1960 Mercury Capsule Operations Manuals
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GUEST:
My father, Charles Anderson, was in the United States Air Force, 1953 to 1957.
APPRAISER:
Mm-hmm.
GUEST:
He was a fighter pilot. And after he did his service, he got a job at McDonnell Aircraft Corporation in St. Louis, Missouri.
APPRAISER:
Mm-hmm.
GUEST:
And he was a technical writer. In 1959, they assigned him to Project Mercury...
APPRAISER:
Mm-hmm.
GUEST:
...to write the astronaut handbook.
APPRAISER:
Mm-hmm.
GUEST:
So that's the, uh, smaller manual, and that is the size of the manual that was taken into space with the Mercury astronauts. He gifted the manual to us in 2018. And at that time, he mentioned he might have a couple other copies of the manual in the attic. So he came down from the attic. This was the first edition of the manual.
APPRAISER:
Mm-hmm.
GUEST:
And then the one on the other side of the table is the final signed proof copy, where everyone had to sign off on the manual before it was printed.
APPRAISER:
So, 1961, that was the height of the space race, trying to put the first human into outer space. The Mercury Project was a culmination of all of our efforts. That was the name of the space capsule that one of the seven Mercury astronauts was going to use to be the first American to outer space. Because in April of 1961, the Soviet Union had just got Yuri Gagarin into space. And this project was a little bit rushed. The capsule was very, very small. It could barely fit one person. So they consolidated all this information into a little 104-page manual. And that's not a whole lot of pages. This actually has less information than your car's manual nowadays. And what's fascinating is, who signed it?
GUEST:
Alan Shepard.
APPRAISER:
And did your dad tell you ever about meeting Alan Shepard?
GUEST:
I was with my father when Alan Shepard autographed his copy of the manual.
APPRAISER:
Mm-hmm.
GUEST:
In 1990, Alan Shepard was autographing some books down in Huntsville, Alabama, at the s, rocket museum.
APPRAISER:
Mm-hmm.
GUEST:
And as they were going through the line, my dad put this in front of Alan Shepard. And he paused and he looked up, and he goes, "I haven't seen one of these in 40 years." And he goes, "Where did you get this?"
APPRAISER:
Mm-hmm.
GUEST:
And my father said, "I wrote it." Mm-hmm. And he stood up and shook my father's hand and nice little chit-chat for a couple of minutes.
APPRAISER:
Mm-hmm.
GUEST:
And autographed it for him.
APPRAISER:
His autograph is out there, but having it on something that is so important to his survival is really, really impressive. These things are so rare. After consulting with my colleagues, we feel that we'd give an insurance value of $8,000 to $10,000 for these three books.
APPRAISER:
My father would be proud.
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