Project Adam

Project Adam was a proposed plan by the United States Army for a manned, suborbital rocket flight.

The twin aims were to gather scientific data on high-altitude flight and to enhance national prestige in the wake of the successful launch of the Soviet Union's Sputnik 1.

[1] The plan involved using off-the-shelf hardware to send a passenger on a steep ballistic flight from Cape Canaveral, with a splashdown in the North Atlantic.

The astronaut would have been housed in a capsule modelled on the USAF's Manhigh gondola, modified for a water landing, with no provision for manual control.

[3] The plan was not formally approved, although after the formation of NASA on 29 July 1958 elements of the hardware were folded into Project Mercury.