Word: mcdivitt
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...McDivitt...
Troublesome Tether. In a press conference at the Space Center the next day, McDivitt and White matter-of-factly gave 75 newsmen a rundown of their flight. Seated at a table covered with gold-colored cloth, McDivitt said he had trouble trying to rendezvous with the booster that had hurled the capsule into orbit. It was, he said, tumbling too much. Mission Director Kraft, noting that when McDivitt thought the booster was 400 ft. off, it was really 2,000 ft. away, said: "It's pretty hard to tell distances up there by eyeballing it." Next August...
...confessed that during his "extravehicular activity," his 25-ft. tether gave him considerable trouble, kept tugging him toward the very spot he had been warned to avoid-the spacecraft's adapter section. There, two-foot-long plumes of burning fuel shot out from the thruster rockets fired by McDivitt to stabilize the capsule, and White at times drifted as near as five or six feet above them...
White said he knew that anything he said during his space walk would be heard over live radio and TV, confessed that he was worried about "What do you say to 194 million people?" He decided to chat with McDivitt as if no body at all were listening. "What you heard," he said, "was two test pilots conducting their mission in the best manner possible...
...promised the astronauts earlier, when he congratulated them by phone after their arrival aboard the Wasp. "I've been saving some little something for you," said the President at that time. Now, standing in front of Houston's Mission Control Center, he told Air Force Majors McDivitt and White that he was nominating them for promotions to lieutenant colonel. He also said he was nominating Gemini 3 Command Pilot Gus Grissom, who helped guide Gemini 4 from the ground, and Mercury Astronaut Gordon Cooper, who will fly Gemini 5, for the same jump in rank. This "little...