Highways Into Space: A first-hand account of the beginnings of the human space program (16 page)

This all came about four decades later as a more suitable variant for the final approach to the target. And, as in Gemini, the desired final conditions for intercept determine the intervening sequence of phasing maneuvers, although the time between launch and actual rendezvous is measured in days rather than a few hours in order to allow the crew to adjust to zero-G. We conducted a terminal phase similar to the Apollo scheme on Gemini 11 with the first rendezvous and experimented with a variation to slow down the relative speeds on a re-rendezvous called the “standoff” technique. These exercises were very helpful in tailoring the sequence to new conditions and constraints in the future.

And Using a Guided Reentry to Landing Point

Gemini did have a small Lift/Drag ratio (L/D), established by an offset of the center of gravity. This small amount of lift was then modulated by rolling the vehicle during reentry to provide the correct amount of lift in plane to reach the target. Once our team got comfortable with this guidance scheme and the control system to achieve it, they added some simulator time to see it all in action. This capability quickly became a known and comfortable staple for the Retros and Guidos.

The first two Gemini flights were unmanned. The objectives of GT-1 on April 8, 1964, were to validate loads on a spacecraft shell and the combined structure of the spacecraft and launch vehicle. The vehicle was guided into a one hundred by two hundred mile orbit with an early planned reentry, which occurred on sixty-fourth orbit. During its time on the pad, GT-2 was subject to some lighting strikes in the area that caused a delay. Then, there were two delays due to the threats of two hurricanes, Cleo and then Dora, resulting in a destack of the vehicle. Back on the pad on December ninth, there was a pad shutdown at T+ one second. After resolving the problem, GT-2 finally launched on a short suborbital flight on January 19, 1965 with a duration of only nineteen minutes. These two flights were monitored by Cliff and me, John Llewellyn and Jerry Bostick as Retros and the “fox,” Charley Parker.

As we prepared for GT-3 that flew on March 22, 1965, the first manned Gemini was crewed by Gus Grissom and John Young. Cliff, John and Charley were the flight dynamics operators. It had been decided to “flight-follow” the MCC at the Cape with the new MCC in Houston. In my new role as a Flight Director in training, I and Jerry Bostick as FIDO and Retro, and Arnie Aldrich as the Gemini systems expert were in the Houston MCC as backup. For the next flight GT-4, we reversed locations and were on backup duty at the Cape. We enjoyed making an occasional offer to take over for any problems at the other MCC.

The flight was such a technical success that the coverage degenerated into the “ham sandwich” crisis as John Young had smuggled an unauthorized sandwich in his suit pocket. Much ado about not much, except that the configuration system that controlled what was in the spacecraft was strengthened, but even then, not enough. This subject came back to bite NASA much later during the Apollo XV stamp cover fiasco, which was an acknowledged violation of common sense standards if not an actual legal transgression. At the time of Apollo XV, Chris Kraft was Center Director at JSC and spent the best part of a year dealing with the fallout from that issue.

Back to GT-3, we were all especially pleased that this flight went so well after the loss of the MR-4 spacecraft when Gus almost drowned. Most of us were very supportive and proud of Gus and happy in this success for him. As a measure of NASA and Deke Slayton’s confidence in him, Gus flew the first Gemini and was scheduled to fly the first Apollo.

Right after GT-3, Cliff informed me about the possibility of a space walk. The EVA activity was being considered for GT-4 but was still under wraps pending completion of certain certification tests. This was a big step for all of us even thought the Flight dynamics team was mostly an observer of EVAs. Mercury did not have an EVA capability and it was believed that we had to exercise EVA in Gemini before we got to the moon, where so much depended on a successful walk on the moon. The EVA was approved for flight only ten days before the mission, when the necessary tests on the EVA equipment were successfully completed. The four-day mission was also a big step in flight duration from Mercury (one and a half days on MA-9) and three orbits on GT-3. GT-4 launched on June 3, 1965, with Jim McDivitt and Ed White as the crew. The orbit was nominal and, after separation, Jim attempted to station keep with the Titan second stage. As he came out of the night pass, he recommended the cessation of the station keeping exercise because it was causing excessive fuel usage. Chris at MCC agreed. This was an early indication that orbital mechanics played a big role in station keeping if the chase vehicle was very far away from the target, more than several hundreds of feet.

The EVA was next on the agenda and all preps were normal and “GOs” were given to depress the spacecraft. The EVA went for a short twenty-three minutes from Hawaii to crossing the States. Ed White found it easy to use the nitrogen gun as propulsion to move himself and control his attitude. The crew had some difficulty with the umbilical hose and the pressurized suits when it came time to close the hatch. This equipment configuration is akin to wrestling a very large snake and capturing all of its body within the confines of a very small cockpit. Two crewmembers already took up quite a bit of the volume even before the umbilical, but the crew got the door closed and latched in due course.

In retrospect, this experience probably misled us. We did not have any new or unexpected difficulty with EVA as it was conducted. We did not learn how difficult this kind of EVA was until a whole year later during the GT-9 EVA by Gene Cernan. Gordo Cooper and Pete Conrad crewed the Gemini 5 spacecraft on its eight-day mission, August twenty-first to twenty-ninth, 1965. This was a three-shift operation for the MCC including the Flight Dynamics team. Jerry Bostick, Cliff Charlesworth and Ed Pavelka were on the FIDO console – Tom Carter, Dave Massaro and John Llewyllen were on the Retro console. Parker, Fenner, Russell and Bales handled the guidance officer position. This group handled all of the Gemini flights with a few changes. Cliff dropped out of rotation after Gemini 6 and Bostick and Pavelka rotated the prime FIDO role. Stu Davis joined to cover the Agena and Bill Gravett joined the Retros on Gemini 7 and subs. Tom Carter was a new assignee out of John Mayer’s Mission Planning branch.

After the usual simulation runs, they were all ready for GT-5, the longest mission yet flown in manned space of eight days, with a deployable pod for evaluating the rendezvous radar, and seventeen science experiments. Once on orbit, the new fuel cell system replacing the batteries had a problem with the cryogenic oxygen tank, in that the pressure fell from the range of eight hundred to nine hundred PSI, to seventy PSI and then leveled off. This was a real concern because the cryo tank pressure forced the oxygen into the fuel cell to generate electrical power. This somewhat precarious position resulted in a daily “Go-No-Go” from MCC to continue each next day of the flight. The situation improved each day and the threat to the planned flight duration receded.

The rendezvous radar evaluation pod was deployed about two hours into the flight and successfully tracked by the Gemini radar. This radar testing was reduced in order to save electrical power but gave good results every time it was tested, including with an L Band transponder, ground based at the Cape. For the rest of the flight, experiments and “living in space” activities dominated, as the crew adapted to this new environment.

It is worth mentioning some background on this eight-day mission. Before Mercury flew, there were national levels discussions and debates about the capabilities of men to survive in the weightless environment. It was said that they would become disoriented, confused and generally fail at piloting in this environment. These dramatic predictions turned out to be overdone and incorrect. We did find later in Apollo that a noticeable percentage of crew members could become ill if they were not careful to avoid rapid head movements in the first two or three days of space flight. After which, they adapt and are generally fine and even with this condition, the crews have always been able to handle whatever was required. So there was some basis for concern but it was over played and not a showstopper. It did not even manifest itself in Mercury or Gemini, but did in Apollo, where there was a significant volume in the cockpit to move around in and to induce this space sickness condition. Once recognized, this is a manageable situation, by avoiding head motions and not scheduling intensive operational activity until there has been one to two days to adapt.

We faced the same extremes in some of the other national Apollo debates, where it was claimed that the spacecraft would sink into the lunar surface. This was in contradiction to the experience with the early unmanned landers on the moon, which did not sink.

During this same period of 1964 to 1965, the Soviets introduced a newly named ship, the Voshkod and flew it three times. We found out later that it was the same one-man ship, Vostok, with barely volume accommodations for three unsuited crewmen and elimination of the ejection seat. Komarov, Feoktistov and Yegorov flew on October 12, 1964, for one day. Apparently seen as upstaging the two-man Gemini, it had to be a nightmare to cram into and stay for a day. The next Voshkod was an unmanned test ship and launched on February 22, 1965. On-orbit OK, the EVA airlock was deployed. However, signals from the ship were soon lost as was the ship. On March 18, 1965, before GT-3, Leonov and Belyayev were in space aboard Voshkod 2. The airlock was deployed and Leonov was outside for ten minutes when he started to ingress the airlock.

We later learned that the ballooning of the suit prevented him from fitting back into the airlock. He had to depress his suit a slight amount, inch back thru the airlock while the suit was repressurizing and then repeat the depress several times before clearing the airlock. At the time for automatic retrofire sequence, there was no ignition of the rockets. This resulted in a ground decision to delay one rev and reenter manually. It was a real scramble for the crew and retrofire was late and out of attitude. The vehicle landed 1200 miles long in a forest and the craft wedged in some trees. They egressed after the rescue team skied in to their location, and eventually returned after about two days in the forest. The world believed that the Soviets had a real 3-man ship and an EVA capability. And they did, of sorts.

Bill and Jane Tindall and their family of four first became close to us while still at Langley. TheTindalls were the first family in Virginia to invite us – Marilyn and I – for dinner with their family of three (at the time) kids – Dana, Mark and Amy. At the time, Marilyn was just pregnant with Jenny. I was working in the same organization as Bill at the time. Bill had a love of sailboats manifested in a ‘34 wooden hull sloop, which he was refurbishing in his barn. The Tindall property, from Jane’s side of the family, was multiple acres with all sorts of equipment and out buildings. Bill used it all to get his required chores done so he would have time to work on his sailboat. Maybe it came from his time in the Navy, or maybe from his being raised on the water surrounding the family home on Cape Cod. However, the pace of the space program eventually caught up with Bill and he didn’t even move the sailboat from Virginia to Texas.

Marilyn, Glynn, Jane and Bill Tindall

Bill functioned as John Mayer’s deputy and he was really fascinated with all of the new challenges facing the Mission Planning and Flight Dynamics teams. He was full of insight to help us new, younger guys cope with these orbital mechanics subjects and he was very good at both – the subjects and the mentoring. Bill always had a variety of jobs and usually was plugged into the point position on the most difficult subjects. He was the first to focus our attention on the possibility of dramatically simplifying the operations concept for Mercury, with an MCC in Florida and a dozen remote stations around the world with small flight control teams. He promoted the improvements in worldwide communications as being the enabler of a single control facility with all voice data, command and eventually video being routed to the MCC in Houston through the global network of receiving stations. Bill was the NASA lead for the software development by Draper labs and MIT for the Apollo computer. But, most dear to our hearts was his integration of the mission trajectory planners, the flight controllers, and the flight crews.

This meeting started out as something called “data priority,” since one of the early issues was which source of navigation data to use in which phases and how to decide that choice in real time. At this level, the primary members of the MCC Flight Controller team to engage in these discussions with the mission planners and the Flight dynamics operators. However, this activity quickly evolved into a more comprehensive process gradually including all of the systems flight controllers, flight software providers, the experts from flight crew operations division who devised the check list and the flight plans and then, most significantly, the flight crews enthusiastically engaged. It was the forum in which we systematically talked through and vehemently argued about every step and decision in the process, precisely defining all of the “flight techniques” necessary to use the best of the spacecraft capabilities to accomplish back-up launch guidance, rendezvous, docking, docked propulsion burns, de-orbit and entry. In later times, the name for this forum did become “flight techniques.”