Word: geminis
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...despite bouts of trouble with thrusters and fuel cells-splashed down only 7.6 miles from their planned impact point, winning a bet made with Schirra and Stafford that they would land closest to the target. There was one notable difference. After a 330-hour, 5.7 million-mile journey, the Gemini 7 astronauts were understandably anxious to leave their cramped quarters as soon as possible. Shortly after they opened their hatches, they were hoisted aboard a helicopter and flown to the deck of the Wasp. Though few would have been surprised if Borman and Lovell had found it difficult to unbend...
...lunar visit down out of the realm of science fiction. The Apollo program, with its planned lunar landing before the decade runs out, no longer seemed a fanciful goal for overambitious scientists. From the scorched launching pads of Cape Kennedy to the lonely tracking ships in the Pacific, Gemini had pumped new life into U.S. space work. And a public grown almost blasé about news of men in orbit waited for the astronauts' return with singular pride...
While the World Watched. By the time Gemini 6 began its searing descent through the atmosphere, the entire country was back before its television screens. The anxious watchers had a better view than ever. Cameras on the deck of the aircraft carrier Wasp, waiting in the Atlantic, got a special space-age lift. They relayed their pictures through the Early Bird communications satellite and brought the tense drama of splashdown into millions of homes and offices (it was 10:29 a.m.) with astonishing clarity...
Search planes catapulted off the carrier and helicopters flapped aloft while the world watched. Televiewers rode the windy flight deck as the Wasp raced to Gemini 6's landing point just under 14 miles away-the closest a Gemini capsule has yet come to its predicted impact point. Dense smoke from the capsule's marker bomb rolled heavily across the camera's field of view, and soon the capsule itself bobbed into range...
Spirit of 76. NASA's timetable calls for the first U.S. astronauts to explore the moon within four years, a goal that has always seemed unduly optimistic-by almost any standards. But Gemini's "Spirit of 76" mission last week dispelled most doubts. It brought the elusive moon into reach, and gave U.S. astronauts good reason to start planning still more ambitious voyages, as hostile space began to show the first small signs of hospitality...