by Robert Stone
As the space age coincided with the civil rights era, it was inevitable there would be periodic intersections. NBC announced it would broadcast the first American television drama series to feature a black actor in a lead role. And, once again, questions were raised in the press asking when America might recruit the first black astronaut. This time the discussion arose when Ebony magazine published a disturbing account of what had happened to Edward Dwight at Edwards Air Force Base two years earlier and his failure to be selected as part of NASA’s Astronaut Group Three. It implied possible complicity on the part of NASA, noting that only 2.5 percent of its workforce was African American. Dwight responded with a public statement asserting that his argument was entirely with the Air Force and he didn’t fault the astronaut selection process. Facing reporters at a press conference held on an Air Force airstrip in California, Dwight was asked whether he might still be selected as an astronaut. He could only reply, “I have no idea.” At the Pentagon, the Air Force continued a search for other accomplished black pilots who might qualify for future astronaut training, but from NASA officials, Dwight heard nothing more.
In a bizarre coincidence, the story of Ed Dwight’s treatment at Edwards coincided with the flurry of media attention given Gemini 4 and Ed White’s spacewalk. And, not surprisingly, some confused astronaut candidate Ed Dwight and spacewalker astronaut Ed White. The situation was further compounded by the widely published pictures of White floating above the Earth, his face entirely obscured by his helmet’s gold visor. The stunning photographs of America’s first spacewalker showed a space-age Everyman, the personification of national determination and technological progress that transcended racial identity. Any viewer gazing upon the photographs could easily project an imagined identity for the anonymous person behind the visor.
In the Manned Spacecraft Center’s astronaut office in Houston, Ed White was surprised to discover that among the thousands of letters he received after Gemini 4, some had been intended for Ed Dwight. Many had assumed that the first man to walk in space had also been the first minority astronaut. White put these letters aside and personally handed two boxes of correspondence to Dwight. Already moved by White’s generosity and thoughtfulness, Dwight was further impressed when White, after seeing all the messages from people around the world, told him, “Now I understand why it’s important for you to go into space.”
All the undue media attention accorded Ed Dwight had taken a toll. Having earned a reputation as someone who didn’t accept the status quo, his Air Force career was in limbo. As a result, he resigned his commission later that year. His personal life was in turmoil as well. Ebony had reported that he was in the midst of a divorce, a biographical detail so socially controversial in the mid-1960s that no astronaut candidate with this stigma on his record would ever receive serious consideration.
Gemini’s first year concluded with a triumphant and visually dazzling accomplishment that served as a demonstration of the crewed space program’s ability to remain agile and innovate even when confronted with adversity. Following the eight-day mission of Gemini 5—long enough to cover the length of time needed to travel to the Moon and back—Gemini 6 was to be the first attempt to rendezvous and dock with a target vehicle. But when the Agena target rocket was lost in an explosion over the Atlantic, the original flight plan was canceled. In its place, an audacious new idea was proposed in which Gemini 6A (a new designation for a new mission) would rendezvous with Gemini 7, already scheduled to carry out a two-week medical endurance mission. The plan would have Gemini 7 launched first, out of sequence. Then eight days later Gemini 6A would follow it into space and rendezvous with Gemini 7 using onboard radar and computers. Gemini 6A eventually got off the ground eleven days after Gemini 7 and rapidly demonstrated that with the proper equipment and precise calculations a rendezvous could be accomplished efficiently without expending excess fuel. For more than four and a half hours, Gemini 6A carefully maneuvered itself around Gemini 7 as both vehicles hurtled above the Earth at 17,000 miles per hour. At one point the vehicles came within two feet of each other.
The widely reproduced photographs taken from one Gemini spacecraft showing the astronauts’ view of a second Gemini vehicle orbiting the brilliant blue planet below provided vicarious eyewitness testimony of America’s progress and served to bolster James Webb’s long-term rhetorical strategy. Receiving far less attention were hundreds of individual Gemini photographs looking down on the Earth, including one taken by Gemini 7 showing a hazy plume extending across East Texas, considered the earliest astronaut sighting of industrial air pollution from space. Unfortunately, over the next four years such observations became more frequent, with the astronauts occasionally requesting that NASA “call the pollution control boys” to ensure that the smoke and smog they were seeing received serious environmental attention.
After the Gemini 6A and Gemini 7 mission, the Soviet threat appeared to recede, as the United States broke two more space records. The Associated Press began distributing a “U.S.-Soviet box score,” treating the space race like an international sports competition, assigning points to the country that had flown the greatest number of piloted flights, crewed flights, hours in space, astronauts in space, spacewalks, hours spent outside the spacecraft, rendezvous, and so forth. During the first year of Gemini, the Soviet Union lagged far behind, not having launched a single piloted flight.
The Soviet Union had no counterpart to James Webb overseeing the management of its space program. There was no NASA-like Soviet space agency; instead, the decentralized Soviet program was run by the military, with separate competing aerospace design groups working on space-related defense projects. This allowed small teams to improvise missions based on already established and familiar hardware and technology. But without the unified guiding vision of a central manager, the competing teams suffered from a lack of coordination.
Lacking a managing administrator, the Soviets relied on the vision of a single anonymous “chief designer” to achieve most of the early feats, such as the launch of Sputnik and the piloted Vostok flights. The chief designer was Russia’s counterpart to von Braun, and his identity was a guarded government secret. However, the world learned his name in January 1966, when the death of Sergei Korolev, “the man who provided the scientific and technical leadership of the vast Soviet rocket program,” was announced in the world press. It was difficult for the United States to assess the long-term impact of Korolev’s death on its rival’s space program. Webb continued to receive access to the CIA’s top-secret intelligence briefings, and in the post-Korolev years he seldom appeared unconcerned about the Soviets’ progress. But the long list of their space accomplishments since 1957 made it impossible to discount the prospect that they might surprise the world again with little advance warning.
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AFTER HALF A decade of piloted missions, venturing into outer space no longer seemed as threatening as it had when Yuri Gagarin first circled the globe. The films of Alexei Leonov and Ed White floating in the void outside their spacecraft made spacewalking appear to be the adrenaline junkie’s ultimate adventure sport. Astronauts brought harmonicas and paperback books into space, leading to accounts that deceptively suggested that space travel was leisurely and relaxing. But the reality of life in a Gemini spacecraft was nothing like the depictions of space travel in Hollywood films or at the World’s Fair. The crew area in a Gemini capsule was roughly equivalent to the seating area in a compact car. Sleeping was difficult, especially while wearing a pressure suit, and exacerbated by the constant need to monitor hundreds of details. There was seldom any time to relax. Flight plans were filled with activities; plus there were endless mundane chores like meticulously labeling and storing daily stool samples, or, as on one Gemini mission, cleaning up a blizzard of dehydrated shrimp floating throughout the cabin after a food packet burst in the zero-gravity environment. Such details were unlikely to make imaginations soar o
r sell magazines. Rather, it was the authentic joy on the faces of the astronauts as they stood on the deck of a recovery ship breathing fresh air, feeling sunshine, and once again experiencing gravity that captured the public’s heart.
America’s ambitious plans for the second and final year of the Gemini program called for astronauts to physically dock with a target spacecraft and conduct adventurous spacewalks without the use of an umbilical cord. Astronauts would maneuver independently around the spacecraft using a self-contained rocket backpack. There was even a possibility that the final Gemini mission would fly in tandem with the first piloted Apollo flight.
For the producers at the three television networks, conveying the stories of the Gemini missions as an engaging and informative narrative continued to be a challenge. Until late 1965, the rocket launch was the only part of the mission that could be seen as it happened. This changed with Gemini 6A, when television pictures of the recovery were transmitted live from an experimental satellite earth station on the aircraft carrier USS Wasp. For everything between launch and recovery, the networks continued to tell the story using scale models, prepared animation, diagrams, and demonstrations. Marionettes were even used to depict a Gemini spacewalk while it took place in orbit. NBC invested one hundred thousand dollars in a full-size mock-up of the Gemini spacecraft, which was installed in Studio 8H in Rockefeller Center.
As part of their launch coverage, the network news divisions were careful not to sensationalize the potential danger, but few viewers remained unaware that as they watched a countdown they might witness a spectacular, possibly fatal, explosion at the moment it happened. Launch-day broadcasts often included a report detailing precisely how the spacecraft’s escape mechanisms were designed to function in the event that an unexpected mishap endangered the astronauts’ lives. Such an emergency had nearly occurred during an aborted launch of Gemini 6A. As Gemini 7 orbited above Cape Kennedy, Gemini 6A’s countdown climaxed with a cloud of smoke and the abrupt shutdown of the Titan II rocket’s twin engines. For a few tense seconds it was uncertain whether the stationary rocket might suddenly rise into the sky as planned or erupt in an orange fireball, offering the astronauts no choice but to fire their ejection seats, an option that carried huge risks. Luckily, the steady nerves of command pilot Wally Schirra prevailed as he gripped, but chose not to pull, the D-ring that would activate the ejection device—a hazardous but ultimately wise decision that saved the mission. The problem that caused the shutdown was swiftly remedied, and Gemini 6A rocketed toward its belated rendezvous with Gemini 7 two days later.
But the most dangerous moment during the Gemini program did not occur during a launch but while Gemini 8 was in orbit 145 miles above the Earth. When it happened, it became a two-day news story that rapidly faded from memory, but it was an event that precipitated two important decisions that were to directly impact the achievement of President Kennedy’s goal by the end of the decade.
An hour and forty minutes after an Atlas missile launched an Agena docking vehicle into orbit, two rookie astronauts, commander Neil Armstrong and pilot David Scott, headed into space aboard Gemini 8. Unlike what had happened a few months earlier on Gemini 6, the Agena worked perfectly this time. When Gemini 8 was in its fourth orbit, Armstrong closed in and maneuvered near to the Agena. A member of Astronaut Group Two, Armstrong was already a famed X-15 rocket pilot, and his unusual status as one of the few civilian astronauts set him apart.
Neil Armstrong’s view as he moved Gemini 8 toward the Agena target vehicle above the Pacific Ocean before accomplishing the first successful docking of two spacecraft. Minutes later, Armstrong and David Scott lost control of Gemini 8 when a malfunctioning thruster sent their spacecraft into a dangerous spin, eventually forcing them to make an emergency return to Earth.
As the two spacecraft passed above Brazil, Armstrong accomplished the last remaining major goal of the Gemini program: He eased the nose of his vehicle into the docking collar on one end of the Agena and then threw a switch that latched the two vehicles together. Because Apollo would rely on the lunar-orbit-rendezvous flight plan, no landing on the Moon would be possible unless the ability to rendezvous and dock two freely floating spacecraft had been mastered. On his first attempt Armstrong had made it look easy, laconically describing the maneuver as “a real smoothie.”
But there was nothing routine about what transpired less than an hour later. As Armstrong and Scott prepared for their first evening in space, Scott noticed that the inertial-platform display on the panel directly below his window indicated that their spacecraft and the Agena were banking at a thirty-degree angle. Armstrong rapidly straightened the attitude with the Gemini’s hand controller, but once again the spacecraft began the banking motion. Assuming the problem was likely a mechanical malfunction originating in the Agena—a spacecraft with a known troubled development history—Armstrong decided to carefully undock and back away from the target vehicle, then try to regain control of his own spacecraft.
This maneuver occurred while the spacecraft was out of radio contact with the receiving stations on the ground. The first indication that Gemini 8 was experiencing any difficulty came when a NASA communications ship heard Armstrong report, “We have serious problems here. We’re tumbling end over end up here. We’re disengaged from the Agena.”
Those listening in to the confidential audio loop heard Armstrong clearly say, “We’re rolling up and we can’t turn anything off.”
Armstrong’s actions to separate from the Agena had done nothing to solve the problem. Instead, their rotation rate had accelerated to nearly one revolution per second. Armstrong described the sensation like being inside a tumbling gyroscope. He noticed that whenever he moved his head, the rapid motion caused his vision to blur, and he thought he might lose consciousness. There was a break in the communication, and then he was heard saying, “Stuck hand control,” which alarmed the flight-control team listening in.
Armstrong realized the problem had to be located somewhere in their spacecraft, most likely a malfunctioning thruster on the aft portion of the Gemini equipment module, so he chose to disengage power to all the rear thrusters. However, even with the malfunctioning thruster now out of operation, the Gemini’s gyrations continued unchecked, so next he tried to stabilize the spacecraft by engaging an unused group of thruster rings located in the nose of the Gemini—devices that were intended for use exclusively during reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere.
As they emerged into the daylight side of the Earth, Armstrong had begun to stabilize Gemini 8. He had been carefully coaxing the reentry thrusters for nearly twenty minutes when he reported to the Hawaii tracking station, “We’re slowly getting back to the proper attitude.” The mission rules dictated that once the reentry thrusters had been engaged for any purpose, the astronauts would need to return to Earth, landing in the first available recovery area. John Hodge, the flight director in Houston, decided to bring Gemini 8 home during the seventh orbit. And since they needed a daylight recovery location, the only choice was a secondary zone in the Pacific where a small contingent of ships and planes was available.
Armstrong was not thrilled about the recovery plans but kept any reservations about the decision within the spacecraft. “I’d like to argue with them about the going home,” Armstrong told Scott. “But I don’t know how we can. I hate to land way out in the wilderness.” Weighing on his mind was how difficult spotting their spacecraft might be for the recovery forces when it was but a tiny speck floating in the middle of the ocean. He couldn’t forget the story of the Andrea Doria and how it took rescuers a day and half to locate the large cruise ship when it began to sink off Nantucket in 1956. In comparison, their Gemini capsule was so small it would easily fit into the Andrea Doria’s first-class swimming pool.
Gemini 8’s emergency came to the attention of the three television networks just as they were to begin broadcasting their valuable prime-time entertainmen
t programs. Ten minutes before CBS was to air the latest episode of the children’s adventure series Lost in Space, Walter Cronkite began live coverage of the unfolding space crisis from his New York news desk. NBC followed a few minutes later, breaking into the opening minutes of The Virginian. Over at ABC, though the network’s news division had been carefully monitoring the crisis in space, programmers in New York opted to broadcast a new episode of their hit series Batman instead. The camp adventure show had just introduced its latest guest villain, Catwoman, when ABC suddenly decided to break in with a brief Gemini news bulletin, the first of four that interrupted Batman during the next half hour, rapidly rendering the plot incomprehensible and angering millions of viewers.
Ironically, unlike their competitors at NBC and CBS, the perennially third-place network had an exclusive that evening. One of the ABC News producers had hacked NASA’s communications loop and had access to the live audio from Gemini 8. But even this scoop couldn’t persuade the programmers to postpone Batman. Eventually ABC began its live continuing coverage of Gemini 8 after Batman had concluded, but by then any viewers who had wanted to follow the crisis in space had already switched over to the other networks.
