then quickly handed over to my team. Armstrong and Lovell, my CapComs, briefed Stafford on the timeline and the areas of the shroud to avoid. During the air-ground discussion I started picking up vibes that none of the astronauts involved in the planning felt warm about the EVA. I wondered if Deke Slayton had polled his guys and was having second thoughts. Stafford and Cernan listened to the proposed plan and advised, “We’ll get together on this at the next site.”
Nine minutes later, over Canton Island, Stafford and Cernan gave us their input. Stafford took the lead. “Both of us are pretty bushed, we’re low on propellant, and by the time we finish with the prep we’re going to be mighty low. I think we should knock it off for a while and consider EVA for tomorrow.” Due to the low maneuvering fuel levels we all knew that there was no way to re-rendezvous with the target the next day, and that waving off today was tantamount to saying NoGo to the shroud EVA. I could have kissed the crew. Neil Armstrong turned in his chair and looked for my input. Smiling for the first time in hours, I gave Neil a thumbs-up, followed by a resounding, “Flight concurs.”
Before I received any further top-level input, I had the controllers give the Agena a few more jolts to see if we could kick the shroud loose. But the angry alligator was not about to surrender. Twenty-three hours into the mission, the exhausted crew separated for the final time from the docking adapter. Within one revolution Cernan was asleep and Stafford was soon to follow. The crew had made the right call.
Sometimes you need luck. The program dodged a bullet when the crew waved off. They also saved me from eating crow. I was glad that I never had to follow through with my words to Kraft in the heat of the moment that this would be my last mission. The flight director’s job was my life but I was still too proud to say, “Dammit, Chris, I was out of line!” I could easily have bailed out of the program, since I had recently received an attractive offer to go back into aircraft flight testing. If two stubborn types like Kraft and me locked horns, Kraft would have let me accept the offer. In any case, both of us were saved by the crew’s decision.
EVA skills, like those of rendezvous and docking, were an essential element of working in space. The skills were needed for lunar surface operations and for crew transfer between spacecraft in the event that the crew could not dock or was unable to open the hatches. Cernan’s EVA was developed to add to the knowledge base of the engineers and mission planners as they designed the more complex missions to come. It was also intended to test the utility of a jet backpack.
Cernan’s EVA the next day was as tough as it ever got in the MCC. Years later in his book he would describe it as “the EVA from hell.” We were behind the timeline from the beginning. It seemed that every EVA activity imposed a high workload on Cernan. In the tradition of great test pilots, his incredibly detailed and graphic reporting made us intimately aware of the problems he was encountering. He worked so hard that his helmet started to fog over from perspiration. The rest periods recommended by Dr. Berry gave Cernan a break, but no more. Cernan, partially blinded by the fog, continued aft to the Gemini adapter module, where the backpack was stored. Entering the adapter by raw force, Gene was further confounded by poor lighting, limited restraints, and inadequate footholds. After a brief rest, he resumed the EVA. The oxygen umbilical was a few inches short, making it difficult to don the maneuvering unit. Nothing seemed to be going right.
Before the mission Cernan had walked through the EVA procedures using the Gemini mock-up in what we called 1G training. Cernan had asked me to observe the training so I would be familiar with the sequence and terms he would use. I now could visualize his effort, virtually blind, trying to adapt and invent ways to anchor in a position, any position, that would let him get his work done or give him some respite. As flight director, I was helpless, hostage to a chain of events occurring 150 miles above me half a world away and with only scattered bits of UHF communications. It was like watching a movie in short segments, with twenty-or thirty-minute gaps between the segments. Only Tom Stafford or Gene Cernan could make these Go or NoGo calls.
As I looked around the room, controllers sat silent at the consoles, scanning their displays, hands tightly gripping the handles of their TV monitors, all empathizing with Cernan. Dr. Berry periodically would notch up the anxiety level of the room as he reported pulse and respiration rates. Each report from Cernan heightened the tension as we strained to hear. “My heel is caught on something. It touched the spacecraft and got a torque that won’t quit.” Every statement was punctuated by labored breathing and an occasional grunt. I found myself thinking, “God, am I glad Stafford had the sense to scrub the shroud EVA.”
In the second hour, the reports weren’t getting any better. Cernan selected a high oxygen suit flow in an attempt to keep cool and clear the helmet face plate. Then Stafford started to have problems communicating with Cernan. “Can you see out at all, can you read me?” Finally, Cernan conceded. “Tom, I’m going to call it quits. Nothing seems to be working.”
The struggle to unstow the maneuvering unit left Gene totally fogged over, sweat now pouring into his eyes and no way to wipe them dry. When Stafford called I quickly concurred in his NoGo of the remainder of the EVA. Frustration rang in Cernan’s voice as he said, “Sorry about the maneuvering unit.”
After a brief rest, the blinded astronaut started back to the hatch area. The only place on his visor that had cleared was at the tip of his nose. Peering through this small view hole, he secured the adapter area and started forward. Every time the tiny opening fogged over, Gene would rest for a few minutes until the plexiglass in front of his nose cleared, then he continued on. We had a blind crewman outside the spacecraft feeling his way with his hands back to the cockpit. I thought, “God, those guys are like icemen, chock-full of guts!” Two hours and ten minutes after opening the hatch, the crew started to repressurize the cabin. For the second time in the mission, I felt I had been granted a reprieve. We had walked the edge. Cernan was back inside and he had avoided disaster on the EVA.
We were blessed with a dedicated, well-informed, and highly professional press corps in the 1960s. (Unlike so many “reporters” today, they knew the difference between objective reporting of news and hyping things up to entertain the audience—and bump up their ratings.) The press conference was almost as much of an ordeal as the mission. Reporters were as confused as we were, asking, “Ed White’s EVA on Gemini 4 came off like clockwork. Why are we now having problems on Cernan’s mission?” They asked the tough questions, but they respected us and the work we did as long as we didn’t try to mislead them. For the first time at a conference I found it tough to give them specifics. I was as confounded as they were. In retrospect I am amazed that we had such a hard time figuring out what was causing the problem. We were still thinking in earthbound terms. Space has an entirely different set of rules and dynamics. We also had no telemetry to analyze what was happening, only the crew’s subjective impressions and some hazy pictures from the onboard TV camera. As a result of this nerve-wracking experience, most of the Gemini flight directors and Kraft developed a decided and long-lasting lack of enthusiasm for EVAs.
Wrapping up the press briefing, I said, “The nature of flight test is working at the boundaries of knowledge, experience, and performance and taking the risks needed to get there. There are times where the things you learn are things that you don’t expect. Often the plan you execute is different than the one you started. I believe this is one of those times.”
The Gemini 9 mission left me with mixed emotions. The rendezvous objectives had been satisfied, demonstrating the Apollo techniques and options for rendezvous and rescue. The docking objective was a bust, but based on the Gemini 8 experience I believed that any good formation pilot could dock. The EVA was a different story. At the debriefing party, Cernan’s words rang in my mind: “Geno [Cernan and I always called each other Geno], EVA is a tough SOB. There is nothing that prepared me well enough to do the job we had planned.” No one could reconcile White’s success with Cernan’s problems. We would just have to press on and get more EVA time.
With mixed feelings I left Gemini to join Kraft and Hodge in preparation for the first manned Apollo mission. I was proud to be named to the manned flight to kick off the Apollo program, but I hated to leave the console with three Gemini missions remaining. The flight director’s console was my life, the White Team my squadron mates. Missions were living, walking on the edge, feeling the camaraderie of the Brotherhood. Leaving the console was like walking away from the cockpit of my beloved Sabre. The flight director’s ultimate training comes at the console, working real problems, facing the risks, making irrevocable decisions. I had a lifetime of learning ahead as a flight director, and I envied Lunney and Charlesworth the experience they would gain in the final three missions. I volunteered to work the crew sleep shift if they needed me.
