Word: gemini
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...time Astronaut Charles Bassett climbs out of the Gemini 9 some time next year to take a walk in space, the very name of his mission-EVA (for extravehicular activity) -may have to be changed. Bassett will be not so much outside one vehicle as inside another. His air-conditioned suit with its $6,000,000 backpack containing 166 lbs. of assorted gadgetry will amount to a spacecraft in itself...
Another space mystery seemed close to solution last week. After painstaking analysis of hundreds of data-packed yards of magnetic tape, Air Force and NASA investigators offered a tentative explanation for the failure of an Agena rocket to soar into orbit as a target for the spacecraft Gemini 6. Looming unexpectedly out of the complex vocabulary of modern missilery, the Agena's trouble sounded as old-fashioned as a Model-T. The Agena's engine, said the scientific detectives, had backfired...
Though repeated ground tests of the Agena have been so successful that the odds are high against the occurrence of another hard start, NASA is not taking any chances. The rocket will be modified if it is still to be used as planned in the flight of Gemini 8. On that mission, Astronauts Neil Armstrong and David Scott are scheduled to restart the engine of an orbiting Agena after docking with it. Another backfire could destroy not only the Agena but Gemini 8 and its occupants as well...
This time, unfortunately, the long-shot became more than a remote possibility. If it had been successful, Gemini 6 would have been the first demonstration of rendezvous and docking in space-a maneuver that is absolutely essential to any manned mission to the moon. Now the Russians have a second chance to be first with rendezvous...
...about to give up too much of a lead in the space race. Last week President Johnson announced a hastily revised schedule that includes plans to double up on the next space mission, possibly in early December. Astronauts Frank Borman and James Lovell will blast off in Gemini 7 for their planned 14-day endurance flight; eight to ten days later, Schirra and Stafford will go up in Gemini 6, rendezvous with Gemini 7 (but not dock), and then orbit the earth in formation. For all the difficulties involved in the mission, the major problems will be on the ground...