Word: geminis
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Some 1,200 miles ahead, Gemini 7 sailed along at 17,290 m.p.h. The strategy of rendezvous, painstakingly plotted by NASA scientists and computers, called for Gemini 6 to catch up by taking advantage of orbital mechanics-the physical laws that govern the motion of orbiting bodies. Those laws state that an orbital path is determined by a delicate balance between gravity, which tries to pull a satellite down, and centrifugal force, which is proportional to the satellite's speed and tends to shove it farther away from the earth. A satellite orbiting close to earth, where the pull...
During the first three orbits of Gemini 6, Command Pilot Schirra made a number of ground-computed corrective maneuvers. To change his elliptical orbit into a circle that reached up closer to Gemini 7, he made several "posigrade" burns-bursts from his forward-thrusting rockets. At two hours and 18 minutes after launch, for instance, Schirra made a posigrade burn when Gemini 6 reached its second apogee over the Indian Ocean. That thrust helped the change from ellipse to circle by increasing the perigee from 100 to 140 miles above the earth; following the laws of orbital mechanics, though...
...information about Gemini 6 and Gemini 7 was fed back from NASA's worldwide tracking stations, the computer was ready to deliver, in microseconds, answers that its human tutors would take too long to supply. Its orders constantly changed Gemini 6's flight plan, pumped out new burn times, duration of burn, power of burn, direction of thrust. It was the computer, for example, that noticed the apogee was half a mile low and called for a tiny "tweak" burn at the second perigee. "During the rendezvous," says NASA Flight Director Chris Kraft proudly, "it gave...
Over the Atlantic, during the third orbit of Gemini 6, the radar transmitter in the spacecraft's nose locked onto a transponder on Gemini 7. The transponder returned signals that were translated into position data by a computer aboard Gemini 6, now only 235 miles behind. At about the same time, the two capsules established voice contact. "We are reading you loud and clear," called Borman. "Good, Frank. See you soon," replied Schirra confidently. "We will be up there shortly...
Blue Lights. After Gemini 6 was jockeyed into a nearly circular orbit 170 miles above the earth and only 17 miles below Gemini 7's flight path, Copilot Stafford caught his first glimpse of 7's blue acquisition lights pulsing in the blackness above the South Atlantic. "Spotted Gemini 7 at 12 o'clock high," he reported...