Word: geminis
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...Gemini 4, the U.S. took a big step toward closing the gap in the man-in-space race, in which the Soviet Union got off to a head start. More important, the flight signaled the advent of the second generation of U.S. spacecraft and spacemen. The two-man Gemini capsule is to the old Mercury capsule what a Thunderbird is to a Model T. Almost all previous U.S. space flights were preplanned to the second, and any deviation meant trouble; in Gemini 4, the astronauts were given considerable flexibility, could and did change their plans and improvise at short notice...
...this capacity, he helped in the training not only of John Glenn but of Ham and Enos, the chimpanzees who broke into space before men did. White figures that he "went weightless" 1,200 times-for a total of about five hours-before he was ever selected as a Gemini pilot...
...Gemini, White became smitten with a single overriding ambition: to be the first man on the moon. "His goal, says his father, "is to make that first flight...
Dress Rehearsals. Gemini officers picked McDivitt and White as the spacemen for last week's flight nearly a year ago. After that, each man spent scores of hours in a simulated capsule at Houston's Manned Spacecraft Center They practiced the chilling procedures for aborting a flight in case of a mishap in a centrifuge at Johnsville, Pa. Together, they bobbed inside a Gemini capsule shell on the Gulf of Mexico off Galveston, rehearsing the act of opening the hatch, jumping out and inflating a life raft to await rescuers...
Watching It Go. Gemini 4's ascent went precisely according to plan: accelerating to 17,500 m.p.h., the spacecraft entered into an orbit that took it 175 miles high at apogee, 100 miles high at perigee. At 6 min. 6 sec. from liftoff, Command Pilot McDivitt set off a string of explosive bolts that set the capsule free from its second-stage booster. The booster dropped loose...