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Pulling Ahead

v1.1.1 / chapter 17 of 26 / 01 apr 13 / greg goebel / public domain

* The US hoped to move ahead of the USSR in the space race with the Gemini missions, but the Soviets managed to stay one step in the lead with their Voskhod missions. However, Voskhod was little more than a modification of the Vostok space capsule, while the Gemini was a next-generation spacecraft, and the Gemini flights soon began to outstrip Soviet achievements.

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[17.1] VOSKHOD IN ORBIT
[17.2] GEMINI FLIES: GEMINI 2 THROUGH GEMINI 4
[17.3] GEMINI 5 / THE GEMINI 6 & GEMINI 7 DUAL MISSION

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[17.1] VOSKHOD IN ORBIT

* The first successful aerial drop test of a Voskhod sharik was on 5 October 1964, and the Soviets wasted not the slightest amount of time putting the spacecraft into orbit. The initial unmanned test flight of a Voskhod, unannounced and assigned the name "Cosmos 47" in the West, was on 6 October 1964, successfully returning to Earth the next day. A crew of dogs had been considered for the flight, but Ivan Ivanovich manikins were used instead.

Cosmos 47 was rapidly followed by the launch of manned "Voskhod 1" by a Voskhod booster on 13 October. The spacecraft carried Konstantin Feoktistov, Vladimir Komarov, and Boris Yegorov, the first doctor to fly in space. They landed successfully in snow flurries after a day in space, with the landing system functioning perfectly.

The mission was proclaimed a success, which given its goal of simply putting three men into space and recovering them, was unarguably true. One naive American journalist praised the spacecraft, saying that Soviet engineering had been able to fly a space capsule that provided a "shirt-sleeve environment", though had its riders been free to publicly say what they thought, they might have not praised this "feature" at all.

Krushchev, the supposed author of the scheme, chatted with the cosmonauts while he was on vacation on the Black Sea. He hopefully enjoyed his triumph, since on 14 October he was called back to Moscow, raked over the coals by a committee, and summarily sacked, to be replaced by Leonid Brezhnev and his associate, Alexey Kosygin. Krushchev wasn't shot as he might have been in an earlier day, living in quiet retirement -- with the authorities keeping an eye on him and making it clear that he should keep a low profile -- up to his death in 1971.

Krushchev had been energetic in his rule and wanted to reform the system, but he had ended up rocking the boat far too much and too wildly for Communist Party power figures. Crop failures in recent years, which were attributed to half-baked schemes promoted by Krushchev and his people, were the last straw. The crop failures also illustrated the deepest weakness of the Soviet space program. The USSR was expending a large amount of resources to put cosmonauts into orbit, while the country could not put bread on the table of its citizens and was frantically building weapons to counter American military power. Brezhnev was aware of this imbalance in priorities and had no great enthusiasm for space spectaculars. The Soviet space effort had gained considerable momentum of its own and would continue, even scoring further significant victories, but the loss of its most powerful patron, Nikita Krushchev, was a major blow.

* A second unmanned Voskhod test flight, designated "Cosmos 57", was performed on 22 February 1965, but due to a ground command error, it activated its self-destruct system shortly after reaching orbit, leaving behind a cloud of debris. The second manned Voskhod flight was flown on 18 and 19 March 1965. "Voskhod 2" was a two-man mission, the crew consisting of Pavel Belyaev and Alexey Leonov, but in classic Korolyev style it also accomplished yet another space victory for the USSR: the first space walk or EVA. Voskhod 2 was fitted with an inflatable airlock, through which Leonov emerged to float in space on 18 March.

He was wearing a new "Berkut (Golden Eagle)" space suit designed for the task. The Berkut was a modified SK-1 suit, with a self-contained life support system capable of keeping a cosmonaut alive for 45 minutes -- along with a backup umbilical to the spacecraft -- plus a removeable helmet, dual pressure bladder garments, and a coverall garment with multiple thermal layers. Unlike the orange SK-1 coverall, the Berkut coverall was white to provide reflectivity; the helmet had a visor to block solar ultraviolet, since it was dangerously easy to get a "killer sunburn" in space, where there was no atmosphere to block UV. Belyaev also wore a Berkut suit, so he could come to the assistance of Leonov if necessary.

A television camera mounted on the outer hatch recorded his movements for relay to Earth. The movements were not very graceful: Leonov found it difficult to maneuver and banged into the spacecraft several times. After twelve minutes of such amusements, Leonov tried to get back into the airlock, and found to his alarm that he would not fit. The sweaty, exhausted, and worried cosmonaut had to repeatedly depressurize his suit, finally going below a pressure level where he was at risk of getting "the bends", with nitrogen bubbles forming in his bloodstream and causing agonizing pain. It was either take the risk or die in space. He finally managed to depressurize his suit enough to allow him to climb back into the Voskhod. Leonov later claimed he had a suicide pill in his helmet to fall back on if all else failed.

The airlock was discarded before reentry. The automatic reentry system failed, and so the spacecraft made an additional orbit and returned to Earth under manual control. The cosmonauts overshot their landing zone by 3,200 kilometers (2,000 miles), landing in snow-covered Siberian forests. The antenna for their radio beacon, which a recovery team was supposed to use to find the spacecraft and its crew, was broken, and the two men spent a frosty dark night in the capsule. Some stories claimed they were harassed by wolves who kept them from getting out and making a fire; other stories say it was a bear; possibly they simply heard strange noises outside and wondered what was making them.

A rescue team arrived in the morning, but they had to make camp overnight before they could get back to civilization. To cover up the silence of the cosmonauts in the meantime, Soviet media claimed they were "resting" after their mission, which in a sense was true.

The mission had not gone as well as anticipated. The Soviets would not perform another EVA until 1969. In truth, however, floating around in the vacuum in a spacesuit was another thing that wasn't quite as easy as the science-fiction writers had thought, and the Americans would have plenty of difficulties of their own with it. Although further Voskhod missions were being considered at the time, Voskhod 2 would turn out to be the last manned Voskhod flight: Soviet manned space flight was entering an idle period.

BACK_TO_TOP

[17.2] GEMINI FLIES: GEMINI 2 THROUGH GEMINI 4

* One of the reasons that Voskhod flights were discontinued was that the American Gemini missions in 1965 and 1966 had matched or exceeded all of the Voskhod's capabilities. The Soviets would have to come up with something better to upstage the Americans.

Gemini had got off to a slow, methodical start. The first unmanned flight, "Gemini-Titan 1 (GT-1)" or just "Gemini 1", went into orbit on 8 April 1964 and remained in orbit for four days. It burned up on reentry as intended, the mission goals not including recovery. Everything went well, which was a relief after the many problems and delays the program had suffered.

A second unmanned Gemini flight, "Gemini 2", was launched on 19 January 1965, after the Soviets had splashed their three-man Voskhod flight across front pages. Gemini 2 was a suborbital flight, focused on validation of the recovery system. The mission had been badly delayed by a resurgence of technical problems, as well as troubles caused by lightning and then hurricanes, and had forced NASA to give up on their hopes of putting the initial manned Gemini into orbit in 1964. In some ways this was just as well, since the problems with the ejection system and fuel cells were still being ironed out, and the Gemini-Agena was well behind schedule.

The launch itself went very well, in fact extremely well considering that it was "on its own" up to the last minutes of the flight. Mission Control suffered a power blackout at launch and didn't get systems back online until the flight was almost over. It turned out the news media had plugged into the Mission Control power circuit, and tripped the circuit breakers when they lit up their lighting. In debriefing, somebody suggested to Chris Kraft that he keep a flashlight on hand for future flights. He was not amused. The news media were told to bring generators in the future.

The first manned Gemini flight, "Gemini 3", was finally launched on 23 March 1965, after the Soviets had finished with Voskhod, and took Gus Grissom and John Young into orbit. This made Grissom the first person to fly in space twice. Remembering how Liberty Bell 7 had sunk to the bottom of the ocean, Grissom, inspired by a popular musical, named the Gemini "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" for good luck. NASA public relations thought it was frivolous and asked for an alternate name. Grissom suggested: "Titanic". The name stayed "Molly Brown", but the order came down to stop giving spacecraft names for the time being and avoid the whole problem.

Gemini 3 was simply a technology validation mission to ensure that the spacecraft would perform as designed, and only lasted five hours. The astronauts wore David Clark Company "G3C" spacesuits -- the designation meaning "Gemini Type 3 suit, Clark company" -- with some relationship to the suits David Clark built for the X-15 program. They were somewhat more elaborate than the Mercury suits, with more garment layers:

• long underwear.
  
  
• A "comfort garment" made of lightweight nylon to reduce abrasion of the suit on the skin.
  
  
• A pressure garment of nylon covered with neoprene synthetic rubber.
  
  
• A linknet restraint garment.
  
  
• A cover garment of Nomex synthetic -- a polymer similar to nylon but fire-resistant, sometimes called "high-temperature nylon" or "HT-1". The cover was white instead of aluminum; some training suits had the aluminization and were worn by astronauts in publicity shots early in the program.

As with the Mercury suit, the G3C was supplied with oxygen from spacecraft systems. Things went well on the flight and the mission scored a "first", a significant one this time, when the two astronauts used the spacecraft's orbital maneuvering system to change the spacecraft's orbit. A manned spacecraft had actually been "flown" in space under piloted control, not simply turned around with its reaction thrusters, paving the way to orbital rendezvous tests.

Gemini 3 was also marked by an incident where Young "awarded" Grissom a corned-beef sandwich that had been smuggled on board the spacecraft. It started spreading crumbs around and they had to stash it away quickly -- bread would prove problematic as a space food. The US Congress reacted fussily with such frivolity on a mission that cost so many taxpayer dollars, even though the mission accomplished most of its list of objectives, and in the future astronauts had to be more careful about what they took along on a spaceflight.

There had been a red-faced shouting match between Chris Kraft and Deke Slayton over turf issues between Mission Control and the astronauts on the eve of the launch; it had introduced turbulence in what was otherwise a flawless flight, and led to Kraft refusing to speak with Slayton for a bit. They cooled off and talked it out after the flight, essentially taking the obvious tack to give Mission control authority over the mission and the astronauts authority over the spacecraft itself. Gene Kranz later commented that everyone was under so much pressure that such blowups were not surprising, and in fact Kranz was surprised it never came to blows.

* Gemini seemed to be a solid system now, and to make up for lost time program officials decided to conduct launches on two-month instead of three-month intervals, as had been originally planned. The first "real" Gemini mission was "Gemini 4", which lifted off on 3 June 1965, carrying Jim McDivitt and Ed White into orbit. The Titan pogoed for a bit during the ascent, causing the astronauts to stutter over the communications link, but the booster then smoothed out its flight.

The mission lasted four days, putting the US in reach of Soviet capabilities. It was supposed to have lasted seven, but continued fuel cell development problems dictated the use of shorter-lived conventional storage batteries. Mission Control was now operating for the first time from "Mission Operations Control Room (MOCR)" -- the new, much improved facility at Houston, instead of the original cramped facility at Cape Canaveral.

Hopes that the Gemini-Agena would be ready in time were also let down, but the crew attempted a mock "rendezvous" with the upper stage of the Titan II that had put them into orbit. The stage had been fitted with flashing strobe beacons to help the crew spot it. The astronauts turned the Gemini around and approached the stage, but they had difficulties matching velocities: their training had not quite soaked up the reality that in general orbital altitude is a function of velocity and vice-versa, with a lower orbit being a faster orbit. It wasn't like parking a car, or even like refueling in midair from a tanker jet. They finally had to give it up when the stage started to tumble. The exercise did prove useful in demonstrating that trying to match velocities with another space vehicle was yet another thing that was not as simple as had been assumed, and program engineers starting working to figure out how to improve matters.

Gemini 4 also involved the first American EVA or "spacewalk", which had been hastily inserted into the flight plan in response to Leonov's EVA, the issue of EVA not being seen as a particularly big deal at NASA. The astronauts wore improved David Clark "G4C" suits, the primary change from the G3C being addition of a "thermal / bumper" garment, between the restraint garment and the nomex cover garment. The thermal / bumper garment consisted of a layer of felt to provide micrometeorite protection over layers of alternating mylar polymer and dacron cloth to provide thermal protection. The dacron interlayers provided an "airspace" that retained heat, sealed in by the top and bottom mylar layers.

The G4C suit came in two configurations, what amounted to a rescue suit for an astronaut who remained in the capsule, and an EVA suit for the astronaut performing a spacewalk. Astronaut Ed White's G4C suit for EVA differed from the IVA configuration by featuring a thicker thermal / bumper garment, plus overgloves for thermal protection -- surfaces could get very hot or cold in space -- and a second visor with a gold film to block solar UV. The EVA G4C was supported by a 7.6 meter (25 foot) umbilical to the spacecraft, backed up by a reserve oxygen supply good for a few minutes in case something went wrong with the umbilical.

A few hours after launch, the astronauts depressurized the capsule, and Ed White then opened up his hatch to float around in space for 21 minutes, using a compressed-air gun, the "Hand-Held Maneuvering Unit (HHMU)", to jet around a bit. There were no problems, White saying it was "the greatest experience, this is just tremendous", though admittedly he wasn't really trying to do anything that looked like work.

When McDivitt told White to get back in before the spacecraft passed into Earth's nightside and darkness, White replied: "It's the saddest moment of my life." The whole exercise seemed like a great success; the fact that he had considerable difficulty getting back into the cramped capsule and was overheated for hours afterward didn't get that much attention.

The relatively long mission allowed NASA to evaluate dietary and sanitation measures for extended spaceflight, and the astronauts used bungee cords to see if they could maintain muscle tone while being cooped up in a flying compact car for several days. They also took large numbers of photographs of Earth landscapes with hand-held cameras, part of an ongoing NASA effort that eventually helped lead to the development of Earth resource satellites.

After 62 orbits, Gemini 4 returned to Earth under manual control because the spacecraft's computer had failed. Although NASA had wanted Gemini to be much more robust than Mercury, the new capsule was complicated and full of new technology; Gemini's reliability was nothing to write home about. Gemini 4 landed about 80 kilometers (50 miles) off target. Public reaction to the flight was extremely enthusiastic. Although White's spacewalk had been as much as a stunt as Leonov's, the American spacewalk had been announced in advance and conducted live on TV. Once again, NASA was able to use the agency's openness to advantage.

BACK_TO_TOP

[17.3] GEMINI 5 / THE GEMINI 6 & GEMINI 7 DUAL MISSION

* Gemini 4 was judged a success, and was followed by eight more Gemini missions. "Gemini 5" was launched on 21 August 1965, carrying Gordo Cooper and Pete "Tweety" Conrad on an eight-day mission. Gemini 5 was mainly an endurance test, carrying the new fuel cells to support a long spaceflight, but the flight was also supposed to test the spacecraft's rendezvous system.

Since the Gemini-Agena upper stage still wasn't ready at the time, the two astronauts were to play "tag" with a 30 kilogram (66 pound) rendezvous evaluation pod, basically just a radar "beacon" with a flashing light, that would be released from the Gemini's adapter section once in orbit.

Unfortunately, a fuel cell fault in the spacecraft forced the cancellation of the rendezvous test, and in fact almost cut the flight short. Mission controllers were able to devise a workaround that kept the two astronauts in space for the scheduled 120 orbits. However, there had been a miscalculation on the rate at which the fuel cells produced water and the astronauts found themselves scrambling to store the overflow in every container they could find. Spacecraft engineers made a note to add a water dump valve to later Geminis.

Cooper and Conrad returned safely to Earth, though their spacecraft was badly cluttered by the rubbish accumulated during the long mission. Among the rubbish was a litter of freeze-dried shrimp, the result of an accident with a food packet that filled the capsule with little pink satellites. The capsule landed short of target; it turned out that the flight dynamics engineers had miscalculated the trajectory for the reentry maneuver, forgetting to factor in the Earth's rotation during the reentry period. No real harm was done, but the engineers weren't allowed to forget it.

Conrad was particularly glad to get the mission done with. In contrast to the laid-back Gordo Cooper, Conrad was on the hyperactive side. The Gemini was as tight or worse a fit for two astronauts as the Mercury capsule had been for one, with no room to do more than just sit there, and Conrad said that just sitting there in the Gemini capsule for eight days was the "hardest thing I've ever done."

* "Gemini 6" was supposed to be the first mission to rendezvous with the modified Agena upper stage, the crew consisting of Wally Schirra and Tom Stafford. The Atlas Agena lifted off from Cape Canaveral on 25 October 1965. The Gemini was supposed to follow a short time later that day, but the Agena failed to make orbit and the Gemini launch was scrubbed.

Walter Burke, a McDonnell vice-president in charge of space and missiles, suggested that NASA simply launch "Gemini 7", which was in advanced preparation, and have the two spacecraft rendezvous with each other. They couldn't dock, but they could maneuver together, which was more than the Soviets could do at the time. The dual mission would be useful practice, and would also show up those smartass Commies.

Senior NASA management was cold to the idea at first, but the astronauts and a lot of other folks in the ranks were enthusiastic, and fleshed out the details solidly enough to sell the idea. Arranging two launches so close together would be difficult, since there was only one launch pad at Cape Canaveral that could support a Gemini-Titan launch, but mission planners finally decided that they could get it done with a little clever juggling. They could erect and check out the second Gemini-Titan first, and then pull it off the pad and store it; then erect, check out, and launch the first Gemini-Titan; and finally pull the second Gemini-Titan out of storage and launch it.

Putting two manned spacecraft into orbit at one time would also greatly strain Mission Control's resources, particularly since the communications network was only set up to handle one manned spacecraft and one unmanned spacecraft at a time. The resolution was to treat Gemini 7 as an unmanned target during the rendezvous phase and let Gemini 6 do all the heavy lifting in the rendezvous. There was a lot of discussion and running around, but all the pieces were put into place.

Gemini 7 was launched on 4 December 1965, carrying Frank Borman and Jim Lovell on a 14-day mission. Since they were not going to perform a spacewalk, they were outfitted in new Dave Clark G5C lightweight spacesuits that only weighed 7.3 kilograms (16 pounds). They were comfortable and easy to take off and put on; the crew wore pilot-style helmets under soft hoods. The suits had large faceplates that gave them an insectlike appearance, and so they were called "grasshopper suits". They were only used on Gemini 7, the remaining Gemini missions using G4C suits.

Gemini 6 had been rescheduled for launch after Gemini 7, but the next attempt to put Schirra and Stafford into orbit, on 12 December 1965, also had to be scrubbed due to a launchpad failure when an umbilical cable dropped a second too soon, causing the Titan's engines to shut down after ignition. The booster's fuel tanks were fully pressurized, and there was a major possibility of the Titan going up like a bomb, producing what was quaintly called a "BFRC (Big Fucking Red Cloud)" of burning toxic storable fuel.

Schirra, the command pilot, sensed the failure and had to decide instantly whether the two astronauts would eject. Since the Titan hadn't budged off the pad he decided against it. Had he done so, the dual mission would have had to be canceled. Distrust of the ejection seats and a pilot's instinct to "stay with the aircraft" did much to influence Schirra's decision. He had taken a bet with his and Stafford's life, and he got a lot of respect for gutsiness. The pressure in the fuel tanks bled off quickly and everyone started breathing again. The incident turned out to be lucky, in a sense, since the booster inspection revealed that somebody had failed to remove a dust cover during engine assembly, an oversight that might have had disastrous consequences.

After three days of intense work, Gemini 6 was finally successfully launched on 15 December, and the capsule was shot into an orbit about 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles) behind Gemini 7. Gemini 7 was fitted with auxiliary lights to act as a docking target; Gemini 6 closed the distance and met up with Gemini 7 a little over seven hours after launch. There was a ripple of applause and cheers in Mission Control. The Geminis maneuvered with each other for several orbits, coming within 30 centimeters (a foot) on one occasion. Schirra and Stafford held up a card labeled "BEAT ARMY" to one of their forward portholes, and Borman, a West Point graduate, held up a placard labeled "BEAT NAVY" in reply.

The rendezvous exercise completed, Gemini 6 returned to Earth a little under 26 hours after launch. Although Gemini 6 was powered by batteries, the last of the Geminis to not carry fuel cells, the two astronauts could have stayed up somewhat longer, but Gemini 7 was having problems with their fuel cell systems and ground controllers had their hands full. Gemini 7 managed to complete its mission, though the two astronauts had to conserve electric power, returning to Earth after 330 hours 35 minutes in orbit.

They were glad to get back home. Two weeks cramped into the tiny capsule was both uncomfortable and tedious, a test of endurance, and certainly a test of getting along. Borman was a no-nonsense decisive manager type; some people, like Deke Slayton, thought he was a take-charge sort of guy, while others found him obnoxious, Gene Cernan describing him as a "tight-assed sonofabitch". Lovell was just as competent but much more relaxed and almost everyone liked him; he was cheery, easy going, with a corny sense of humor. They got along well. They sang top-forty pop hits to each other to pass the time.

The primitive sanitation was a particular problem, badly aggravated when a urine bag broke in Borman's hands. The flight was, as Lovell commented later, something like sitting in a latrine for two weeks without access to a shower. However, they had demonstrated that men could stay in space for the full duration of a Moon mission and then some.