Wally Schirra:  “For the third time, go!”  

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I’ve been thinking of Project Gemini this week, the 60th anniversary of the first rendezvous in space.  Gemini 6 with Wally Schirra and Tom Stafford launched aboard Gemini 6 on Dec. 15, 1965.  Through a four-orbit chase, they made rendezvous with Gemini 7, Frank Borman and Jim Lovell, in orbit since Dec. 4, making a record 14-day flight.

The two flights brought back the first photos of Gemini spacecraft in flight, flying formation, coming to about a foot of each other.  Beautiful photographs.  And beautiful little gem of a spacecraft, I think the Gemini was, with its long nose and two “eyes” (half-moon windows) and the blazing white adapter section. 

There the two spacecraft are, in full color photos in the April 1966 issue of National Geographic, “Space Rendezvous, Milestone on the Way to the Moon.” by Kenneth F. Weaver.  The article begins with a post-flight quote from Jim Lovell:  “It was nighttime, just becoming light.  We were face down, and coming out of the murky blackness below was  this little pinpoint of light.
“. . . Just like it was on rails, it become a half-moon.  At about half a mile we could see thrusters firing, like water from a hose.  And just in front of us it stopped. Fantastic!”

The quote, which I’ve condensed to its essence, ignited the imagination of my 11-year-old mind.  The accompanying photos of the twin Geminis flying formation seemed in motion, the two coming within inches of each other and stopping, the astronauts peering at each other through the small windows.

Ancient stuff?  Obviously not to me.  Yet it was, apparently, to Damien Chazelle, director of the movie First Man, which depicted the launch of Gemini 8, commanded by Neil Armstrong, as something from the dark ages of spaceflight.  I recall that in an interview, he said something like that he wanted to portray how crude and primitive the Gemini was, hence the creaking noises when the hatches were shut.   Which sounded to me like noises from the boiler-room bowels of the Titanic.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, I thought, even if understandable, as Chazelle was born twenty years after Gemini in 1985.  Everything you need to experience spaceflight is right there in Project Gemini.  Sixty years is nothing.  It’s still high tech and high adventure at its best, as if it happened yesterday.