_Live From Cape Canaveral_ - Jay Barbree [43]
The Voshkod crashed in the thick forest near Perm in the Ural Mountains, coming down to wedge itself tightly between two large fir trees. Leonov and Belyaev remained inside their crippled ship, unable to open their hatch.
During the freezing night, a recovery helicopter arrived dropping warm clothes, but the clothes fell into the higher branches, out of reach. The next morning, a rescue crew entered the thick stand of firs on skis and wrestled the Voshkod free, releasing the freezing cosmonauts for hot food and warm clothes.
Leonov and Belyaev skied out of the forest to a waiting helicopter. And now that the two cosmonauts were okay and on their way to Moscow, Soviet officials began putting a positive spin on the flight. They emphasized the importance of the world’s first spacewalk and trumpeted the new Voshkod as a spaceship capable of carrying three men to the moon.
A Pravda headline read, “SORRY, APOLLO!”
EIGHT
Gemini
Five days after the two Russian cosmonauts crashed in snow-covered trees, the first countdown for Gemini was underway. Days before, Gus Grissom had created some management discomfort. He had never been able to shake off whispers that the sinking of the Liberty Bell Seven was due to his screwup rather than a technical mistake in the hatch. So Grissom named Gemini 3 “Molly Brown,” as in “The Unsinkable Molly Brown.”
Well, we guys in the media loved it, and everyone else thought it was fun stuff except Washington. These NASA suits, looking for recognition of their authority, were not pleased. Orders were issued. No more names. We reporters extended our middle fingers and on the airways and in print, Molly Brown stayed.
Grissom and John Young closed Molly Brown’s hatches and roared off the new Titan II pad. The big rocket easily pushed the first Gemini into orbit, where Grissom and Young were told to stay for three trips around Earth. There they would wring out the new ship by testing Molly Brown’s systems. They fired its onboard rocket thrusters. The rocket blast moved them into a higher orbit, and then they lowered the Gemini into another, and just for the fun of it, they changed their orbital plane. These were not only maneuvers essential for going to the moon, they were essential for rendezvous and docking with other spacecraft.
Gus Grissom and John Young board Molly Brown, the first Gemini spacecraft. (NASA).
The Russians hadn’t done any of this stuff yet.
The new Mission Control in Houston wouldn’t be up and running until the next Gemini launch. Gemini 3 was flying under the direction of Mercury Control at Cape Canaveral, and it came out of orbit with its crew bragging, “Man, does this baby handle right!”
Molly Brown made a perfect splashdown on the Atlantic, where Grissom, taking his title as commander seriously, changed the landing plans. He kept Gemini 3’s hatches closed until navy frogmen secured the bobbing spaceship with a flotation collar. He was to have opened the hatches for fresh sea air, but there was no way he was going to let water into this baby. The delay took time, and Grissom paid for his decision. The Gemini was a great spaceship, but it wasn’t worth a damn as a boat. It pitched and rolled, and Young, the naval aviator, laughed. Gus, the air force flyboy, was green, and John handed him the barf bag.
Finally recovery was over and though Grissom was still sick, his spacecraft didn’t sink, and Young was his usual charming self. He was now the seventh American to fly in space, the first not from the Mercury ranks, and—possibly more important in some quarters—Young gave Wally Schirra a run for his money when it came to high-skilled pranks.
Most any lunchtime you could find John in the Cocoa Beach Jewish delicatessen named Wolfie