::: capsule launch for Friendship 7 anniversary :::

I'm Italian (so I apologize in advance for my imperfect English) and have been a Space exploration enthusiast since I was 8 years old.

Last July, the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, was VERY DEPRESSING because in last 50 years no other human has gone to the Moon and walked on the lunar surface.

But on February 20, 2022 (just ten months from now), we will celebrate the 60th anniversary of John Glenn's mission aboard the Mercury Friendship 7 (launched with the Atlas SM-65D), which launched the first American into orbit.

Well, for that anniversary, I've had a great idea to do something (much) better than the (nearly) nothing done for the Apollo 11 anniversary.

My idea is to send a well-made scale model of the Friendship 7 into Earth’s orbit using a rideshare rocket launch on a multi-sat mission.

The money raised with this crowdfunding campaign (net of taxes and GoGetFunding fees) will be used to build the scale model (made by professionals fabricators) of Glenn's Mercury capsule and to pay the rideshare launch costs.

Also, my hope is to launch it on February 20, 2022 (the exact date of the 60th anniversary) or pretty close to that date.

The goal of this crowdfunding campaign is to raise $1 million, but if this campaign is able to raise even more money, the capsule will be built out as large as possible.

In the best case scenario (that is if this campaign raises more than $60 million), I will try to make a FULL-SCALE model of the Glenn's Mercury, with a full-scale mockup of the astronaut aboard and launch it with an Antares 230 rocket, on the SAME day and minutes (and to the SAME orbit) of the Mercury Friendship 7 capsule.

The only difference will be that the Mercury model will not simply fly around the Earth for three orbits, but instead it will stay there until its orbit naturally decays.