Tom Stafford were my crew. Cernan was the easiest of the third group of astronauts to know. On the first four Gemini missions, he worked as the booster tanks monitor or a CapCom.
In the eyes of the controllers, Gene was one of us. I knew Cernan in a different way. The Catholic priest at my church, Father Eugene Cargill, was also Gene’s chaplain. The padre was invited to the Cape for launches and was a familiar face at the crew’s splashdown parties. Father Cargill followed our missions closely and always gave a special blessing at the morning mass before my missions as flight director.
Although I knew Cernan, Stafford, with a wide smile and a perpetual hoarseness to his voice, was a bit harder to get a fix on. He kept his opinions to himself, generally letting Cernan talk. Tom was in the second astronaut class, out of the Air Force, studious and balanced, while Cernan’s antics were characteristic of Navy pilots who land airplanes on aircraft carriers. Cernan was my favorite for his carefree and jovial attitude, unabashed patriotism, and close personal relationship with the controllers. He was also a skilled systems guy.
Gemini 9 had virtually everything packed into the first seventy-two hours of the mission—three different rendezvous techniques being tested for Apollo, a docking, and a space walk by Cernan with a jet backpack. The Air Force proposed that Cernan fly the jetpack without being tethered to the Gemini. Slayton and Kraft made their position clear: “He will fly without a tether over our dead bodies.” The Air Force lost that argument.
Things did not go well on the Atlas/Agena launch. Twenty seconds before cutoff, we lost control when the Atlas engines swung abruptly to the side, spinning the rocket. For the second time, the Agena target was reduced to junk as bits and pieces crashed into the Atlantic. There was no question the controllers were beginning to feel snake-bit as we passed the word to Stafford and Cernan and scrubbed the Gemini countdown. Before we left Mission Control, we had received orders to develop a backup mission. There was no party that night at the Singing Wheel, but by now our team had developed a resilience that we believed could overcome this and any other difficulty.
The Gemini program office had directed McDonnell Aircraft to develop a backup rendezvous target. The target was called the augmented target docking adapter (ATDA). It was assembled using the nose (aerodynamic) shroud, docking collar, and command system from an Agena and a reentry attitude control package from a Gemini. The whole lashup was launched on an Atlas rocket. The backup could perform every Agena function except on-orbit maneuvering. The most distinguishing characteristic was the ten-foot aerodynamic nose shroud that opened like a clamshell and was jettisoned after launch phase to expose the docking system. My control team, aware of the backup option, had developed procedures, rules, and plans for the mission. The remote teams were advised to remain at their sites and we began a two-week turnaround for the backup mission. To keep the paperwork straight, the mission was renamed Gemini 9A.
The ATDA launch on June 1 went well, reaching the planned circular orbit at an altitude of 160 nautical miles. I passed the good news to Stafford and Cernan on Pad 19 and continued counting down to the second launch. As the target passed in its orbit over Bermuda, the ATDA controller, Jim Saultz, passed a warning on to me. “Flight, I think we’ve got some problems with the ATDA. We’re using the attitude control fuel like crazy, and I did not see telemetry indications of the nose shroud separation.” Five minutes later, after reviewing the target’s telemetry data, the Canary Island CapCom advised me, “Flight, we’re really hosing out the fuel. I recommend we secure the attitude control jets before we lose it all.” My response was brief, “Go ahead, shut it off.” In less than twelve minutes of flight we had used one of the two tanks that supplied fuel to the ATDA attitude thrusters.
I turned to Saultz and ordered, “Jim, keep me advised of any further developments. I’m going to follow the Gemini-Titan launch countdown from now on.” The mission rules for launch were simple: as long as the ATDA was in an orbit suitable for the three planned rendezvous demonstrations we were Go to launch the Gemini 9. Docking with the ATDA was considered a secondary objective.
The Gemini countdown entered the scheduled hold at launch minus three minutes, while waiting for the precise liftoff time needed to set up the orbital conditions for rendezvous on the third orbit. During the brief hold in the countdown, the ground test equipment computed the exact steering information to guide the Titan into the ATDA orbit. When the countdown resumed, the ground support equipment failed to provide the update to the Titan guidance. The launch was scrubbed for forty-eight hours.
During the two-day turnaround period, we conducted several tests with the ATDA using ground commands to extend and retract the docking mechanism and fire the attitude control jets to kick the shroud loose. We concluded that the target nose shroud was only partially deployed. While we regrouped, the Titan team fixed the electronics box that had failed to send the update.
The crew, the control team, and myself were briefed by the team at the Cape that had installed the shroud. They concluded that a safing pin had not been removed from the band and as a result the sequence had started but the band had not separated, leaving the shroud unopened.
The countdown was virtually perfect for our third try at getting Stafford and Cernan off the ground. After giving the launch team the word, “Mission Control is Go for launch,” I stood up and put on my vest. By now everyone was used to the bit with the vest. But this one was radically different from any I had worn previously. All earlier vests, while different in style and material, were solid white. After my second Gemini 9 launch scrub, Marta made a splashy vest of gold and silver brocade over white satin. She thought I needed a bit of good luck for my third launch try.
When I put this vest on, Kraft made a few wry comments. Looking up and through the glass into the viewing room, I could see people pointing. The vest had made a hell of an impact on the visitors; now I just hoped it brought my team and the crew a bit of luck.
There is no feeling in the world like a launch day. The controllers, launch team, and crew are a single entity bound by a mission, the atmosphere brittle and electric. The clock provides the cadence as we grind through the procedures, events, and tests. In the final minutes prior to launch, I began the flight director’s ritual, locking the doors of the control room after the final status check.
For the last sixty seconds the voice calls are all programmed, there is no superfluous chatter, all reports are crisp and formal. We were like sprinters in our blocks, waiting for the starter’s gun. Alas, the automatic launch update again failed, so my GUIDO (guidance officer) manually transmitted the commands, ramming them home in the allotted forty-second window.
In the final seconds, it turned eerily quiet in the control room. The controllers scanned their displays, absorbing and assessing hundreds of pieces of data. The only sound was the incessant finger tapping against the consoles or the nervous clicking of ballpoint pens. Relief from the tension comes only when the launch team calls, “Auto sequence start… five… four… three… two… one and engine start!” Approaching zero, I felt like I was flying an aircraft for the first time. My adrenaline reached a peak, and then there was icy calm at the moment of commitment. I was ready and I felt great. In a few moments, when the rocket cleared the launch tower, the ballgame was ours. I never had a controller get the shakes during a mission—the nervous types were weeded out or else looked at the job and knew it wasn’t the right one for them.
“Flight, liftoff, 13:39:33 [7:39 A.M. CST]. The clocks have started.” Recording the liftoff time, I decided this new vest was really lucky. We were finally on our way, the crew and controllers crisply reporting launch events as the Titan accelerated, arching skyward, reaching for its target orbit in space. The work, sweat, and frustration now paid off with a perfect orbital cutoff. After separation, and then another maneuver, Stafford and Cernan were racing
