The crew wore new lightweight suits designed for use only inside the spacecraft. The most recognizable aspect of the suit was the soft hood that replaced the traditional hard helmet. According to the manual, in an emergency, the crew could don the suit in fifteen to twenty minutes. In fact, after much effort, it turned out to be more like an hour.
Food was as limited as the rest of the crew systems, consisting of simple rehydratable meals (“add water and ignore the taste”) in a squeeze bag with a feeder spout. The bite-sized foods were dry and tended to crumble. The fourteen days in the spacecraft were like a primitive campout, minus the ability to shower, stand, stretch, or take a walk. Through every day of Gemini 7, the controllers’ hearts were with the crew in the spacecraft, and we worked hard to cheer them toward their fourteen-day flight goal.
As soon as the Gemini 7 Titan had cleared Pad 19, the launch turn-around for Gemini 6 started. Both stages of the Gemini Titan arrived at Pad 19 within two hours of the previous launch. The race was now on.
Kraft, Hodge, and I were following the team rotation pattern we had established on the two previous missions. During Kraft’s shift, Borman and Lovell flew formation with the Titan upper stage, and then methodically started on the flight’s medical experiments. Kraft’s handover was smooth, and soon I was up and working my third mission as flight director. The technology of space was sprinting forward, especially in communications. The ships on my shift were in their familiar locations in the northwest Pacific near Japan and in the southeast Pacific off the coast of Chile. For the first time, we used a satellite communications relay from Chuck Lewis’s team on the
I had a new controller working on the White Team for Gemini 76, who would become a key player on many of my Apollo teams. Gerry Griffin was an experienced Lockheed Agena engineer and in the military flew as a “scope dope” (radar and weapons officer) in the supersonic McDonnell F-101 Voodoo interceptor. Griffin followed in the footsteps of Aldrich as a Gemini GNC (guidance, navigation, and control engineer).
My shift broke down into three distinct activities. The trajectory team worked to pinpoint Borman and Lovell’s orbit to support the rendezvous targeting. Griffin and my EECOM split their time between spacecraft support and updating the telemetry, command, and display data for the subsequent Gemini 6 launch. The challenge to the MCC procedures team was to integrate the pad test and controller training schedules for the coming Gemini 6 launch into the team shifting and daily operation of the Mission Control Center as we continued the support of the flight of Gemini 7.
After Kraft’s Go NoGo on day three, Lovell removed his suit. We had planned to get both astronauts out of their suits but NASA management got involved, and the decree came down that one crewman would be suited at all times, and both would be suited for rendezvous and reentry. By day four it was obvious that Lovell was a hell of a lot more comfortable and was sleeping better than Borman. The message was clear—the cockpit was cramped, the suit was hot, and it was again time to challenge headquarters’ decision. By compiling medical telemetry and data from both men we were able to show the marked difference in things like blood pressure, pulse rate, and quality of sleep between Frank Borman, sweating and uncomfortable in his suit, and Lovell. We even deliberately raised the issue at press conferences, but NASA’s top management remained adamant. Kraft finally brokered a sort of compromise—Borman and Lovell would take turns wearing the suit.
We also had to follow NASA’s directive to let the media—and through it, the whole world—listen to virtually all communications between the spacecraft and the ground. We had to make some exceptions to give us privacy in certain communications involving things like mission risk discussions or direct conversations between flight surgeons and crew members, so we developed a code word. If the MCC or the crew wanted a private conference either side could request or schedule a “UHF-6” test, which we gradually wove into the daily flight plan, hoping that the media would pay little attention to the “test.”
Early in the mission the UHF-6 passes went well, and we were pleased that we could conduct needed mission communications in private. When the UHF-6 was requested, the surgeon at the MCC went to the back room with the communications technician and all lines to the controllers and outside the center were disabled. After the UHF-6, the surgeon briefed the flight directors privately. We thought we had pulled it off and got a bit cocky. We were wrong. Reporters are a sharp and nosy lot (after all, that’s why they’re reporters). They started to become suspicious and pressed Kraft to explain the UHF-6 business. After repeated queries, Kraft finally said, “Ask Kranz at his post-shift conference. He’s the one with the details of the test.” At my press conference I tried to bury it in a highly technical discussion of communications and antenna patterns, but I knew the jig was up when a reporter finally asked, “Is UHF-6 a code name for a private medical conference?”
My answer was simply, “Yes.” With my response, the press corps applauded, and the atmosphere became friendly once again. They had caught the NASA flight directors fair and square, and for a few minutes had us jumping through the hoops. Virtually every event in my early career taught me some very painful but useful lessons.
We debriefed the UHF-6 episode with the mission team much like any other mission event. We determined never again to try a fast one. Personally, I took the attitude that a press conference was like a high-stakes poker game. I loved playing the game with the press, always telling the truth but showing my full hand only when asked the right question.
Apart from such public relations glitches, things were going well and certain individuals began to stand out as superlative performers. Griffin was a great systems guy. He was an Aggie (a graduate of Texas A&M, which enjoyed a fierce rivalry in football—and everything else—with the University of Texas) and, thanks to his experience as a back-seater in early jet interceptors, had an ability to make good snap decisions. He also had an uncanny ability to grasp complex issues. Next to Lunney, I considered him one of the quickest controllers to recognize problems and initiate corrective action. We were lucky that Kennedy’s challenge had inspired people like Lunney and Griffin and so many other sharp men and women to rally to the greatest challenge of our country in a turbulent era. They entered Flight Control as rookies and within a year, if they survived, they had the MCC version of a master’s degree in real-time operations. By their second year they had a Ph.D. in flight control.
During the periods of my shift when we were shooting the gap and the communications with the Gemini spacecraft were infrequent, I would drill the remote site teams with a series of hypothetical mission situations. My objective was to get the teams supporting my shift up to speed and on the edge, responding to each other crisply, precisely, correctly, and convincingly. Learning to make the seconds count, I would continue the brain twisters for hours, interrupting them only when the Gemini passed over a tracking site in real time. I did not know it then, but these early drills would pay off handsomely on Gemini 8 when the remote sites would be critically important.
In the midst of all this, the turnaround process on Pad 19 was going with remarkable smoothness. The Air Force 6555th test wing, Martin, the Titan contractor, and McDonnell were pulling off a miracle. All three teams of controllers were pulling double shifts, supporting the ongoing mission and preparing for the coming launch with Schirra and Stafford. After one of the extended shifts, John Llewellyn decided to go home to get some rest. When John did not arrive for shift change, the previous shift’s RETRO called his house to find out whether he was still at home.
Llewellyn awakened, realized he had overslept, and charged out of the house into his Triumph TR3, tearing up the road en route to the MCC. Arriving in the parking lot, he circled, looking for a parking space, his frustration mounting by the second. Spotting no spaces he made the only decision possible for a Marine, driving his car up the walk, circling across the grass and then up the steps, stopping at the entrance. Clipping his badge on, he emerged to a surprised group of controllers and security guards, moments later striding into the control room and, with a grunt, putting on his headset and starting the handover.
Outside the building, the security forces mustered around John’s car, calling in additional support. Lunney and Hodge were fed up with Llewellyn’s antics, so when they pulled his car pass after the mission John appealed to me as his judo partner to intercede on his behalf. I talked to Hodge, but in his clipped British accent he said, “Gene, Llewellyn has got to learn a lesson. Having him walk on site will maybe make a dent in his thick skull.”
The story doesn’t end here, however. With no car pass and faced with a mile-long walk from the front gate, John came up with an alternative not covered by the regulations. The first day of his suspension, Llewellyn pulled his horse trailer into the parking lot at the Nassau Bay Hotel across from the NASA main gate. Mounting the horse with his leather briefcase, then showing his badge prominently to the surprised guard, Llewellyn galloped through the gate to Mission Control. For the remainder of the week we knew John was in the office or on console when we saw a horse hitched to the bicycle stand. Llewellyn’s legend grew once again.
The simulations before the mission had shown that supporting two manned spacecraft simultaneously with a
