Word: geminis
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...December 1965, Borman and Lovell were pilots of Gemini 7 on man's longest space flight - a 3301-hours' orbital mission that included the history-making rendezvous with Gemini 6. Both took their long confinement in the cramped spacecraft with equanimity and quiet humor, and displayed competence and stability that helped win them their Apollo 8 assignments. Eleven months later, Lovell .and Edwin Aldrin were the crew on the 941-hour flight of Gemini 12, the last U.S. manned flight before Apollo 7. Between them, Lovell and Borman have a total of 7551 hours in space, about...
...everyone who has worked with him is convinced that there are really two Wally Schirras. One will be best remembered for his high jinks in space. On his first mission, he smuggled an unauthorized steak sandwich aboard the spacecraft. In mid-December 1965, during the rendezvous of Gemini 6 and 7, Schirra pulled to within a foot of the other spacecraft and held up a sign for Gemini 7's command pilot, West Point Graduate Frank Borman. It read: "Beat Army." Later, on the same flight, he reported that he had sighted "an object" going into polar orbit. "Stand...
...fighter pilot who later barnstormed with his wife as wing-walker. Wally himself soloed at 16, and went into naval aviation soon after graduation from Annapolis. He flew 90 combat missions in Korea, shot down one MIG and scored one "possible." On the first unsuccessful attempt to launch Gemini 6, when the Titan booster belched smoke and flames without lifting off, Schirra correctly decided that there was no danger of an explosion. He made a split-second decision not to damage the spacecraft by pulling the seat-ejection ring. A few days later, Gemini 6, still intact, carried him aloft...
...only slightly less than the 1.6 million-lb. thrust of the Saturn 1B's first stage. As a result, acceleration was gradual; Astronauts Walter Schirra, Donn Eisele and Walter Cunningham were subjected to only a fraction of the oppressive G-forces experienced on earlier flights by Mercury and Gemini crews...
Schirra meanwhile, was setting new records. The 45-year-old Navy captain, a veteran of near-perfect Mercury and Gemini missions and the first pilot to make a space rendezvous, became the first man to a drink coffee and the first to develop a full-blown cold in space. "I've gone through eight or nine Kleenexes with some pretty good blows, he radioed, "and I've taken two aspirins." NASA doctors prescribed decongestant pills that they routinely store aboard Apollo spacecraft...