The Mammoth Book of Space Exploration and Disasters

Three days later the Gemini VI-A mission was finally launched. After six hours of maneuvering, the last three in the automatic, computer-controlled mode, Wally Schirra accomplished America’s first true orbital rendezvous. He wasn’t exactly sure what he was doing when he fired his thrusters on the computer’s orders. About an hour before actual rendezvous, Wally exclaimed, “My gosh, there’s a real bright star out there. That must be Sirius.” The bright object was Gemini VII.

NASA had two spacecraft and four astronauts in orbit, and the news media made the most of the mission. The press was ecstatic when Tom Stafford gleefully said he’d just seen “a satellite going from north to south, probably in a polar orbit.” Then Wally Schirra – ever the prankster – played “Jingle Bells” on his harmonica.

By 18 December, when Frank Borman and Jim Lovell splashed down in the Atlantic, America had more than quadrupled the “space hours” racked up by the Soviet Union.

In 1966 Soviet efforts were hampered by the illness and death of chief designer, Korolev, and by competition between his successor, Michin and the ICBM design bureau led by military designer General Vladimir N. Chelomei. The Soviets also needed to develop a large rocket like the Saturn V, but had not yet managed to build the more complex upper stages. The lower stages of their “Proton” project were still similar to Korolev’s original Vostok: a clustered engine with strap-on boosters.

Buzz Aldrin was one of the back-up team for Gemini X. When the primary crew of Gemini IX, Charlie Bassett and Elliott See were killed in a flying accident the new crew would be Tom Stafford and Gene Cernan. Jim Lovell and Buzz Aldrin became their backup crew.

Gemini VIII has to abort

On 16 March 1966 Neil Armstrong and Dave Scott in Gemini VIII achieved a successful docking. Buzz Aldrin was in Mission Control:

I was in the Mission Control room in Houston on March 16, 1966, when Neil Armstrong and Dave Scott accomplished one of Project Gemini 5 main goals, orbital rendezvous and docking with an Agena target vehicle, during the Gemini VIII flight. I didn’t know Neil Armstrong that well – he was a civilian astronaut from the second group but he was highly thought of from his days as a NASA test pilot on the X-15 rocket plane out at Edwards. For almost five hours, Arm-strong and Scott maneuvered their spacecraft to match orbits with the Agena and finally rendezvoused above the Caribbean, as Dave Scott called out radar ranges and Neil slowed the spacecraft by “eyeball” judgment.

After about an hour of floating near the Agena (“station keeping”) Mission Control told them, “Go ahead and dock.” The spacecraft’s cylindrical neck eased into the open throat of the Agena’s docking adapter. Mechanical latches sprang out to connect the two vehicles.

“Flight,” Neil called to flight director Gene Kranz in Houston, “we are docked! It’s really a smoothie.”

The Mission Control room was loud with cheers and whistles among the usually quiet flight directors. Gemini had just passed a milestone. Orbital docking brought us one step closer to an LOR mission and a landing on the moon. Because the Agena was built to accept engine commands directly from the Gemini spacecraft, the mission plan next called for Neil and Dave to fire the Agena engine to change their orbit. But the docked Gemini-Agena began rolling, slowly at first, and then with increasingly wilder gyrations.

“Neil,” Dave Scott said, “we’re in a bank.”