In May 1961, Alan Shepard became the first American in space, but only after a four-hour hold on the launch pad left him with a full bladder and no collection device, until he finally told the launch team he would have to go inside his sealed pressure suit, briefly short-circuiting his medical sensors

In May 1961, Alan Shepard became the first American in space, but only after a four-hour hold on the launch pad left him with a full bladder and no collection device, until he finally told the launch team he would have to go inside his sealed pressure suit, briefly short-circuiting his medical sensors

On the morning of May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard lay strapped on his back inside a capsule the size of a phone booth, breathing pure oxygen through a sealed pressure suit, waiting for a Redstone rocket beneath him to stop misbehaving. The countdown had already slipped past three hours. His bladder was full. The hatch was bolted shut. Mission control kept telling him to hold. Eventually, according to National Geographic’s reconstruction of the morning…