refurbishment of this seventh airframe so as to have three Little Joe boosters for the qualification flight program. The success of Little Joe 1B in January 1960 meant that the next flight, the sixth, to be known as Little Joe 5, would be the first to fly a real Mercury capsule from the McDonnell production line. In passing from development flight tests with boilerplate models to qualification flight tests with the "real McDonnell" capsule, the Space Task Group moved further away from research into the development and toward operations. Mission numbering The official Mercury mission numbering designation was a two-letter designation that corresponded to the launch vehicle type, followed by a dash then a digit indicating the particular set of flight objectives, and an optional letter used to distinguish further flights to accomplish those objectives. So the official designation for the first Little Joe flight was "LJ-1." Flights did not occur in numeric sequence as the project schedule was adapted as it progressed. The actual flight order was: Specifications Little Joe I Thrust: 235,000 lbf (1,044 kN) Length: 15.2 m Diameter: 2.03 m Fin Span: 6.5 m Weight: 28,000 lb (12,700 kg) Fuel: Solid Burn Time: ~40 s Recruit rocket (Thiokol XM19) Thrust: 37,500 lbf (167 kN) Length: 2.7 m Diameter: 0.23 m Weight: 350 lb (159 kg) Fuel: Solid Burn Time: 1.53 s Castor rocket (Thiokol XM33) Thrust: 58,200 lbf (259 kN) Length: 6.04 m Diameter: 0.79 m Weight: 9,753 lb (4,424 kg) Fuel: Solid Burn Time: 37 s See also Big Joe Little Joe II Boilerplate (spaceflight) Notes References Sources External links NASA - This New Ocean: A History of Project Mercury NASA Report: Performance characteristics of the Little Joe launch vehicle - September 1962 Little Joe DVD 1959 in spaceflight 1961 in spaceflight NASA space launch vehicles Project Mercury