Word: astronautics
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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While Gemini 4 was in one of its last revolutions around the earth, Command Pilot Jim McDivitt allowed as how he and Co-Pilot Ed White were a little tired but feeling fit. From Houston's Manned Spacecraft Center, Gemini 3 Astronaut John Young joked that the tough part would come back on earth...
Only three years ago, Astronaut John Glenn and his Friendship 7 capsule were the symbols of American adventure in space. Today, Glenn is a 43- year-old soft-drink company executive in Texas, and Friendship 7 is on display in the Smithsonian Institution. Both the man and his machine are honored relics of the infancy period of U.S. space travel...
...necessary to help the pilot guide the capsule back to earth with pinpoint accuracy, the failure caused no great alarm. At the Houston Control Center, Mission Director Christopher Kraft blamed "glitch"-a computer-age gremlin that causes an abrupt change in power, fouling up delicate circuits. Kraft turned to Astronaut John Young, who used a similar computer on the earlier Gemini 3 flight, asked if a swift kick might revive it. Said Young, "Yes, if everything else fails." Nothing would get it going again, but Kraft declared that the failure would have "absolutely no effect on the safety...
...said Berry, who flew from Houston to the Wasp. "If I were any happier today, I think I'd be flying around the room." Berry said the flight promised "to knock down an awful lot of straw men. We had been told that we would have an unconscious astronaut after four days of weightlessness. Well, they're not. We were told that the astronaut would experience vertigo, disorientation when he stepped out of that spaceship. We hit that one over the head...
...hours after the astronauts' press conference, President Johnson flew down to Houston and came up with the surprise he had promised the astronauts earlier, when he congratulated them by phone after their arrival aboard the Wasp. "I've been saving some little something for you," said the President at that time. Now, standing in front of Houston's Mission Control Center, he told Air Force Majors McDivitt and White that he was nominating them for promotions to lieutenant colonel. He also said he was nominating Gemini 3 Command Pilot Gus Grissom, who helped guide Gemini 4 from...