Word: tethers
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...three-day flight of Gemini 11 with quite the same impact as the remarkable color pictures shot by the astronauts. The movie footage and still shots released by NASA last week give an astronaut's clear-eyed view of everything from the weird undulations of the tether that briefly connected Gemini and the Agena target vehicle, to vast panoramas of the earth seen from altitudes never before attained...
Devoid of Life. In the most spectacular movie sequence, shot with a camera fixed in the left cabin window, Gemini and Agena gyrate erratically at opposite ends of the oscillating Dacron tether while the earth swings dizzyingly below. Gradually, as Command Pilot Pete Conrad fires short blasts of his thrusters, the two ships settle down into stable rotation. The tether stretches taut between them. Frames taken after the tether is cut loose show the long Dacron strap winding in haphazard fashion around Agena...
...camera he mounted on Gemini's hull, graphically illustrate the already familiar difficulties of extravehicular activity (EVA). As he moves slowly toward Gemini's nose, the astronaut is clearly out of his element; his movements are labored and uncertain. The simple task of clamping Agena's tether to Gemini's docking bar is an exhausting struggle. As Gordon attempts to straddle Gemini's nose, cowboy-fashion, he proves unable to assume a stable position. There is every indication that he may be bucked off at any moment...
...emerge from his hatch and work his way back to the AMU, stowed in Gemini's equipment section. After snapping the AMU's chairlike arms into place, he was to strap himself in and then jet about in space, connected to Gemini by a 125-ft. safety tether...
...experiment clearly proved that tethered spaceships can orbit in formation without wasting fuel. Robert Gilruth, director of NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center, immediately conjured up "colonies of vehicles fastened together in ways like this." The slow rotation of the system also provided a bonus: a small centrifugal force that acted like a weak gravitational pull, causing objects to drift toward and finally "fall" on the rear wall of Gemini's cabin. It was the first artificial gravity created during a manned orbital flight. After three hours of tethered orbiting, Conrad flipped a switch that jettisoned Gemini...