Flight of the Seagull

Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space on June 16, 1963. Vostok 6, with the call sign Seagull, carried Tereshkova for 48 orbits of the Earth over the course of 3 days.

It was only recently revealed (in the last 5 years) that Tereshkova experienced some serious problems during her flight. An error in the onboard computer programming caused her ship to go into a higher orbit rather than descending as intended. She was able to reprogram the computer with data called up from the ground, and she re-entered safely. After she ejected from the capsule just before landing (as the early cosmonauts did), high winds nearly blew her into a nearby lake.

Her flight was another propaganda victory for the USSR in the early space race, ostensibly illustrating the equality of the sexes in Soviet society. However, it would be more than 19 years before the Soviets launched another woman into space. Only three female cosmonauts have flown in the entire history of the Russian space program, while the US has flown more than 40 female astronauts during the Space Shuttle era.

Remembering Deke Slayton

Donald K. "Deke" Slayton died 16 years ago this past week. He was, to me, the least familiar of the original Mercury astronauts. As mentioned in a prior post, his paroxysmal atrial fibrillation, which was discovered after he was named to the Mercury program, grounded him for more than a decade. He was in line to fly next after John Glenn but was taken off the rolls once his heart condition became apparent.

Deke was a fighter, first and foremost. Even after he was grounded, he vowed to stay involved in the space program however he could, hoping that someday he would be allowed to go into space. He volunteered to head the Astronaut Office at the Manned Spaceflight Center, and as such, he was the person who made the recommendations about who would fly and who would not. He is generally credited with establishing the crew rotation system, where a crew would act as backup on one mission, and then be assigned as the prime crew three missions later.

According to the book "Moon Shot," by Jay Barbree and Howard Benedict (although ostensibly written by Alan Shepard and Slayton, who actually died before the book was published), Slayton took megadoses of vitamins and was somehow able to eliminate all symptoms of his atril fibrillation. [I haven't tried that for my symptoms - maybe it's worth a shot!] The NASA flight surgeons certified him as fit to fly, and he pushed for a spot on the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in 1975. Trying to pull seniority, he insisted on commanding the mission, but higher authority ruled in favor of the much more experienced Tom Stafford to be Commander. Slayton decided not to press the issue, deciding to be satisfied with having a seat on the mission at all. The pin shown at left was one of Slayton's commemorative lapel pins from the mission.

This last item is one of the more unusual in my collection. It's Slayton's International Certificate of Vaccination from 1982. I picked it up -- accidentally -- at the first live online auction in which I participated.

One wonders how the thread of US manned spaceflight would have spun out in Gemini and Apollo had Slayton not been so influential behind the scenes. He was a tough boss, but generally fair. He would also fight for his fellow astronauts against political pressure - not always successfully, but the astronaut corps knew he was on their side.

A birthday shout out to Jim McDivitt

Yet another of the early astronauts reaches his 80th birthday on June 10, as hard as it is to believe. Jim McDivitt, who was the Commander of Gemini IV and Apollo 9 has reached this milestone.

McDivitt was "at the stick" when Ed White took his famous spacewalk on Gemini IV. When I met McDivitt at Spacefest this year, I told him that I always thought it unfair that he didn't get EVA credit. At the same time that White was outside the capsule, the door was open and McDivitt was exposed to hard vacuum just as much as White was - he just wasn't standing up in his seat or leaving the confines of the ship. Nowadays, on Space Shuttle and Space Station missions, the start of an EVA is counted from the time when the hatch is opened, even before the astronauts have ventured outside. By that definition, in my humble opinion, McDivitt could have gotten EVA credit both for Gemini IV and Apollo 9! He said he agreed with me but it wasn't worth arguing with anyone about!

McDivitt had the most infectious laugh of anyone I have met. Even though he didn't know me from Adam, he pulled me right away into some hilarious stories about NASA in the good ol' days and some of the characters that he used to work with. I thoroughly enjoyed spending time with him over the weekend at Spacefest!

Happy birthday, General, and many many more --

Happy birthday, Bruce McCandless

Astronaut Bruce McCandless II turned 72 on June 8.

McCandless, whose father was a highly-decorated hero in World War II, went to the US Naval Academy. He graduated in 1958, in the same class as John McCain. He flew fighters off of the USS Forrestal and the USS Enterprise, including flights from the latter during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

McCandless was one of the "Original 19", the third group of astronauts selected by NASA, in 1966. He is sometimes called "the first human to speak to a person on another planet," because he was the CAPCOM (Capsule Communicator) during the Apollo 11 moonwalk, when Neil Armstrong first stepped onto the Moon. However, it would be 18 years from his selection as an astronaut before McCandless would fly into space himself.

McCandless's big moment came in February 1984, when McCandless flew as a Payload Specialist in Challenger on STS-41B. McCandless flew the first tests of the Manned Maneuvering Unit, which he had helped develop, dating from a prototype that flew inside Skylab. Donning the MMU and releasing his tethers, McCandless became the first human being to fly free from a spacecraft in orbit. He flew several hundred feet away from Challenger and spent four hours as a "human satellite." The photo of him floating free is one of the iconic images of the Space Program.

I enjoyed spending some quiet moments with McCandless during Spacefest in February. He was a quiet and unassuming man yet extremely friendly and eager to discuss his experiences. I asked him about his extraordinary patience, to have waited so long before getting his first flight. He said he had been keeping plenty busy during the intervening years, developing the MMU and providing astronaut input into the development of several important technologies that would come of age in the Shuttle program. He knew that his time would come, so he kept with the program.

All of his friends in the space community wish him a very happy birthday!

Happy birthday, Dave Scott

Dave Scott, American astronaut, turns 77 on June 6.

Dave's first mission was the ill-fated Gemini VIII mission, which he flew alongside Neil Armstrong. After piloting the world's first on-orbit docking with an unmanned Agena rocket, the spacecraft began to tumble violently. The Gemini capsule undocked and then went into an even faster spin, exceeding one revolution per second. Almost at the point of blacking out, the crew regained control but was forced to make an emergency splashdown near Okinawa.

My family and I lived on Okinawa at the time. I was in 4th grade at an elementary school on the Air Force base in Naha, the port where the crew returned from their journey. Feigning illness, I stayed home from school so I could watch them on TV as they came into port. Unfortunately, the crew were whisked away immediately and I didn't get to see them.

Scott flew next as the Command Module Pilot on Apollo 9, the first test of the Lunar Module. It was as part of the celebration of the 40th anniversary of that flight that I got to meet Scott and the rest of the crew at Spacefest in San Diego this year.

Scott's finest hours were as Commander of Apollo 15, in July and August 1971. It was the first extended-stay lunar mission and the first to use the Lunar Rover. I followed that mission intensely, because it was a true adventure - landing in the middle of mountains and a deep valley, and exploring far from the safety of "home base." They broadcast some of the most spectacular TV images I have ever seen.

Just prior to Spacefest, I picked up an interesting "Apollo 15 Descent/Ascent Summary" chart, which detailed the ground track of the Lunar Module Falcon just prior to landing and after liftoff. It also included profiles of the flight, a map of the landing site, and a simulated view out of the Commander's (Scott's) window. I asked Scott to sign it at Spacefest, and he spent a good 5 minutes looking it over and remarking that he had never seen it before. Just above the view from the cockpit, he signed "Flight of the Falcon."

The next night, at the reception prior to the Spacefest banquet, Scott got into line behind me at the bar. I got a chance to buy a drink for one of my boyhood heroes. It doesn't get any better than that!

America catches up with the Russians

June 3, 1965 was the date on which the Americans caught up with the Soviet Union, in terms of proving the nation's capabilities in manned spaceflight. Ed White II became the first American to "walk" in space, less than 3 months after Alexei Leonov performed a similar feat.

The Soviets trumped the Americans in many important "firsts" during the early years of the space race. It was frustrating for me as a kid - of course I knew that we Americans were superior but we always seemed to be getting beat. I can only imagine how infuriating it was to America's adults, and to the Government, Department of Defense, and NASA in particular.

Ed White's EVA in Gemini IV brought us up to par on all of the important technical capabilities that the Russians had demonstrated. From that date forward, the US clearly became the leader in the race to the Moon, as we publicly tried out complex techniques in orbit change, rendezvous, docking, and performing useful construction tasks outside of the spacecraft that would be needed to execute a successful lunar mission.

There were no cameras on board the Gemini IV capsule, so we couldn't watch the spacewalk live. I clearly remember listening to it on TV. I don't recall if it was being broadcast live, or if I listened to a replay at a later time. I do remember that this was on an afternoon when we lived in North Carolina, and the spacewalk did occur in the afternoon Eastern Daylight Time, so perhaps it may have been a live news broadcast.

The photos that we saw in Life magazine a week later, after Gemini IV returned from orbit, were incredible. Unaccustomed to the strange sight of someone outside of a space capsule, it was sometimes hard for me to tell exactly what I was looking at. The tether and nitrogen jet gun were strangely alien. I remember being particularly intrigued by the blackness of space as reflected in Ed White's visor...how eerie! Where was his face? But I knew from these photos that my concept of spaceflight would never be the same again.

"If you can't be good, be colorful"

Charles "Pete" Conrad, astronaut extraordinaire, would have been 79 years old today. The title of today's blog was Pete's personal motto. He was nothing if not colorful -- and he was very good, too.

I first heard of Pete when he flew Gemini V with Gordon Cooper in August 1965. Gemini V had an ambitious goal of "eight days or bust" in Earth orbit. That mission, the equivalent time for a trip to the Moon and back, nearly doubled the cumulative total of America's total time in space to date. Pete later commanded the Gemini XI mission with Dick Gordon as Pilot.

Pete and Dick flew together on Apollo 12, joined by Alan Bean. They had the most harrowing launch of the Apollo program, when their Saturn V was struck by lightning just after liftoff. The lightning strike scrambled all of the Apollo capsule's instruments. Luckily, the rocket - which was still accelerating - had its own guidance system which was unaffected by the power surge. Conrad had nerves of steel and was not about to abort the mission unless things became hopeless. A quick-thinking technician in Mission Control suggested a fix that enabled the mission to continue. I remember watching the liftoff from a small TV in my 8th grade shop (industrial arts) class when I was in middle school. I couldn't believe they let the mission continue after that lightning strike!

Pete flew his Lunar Module Intrepid to a pinpoint landing 3 days later. Pete's first words upon becoming the third man to walk on the Moon were, "Whoopee!! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that was a long one for me!" We were disappointed that the Apollo TV picture tube burned out, but I enjoyed listening to the audio broadcast of both moonwalks nonetheless. Pete's and Al's descriptions were very vivid ("colorful" comes back to mind again as the perfect word), and they seemed to be having an incredibly good time as they went about their tasks. I dearly wished I could have seen them working at the Surveyor 3 lander in the last half of their second spacewalk.

Pete's outstanding work as commander of the first Skylab crew was noted in my post last week. After retiring from NASA in 1973, Pete worked for several NASA contractors, including McDonnell Douglas and Martin Marietta. At Martin, Pete was a consultant on the "Large Space Telescope" project, which eventually became known as The Hubble Space Telescope.

Pete was motorcycling with friends in Ojai, California, in July 1999 when his motorcycle skidded off the road. He seemed to be fine after the crash, but he died of internal bleeding 6 hours later. His death was a real shock to all of us who had followed his exploits over the years. I deeply regret that I never had a chance to meet him and thank him for all the good times he gave me.