Scott Carpenter's Guest Essay #11

Flown Art: The Story of Cece Bibby and
the Mission Insignias for Project Mercury
by Francis French

Almost half a century after the events of Project Mercury, it is perhaps hard to recall just how unusual it was to see a woman working at a rocket launch pad. This did not apply only to the high-visibility jobs of NASA astronaut or chief engineer. Women were simply not found in any role close to the manned rockets of the Mercury program as they were readied for launch. No role, that is, save one.  

In 1959, the year America selected its first astronauts. Cecelia “Cece” Bibby was a graphic artist with a brand-new job at the Chrysler Corporation, specializing in the company’s
work with NASA. She’d spent a number of years at other engineering companies prior to this, helping turn the ideas of others into inspiring artwork and technical drawings. Yet there seemed no chance that, at NASA, she’d be producing art on spacecraft.

Beginning in 1961, when the Mercury astronauts began flying in space, they chose names for their spacecraft that were then duly painted on the side. In keeping with an engineering program, this was done in the most practical way possible: stencils and spray paint. Although functional, the stenciled names hardly excited the imagination. This brief tradition changed with the third manned Mercury mission, and a choice made John Glenn, the pilot of Friendship 7.

Glenn wanted something a little more personal for his spacecraft—something more like a mission insignia or logo than a stenciled name. He also wanted it hand-painted directly on the metal spacecraft shingles. Bibby’s manager was to supply sample artwork to the astronaut, and he delegated the task to Cece, who later recalled she got the job because her boss believed women had better handwriting. Her design—a flowing, free-hand white script superimposing the name “Friendship” over a large, red number seven—was so popular with Glenn that he not only chose the design for his spacecraft but also insisted that Cece paint it on the spacecraft herself.

For the pad workers, this presented a problem. Women, in their opinion, had no business being at the launch site, and for Cece to work at the very top of the gantry, hand-painting her design on their beloved and priceless piece of engineering, was an invasion they objected to strongly. Cece, however, had the perfect answer: “If you don’t like it, take it up with John Glenn.” In the end her vivid, red-and-white mission insignia was the perfect personal touch to the spacecraft. As Glenn rode into space inside Friendship 7, orbited the Earth, and survived a fiery reentry, Cece’s artwork rode along with him, on a far more perilous journey—on the outside.

A precedent had been set. The next astronaut to fly, Scott Carpenter, wanted something even more ambitious for his Aurora 7 spacecraft, and he wanted Cece to paint it, too. The result was almost mystical in its artistry—instead of the clean-bordered, swooping lines of Glenn’s design, Cece created a colorful radiance of overlapping circles representing an aurora—an upper-atmospheric effect that can be explained by science but only fully appreciated when observed for its sheer beauty. Overlapping the celestial display was a vivid, marine-blue number seven. Cece, whose technical-drawing expertise was enlivened with real artistry, had created a masterpiece. A spacecraft that otherwise would have been virtually indistinguishable from other Mercury capsules had its own unique and indelible identity.

Cece’s last spacecraft artwork was created for the next mission—Sigma 7, flown by Wally Schirra. Symbolizing the engineering precision of his mission, Schirra was delighted with Cece’s design, a number seven intertwined with the Greek symbol for Sigma, meaning summation. This bold image is perhaps her most striking and immediate, iconic in the way that symbols of religions or nations can be. With three unique, diverse designs under her belt, Cece literally made a mark on spaceflight history, creating enduring images that have been remembered long after orbital statistics and experiment results were forgotten.

We can only speculate what other artwork Cece might have designed had she remained with the program. Before the next mission, however, she was briefly lured away from NASA, and by the time she returned the streak was broken. NASA, too, was changing, with functional names such as Gemini 4, 5, and 6 replacing the inspirational names chosen by the Mercury astronauts. Sometimes artistry such as Cece’s can thrive only at the beginning of a project. As NASA grew larger and more bureaucratic, the moment passed. Artwork eventually found a new outlet in small, embroidered crew patches worn on spacesuits, but the spacecraft themselves looked interchangeable and relatively impersonal. Something intangible was lost when Cece stopped painting on them.

The Mercury spacecraft were not designed to be reused. Once they had flown their missions, they quickly lost value to the rapidly advancing space program. Similarly, the artwork was not designed to last: although Cece experimented with different kinds of paint to see which would survive the (literally) blistering heat of reentry, this was done only out of personal curiosity, and much of the artwork burned away during reentry. In many ways, however, the ghostly remnants of paint, still quite readable in postflight photos, became even more evocative of the power and inherent danger of flight.

Once back on Earth, plucked from the ocean, the spacecraft were disassembled and inspected before going on tour as public displays to boost interest in the space program. Sometimes they spent long months outside, exposed to the elements, and it seems that the surviving traces of Cece’s artwork were neglected even more. Somewhere along their journeys, possibly shortly after their flights, the bolted pieces of shaped metal that displayed her work were removed from two of the three spacecraft. They were never returned, and their whereabouts are unknown.

Sigma 7 is on display only a few miles from the pad where it was launched, but the artwork is long gone. Similarly, the relevant panel is missing from Aurora 7, on show in Chicago. Because of the way it is displayed, one needs a stepladder to climb up next to the spacecraft display to even try and look for it. On the very top of the spacecraft is the faintest trace of blue and white paint: a fortunate survivor from Cece’s final brushstrokes that lapped over onto the next panel. Not too dissimilar from traces of paintwork that can still be glimpsed on ancient Egyptian temples—the bright color then suddenly ends, at a blank, bland replacement panel. What was once a symbol of bold, cutting-edge technology is now worn and incomplete, like an archaeological relic.

Cece’s first, and perhaps most famous, artwork survives. As the thousands of visitors discover every year at the National Air & Space Museum in Washington, D.C., the Friendship 7 spacecraft is at the front entrance—a national treasure—and there, still visible on its side, is Cece’s artwork. It now symbolizes not only Glenn’s desire to personalize his mission and Cece’s breaking of a gender barrier but also our need to conserve, preserve, and protect the remaining fragments of the Space Age as carefully as we might an ancient piece of Greek or Egyptian art. Just as technology can demonstrate human need and willpower, so art can portray personality and humanity. With Friendship 7, we still have both sides of the story intact for future generations.