_Live From Cape Canaveral_ - Jay Barbree [47]
The runaway thruster kept spewing—for almost half an hour; then, and only then, did NASA’s top rocket man have full control of his ship.
“The X–15 was never anything like this,” said Armstrong, reaching for the book. With control, the rules were back, and the rules said that once reentry thrusters had been fired, for any reason, the astronauts were to bring their ship home.
Armstrong and Scott now had to land at the first opportunity, before they depleted the reentry thrusters’ fuel supply—before they would be left with no control of Gemini 8 whatsoever.
There was only one problem: They were nowhere near a main recovery area. Flight controllers huddled. Then they said, “To hell with it,” and ordered Armstrong and Scott to set up for an emergency landing in the western Pacific.
High over the African Congo, in darkness, Neil Armstrong fired Gemini 8’s retro-rockets. The braking rockets started their half-hour ride through an atmosphere of total darkness—there was not even the suggestion of a light in the African jungle or on the ocean below, and there was not even a voice from a tracking station to give comfort.
Armstrong and Scott performed the reentry with great skill. They splashed down 480 miles east of Okinawa, their shortened mission lasting just under eleven hours. Soon an air force rescue plane roared overhead, dropping rescue teams. Three hours later the astronauts were safe, enjoying hot food and showers aboard a navy destroyer.
Flight director Chris Kraft handed out his own statement: “The spin rate was up as high as 550 degrees per second, about the rate where humans lose consciousness, or the capability to operate. That was truly a fantastic recovery, and really proved why we have test pilots in those ships. Had it not been for the good flying, we probably would have lost the crew.”
Deke Slayton took a few days for Gemini 8’s emergency to settle some obvious facts in his mind. He told himself Neil Armstrong’s abilities to reason, to think, to handle emergencies, to fly the hell out of anything from the Wright brothers to rocket ships, made the civilian test pilot the leading candidate to land the first Apollo lunar module on the moon. He expected, and received, no objections from other department heads within NASA.
Deke also conceded that Gemini 8 proved rendezvous and docking would work, but the shortened flight left the technique without a track record. The final three Gemini missions would give NASA that needed history—not only in rendezvous and docking, but in using the Agena rockets to relaunch their Gemini ships into higher and different orbits.
The fan effect of the gantry being lowered and the Titan lifting off was achieved by eleven separate exposures on one sheet of film when Gemini 10 was launched July 18, 1966. (NASA).
But surprisingly to Deke, spacewalking proved to be the most difficult challenge for the Gemini crews. The problem had first raised its head when Ed White had so much trouble getting back in Gemini 4. In fact, Deke Slayton had talked to the Gemini commanders after that, telling them bluntly, “If your spacewalker becomes disabled, and he can’t make it back inside, cut him loose. Do not risk your life too.” It was a tough order, but they agreed.
Gemini 9’s Gene Cernan was picked to be the second American to take a stroll in space. Once he and commander Tom Stafford were in orbit, Cernan stepped outside, attached to a twenty-five-foot tether, looking forward to the frolicking good time Ed White had had. He charged off to do the things he’d been told to do—to spend two hours outside having a ball. But he couldn’t make any headway. He wasn’t trying to move in broad steps; he was just trying to move his body a few feet to the rear of the Gemini, to the equipment