#OTD On this day (November 21) in 1960, Mercury-Redstone 1 took a four-inch flight - the Redstone rocket's engines fired enough to lift it about four inches before the engines cut out. The vehicle came back to a vertical resting position on the launch pad. The engine failure automatically activated the escape tower system, but it left the uncrewed capsule behind. Read more about what initially seemed like a huge blow to the Mercury program here, in this excerpt from the NASA History publication