Word: wasps
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...target. There was one notable difference. After a 330-hour, 5.7 million-mile journey, the Gemini 7 astronauts were understandably anxious to leave their cramped quarters as soon as possible. Shortly after they opened their hatches, they were hoisted aboard a helicopter and flown to the deck of the Wasp. Though few would have been surprised if Borman and Lovell had found it difficult to unbend and walk, both climbed unaided from the helicopter, chipper and in remarkably good shape...
While the World Watched. By the time Gemini 6 began its searing descent through the atmosphere, the entire country was 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...
Search planes catapulted off the carrier and helicopters flapped aloft while the world watched. Televiewers rode the windy flight deck as the Wasp raced to Gemini 6's landing point just under 14 miles away-the closest a Gemini capsule has yet come to its predicted impact point. Dense smoke from the capsule's marker bomb rolled heavily across the camera's field of view, and soon the capsule itself bobbed into range...
Navy frogmen were already there; a flotation collar was lashed into place and a plugged-in telephone provided close-up communication with the astronauts even before they opened their hatches. TV brought its fans as close as any Wasp crewman when the capsule was finally hoisted on deck, and as his hatch opened, Wally Schirra gave the familiar thumbs-up signal of success. Then, while the band played Anchors Aweigh, the two space travelers walked briskly down the red carpet of welcome between lines of cheering sailors and marines...
...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...