Word: geminis
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...motion required the utmost physical effort. Space experts were convinced that part of Gordon's problems with EVA were psychological. "No matter how many times you've seen EVA films and been told that you'll not fall," said one Air Force officer assigned to the Gemini missions, "the first time you do it for real is something else. There's a psychological factor involved which we don't know very much about and which we cannot measure...
...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...
...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 used the pool...
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...
...spacewalk difficulties encountered by Gordon-and by Cernan before him-have had a restraining effect on NASA officials. Last week, anxious that nothing go wrong on the final Gemini flight, they canceled the entire AMU experiment and began planning a simpler and less arduous space walk that will give Aldrin a better chance of making out with...