Full coverage of the design， engineering， development and flight operations of NASA's Mercury spacecraft， which in addition to several unmanned tests supported two piloted ballistic sub-orbital flights in 1961 and four piloted orbital flights between 1962 and 1963。The Mercury programme bridged the gap between the hypersonic X-15 and the two-man Gemini spacecraft， which in turn led to the Apollo spacecraft。 MERCURY - AMERICA'S FIRST PILOTED SPACECRAFT 1958-1963 completes the Haynes Workshop manual series of US and Russian piloted space vehicles and serves as a precursor to a possible Hynes Workshop Manual on the NASA Orion deep-space exploration vehicle scheduled to fly in 2018 on the Space Launch System， the world's biggest rocket。The emphasis in the book will on describing the design， engineering and technology of the Mercury spacecraft rather than on the missions， which are comprehensively covered in several previously published books。 In this way the Workshop Manual brand line is maintained as a reference to the way machines are built and operated。