Mercury - Redstone

Redstone as used for the suborbital Mercury missions
Mercury-Redstone 3 lifts off carrying astronaut Alan Shepard in the first U.S. manned sub-orbital flight on 5 May 1961 credit to NASA Scanning credit to Kipp Teague Redstone - Mercury The Redstone is a single-stage launch vehicle. It was developed as a short-range ballistic missile for nuclear warheads. It was selected for manned spaceflights because of its reliability record. Its design was based on Werner von Braun's V-2. As with the V-2, the direction of the thrust could be controlled by steerable vanes mounted directly beneath the engine nozzle where the engines' exhaust gases could be deflected. The Redstone was not powerful enough to bring a man into orbit. Instead, several suborbital flights or ballistic flights have been made, among which two were manned. The first one was flown by Alan Shepard, and he became, therefore, the first American who went into space. His flight only took about 15 minutes, but it gave NASA enough confidence to pursue its course towards more ambitious spaceflight missions.
Exterior and Interior	Exploded view	Mercury-Redstone launch vehicles

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