HECTV's “History in the First Person: Is an instructional/educational series that brings history alive taught by those who witnessed history, lived history and/or made history. For this episode, “Building the Mercury Capsule”, we partnered with the St. Louis Science Center, NASA and The Missouri Aviation Historical Society. Viewers get the rare opportunity to learn about the genius that launched NASA. Through the first hand accounts from the Mercury Mission engineers, Illustrated by historical NASA film footage and rare still images, we find out how out how these engineering pioneers designed, built and launched the first manned spacecraft using a slide ruler. The year was 1963, fifty years before advanced computer technology, as we know it today. It was an era of the Space Race between the United States and Russia. It was and exciting time in history, the birth of space exploration. Fifty years later, we get a once in a lifetime opportunity to witness the engineer’s raw emotion as they share their feelings about viewing the historical realtime footage of the Mercury Capsule’s risky launch and it’s successful reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere. This program offers an engaging interactive classroom experience for STEM studies with HECTV's free teacher curriculum materials and suggested classroom activities that are posted at www.hectv.org to accompany this episode, “History in the First Person: Building the Mercury Capsule.” Hosted by Tim Gore.