Extensive training binder of legendary astronaut Deke Slayton from circa 1959, dated shortly after his selection for NASA's Project Mercury, the first U.S. crewed space flight program. The three-ring binder, 10˝ x 11.25˝ (2.75˝ thick), contains over 200 pages of early handwritten reports, lessons, lists, and graphs made in pencil and ink by Slayton while stationed at the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, during the intensive Mercury Seven training period. The binder and all its contents, which had been uniformly water-damaged from a flood in Houston, were professionally cleaned and restored by expert paper conservator J. Franklin Mowery in 2012. His remarkable efforts saved the majority of this binder’s many incredible documents, which offer many rare, perhaps never-before-seen assignments issued to the Mercury Program spacemen.
The binder is separated by numerous section sheets: History and Background, Schedules, Guidance and Control, Environmental Control, Support and Restraint, Communications and Tracking, Instrumentation, Emergency Conditions, Radiation, and more. Among these sections are pages dedicated to Training Program, Mercury Pilot Assignment, Astronaut Indoctrination and Mock-up Review Agenda, Training Program, Conference Plan Brief, First Month’s Program for Astronauts, Survival Training, Ground Support Tests, Crew Space, Restraint Harness (with diagrams of spinal injuries from a hard landing), and even a report entitled "Some Observations on the Personality Structure of Military Personnel Engaged in Unusual Missions.” Additionally, the binder contains Slayton’s handwritten review of the Mercury selection process that ran from February to April 1959. Several maps and pages loose from binder, as is a group of printed comic strips. In good to fine condition, with varying degrees of moisture damage, ranging from little to somewhat heavy, throughout. Accompanied by an Invoice and Documentation Report from J. Franklin Mowery.
