Word: astronauts
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Nothing in the mass of telemetered data, no comment in the yards of tape-recorded communications brought back the drama of the three-day flight of Gemini 11 with quite the same impact as the remarkable color pictures shot by the astronauts. The movie footage and still shots released by NASA last week give an astronaut's clear-eyed view of everything from the weird undulations of the tether that briefly connected Gemini and the Agena target vehicle, to vast panoramas of the earth seen from altitudes never before attained...
Movies of Richard Gordon's unsuccessful space walk, shot automatically from a camera he mounted on Gemini's hull, graphically illustrate the already familiar difficulties of extravehicular activity (EVA). As he moves slowly toward Gemini's nose, the astronaut is clearly out of his element; his movements are labored and uncertain. The simple task of clamping Agena's tether to Gemini's docking bar is an exhausting struggle. As Gordon attempts to straddle Gemini's nose, cowboy-fashion, he proves unable to assume a stable position. There is every indication that...
...ease the psychological adjustment for Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, who will take a space walk during the flight of Gemini 12 this fall, NASA now plans to acclimatize him more gradually to open space. Before he leaves Gemini's cabin entirely, Aldrin will poke his head through the open hatch, stand up on his seat and shoot pictures with only the upper half of his body outside the spacecraft. NASA officials point out that Gordon and Gemini 9's Eugene Cernan, both of whom had trouble with EVA, took their space walks before their open-hatch photography sessions...
Underwater Workouts. In an attempt to familiarize Aldrin with weightlessness, which until now has been simulated for astronaut trainees in an Air Force KC-135 for only 30 seconds at a time, NASA has been giving him workouts in a Baltimore swimming pool that contains a full-size mock-up of Gemini's equipment section. Dressed in a special pressure suit rigged with weights and floats that enable him to remain buoyant at a specific level underwater, Aldrin has spent hours practicing his EVA assignments under conditions that approximate but do not exactly duplicate weightlessness. Astronaut Cernan has also...
Aldrin's underwater training has been largely pointed toward the most ambitious EVA activity scheduled for Gemini 12: use of the Buck Rogers-like, jet-propelled Astronaut Maneuvering Unit (TIME, Nov. 26). Initial plans called for Aldrin to emerge from his hatch and work his way back to the AMU, stowed in Gemini's equipment section. After snapping the AMU's chairlike arms into place, he was to strap himself in and then jet about in space, connected to Gemini by a 125-ft. safety tether...