Word: splashdowns
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Dates: during 1965-1965
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...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...
...Dring ("chicken switch") that would have ejected him and Copilot Stafford from the Gemini capsule, the mission could probably not have been sent aloft on time. His superb piloting of the capsule, perfected in long hours of practice in the Houston docking simulator, and his nearly on-target splashdown near the carrier Wasp were reminiscent of his first space flight. In 1962 Schirra flew a near-perfect mission in the Mercury capsule Sigma 7, landing only four miles from the recovery carrier in the Pacific...
...Diet. On the day after splashdown, they were flown to Cape Kennedy to begin eleven days of even more intensive physical checkups and debriefings. The exams showed that Cooper and Conrad were not so fatigued as the men of the four-day Gemini 4. For one reason, the Gemini 5 astronauts were able to get six or seven hours of sleep daily after the first few crucial days. When they slept in orbit, their heartbeats dropped to the high 30s. As they maneuvered their spacecraft and performed experiments, the beats rose to the 60s and 70s, which is about normal...
Against the growing probability that the mission would have to be aborted early, he ordered four Air Force planes to move into position in the Pacific for a possible emergency splashdown some 490 miles north and east of Hawaii. A Navy destroyer and oiler in the vicinity were alerted to stand by. Radioed Cooper: "We've decided we're going to have to either re-enter early or else power down." Kraft promptly ordered him to shut off as many systems as possible. Was the rendezvous with the pod still possible? asked the astronauts. "We're working...
Fifteen minutes after splashdown, Navy frogmen were lowered into the water by a helicopter. They peered into McDivitt's window to see if the astronauts were all right, then strapped a huge yellow flotation collar around the capsule to keep it from sinking...