Word: geminis
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...schedule, the reliable Atlas booster roared up from Cape Kennedy and out over the Atlantic carrying an unmanned Agena rocket as its payload. Astronauts Walter Schirra and Tom Stafford watched the action on TV as they waited for their own scheduled liftoff, 1 hr. 41 min. later, in Gemini 6, the capsule in which they would make the first attempt at rendezvous and linkup in space. Then, six minutes later, the Agena target vehicle mysteriously disintegrated. The whole mission was scrubbed, and from Houston to the Cape, U.S. spacemen began to search their telemetered data for some sign of what...
Then, 143 miles high and 541.9 miles downrange over the Atlantic, the Agena suddenly went silent. At the Houston control center, flight directors hunted desperately for their missing spacecraft, still hoping that there might be something in orbit for a Gemini rendezvous. But after a futile radar hunt, a technician at the Carnavon tracking station in Australia announced the end by moaning...
...Director Robert Gilruth and his deputy George Low glumly surveyed the failure of a mission. It may be weeks before the experts can identify the "glitch," the space-age devil that caused the trouble. And if it turns out to be a major design failure in the Agena, the Gemini program is in deep trouble. Five of the next six Gemini missions involve rendezvous and docking exercises with an Agena target...
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...