Search - Freedom 7: America's First Space Flight on DVD

New and rare materials

Laurenc SVITOK | Bratislava Slovakia | 01/02/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This single disc release represents the new stream of Spacecraftfilms materials dedicated to the particular manned missions. Logic behind the starting with Freedom 7 is obvious - the best start is from the beginning. I was curious to see what else can be released after the incredible six disc Mercury set - is there anything new which is not on the "big" set ? I am not disapointed, this material is an excellent adition to the main Mercury set. Part 1 contains official NASA and USIA movies on the flight plus a Spacecraftfilmsmade Mercury program summary.
Here I would like to make the viewers aware of a rare film footage in the US Information Agency short b/w movie - you have here the actual pickup of Al Shepard from the hooked cabin hanging below the helicopter #44! This kind of recovery is absolutely unique, it hapenned only once. The same was planned for Gus Grissom but went wrong completely, Glenn, Schirra and Cooper have been brought onboard the recovery NAVY ships inside the cabin and egressed on the ship's deck. Scott Carpenter's egress was also unique, he left the cabin through the top hatch but due to the several hundreds kilometers landing site overshot no coverage exists.
I never saw this first part of the Shepard's recovery on the film, a lot of photos only.
Part 2 contains the Spacecraftfilms material on the Freedom 7 flight, the same like in the big Mercury set.
Part 3 contains over 500 photos related to the flight, many of them rare and which is very nice it's not official photos only. You can see a lot of interesting shots in "unguarded" moments, I personaly like Gus Grissom "making faces" in front of the Freedom 7 periscope to - maybe - entertain Al Shepard sitting in the sealed cabin before the launch.

Laurenc Svitok
Bratislava, Slovakia"