The Moon in Their Grasp

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We are 120 feet apart and sitting.

The voice was almost unbelievably calm. But behind every word was an unmistakable note of triumph. From 185 miles above the earth, Air Force Major Thomas Stafford reported that he and his fellow astronauts had just made the first manned rendezvous in space. Moving with exquisite precision across the night sky, the spacecraft Gemini 6 tracked down its partner, Gemini 7. As the two ships edged closer to fly in formation, then circle each other in a stately orbital ballet, Stafford and Command Pilot Wally Schirra joined Gemini 7's Lieut. Colonel Frank Borman and Commander James Lovell at the farthest reach of the fast-expanding age of space.

With their successful mission, the four astronauts leaped over past delays and put the U.S. space program back on schedule. Pure science and practical engineering had cooperated to solve the incredibly complex equations of orbital mathematics. Human skill and human courage had added the vital ingredients that made the computations correct. Now the dream of docking two spacecraft while they whirl through their curving courses promised to be no more of a problem than parking a compact car; rescue of astronauts adrift in space became a definite possibility. A manned orbiting laboratory suddenly seemed more than an imaginative scheme; a space station that can be constructed aloft seemed within man's grasp. And the men of Gemini 7 who had blasted off eleven days earlier to spend a full two weeks above the atmosphere had vastly extended the known limits of human endurance.

Now the moon itself seemed nearer and definitely accessible. Man's technical talents had brought a lunar visit down out of the realm of science fiction. The Apollo program, with its planned lunar landing before the decade runs out, no longer seemed a fanciful goal for overambitious scientists. From the scorched launching pads of Cape Kennedy to the lonely tracking ships in the Pacific, Gemini had pumped new life into U.S. space work. And a public grown almost blasé about news of men in orbit waited for the astronauts' return with singular pride.

While the World Watched. By the time Gemini 6 began its searing descent through the atmosphere, the entire country was back before its television screens. The anxious watchers had a better view than ever. Cameras on the deck of the aircraft carrier Wasp, waiting in the Atlantic, got a special space-age lift. They relayed their pictures through the Early Bird communications satellite and brought the tense drama of splashdown into millions of homes and offices (it was 10:29 a.m.) with astonishing clarity.

Search planes catapulted off the carrier and helicopters flapped aloft while the world watched. Televiewers rode the windy flight deck as the Wasp raced to Gemini 6's landing point just under 14 miles away—the closest a Gemini capsule has yet come to its predicted impact point. Dense smoke from the capsule's marker bomb rolled heavily across the camera's field of view, and soon the capsule itself bobbed into range.