Aug 142018
Found on ebay a while back, a pre-NASA Army Ballistic Missile Agency illustration dated 25 May 1959 depicting the Mercury space capsule, including smaller views of it atop both a Redstone and a Jupiter. In both cases this would be a purely sub-orbital lob. It’s unclear just what’s going on with the nose of the Jupiter version; it does not have the abort tower the Redstone version has. This may be a purely aerodynamic fairing, with abort motors located underneath the capsule in the sizable adapter section.
