Word: schirra
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...Wally Schirra, to be sure, had never succumbed to the growing pessimism. "If we had 999 chances out of 1,000 of having a successful flight," he explained, in a preflight interview for the National Broadcasting Company, "no one would want the 1,000th flight. But you don't add up a whole bunch of flights and say we're due for a failure. It's 999 out of 1,000 on each flight...
...Schirra's statistics sounded like whistling in the dark. Even the omens were bad. During the aborted launch attempt, a Cape Kennedy rescue helicopter crash-landed in nearby Banana River. Then word was received that NASA's respected director of space medicine, Dr. W. Randolph Lovelace, and his wife were missing on a private plane flight. Search parties later found their bodies beside the plane's wreckage near Aspen, Colo...
...Delicate Balance. On the day of the successful rendezvous, however, the fog that had shrouded Cape Kennedy during the night-and the cloud that had hovered over Gemini 6 even longer -suddenly blew away. "For the third time, go," exulted Schirra just before the Titan II left the pad in a launch that was as close to perfect as any in all the Cape's history...
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...
...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...