The Mercury Joe Story
 

Preface: This L3 project was inspired 39 years ago when I got a GI Joe Mercury Capsule for my birthday. I always imagined it flying (even orbiting) and it kept me out of my parent's hair for days on end.  Fast-forward to the mid 90s when the GI Joe Capsules are re-issued by Toys-R-Us -- naturally I picked up one (well 3).  After the popularity and success of the Gumby flights I simply had to look to the shelf above my workstation to be inspired for my next big project.  When I found a tube that was 9.25" (the exact diameter of the Capsule base), this project was set into motion.

 

Project goal: To send a full GI Joe capsule aloft (with Astronaut), have the capsule free-fall and deploy its recovery system safely.  The entire flight will be recorded by three different on-board video systems.

Note: This ISN'T a scale project; the "Mercury Booster" will be much shorter than the real thing.  The "Mercury" capsule, being built from the GI Joe unit, is under scale as well. 

The big challenge of this project is to perfect a system that allows the capsule to free-fall to a safe altitude before deploying its parachutes. Technically this is no more than a dual deployment flight, but the added complication of extracting the tower so the capsule can free-fall is anything but simple.

  • At apogee the capsule (with  tower) will decouple from the booster.  This also releases the hold-down straps for the Tower.

  • The capsule has a deployment bag attached to the heat shield which will pull out the drogue chute for the booster.  

  • The decoupling activates an ejection charge timer inside the tower, allowing for the capsule and tower to drift away from the booster (which should be unfurling its drogue chute).

  • Once the tower charge has fired and its chute has inflated, the weight of the capsule should cause it to fall free off the tower base.

  • The capsule will free-fall to about 1000' before deploying a drogue that will subsequently deploy the main chute.  

With all going to plan, the Tower (fitted with fairly large chute) should record the free fall and recovery of the capsule and the booster, but a lot of that depends on how the tower swings.