Gus Grissom: The Lost Astronaut (INDIANA BIOGRAPHY SERIES)

In this second volume in the Indiana Historical Society Press’s Indiana Biography Series, Hoosier historian and writer Ray E. Boomhower explores Grissom’s life, from his days as a child playing in the forests of nearby Spring Mill State Park to his service as a combat pilot flying missions against Communist opponents in the skies over Korea. He also delves into the process by which NASA selected its original seven Mercury astronauts, the jostling for position to be the first American in space, and Grissom’s near-fatal Liberty Bell 7 flight that haunted his subsequent space career.

After almost drowning when the hatch malfunctioned on his Mercury flight, Grissom resurrected his reputation through determination and his careful work with the space agency’s Gemini program. The Hoosier astronaut made such a mark on the program that fellow astronauts nicknamed the Gemini spacecraft the Gusmobile. Grissom continued to be the astronaut NASA turned to when testing new spacecraft for the Apollo moon program. On January 27, 1967, Grissom, along with crew members Ed White and Roger Chaffee, died when a fire swept through their Apollo command module during a supposedly safe test on the ground at Cape Kennedy’s Launch Complex 34. The astronaut’s story continues after his death, however, most recently with the discovery and raising of the Liberty Bell 7 from its resting place on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.