I SEE SOMETHING AT 12 O’CLOCK

Gemini VI performed the rendezvous from below because orbital mechanics allow the spacecraft in the lower orbit to catch up to its target in the higher orbit simply because the lower orbit provided less distance to travel.

 

Although the NASA documentary made on the Gemini VI rendezvous has a soundtrack where an obviously re-recorded voice of Stafford is portrayed as being the first person to sight Gemini VII. A careful reading of the transcript shows that it was Schirra who first spotted the target.

 

“I see something at 12 o’clock,” Schirra stated at 05:04:32 mission elapsed time.

 

At that moment Stafford was actually blinded by the sun reflecting off the nose of the spacecraft. He couldn’t see anything including the stars, but at 05:05:05 Stafford excitedly reported,

 

“Hey, I think I got it! That’s Seven, Wally!”

 

Controllers at the Ascension ground station disagreed considering that spacecraft 7 was 51 miles ahead of Gemini VI at that moment. For several minutes the crew debated as to whether or not the bright object in the sky they were seeing was Gemini VII or the star Sirius. As it turned out they were in fact seeing spacecraft 7.

 Aboard spacecraft 7 Borman and Lovell soon caught sight of spacecraft 6 as it originally appeared looking like a bright star but then rapidly drew near them from below.

 

Just 31 minutes after the initial sighting Gemini VI was 7.7 miles from Gemini VII. All of Stafford’s calculations and computer readings were coming together perfectly. Schirra was making precision burns at absolutely the correct times and using minimum fuel to accomplish rendezvous. By 05:56:01 Gemini VI was at 120 feet and station keeping with Gemini VII; rendezvous had been successfully accomplished for the first time in space.

 It was an exciting moment, so much so that even Frank Borman got a little humorous when asking what attitude Schirra wanted him to maintain.

 

“I'm going to go ahead and put it on Inertial -Neutral here and stay right on the horizon,” Borman said, “if that's what Precious wants.” 

By the term “precious” he was the facetiously referring to Schirra.

 

Flying in formation that more than 17,000 miles per hour the astronauts of both spacecraft finally got a chance to see what another spacecraft in flight looked like. One of the first things that they noticed were long, gold foil coated wires or cables protruding from the back of one another’s spacecraft. Borman had initially commented about this but the crew of spacecraft 6 didn’t hear the message.

“You guys are really showing a…” Schirra began, “of droop on those wires hanging there.”

 

“… On me?” Borman replied, “Where they hanging from?”

“Well,” Schirra described, “Frank, it looks like it comes out at the separation between… It might be fiberglass. It’s approximately… oh… 10 to 15 feet long.”

 

“The separation came from the booster,” Borman reckoned, “right?”

 

“Affirmative,” Schirra replied.

 

“That’s exactly where you have one too,” Borman stated with satisfaction, “it really belted around there when you were firing your thrusters.”

 

“Looks like about eight or 9 feet long and double wire,” Schirra observed.

 

“Right,” Borman agreed.

 

For just over six hours the two spacecraft flew in close formation as Schirra maneuvered spacecraft 6 around spacecraft 7. Borman and Lovell were conserving fuel and essentially remained in a near drifting flight attitude. Both crews, however, had plenty of film and took scores of photos and a library of movies during the exercise. At one point Tom Stafford held a sign up in his window that read, “BEAT ARMY” which was a reference to the upcoming Army-Navy football game. Stafford, Schirra and Lovell were all graduates of the United States Naval Academy while Borman was a graduate of West Point.

 

OUR MOST EXCITING DAY IN SPACE

At 9:00 Sheridan Park, Saginaw, Michigan time on Sunday morning, December 12^th  1965 - 60 years ago as of this writing, Walter Cronkite opened CBS news’ broadcast of the launch of Gemini VI(A) by cheerfully stating,

“Good morning, everyone, this ought to be our most exciting day in space…”

He was, of course, referring to the planned rendezvous between Gemini VII and Gemini VI. Yet, he had no idea just how true those words would become in less than 54 minutes. (Yes, I know his display says 41:40 here, but there were planned holds along the way)

 

Over his left shoulder was a TV screen and on it was a live picture of the GT-6A launch vehicle and spacecraft poised for ignition and in his voice was a note of gleeful excitement. In that spacecraft were Schirra, Stafford and about 301,771 pounds of highly toxic, corrosive propellants that would burn on contact. 

Sometime in the spring of 1965 a technician at the Martin Baltimore plant had removed one of the engine’s gas generators on vehicle 62-12561 for cleaning. As the check valve for the oxidizer inlet was separated, he placed a small plastic dust cover in the gas generator port in order to keep dust and dirt out. When the gas generator was later reinstalled, probably by different personnel, the little dust cap was overlooked and once the entire assembly was put back together there was no way to see the cap and there were no preflight tests that would indicate that it was there. The result would be that at about the same moment that the bolts blew and the Titan II began to rise, the thrust would have decayed to the point where the engine would shut down and the whole stack would come crashing back to Earth in a huge fireball garnished with a toxic orange cloud. Now, as Cronkite announced the this and that’s of the mission the clock counted down toward that disaster.

 

Schirra’s hands were on the “D” ring that when pulled would eject both he and Stafford simultaneously from the spacecraft. Once the erector had been lowered, ejection was their only way to escape. Stafford also had a “D” ring, but he had concluded long ago that he would leave the ejection up to his commander.

 

Most Gemini astronauts had little faith in the ejection system, feeling that their oxygen-soaked suits would light up like roman candles with the firing of the ejection rockets. Stafford referred to it as committing suicide to keep from being killed.

In the spacecraft the astronauts listened as the Test Conductor, “TC” Frank Carey counted off the final events. At T-minus 02:00 TC called that the big first stage pre-valves were opening. Now the oxidizer from the stage’s upper tank flowed down as far as the engines and waited for the ignition signal. At T-minus 01:30 the TC called that the Titan II was going onto internal power. Next at T-1:20 TC notified the crew that the engine gimbal test was taking place. In the cockpit the crew did not really need a notification. The action of the engines gimbaling through a pre-programmed pattern of movement was both felt and heard in the cabin. In fact it was a loud and obnoxious grind and groaning that shook the vehicle and really got their attention. Every crew commented on it during their post-flight debriefing.

 

Finally at T-00:35 in the count the second stage’s pre-valves were reported opening by TC. The crew heard the big valves open and also heard the “glug, glug, glug” of the oxidizer flowing down the pipe. The big bird was ready to light her engines.

 

From the Complex 19 blockhouse astronaut Alan Bean was serving as “Stony,” the blockhouse CAPCOM, and it was his job to count down the final ten seconds to the crew and call ignition. Bean counted down exactly as he was trained and when he saw the signal he called out, “Ignition.”

With an almost primordial scream like a giant monster coming to life the Titan II’s turbo pumps spooled up to speed and fed the hypergolic fuel and oxidizer into the combustion chamber. A great orange cloud of toxic smoke burst from the pad’s flame bucket as the near explosive burning of the propellants blasted from the twin Aerojet engines and the entire engine mount shook. At nearly that same instant the hand of fate reached out and saved the mission of GT-6A as a small cannon plug at the base of the booster shook loose and dropped out.

That plug was meant to pull out at liftoff 3.7 seconds after ignition, but it dropped out nearly immediately. To the malfunction detection system, that error was clear and the signal was sent at the speed of light to shut down the entire launch system. Instantly the engines were shut down, the thrust tapered off rapidly and soon all that could be heard was the low shrinking howls of the turbo pumps spooling down as if the monster was now falling asleep. Color TV cameras caught the toxic orange mist of what remained of unburned Nitrogen Tetroxide propellant, caused by the aborted engine start.

In the cockpit, Schirra’s clock had been started by the dropping out of the tail plug. This was an indication of liftoff, but if a liftoff of less than an inch had indeed taken place and then the engines had shutdown, the Titan II was no longer bolted to the pad and was about to topple over and explode— it was an ejection situation. Yet Schirra saw that things did not add up.

 

The actual liftoff was supposed to happen 3.7 seconds after ignition, not immediately at ignition. Additionally, none of his attitude needles were moving and he had no feeling in the seat of his pants that the vehicle was moving. Finally, the sound of the thrust had rapidly come up and then vanished just as rapidly.

 

In less than two seconds Schirra, the experienced test pilot and Mercury astronaut correctly calculated that they were still bolted to the pad. Glancing at his fuel pressure gages he saw that they were beginning to drop- he and Stafford were indeed still bolted to the pad.

 

“Shutdown Gemini Six!” the TC rapidly called to the crew, “Program reset!”

 

Now Schirra knew for sure he had not lifted off. His major concern now was the tank pressures. If they stopped venting, the crew may have to eject anyway.

 

Across the free world, hearts stopped as everyone waited for the worst and for the crew to eject. Instead, Schirra and Stafford did exactly the right thing— which was to sit tight and do nothing.

 

In less than three minutes the Test Conductor sent word up to the crew that the indication was that of a tail plug dropping out. Without doubt the technician who had installed that plug was probably feeling pretty bad for the next 24 hours— until it came to light that he had unwittingly saved the entire mission.

Oddly, the mission rules said that after a situation such as this, if the crew was to be removed by way of the erector it had to be up and in place within 15 minutes. Schirra thought that was dumb and when the ground told him it would take 20 minutes he happily agreed.

 

As those 20 minutes turned into 99 minutes, he advised that they should read the mission rules again. No one considered just how long it would take to fully safe the booster.

 

Again, oddly, there was plenty of experience with Titan II shutdowns. Test vehicle N-4 had a shutdown on Launch Pad 16 back on June 27^th, 1962 when it suffered a “severe start transient.” That issue actually blew the thrust chamber of one of the engines off the mount and shot out through the flame bucket. It landed “…several hundred feet…” away from the pad. 

N-4 was successfully launched on July 25^th of that same year. Also, GT-2 had a shutdown on December 9^th, 1964, just a year and four days prior to GT-6A’s shutdown. In that situation the ignition took place, and in the 3.2 seconds prior to the programmed blowing of the hold-down bolts and liftoff, the booster sensed a pressure drop in its primary hydraulic control system and instantly switched over to the back-up system. Since the engines were running, the malfunction detection system sensed that switch-over and it could not allow the vehicle to launch on just the back-up system, so it sent the shutdown command.

 

In both cases, the malfunction detection system did exactly what it was supposed to do and it saved the vehicle to fly another day. The fix required re-machining a component and the new part did not arrive at the Cape until January 9th and NASA had to slip the GT-2 launch to January 19^th.

 

Immediately following GT-6A’s shutdown, the launch vehicle sat there with two astronauts aboard plus its toxic propellants— some of which were currently venting into the surrounding atmosphere and to make the matter worse, about 1,830 pounds of that propellant had already been combusted into the pad’s flame bucket. The entire scene was horribly toxic and highly dangerous, but the ground crews now had to get the crew evacuated as quickly and safely as possible. 

It also had to be kept in mind that the booster and spacecraft were both bristling with live pyrotechnics. Scores of squibs, explosive bolts and linear shaped charges were everywhere. There was a slide wire that extended from the service tower to a safe area at the pad perimeter, but the crew had no way to get to it without the erector raised and in position. If they opened their hatches now, there was nothing but empty space. Getting to the slide wire required stepping into the erector’s whiteroom and then dashing to the doors opposite the elevator, go down a flight of stairs and across a short walkway to the service tower. Thus, the first problem to be solved was raising the erector.

 

Pad technicians clad in Self-Contained Atmospheric Protective Ensemble (or SCAPE) suits were at the pad within minutes of the word that the vehicle was stable. They first had to replace the steel grid decking around the engines and then had to go about ensuring that the atmosphere was indeed safe for the extraction crew to move in from their safe positions. That crew would then raise the erector. This whole process all took an agonizingly long time.

Schirra and Stafford were left there “…just breathing,” as Schirra reported to the TC. Their problem was that their spacesuits were at their worst when reclined there in 1G.

Schirra, contrary to what some other authors may say, was wearing the G3C suit, of the same model that Grissom and Young had worn and that suit had a single zipper up the back and along the spine. So, after being in that seat aboard GT-6A for nearly three hours, he was quite uncomfortable. Stafford, however, was wearing the newer G4C suit that had a double zipper up the back. By all rights he should have been in double agony, but he had thought ahead and ordered a long strip of wide foam rubber to run the length of his spine. That was inserted while he was suiting up- and now it paid off. Still, by the end of their entrapment in the spacecraft, Stafford had to resort to grabbing the hatch closure loop and occasionally pulling himself off the seat in order to tolerate the discomfort.

After the crew had been in the spacecraft for a total of three hours and 22 minutes the erector finally started to raise. It took six minutes and four seconds for the erector to reach the vertical position and come to a stop; Schirra was livid.

Just 30 seconds after the erector came to a stop a team of three engineers dashed to the base of the structure and headed up the stairs. The elevator was locked at the spacecraft level to afford the astronauts an alternative exit once the erector was in place. Therefore, the only way for the extraction crew to get up to the whiteroom level was a climb up the tower by way of 80 feet of caged rung ladder and then a series of stairs to the spacecraft level in the white room. Adrenalin must have been really pumping as the first member of the extraction crew made it to the spacecraft level in just two- and one-half minutes!

 

Quickly Schirra and Stafford were helped out of the spacecraft. Together they took the waiting elevator down to the pad level and were met by the emergency crew. This was an actual pad abort and the procedures called for the astronauts to be evacuated to the safe area near the blockhouse by way of the two armored vehicles that were waiting for them on the pad. So, although both astronauts were in good condition and by the time they had finished their elevator ride and Schirra’s temper had cooled down, they were directed away from the waiting astronaut van and into their assigned armored personnel carrier (APC) vehicle.

 

Once at the blockhouse safe area they were finally allowed to get aboard the astronaut van and head off to get out of their suits. The entire evacuation was shown on live TV as the Cape’s remote cameras followed the process.

 

In watching the events it is a sure bet that many out there in TV land considered that Cronkite’s opening statement was far too correct. This was indeed our most exciting day in space- but not for the reasons everyone had expected. 

 

SCRAMBLE TO PAD 19

It is common history that following the launch of Gemini VII on December 4, 1965 the booster and spacecraft for Gemini VI was placed on Pad 19 so that they flight could go up and meet Gemini VII. However, few folks in the space fan community know the details of what went on after Gemini VII left the pad.

 

When Gemini VI’s Agena target vehicle exploded as it was supposed to insert itself into orbit back on October 25, it was decided that the GT-6 launch vehicle could be used in December to rendezvous with Gemini VII. Since Gemini VII was scheduled to remain in orbit for two weeks, there would be a rendezvous opportunity for Gemini VI. Of course, there was only one launch pad from which a manned Gemini Titan II booster could be launched… Pad 19. Thus, that would mean that the normal 28-day long Subsystems Functional Verification Tests would somehow have to be abbreviated to something like four days.

 

The answer was to de-stack the GT-6 booster and spacecraft, which had been fully checked out yet not used. Then the stack would be divided into the two stages and the spacecraft. They would be stored under guard until after Gemini VII had vacated Pad 19. The booster stages were stored in the Satellite Checkout Building at the Cape. Meanwhile the Gemini spacecraft was stored at the Pyrotechnics Installation Building at the Merritt Island Launch Area. This was all completed by October 28.

Just two hours after Gemini VII departed from Launch Complex 19, the ground crews began a well-practiced scramble to get the GT-6 booster onto the pad.

 Fortunately, pad damage was very minimal following Gemini VII’s departure. 

It took only an amazing 10 hours and five minutes to get the first stage of the Titan II booster onto the pad. By six o’clock that Sunday morning the second stage was in place. Within the following 24 hours the spacecraft was hoisted up and placed onto the booster.

 

Each of the Titan II’s stages had an individual trailer upon which it was towed horizontally to the pad by a simple truck. 

Likewise, the spacecraft, wrapped in a protective cover, was moved in an upright position. 

By December 8 the Subsystems Reverification Tests were completed. The pad rats had scrambled and completed a pre-launch that many thought to be impossible.

 

OUT-STUNTING THE SOVIETS

On December 4th, 1965, sixty years ago as of this writing, NASA set out to allow the United States to out-stunt the Soviets. Back on June 14th, and 16th, 1963 the Soviets had launched Vostok 5 and 6 which passed one another within about 4.03 miles. Like their other Vostok and especially Voskhod flights this was little more than a stunt allowing them to, not only put the first female in space, but also try and take credit for the first ever space rendezvous. Of course there was no real rendezvous, it was simply that their launch azimuths came close for a brief few moments. 

NASA’s actual rendezvous mission was to be Gemini VI in 1965. That attempt was scrubbed when the Agena target vehicle exploded upon its engine start command. This left astronauts Wally Schirra and Tom Stafford with no mission. Theirs was last battery-powered Gemini spacecraft thus it could only remain in orbit for about four days. To make matters worse, their Titan II (GLV-6) booster was configured to loft only the GT-6 spacecraft, (each Gemini Launch Vehicle was configured to launch a specific spacecraft). Considering that the Gemini Agenas had some sort of inherent fault that needed to engineered out, there was no ready replacement. On the day of the scrub, it looked pretty dim for the Gemini VI crew and their Gemini spacecraft.

While the bits and pieces of Gemini VI’s Agena were reentering the atmosphere, McDonnell’s Spacecraft Chief Walter Burke rounded up his deputy John Yardley at the Cape control center and began a quick discussion that involved using Gemini VII as a replacement target vehicle for Gemini VI. Shortly after the discussion began the two men pulled Frank Borman, Gemini VII’s command pilot aside and brought him into the plan. It was all based on a recent study for a quick turn-around of a Gemini Titan II vehicle and soon Raymond Hill, McDonnell’s man at the Cape who was in charge of the hands-on movement of the hardware was brought into the loop. Hill was familiar with the plan and brought everyone else up to speed. Next Burke and Yardley took their idea to NASA’s upper management and that was where the roadblocks went up.

 Management felt that there were too many “impossibles” in the Burke-Yardley scheme and that the best plan was to simply stack the Gemini VII spacecraft atop the Gemini VI booster and fly that mission alone.

But then the engineers did the math and found that the Gemini VII spacecraft was too heavy to be boosted by the GLV-6 booster. Only then did the Burke-Yardley plan begin to gain traction. Of course, Chris Kraft said it was “impossible,” but he tended to say that about most things. Soon the roadblocks began to fall and eventually the plan found its way to NASA Administrator James Webb.

Unlike his underlings, Webb was all in favor of the plan; it was bold, it was forward thinking and although risky, it would make history and it would score a beat on the Soviets. Indeed, this was an era when NASA’s administrator pointed his agency toward doing bold and historic things. He approved the plan and forwarded it to the President. LBJ also approved and just three days after their mission had been scrubbed, Schirra and Stafford had their mission back.

On October 28th, the same day the White House made the announcement that Gemini VII and Gemini VI would rendezvous in space, Gemini spacecraft 6 and the GLV 6 second stage were deerected at Launch Complex 19. Then, the following day, Thursday October 29th, the GLV 6 first stage was also deerected. Spacecraft 6 was stored in the Pyrotechnics Installation Building at the Merritt Island Launch Area while the booster was stored under guard at the Cape Canaveral Satellite Checkout Building where it was kept in a climate-controlled environment. This bonded storage was done to maintain the integrity of the pre-launch check-out of the booster. Now that equipment would wait until after Gemini VII had been launched. Then GLV-6 could be launched without another protracted pre-launch check-out. The Burke-Yardley plan was now in full motion.

 

Command Pilot Frank Borman and pilot Jim Lovell were launched at two seconds past 2:30 on the afternoon of Saturday December 4^th, 1965. Although I had just come inside from playing in the fresh snow and had to quickly shed my wet boots, socks, pants, mittens, hat, jacket and shirt, in order to thaw my benumbed toes over the heater vent. Meanwhile, the final countdown to the launch got my attention.

 

Keep in mind that in the mid-1960s Gemini was THE spacecraft of the era. The GLV booster was best described to me by Dick Gordon as “…a real hotrod.” Unlike later boosters, the Titan II was a true ICBM meant to deliver an atomic bomb upon the Soviet Union from an underground silo. It had to get up and GO! With a Gemini as its payload the crew found the ride to orbit to last 5:41 from bolts blowing to SECO. We who were watching from our TV sets at home did not hear a word from the astronauts. Everything they said was fed to the public through NASA’s PAO (Public Affairs Officer). In fact, live communications from the astronauts during the boost phase first took place on Apollo 10 and that was largely due to Tom Stafford’s insistence. So, we watched the launch on our black and white TV sets, saw animation shortly after staging and listened to what the newsmen such as Cronkite, Bergman and McGee told us. Yet, for a 3rd grader like me, it was really exciting.

 

Although I had shed my snow caked garments before the launch, Borman and Lovell were far better dressed than I had been. They were sporting the new G5C lightweight spacesuits. These suits had no attached helmet, but rather sported a soft hood with a faceplate. Inside the hood each astronaut wore a helmet similar to the standard helmet worn by fighter pilots of that era. The suits were supposed to have greater comfort in the cockpit of the Gemini spacecraft and were also supposed to be easily removed and quickly donned in the event of some sort of cabin depressurization; neither was true. In fact, the suits were hot and uncomfortable in flight and once they were removed there was no way to get them back on quickly— it took the better part of an orbit.

 

On that cold winter Saturday afternoon in 1965, Borman and Lovell rocketed into space seeking to set the world’s record for spaceflight and prove that humans could live in space for extended periods.

 

Although immediately after separation from their Titan II’s second stage the crew did manage to station keep with the spent booster for a while, no matter how anyone looks at it, the flight of GT-7 was purely a medical mission. When asked years later,

 

“…did you feel like you were an experimental rat up there…?”

 

 Lovell replied,

 

“A guinea pig. Absolutely a guinea pig!”

 

 

They were, however, much more prepared to avoid the garbage can syndrome that Cooper and Conrad had experienced. Both crewmen had spent countless hours in the Gemini trainer figuring out how to take every single bit of waste paper or discarded container and painstakingly fold it as small as possible and then stow it. They spent nearly as much time doing that as they spent practicing some of the flight maneuvers. Thus, they started their mission with a very clear view of the problems ahead— and that would pay off.

 

Interestingly, the Gemini VII crew were not the first Gemini astronauts to take their pressure suits off during a flight. After he had left the program, Pete Conrad admitted that at the beginning of his 8-day long Gemini 5 mission, one of the first things that he and Gordon Cooper did was get out of those suits. It was their plan from early on and while on-orbit they said nothing about it among themselves or when talking to mission control. Those space suits traveled quite well stuffed down in the spacecraft’s foot wells.