Mercury Redstone BD, March 24th, 1961

These are 1/72 scale decals for the Mercury-Redstone BD (Booster Development), launched on 24 March 1961 from Cape Canaveral, Florida — an uncrewed test flight inserted into the Mercury program schedule by Dr. Wernher von Braun out of an insistence on perfection before trusting a Redstone with a human life.

The Mercury-Redstone BD was added to the launch manifest between the MR-2 chimpanzee flight (which carried Ham into space in January 1961) and the planned first crewed flight. Von Braun was deeply unsatisfied with the booster's performance on the preceding missions — MR-1A and MR-2 had both exhibited anomalies that, in his judgment, fell short of the standards required to declare the Redstone man-rated. Over the objections of NASA managers who were acutely aware that the Soviets were closing in on a crewed spaceflight of their own, von Braun insisted on one more uncrewed booster development test before he would certify the vehicle safe for an astronaut. The BD flight on 24 March 1961 was a complete success — a textbook performance that finally satisfied von Braun's exacting standards.

The cost of that caution was measured in history: just three weeks later, on 12 April 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space aboard Vostok 1. Had von Braun accepted MR-2's performance as sufficient, Alan Shepard might well have beaten Gagarin into space. Instead, Shepard flew on 5 May 1961 — a triumphant flight, but forever the second crewed spaceflight in history. The Mercury-Redstone BD thus occupies a uniquely poignant place in the story of the Space Race — the flight that was right, and the decision that changed history.

A deeply significant and seldom-modeled subject from one of the most consequential moments of the Space Age. Please allow some time for decal printing and shipping.