Grissom's Capsule Lifted From Ocean

By MARCIA DUNN, AP

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) - Filled with stinking muck after 38 years at the bottom of the Atlantic, Gus Grissom's Mercury capsule was brought to the surface Tuesday along with seven Mercury dimes the astronaut carried into space as souvenirs.  Liberty Bell 7 emerged from the black ocean in the middle of the night under the glare of floodlights. It was in remarkably good condition.

``It almost appeared like an apparition or like a ghost,'' expedition leader Curt Newport said in a ship-to-shore interview.  ``When we were diving on it, it was on the bottom, it was still 1961. When we got it up to the surface, all of a sudden it was 1999. So it was almost like having this thing punch to the surface through some type of time portal or something.''  The 7-foot aluminum-and-titanium capsule sank after splashdown on July 21, 1961, when its hatch blew open prematurely and the spacecraft filled with water. Grissom narrowly escaped drowning, and insisted until his death in a 1967 Apollo launch pad fire that he did nothing to cause the hatch to blow.  The capsule had lain on the ocean floor - 3 miles down, even deeper than the Titanic - ever since.

It was recovered just one day shy of the 38th anniversary of the 15-minute suborbital flight that made Grissom the second American in space, and exactly 30 years to the day that man first landed on the moon.

Newport's team did not find the capsule's hatch, which could have shed light on whether the explosive bolts malfunctioned or whether Grissom activated them prematurely.

Once Liberty Bell 7 was safely aboard ship, Newport rummaged through the spacecraft, which had a sulfurous odor, and found some of the shiny dimes still there.

The capsule was quickly placed in a specially designed container filled with sea water to prevent corrosion. The ship carrying it was due to arrive at Cape Canaveral on Wednesday.

The Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center will disassemble and clean the capsule. Then the Discovery Channel, which financed the expedition at a cost of millions, will take it on a three-year tour before returning it to the Kansas museum for display.   NASA welcomed the news. The space agency never tried to recover the spacecraft because of the cost and because it had more important things to do at the time, like launching John Glenn and getting men on the moon.

Anything made of aluminum, like the control panels, had deteriorated. But considering the harsh conditions underwater, the capsule was in surprisingly good condition, particularly the fabric, Newport said.

``I can still see the actual straps that Grissom wore during his flight inside,'' he said. ``The personal parachute inside the spacecraft is perfectly intact.''

Newport, an underwater salvage expert who spent 14 years searching for the capsule, located the spacecraft on May 1, about 300 miles southeast of Cape Canaveral. But he had to leave it there when the cable to the expedition's robot vessel snapped in rough seas. Newport and his team went back to get the capsule this month.  Betty Grissom, the astronaut's widow, lamented the discovery of the capsule back in May, saying, ``It brings back memories and there's nothing good.''

When Newport finally located the capsule again, it took eight hours to pull it up. A robot vessel was used to attach a sling to the capsule. Then, sturdy Kevlar cord was used to reel in the capsule, which weighed about 3,000 pounds with the water inside.  Bomb experts removed and threw overboard an explosive device in the capsule that was supposed to go off when the spacecraft sank in 1961 to help the National Aeronautics and Space Administration pinpoint its location. The device never detonated.

When Liberty Bell 7 finally pierced the ocean surface, its recovery line still dangled from the spacecraft to Jim Lewis' amazement. He was the pilot of the helicopter that tried to lift the water-filled spacecraft in 1961.

``To see it come out of the water again, like it did that long ago, was a feeling that I don't have an adjective to apply to,'' Lewis said.

Because of problems recovering Liberty Bell 7, two days were wasted because of bad navigational data and the recovery vessel kept breaking - Newport had no time to search for the hatch.  The answer to the enduring mystery of why the hatch blew may have been in the inside-the-capsule camera that was running when Liberty Bell 7 splashed down. But the camera was found broken open and the film was ruined.

``I don't think there's going to be any way to answer that question, ever,'' Newport said. He has no intentions of going back to look for the hatch, ever: ``Finding the spacecraft was good enough.''

Mercury astronaut Wally Schirra said he believes Grissom's insistence that it wasn't his fault.

``If they find the hatch, it would mean something,'' Schirra said. ``But in any case, I know it was something mechanical.''

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