Shoot for the Moon

by James Donovan

Belyayev and Leonov’s capsule landed a thousand miles east of its intended recovery point, wedged between two large fir trees in the Ural Mountains. The two cosmonauts spent a frigid night huddled together, trapped inside the craft while wolves howled nearby, and were found the next morning by a rescue team on skis. But those details came out later; at the time, the mission was deemed another Soviet space spectacular. The Russians appeared to have the inside track on a lunar orbit or landing, a belief they reinforced in various public comments. “But our immediate goal, the target before us, is the moon,” said one spokesman, and under the headline “Sorry, Apollo!,” a Pravda article bragged that “the gap is not closing, but increasing.” Evidence of how close the Soviets were to that goal could also be seen in Leonov’s environmental system: a self-sufficient backpack, far more complex—and troublesome in terms of getting in and out of an air lock—than a relatively simple umbilical. Such a backpack would be needed for a walk on the moon but was hardly necessary for an EVA in space.

  But there would not be another Soviet manned mission for more than two years. It was America’s turn.

  Chapter Eight

  The Walk, and a

  Sky Gone Berserk

  We try and plan for the unknowns. It’s the unknown unknowns that you have concerns about.

  Bob Gilruth

  If there had been a space equivalent of Car and Driver magazine, its editors would have voted Gemini the Spacecraft of the Year.

  By the time the spacecraft was man-rated and ready to fly two astronauts, its total cost had ballooned to $1.35 billion, almost double its original budget of $700 million. But Gus Grissom had done his job well. It was a pilot’s dream in every way that counted. And he had gotten his wish, thanks to Al Shepard’s inner-ear problem—he would command the first Gemini mission. To prepare, he and his shipmate John Young, one of the New Nine astronauts, had spent many hours in the Gemini simulators, precise duplicates of the capsule’s cabin in which a crew could approximate a complete mission, from liftoff to touchdown. Included were realistic visuals outside the windows and tilting and vibration that faithfully simulated the feel of launch and reentry. Nominal missions were flown at first, with various failure and abort situations added later.

  At 4:40 a.m. on March 23, 1965, Deke Slayton knocked on the bedroom door of the crew quarters of Hangar S to wake up Gus Grissom and John Young. Slayton had first done this for Gordon Cooper on the final Mercury mission. He would do it for twenty-four flights altogether. He had also begun choosing the crew for each flight, subject to the approval of Bob Gilruth and a few senior NASA officials, though Slayton would be overruled only once.

  Over the next twenty months, from March 1965 to November 1966, sixteen Americans would roar into space on ten different missions, roughly one every two months. Gemini’s crews would comprise three of the Mercury Seven, every remaining member of the New Nine, and five astronauts from the 1963 selection. Each flight would incrementally increase the knowledge and experience needed to reach the ultimate goal of a man on the moon. Each would face its share of problems, some minor, some major. None would endanger the lives of its crew except one.

  Two unmanned Gemini missions preceded Gemini 3, though, because of the piloting required in the new spacecraft, there were no more flights for the astrochimps. They had done their duty, and most of them were eased into retirement at various zoos to live long and happy lives.

  On March 23, 1965, Gemini 3 blasted into space from Cape Kennedy’s launch complex 19, as would every Gemini mission, to begin a three-orbit shakedown cruise. Grissom had tried naming the craft Molly Brown, after the popular Broadway musical The Unsinkable Molly Brown, a dig at the criticism of his Mercury flight. (Grissom had a sense of humor; his first name choice was Titanic.) NASA management was unamused, but allowed the name to stick. It would be the only Gemini spacecraft to have a name beyond the flight designation.

  In the launch control center several hundred yards away—a blockhouse similar to its predecessors but even better fortified—was Wernher von Braun. It was his fifty-third birthday. His Marshall team had nothing to do with the Gemini program, and he and his center were busy enough; though costs and problems were rising on his Saturns and their F-1 engines, several test Saturns had been launched into orbit successfully. He was already worrying about Marshall’s post-Apollo fate, since there were no plans for more large boosters. But he wanted to see for himself the launch of a spacecraft capable of maneuvering and changing orbit.

  Grissom’s flight went as smoothly as expected. “Grissom Maneuvers the Gemini” ran the large headline on the front page of the New York Times the next day, emphasizing the superior piloting control available on the spacecraft. Grissom raved about its maneuverability and handling; unlike Mercury, Gemini had powerful thrusters that allowed it to change orbit and effectively go where its pilot wanted, short of leaving the Earth’s gravity (which would require a larger rocket engine). Every astronaut who flew it agreed with Grissom. Passengers no more, they were finally flying in space.

  An EVA had been planned for a later Gemini flight, but after Alexei Leonov’s space walk five days before Gemini 3—a mission clearly timed to preempt Grissom’s—NASA officials decided to move it up. Ed White, a world-class athlete who had barely missed qualifying for the 1952 Olympic track team, seemed a perfect choice for an activity that might be strenuous. In the weeks leading up to Gemini 4, some newspaper articles suggested the EVA might have been advanced to match the Soviets. Flight director Chris Kraft took offense when asked about it in one interview: “We’re not playing Mickey Mouse with this thing,” he replied testily. “I don’t think it’s very fair to suggest we’re carrying out a propaganda stunt.” But on a wall in the MOCR at the Manned Spacecraft Center was a neatly lettered poster that belied Kraft’s denial: WE ARE 301 MAN-ORBITS AND 443 MAN-HOURS BEHIND THE RUSSIANS IN SPACE FLIGHT TIME.

  For the first time, Kraft would lead his ground team from Houston. The MOCR would handle all future manned missions, taking control as soon as the rocket cleared the launch tower. The new Mission Operations Control Room in Building 30 (there were two MOCRs, actually, one on the second floor, used for simulations and practice runs, and one on the third, used for all the Gemini and Apollo Saturn V missions) was larger and more up-to-date and would host not one or two but three shifts of flight controllers for around-the-clock operations. Gene Kranz would oversee one shift; he named his team White, in contrast to Kraft’s Red team. John Hodge, the pipe-smoking engineer whose gray hair and British accent gave him a distinguished air, would handle the third shift, Blue. (Each flight director picked his team’s color; when a flight director left, that color was retired.) He had been Kraft’s assistant for a while but was promoted to flight director when it became clear that the last Mercury mission, Gordon Cooper’s daylong Faith 7 flight, would require a third shift. And the tracking network had been increased to some twenty-odd stations around the world to improve communication. Data radioed from the spacecraft was received at NASA’s Goddard Center near Washington, DC, digested, and then sent to Mission Control in Houston.

  On June 3, 1965, ten weeks after Grissom’s flight, astronauts Jim McDivitt and Ed White, El Lago neighbors and good friends since their time together studying aeronautical engineering at the University of Missouri, orbited the Earth for four days in Gemini 4. The mission had two main goals. One would end up being a perplexing failure, the other a smashing success.

  A spacecraft had never tried to rendezvous with, or even approach closely, an object in a different orbital path. But rendezvous and docking would be required for a lunar landing using LOR, the chosen method. Command pilot McDivitt tried to maneuver his Gemini close to the spent upper stage of its Titan II booster, but as he pointed the nose of his craft toward the target and activated his thruster jets to close the distance, a curious thing happened—the booster moved away and downward. A few minutes later, he tried again, once more with no luck. After a few more attempts, Kraft finally told him to quit trying
. Without an onboard rendezvous radar, planned for later Gemini missions, rendezvous would have to wait.

  What this revealed was the complexity of orbital mechanics, which on the most basic level worked exactly the opposite of how it did with aircraft. Adding speed while in orbit raises a ship to a higher orbital path, where it will paradoxically slow down, since the craft’s orbital speed is a direct function of its distance from the center of gravity of the object it’s circling—in this case, Earth. The ship’s target will now be traversing a lower, and shorter, orbit, and will consequently move faster around the Earth. To catch up to a target ahead of it or in a higher orbit, the ship needs to reduce its speed and drop into a lower orbit. At the correct moment, a burst of speed will lift the craft close enough to the target’s orbit to eliminate all relative motion between them, at which point these paradoxical effects virtually disappear, and station-keeping, or flying in formation in space, is achieved. Only then can docking be attempted. McDivitt’s failure was a lesson learned, and much of the subsequent Gemini missions would involve perfecting orbital mechanics and rendezvous maneuvers.

  The second goal, however, was achieved. A few hours after the failed rendezvous, the cabin was depressurized, and after some difficulty, White’s hatch was opened. A hundred miles above the Earth, he went drifting out into the void of space connected to the craft by a twenty-five-foot, gold-tape-wrapped umbilical cord supplying his oxygen. For twenty minutes, he floated around the capsule, maneuvering with bursts of compressed air from a small zip gun and shooting photos with a Hasselblad on his chest. McDivitt also had a camera, and his vivid images of his cavorting crewmate, the arc of the Earth and its clouds, continents, and oceans behind him, became iconic. Each man had decided to have an American flag patch sewn onto the left shoulder of his spacesuit, and every subsequent astronaut would wear the Stars and Stripes there.

  White enjoyed himself so much that he needed a bit of coaxing to return to the craft. When he finally pulled himself into the cabin, he stood on his seat, drinking in the view. “This is the saddest moment of my life,” he said. He needed McDivitt’s help to close the hatch, and by the time he was securely fastened in his seat, he was exhausted. But his performance impressed his superiors; a few weeks later, he would be named backup commander for Gemini 7, and soon after that, he’d be assigned to the crew of the first Apollo flight. McDivitt was also rewarded; he was given command of another early Apollo mission.

  The Gemini flights continued at such a rapid pace that eventually some of the American public lost interest. White’s space walk, especially the striking color photographs of it taken by McDivitt that ran in magazines and newspapers worldwide, was a hit, but the novelty of a man in space, one blasted into the heavens atop a massive rocket, was wearing off. Though manned spaceflight was anything but routine—a hundred things could go wrong during launch or reentry, and a thousand in between—it began to appear that way to most Americans, especially since NASA avoided talk of a mission’s danger and stressed its safety. No astronaut had died during Mercury, and Gemini appeared to be just as safe. Besides, everyone knew that the Apollo moon landing was the main attraction. To many, Gemini seemed a warm-up act, and like most warm-up acts, it attracted a smaller audience.

  Near the end of August, Gemini 5 stayed in orbit eight days—the minimum length of time needed for a lunar landing and return to Earth—and easily exceeded the Russians’ five-day flight of Vostok 5. But its mission, with command pilot Gordon Cooper and New Nine astronaut Pete Conrad at the controls, was plagued by problems, from issues with the fuel cells (on their maiden voyage) and the electrical systems to low oxygen levels and jammed thrusters. The complications didn’t help Cooper’s mood; occasionally, his attitude seemed peevish, which only worsened his reputation with his NASA bosses.

  But the eight-day ordeal eased the fears of some doctors about the dangers of prolonged weightlessness and also about the human ability to travel to the moon and back. The next two missions would further test long-duration spaceflight and the perplexing problem of rendezvous.

  The Soviets hadn’t sent a man into space since Gemini had begun, and the growing accolades the American space program was receiving weren’t sitting well with them. After Gemini 5, they accused the United States of conducting clandestine military activities. “The real purpose of the program is obvious,” claimed a Russian newspaper, and the article insisted that the astronauts had brought spy cameras to photograph Soviet activities below, despite the fact that the spacecraft’s orbital path had not carried it over the USSR once. To make matters more urgent for the Russians, midway through that flight, President Johnson announced the official approval of the Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) program, in which Geminis would shuttle air force crews to a cylindrical laboratory for up to thirty days of reconnaissance experiments and defense research. The Soviets responded, predictably, with plans for their own military space stations. The Cold War had not thawed appreciably.

  Publicly, Deke Slayton would claim that every astronaut could fly any seat in any flight, but privately, he didn’t really believe that, nor did he put the theory into practice in his crew selection. “All astronauts are created equal, but some are more equal than others,” he would write later. Some men in the 1962 group—John Young, Ed White, Tom Stafford, and Frank Borman, for instance—seemed to ooze that indefinable quality of leadership, and they became Slayton’s early favorites, though the rest of the class wasn’t far behind. It was loaded with well-educated engineers who just happened to be experienced test pilots as well. Slayton had told them that there would be plenty of flights for all of them, and as the Mercury ranks thinned and Gemini flights began to stack up, that seemed to be the case.

  Not so for the October 1963 class of additional astronauts, the Final Fourteen. With the test-pilot requirement already dropped, the half a dozen without that experience wondered if it would work against them. None of them could figure out what Slayton based his selections on—if it wasn’t test-pilot experience, what was it? Off-duty socializing? Sucking up to him and Shepard? How they fared in the many courses they took, or how they weathered the centrifuge and other machines?

  Those picked to command a mission had a say in who their shipmates would be, and they often chose men who shared their service affiliations or other experiences. The navy aviators looked out for their own, as did the air force pilots. Men who had graduated in the same test-pilot class at Edwards or the navy test-pilot school at Patuxent took care of one another. Crew commanders who were West Point grads tried to get other former cadets as crewmates or at least recommend them for crews. Annapolis grads did the same. Some of this was successful, but not all—Deke had his own reasons for picking who he did. For instance, for the upcoming Apollo crews, he decided that in the first few flights, the command module pilot, who at one point would be orbiting the moon alone while his crewmates were in the LM, would not be a rookie astronaut.

  Since no one knew Deke’s criteria, everyone competed in any way possible to at least snag a backup role on a flight. About halfway through Gemini, a pattern began to emerge, though it wasn’t a hard and fast rule: after a mission, a backup crew would skip two flights and be named the prime crew on the third.

  The Gemini missions continued. On December 5, 1965, Frank Borman and Jim Lovell blasted into low Earth orbit on Gemini 7, beginning a marathon fourteen-day flight. Ten days later, Gemini 6, with Wally Schirra and Tom Stafford aboard, launched; their mission to dock with a radio-controlled Atlas-Agena target vehicle had been delayed when the Agena exploded six minutes after liftoff. After the craft reached orbit, Schirra skillfully maneuvered to within a foot of Gemini 7. During three revolutions of the Earth, the two vehicles kept within one hundred yards of each other in an impressive feat of station-keeping. Twenty-five hours and fifteen minutes after liftoff, Gemini 6 splashed down, having completed the world’s first manned spaceflight rendezvous. Gemini 7 dropped into the Pacific two days later, its two occupants weary, sore, and extremely f
ragrant—but healthy. Two of the three frogmen who attached the flotation collar to the command module after splashdown vomited when the hatch opened and they got a direct blast of fourteen-day-old air and the men who had lived in it.

  Gemini 7’s two weeks in space reaffirmed that an eight-day lunar voyage could be made safely, and it further tested the Mission Control team. The flight was Kraft’s final one as a flight director; after Gemini 7, he would turn full-time to his duties as director of flight operations. To join Kranz and Hodge, his two other Flights, he tapped a backup flight director named Glynn Lunney, the youngest of the original members of the Space Task Group. Lunney had been involved with Mercury from the start, both in mission planning and as a flight guidance officer controlling the trajectory of the spacecraft, before working backup on a couple of early Gemini missions. Kraft also started grooming a couple of others, including Cliff Charlesworth, formerly a civilian physicist with both the navy and the army.

  But Kraft was still there for every mission’s launch and much of the remainder of its flight, sitting in the back row watching over the operation he had created and the men he had hired to work it, biting his tongue occasionally but letting his new flight directors make the tough decisions. During every Mercury mission, but never at any other time, he had worn a Mercury lapel pin for luck. Now he did the same with a Gemini pin. And after every successful splashdown, he would light up a good-luck cigar. Soon many in Mission Control were doing the same thing, and the light haze from cigarette and pipe smoke became even thicker.

  With Gemini 7, America had clearly surpassed the Soviet space program. All that was missing—besides more EVA experience—was successful docking. That would be the number-one objective of the ambitious Gemini 8 mission, a three-day flight that would also feature an extended space walk and several important experiments. Neil Armstrong, a quiet former navy aviator and X-15 pilot, would command the mission. His copilot—rather, his pilot, since Deke Slayton had decreed before Gemini began that no astronaut would ever be called a copilot—was Dave Scott, one of the Final Fourteen, on his first spaceflight. Scott had it all: good looks, confidence, a master’s in astronautical engineering. He was a fighter pilot’s son, a fighter pilot and test pilot himself, and married to the daughter of a retired air force general—clearly one of NASA’s fair-haired boys, evidenced by the fact that he was the first in his astronaut class chosen to fly into space. He and Armstrong had been training for six solid months, and the upcoming mission featured an extended EVA for Scott.