Space: The Moon in Their Grasp

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(6 of 10)

Eventually, Gemini 6 maneuvered into a safer orbit that kept the ships between 25 and 48 miles apart while their tired crews slept. Next morning, an hour before he fired retrorockets for Gemini 6's trip back to earth, the irrepressible Schirra solemnly reported sighting an unidentified satellite in a low trajectory in polar orbit. It was trying to contact him, he told Mission Control in Houston. Then, before Chris Kraft & Co. had time to recover, he pulled out a harmonica and played Jingle Bells.

Eyeball Maneuvers. From the time that Schirra made the final major thrust that moved his ship up toward Gemini 7's circular orbit, Gemini 6 was completely on its own, freed from direct guidance by Houston, largely dependent on its on-board computer, its radar and Command Pilot Schirra's "eyeball" maneuvering. Both Schirra and Stafford literally had their hands full. Schirra's left hand was on the OAMS (Orbital Attitude Maneuvering System) translation stick, which controls Gemini's 85-Ib. and 100-lb. thrusters, and is—in NASA parlance—"direction oriented." When he wanted to move forward, he merely moved the stick forward; when he wanted to go into reverse, he pulled the stick back; he moved it right or left for sideward motion. In his right hand, he clasped a notched pistol grip that controlled smaller thrusters used to pitch, yaw or roll the Gemini around one of its own axes—maneuvers that could fix its attitude in space. By working both controls simultaneously, Schirra was able to make his spacecraft respond as smoothly as a trained seal. Stafford, meanwhile, was busy with a circular slide rule and a heavily crosshatched plotting chart in his lap, checking the on-board computer's data and relaying information to Mission Control.

At short range, where the thrusts are small, there is little time for orbital mechanics to take hold, and Schirra was able to largely ignore their strange effects and allow his pilot's instincts to take over. After blipping his thrusters to edge closer to Gemini 7, he fired short reverse blasts to come to a stop, since there is no friction in space to slow him down. Back and forth, up and down, he maneuvered with a precision that brought expressions of admiration from Borman and from ground control in Houston, which noted that at rendezvous he had used less than 50% of the maneuvering propellant he had aboard.

As Schirra had predicted, it was "a piece of cake."

Calm & Effective. Perhaps. But there was little doubt last week that much of the credit for the successful rendezvous belonged to casual Wally Schirra, who, at 42, is the oldest astronaut flying. It was his cool and seasoned performance during the abortive Sunday launch of Gemini 6 that made the midweek triumph possible. Had he panicked and pulled the Dring ("chicken switch") that would have ejected him and Copilot Stafford from the Gemini capsule, the mission could probably not have been sent aloft on time. His superb piloting of the capsule, perfected in long hours of practice in the Houston docking simulator, and his nearly on-target splashdown near the carrier Wasp were reminiscent of his first space flight. In 1962 Schirra flew a near-perfect mission in the Mercury capsule Sigma 7, landing only four miles from the recovery carrier in the Pacific.