Gemini XI: asleep in a vacuum

Gemini XI also tried something new – to meet a target in space in the first orbit. Conrad explained:

The big thing about this was there was no way we were going to get any help from the ground. Previously all the solutions and the phasing burns and all of that stuff were computed on the ground. We had to get ourselves into a matching orbit that was 15 miles (24 kilometres) smaller than the Agena target was in and phased the proper distance behind so that a while later we would begin the Terminal Phase Initiate (TPI) burn and go ahead and rendezvous with the target. The most important thing was that we knew the exact time of our lift off down to quarters of a second. The ground had to pass up our corrected lift off time during powered flight just after launch, but before we disappeared over the horizon. We had this nice little handwritten chart which gave us the burn we had to do right smack at insertion.

As we went over Madagascar the ground was going to try and pass up what they thought the TPI solution was, but we already had a good solution and caught up and rendezvoused shortly after Australia, and were flying some exercises around the target when we passed over Hawaii. There was a big dead period in the communications after Australia, so the ground were all very nervous waiting to find out what had happened when we reached Hawaii. The whole rendezvous was done either with our on board computer or the handy‑dandy chart.

Lindsay:

After liftoff, the astronauts steered Gemini XI to a safe dock over the Hawaiian Islands after only 80 minutes. “Mr Kraft – would you believe M equals one?” Conrad drawled with satisfaction, informing Houston they had successfully docked on the first orbit.

During the third day in the twenty‑sixth orbit the Agena rocket belched fire to boost them to a new record height of 1,368 kilometres above the Earth, a height that clearly showed them the sphere of the Earth. “Whoop‑de‑doo, the biggest thrill of my life!” a gleeful Conrad called out as the acceleration shoved them into their straps – though they did wonder if the vehicle was ever going to come back as they blasted out into space!

1,368 kilometres under the spacecraft Carnarvon called, “Hello up there!” and Conrad burst out, “I tell you it’s go up here, and the world is round… you can’t believe it… we’re on top of the world, we’re looking straight down over Australia now the whole southern part of the world at one window… utterly fantastic!”

Conrad remembers, “Australia was half in night on the ground and what we were seeing was the western coastline, there was a piece of beach there in the north west that was very prominent – Eighty Mile Beach, I think it was.”

Returning to around 290 kilometres they were supposed to get ready for their next space walk, but Conrad told Al Bean at Houston, “We’re trying to grab a quick bite. We haven’t had anything to eat yet today.”

“Be our guest,” offered Bean.

Over Madagascar, Gordon opened the hatch. “Here come the garbage bags,” said Conrad as everything in the spacecraft not fastened down floated out, including Gordon, before Conrad grabbed a strap on his leg. Gordon watched the sunset standing on the spacecraft floor, before photographing selected star fields. Then, deciding to keep the hatch open, the two astronauts simply fell asleep where they were! Conrad said, “We had worked three twenty‑hour days; it got to be a nice quiet time in the day and we were waiting to get into a night pass.” He called Houston after they woke up, “There we were – he was asleep hanging out the hatch on his tether, and I was asleep sitting inside the spacecraft!”

“That’s a first,” answered Capcom John Young. “First time sleepin’ in a vacuum.”

Gordon climbed out of the hatch and set up a 30‑metre cable between the Gemini capsule and the Agena and they flew in formation. Instead of staying apart, the two vehicles tended to drift together.

“This tether is doing something I never thought it would do,” reported Conrad. “It’s like the Agena and I have a skip rope between us and it’s rotating and making a big loop. It’s like we are skipping rope with this thing. Man, have we got a weird phenomenon going on here. This will take somebody a little time to figure out.”

Conrad tried every trick he could think of to straighten the line. Although the line was curved, it seemed to still have tension. “I can’t get it straight,” he complained, but the ground engineers said to leave it alone. “So we really gritted our teeth and waited,” Conrad said, and sure enough centrifugal force took over and the line smoothed out. They managed to use their thrusters to start the combination spinning once every nine minutes as they orbited the Earth. The cable remained taut and the two spacecraft happily spun their way around the Earth, while the astronauts then tired of watching the Agena and turned to eating their evening dinner.

Their rest was interrupted by the Hawaii Capcom suggesting they accelerate the spin rate. Although they had some initial problems with the line, “Oh, look at that slack! It’s going to jerk this thing all to heck,” called Gordon. It did stabilise again, and they were able to test their strange combination for artificial gravity. They put a camera against the instrument panel, and sure enough, when they let it go it drifted gently to the back of the cabin. The crew did not feel any physiological effects to themselves, though.

Apart from problems with Gordon’s spacewalk, the mission was a great success, and Gemini XI returned to earth under automatic control to be picked up by the USS Guam . The Agena came down on 30 December 1966.

Conrad enjoyed this mission. “We got to fly the whole thing, which was the closest to the world I had left, that is flying airplanes. Like the M equals one rendezvous without help from the ground; we hand flew most of the burns – they weren’t controlled by the computer; that sort of thing. It was a great flight.”

The Soviet’s new G‑1 booster was vertically staged, using lox, kerosene and clusters of RD‑7 (Semyorka) engines. They were hoping it would enable them to make a circumlunar flight in 1967.