed to slow its decent. Spider-Man continues to cling to the outside of the capsule until it is close enough to the ground for him to leap to safety, immediately leaving the area instead of staying for what he foresees as an embarrassing round of gratitude from everyone involved – including J. Jonah Jameson.
The next morning, however, the Daily Bugle calls for Spider-Man’s immediate arrest. “It was all a plot for Spider-Man to steal the spotlight from my son,” J. Jonah Jameson declares. “I accuse Spider-Man himself of sabotaging the capsule so that the guidance unit would fall off. Spider-Man unlawfully broke into a military base and commandeered a plane by force. Then, by means of a grandstand play, he tried to make a hero of himself, but he caused an important missile test to fail and set our space program back by many weeks. I repeat – Spider-Man is a menace to America!”
The twenty-seven-year-old Yuri Gagarin was only four years removed from flight school when he was chosen from a pool of six cosmonauts to become the first Russian – and consequently first human – to travel into space. Gagarin was sealed into a spherical spacecraft known as Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961, and although the entire trip was controlled from the ground as opposed to the cosmonaut himself, the capsule and its occupant not only broke through the atmosphere but made a complete orbit around Earth during its 108-minute flight.
A little over three weeks later, American astronaut Alan Shepard was awakened from his slumber at 1 a.m., fed a breakfast of bacon-wrapped steak and eggs, and helped into an aluminum-coated pressure suit. Shortly after six, he was sealed inside the Mercury capsule that he had named Freedom 7 – where he sat for the next three hours, courtesy of cloudy weather and a faulty computer. Then at 9:32 a.m., forty-five million Americans watched on live television as the Redstone rocket ignited and slowly lifted Shepard upward.
Unlike Yuri Gagarin’s complete orbit, Shepard was merely carried one hundred miles above the planet before falling back to Earth in a curving arc. The takeoff was flawless and Shepard calmly relayed both his body’s ability to handle the acceleration and weightlessness as well as the ship’s performance. He then manually operated the small thruster jets to change direction, marveled at the “beautiful view” of Earth below him, and began his decent.
The heat shield and retrorockets reacted perfectly, and within a minute the Mercury capsule had slowed to 341 miles per hour. Parachutes atop the craft opened as designed, and after a 15 minute and 22 second flight, Alan Shepard splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean.
The date was May 5, 1961, and the United States had finally entered the Final Frontier.
Anthony Letizia