Redstone rocket.

You guys know the Redstone's the ones that were used for the Mercury NASA missions. What was the deal on them? I've looked into it and have seen them as highly unreliable. Can someone explain what was wrong with them and why they chose them over other large rockets.

originally posted by: Mizar
You guys know the Redstone's the ones that were used for the Mercury NASA missions. What was the deal on them? I've looked into it and have seen them as highly unreliable. Can someone explain what was wrong with them and why they chose them over other large rockets.

To answer this question, NASA chose the US Army's Redstone ballistic missile for its sub-orbital flights as part of the Mercury program because the Redstone was was the oldest one in the US fleet, having been active since 1953 and had many successful test flights. A total of six Redstone launches for the Mercury program were made, one which carried the chimpanzee Ham and the last two which carried Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom to suborbital altitudes. The first Atlas mission for the Mercury program in 1960, which was unmanned and suborbital, ended in failure 58 seconds after launch, but the second Mercury-Atlas flight in February 1961 was successful. The first orbital flight of the Atlas for the Mercury program in April 1961 failed to reach orbit, but the Mercury-Atlas 4 became the first Atlas flight for Project Mercury to orbit the Earth.

Link:
en.wikipedia.org...

a reply to: Potlatch

The REDSTONE Mercury launch booster was a heavily modified version of the ARMY REDSTONE MRBM - the booster was lengthened by 8 ft to carry extra propellants and Hydrogen peroxide for the steam generator/turbo pump

There were 800 alterations from the standard ARMY REDSTONE including replaced the inertial guidance with a simpler autopilot which was not as precise, but adequate

Also an abort sensing system was added to lift the Mercury spacecraft free in case of booster malfunction


en.wikipedia.org...

The book 'This new ocean' details the early stages of the space race:

history.nasa.gov...

I've only skimmed it, but the gist seems to be that at the time they were developing the Mercury program, the Redstones were an established missile launch system and Atlas were was still in development. Atlas rockets also cost $2.5m a launch, compared with $1m for Redstones.

So a combo of cost and proven track record seems a big factor.