STS-135 T-29 Days

The insides of these first capsule were minuscule.  A hatch was opened and the astronaut climbed into a space just big enough to sit.  They wore a space suit the entire time, because they were not confident in the pressure hull of the capsule.

The Mercury flights were short.  John Glenn's flight of three orbits lasted just under five hours.  By the sixth and final orbital flight they made it to 22 orbits and lasted a day and ten hours.  Look at the picture of the capsule, below and imagine being in this position with no place to move for 36 hours.

The seven astronauts that flew these missions were known as the Mercury Seven.  Many went on to fly in later programs.  For three and a half decades, John Glenn was not allowed to fly on any missions.  The rumor, and probably the truth, was that he was too important a symbol to risk him dying in a malfunction in a future trip.  After many decades, he finally was permitted his wish to go into space again, and was an astronaut on the STS-95 Shuttle mission in 1998 at age 77. 

At the time of the eighth Mercury flight, the program had achieved its goals and although there were more capsules left, the moon program was anxious to move on to the next phase, which was Project Gemini.  It was May 1963 and much needed to be accomplished and learned to be able to get to the moon.  Think about what it took to  get this tiny capsule with one person in it to go around the world a few times then land in the ocean.  They had to carefully monitor fuel, oxygen, power and stamina of the astronauts.  There was a lot to learn and a long way to go to get to the moon by the end of the decade.

These were the very first objects man had put into orbit.  There were no communications satellites.  All trans-ocean communications was via limited  capacity cables.  TV broadcasts were mostly prerecorded.  The first color TV shows began airing in 1961 as this was happening.  TVs were still made from vacuum tubes that people (including me as a kid) would remove and take to the grocery store to test, replace, and fix their own TVs.  Consider what the space program accomplished in that era.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury-Atlas_9