Closing the Gap

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He stood on top of his spaceship's white titanium hull. He touched it with his bulky thermal gloves. He burned around like Buck Rogers propelling himself with his hand-held jet. He floated lazily on his back. He joked and laughed. He gazed down at the earth 103 miles below, spotted the Houston Galveston Bay area where he lives and tried to take a picture of it. Like a gas station attendant, he checked the spacecraft's thrusters, wiped its windshield. Ordered to get back into the capsule, he protested like a scolded kid. "I'm doing great," he said. "It's fun. I'm not coming in." When, after 20 minutes of space gymnastics, U.S. Astronaut Edward Higgins White II, 34, finally did agree to squeeze himself back into his Gemini 4 ship, he still had not had enough of space walking. Said he to Command Pilot James Alton McDivitt: "It's the saddest day of my life."

White's exhilarating space stroll provided the moments of highest drama during Gemini 4's scheduled 62-orbit, 98-hour, 1,700,000-mile flight. White spent twice the time outside the spacecraft that Soviet Cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov did last March 18, and he had much more maneuverability; all Leonov did was somersault around at the end of a tether, getting dizzy, while White moved around pretty much at will.

Second Generation. Still, Gemini's planners would have scrubbed White's EVA (for Extra-Vehicular Activity) expedition in a second if they had thought it might detract from the flight's basic missions.

In Gemini 4, the U.S. took a big step toward closing the gap in the man-in-space race, in which the Soviet Union got off to a head start. More important, the flight signaled the advent of the second generation of U.S. spacecraft and spacemen. The two-man Gemini capsule is to the old Mercury capsule what a Thunderbird is to a Model T. Almost all previous U.S. space flights were preplanned to the second, and any deviation meant trouble; in Gemini 4, the astronauts were given considerable flexibility, could and did change their plans and improvise at short notice. For the first time, a U.S. space flight was controlled from Houston's supersophisticated Manned Space Center, which makes Cape Kennedy almost as obsolete as a place once called Canaveral.

Moreover, the spacemen themselves were second generation. Project Mercury's pioneers were national legends almost before they got off the ground. Yet who, before last week, knew very much about Jim McDivitt and Ed White?

The Team. The pair made an almost perfect space team. Inside Man McDivitt is a superb pilot and a first-class engineer who is the son of an electrical engineer. Outside Man White is a daring flyer, a fine athlete, a military career-man who is the son of a retired Air Force major general who flew everything from balloons to jets.

McDivitt, whose 36th birthday is this week, is a whippet-lean (5 ft. 11 in., 155 Ib.) Air Force major. As a youth, he did not seem exactly the type to be a spaceship jockey. After graduating from high school in Kalamazoo, Mich., he worked for a year as a furnace repairman, then drifted rather aimlessly into tiny (then 531 students) Jackson Junior College in 1948. On his college application he wrote: "I think I would like to be an explorer and a novelist." A so-so student, McDivitt finished his two-year course in 1950, and since he was about to be drafted into the Army, decided he might as well join the Air Force as an air cadet. He found a home and a calling.

As a jet fighter pilot, he went to Korea, flew 145 combat missions, won three Distinguished Flying Crosses and five Air Medals. In 1957 the Air Force sent him to the University of Michigan to get a degree in aeronautical engineering. By now more mature and sure of himself, he got straight A's, graduated first in an Engineering School class of 607. From Michigan he went to the Experimental Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base in California, was selected for the X-15 testing program, but applied instead for Gemini.

He was picked with eight others-including Ed White--in September 1962. Jim McDivitt sounds about as dispassionate about being an astronaut as he would about fixing furnaces. "There's no magnet drawing me to the stars," he says flatly. "I look on this whole project as a real difficult technical problem-one that will require a lot of answers that must be acquired logically and in a step-by-step manner."

McDivitt may be able to keep his eyes off the stars, but not Ed White, also an Air Force major. White was an Army Air Forces brat, brought up at bases from the East Coast to Hawaii, and committed to flying for a livelihood.

His father, who held a pilot's rating during all of his 35 years in the service, took his son up for his first airplane ride in an old two-seater T-6 trainer when Ed was only twelve. "I was barely old enough to strap on a parachute," re calls the astronaut. "When we were air borne, Dad let me take the controls. It felt like the most natural thing in the world to do." White won an appoint ment to West Point, where he finished 128th in 1952's class of 523. He went to flight school in Florida and became a jet pilot.

White was -- and is -- a fanatic on physical fitness. At West Point, he was a center-halfback on the soccer team. In 1952 he set an Academy record that still stands in the 400-meter hurdles, went on to qualify for the U.S. Olym pic trials, but missed making the team by .4 sec. He still jogs a couple of miles every day, squeezing a hard rubber ball as he runs. He can do 50 situps, then flip over and do 50 push-ups without breathing hard. On his days off, he enjoys climbing a 40-ft. rope in the backyard of his home near Houston. Of all the astronauts, he is considered by Gemini's medics to be the best physi cal specimen.

In 1957, while stationed in Germany, White read about the U.S.'s embryonic astronaut program, decided that he would one day get into it and, in the process of preparing himself, took a master's degree in aeronautical engineering at the University of Michigan--at the same time Jim McDivitt was there. After Michigan, White went to test-pilot school, later was assigned to a necessary but frustratingly tangential job having to do with the space program. At the controls of a jet cargo plane, he would go into a screaming, precisely plotted dive that would create the zero-gravity weightlessness of space ride. In this capacity, he helped in the training not only of John Glenn but of Ham and Enos, the chimpanzees who broke into space before men did. White figures that he "went weightless" 1,200 times--for a total of about five hours--before he was ever selected as a Gemini pilot.

In Gemini, White became smitten with a single overriding ambition: to be the first man on the moon. "His goal, says his father, "is to make that first flight."

Dress Rehearsals. Gemini officers picked McDivitt and White as the spacemen for last week's flight nearly a year ago. After that, each man spent scores of hours in a simulated capsule at Houston's Manned Spacecraft Center They practiced the chilling procedures for aborting a flight in case of a mishap in a centrifuge at Johnsville, Pa. Together, they bobbed inside a Gemini capsule shell on the Gulf of Mexico off Galveston, rehearsing the act of opening the hatch, jumping out and inflating a life raft to await rescuers.

In preparation for his step-out into space, White spent 60 hours in vacuume chambers that simulated altitudes of up to 180,000 ft. Patiently, he practiced moving about in the suit he would wear outside the capsule. Weighing 31 lbs and costing over $30,000, the garment is a marvel of cautious construction With 22 layers, it acts as a coat ot armor, as a heat repellant, as protection from deep-freeze temperatures, and as a pressure force to keep White s body from exploding in the near-vacuum of space. Yet it also allows a certain freedom of movement. Although NASA experts figured that the odds against White being punctured by high-velocity micrometeor in space were about 10,000 to 1, they nevertheless blasted White's suit over and over again with splinters of plastic fired at 25,000 ft. per sec. In those tests, the suit held up.

No Mickey Mouse. White also spent some twelve hours rehearsing with Y "handheld self-maneuvering unit"--the gadget that was to help him walk around in space. The device weighs 7 1/2 lbs., has two small cylinders of compressed oxygen belted to a handle that also acts as a trigger to send jets of air through two hollow tubes, each 2 ft. long. Holding the contraption just below his midriff White could, in his weightless state, manipulate it so as to send him, like a bit of fluff in the wind, in any direction he desired.

When, on May 25, only nine days before the launch date, NASA announced that White would try to take his walk in space, skeptics suggested that it was only a publicity gag. This irked the NASA men. "We're not playing Mickey Mouse with this thing, snapped Christopher Kraft, Gemini 4's mission director. "We're trying to carry out flight operations. I don't think its very fair to suggest we're carrying out a propaganda stunt."

The Real Thing. Now the rehearsals were over, and it was time for the real thing. McDivitt and White were ready.

"The condition of the astronauts is the best I've ever seen," said Dr. Charles Berry, Gemini's presiding physician. The countdown started 420 minutes before scheduled blast-off time, and as Mission Director Chris Kraft said, "Everything looks to be about as good as you could ever hope it to be."

Before dawn, McDivitt and White had a low-calorie breakfast of sirloin steak and eggs, gulped in breaths of pure oxygen to prevent the formation of nitrogen bubbles in their blood at high altitudes, went through the laborious process of putting on their space suits, and at 8:12 a.m. E.D.T. lay down on their twin bedlike couches in the capsule on Cape Kennedy's Launch Pad 19. The only hitch came 1 hr. 13 min. later, and 35 minutes before the scheduled launching time, when there was an electrical breakdown in the motor that was to lower the huge erector cradle, which had been used to set the Titan II booster rocket in its place. The delay lasted 1 hr. 16 min.

At 11:16 a.m. E.D.T., a billowing plume of hot orange smoke leaped from the base of the missile. Three seconds later, the rocket lifted ponderously from its pad, built speed rapidly as 430,000 Ibs. of thrust propelled it skyward. As it rose, McDivitt and White lay in their seats, each clutching a D-shaped ring; by pulling on the rings, they could eject themselves instantly if they had to abort the mission.

As the first stage of the missile dropped away, the first words came from the capsule. Exclaimed McDivitt: "Beautiful!" Exclaimed White almost simul taneously: "Beautiful!" Every word, every breath and every heartbeat of McDivitt and White as well as every calibration on every instrument in the cabin were under constant surveillance in Houston's new $170 million Manned Spacecraft Center.

There the nerve center for the Gemini flight was a softly lighted, air-conditioned Mission Operations Control building, where some 300 scientists, en gineers, doctors and technicians hunched over blinking panels or watched the orbital progress on 10-ft. by 60-ft. screens. Chris Kraft and his men were linked through 10,000 miles of wire, 140 instrument consoles and 384 television receivers with the entire Gemini 4 communications operation--including 11,000 men in a recovery fleet of ships and planes spanning two oceans. Basic to control of the Gemini 4 flight were five IBM 7094-11 computers, each of which could digest 50,000 "bits" of telemetry information per second from the orbiting craft. Gemini is able to flash back 275 different kinds of information, three times more than Mercury; the computer gobbles it up, puts it on paper or, upon specific demand, transmits it by television to the mission control officials.

Watching It Go. Gemini 4's ascent went precisely according to plan: accelerating to 17,500 m.p.h., the spacecraft entered into an orbit that took it 175 miles high at apogee, 100 miles high at perigee. At 6 min. 6 sec. from liftoff, Command Pilot McDivitt set off a string of explosive bolts that set the capsule free from its second-stage booster. The booster dropped loose and

McDivitt swung Gemini 4 around so that it was flying blunt end forward.

The booster, tumbling slightly and mov ing slower than the capsule, dropped about 400 ft. below.

The original flight plan had directed McDivitt to stay close to the booster, which was the size of a house trailer and was rigged with 2,500,000-candle-power lights so that it could be seen for 300 miles. It was contemplated that White, during his space walk, might touch the trailing booster. If he had, it would have been a significant step toward i rendezvous between two spacecraft.

But from the very start, McDivitt had trouble staying within range of the booster. "I have been struggling here not to let it get too far from me," he told Houston Control shortly after the booster fell away. McDivitt manipulated the capsule's Orbit Attitude Maneuver ing System (OAMS) comprised of 16 rocket engines mounted about the cap sule to allow changes in altitude and direction. The fuel supply for OAMS was separate from the crucial fuel cache McDivitt would need to fire the retrorockets for his return to earth later on.

The craft headed over Mexico to ward the end of its first orbit. The ship's OAMS fuel supply had gone from 410 Ibs. to 228 Ibs. in the hide-and-seek game with the booster. Director Kraft told McDivitt to take it easy on the fuel in chasing the errant booster. The astronaut replied: "It's out farther than we expected." A little later he asked Houston, "Do you want a major effort to close with this thing or save the fuel?" The instant answer: save the fuel and forget about the booster. Resigned, McDivitt said, "I guess we're just going to have to watch it go away."

By now, Gemini 4 was over the coast of Africa, well into its second orbit--the orbit in which Ed White was sup posed to get out and walk around.

White began to ready his EVA gear.

There were 54 items to check from his flight-plan list, and it was painfully slow going. White began to perspire heavily; almost every drop of sweat was noted by Houston's wizard gear.

As the craft flew over Australia, Mc Divitt radioed the tracking station there: "We don't have arty time at all."

From Houston, Kraft told him to delay White's EVA mission until the third revolution.

And Out He Went. As Gemini 4 went into its third orbit, White donned his EVA equipment. He snapped on an ex tra face plate which was tinted gold to deflect the sun's broiling rays, hooked up his gold-coated umbilical cord -- a 24.3-ft. tether connecting him to the spaceship, providing him with oxygen and a spacewalk talk system. Since he could not look down with his hel met on, White used a mirror to strap on to his chest a shoebox-sized pack weighing 8.3 Ibs. and containing a twelve-minute supply of emergency OXygen. If his main oxygen source failed, Spaceman White could flip a switch on the box, haul himself back into the spacecraft, close the hatch and hurriedly repressurize the cabin before his portable supply ran out.

Unlike the ship used in Cosmonaut Leonov's space walk, Gemini 4 did not have a separate exit compartment that could be depressurized while the cabin remained normal. Thus, before Mc-Divitt and White could crack the hatch, they had to drop the pressure inside from the normal 5.1 Ibs. per sq. in. to about 3 Ibs. per sq. in.

Now Gemini 4 was 4 hr. 43 min. off the launching pad. It was flying blunt end forward and upside down in relation to the earth--although this made no difference to the astronauts in their weightless condition.

Slowly, White began cranking a ratchet handle to loosen a set of prongs around the hatch opening. The hatch was free. It raised to a 50DEG angle, and

White poked his head through the opening. McDivitt asked Director Kraft for a go-ahead. Replied Kraft: "Tell him we're ready for him to go whenever he is." Out went White.

Gripping his jet gun, he slipped alone into space over the Pacific, just east of Hawaii. On the part of his space suit facing the sun, the temperature was an infernal 250DEG above zero; on the shady side, 150DEG below zero. White punched the trigger on his hand jet, squirted himself under the capsule, then back to the top. His movements jostled the ship. McDivitt, carefully working the controls inside Gemini 4 to maintain a stable base for White, said into his microphone to Gemini 3 Astronaut Virgil ("Gus") Grissom at Houston control center: "One thing about it, when Ed gets out there and starts whipping around, it sure makes the spacecraft tough to control."

Along the Life Line. By the time he had been out of the capsule for three minutes, White had exhausted his hand gun's fuel propellant. This was neither alarming nor surprising, since NASA officials had purposely kept the thrust of the gadget low and the fuel supply at a minimum for this first experimental trip. From then on, White maneuvered by twisting his torso and hand-pulling himself back and forth along his life line.

As Gemini 4 streaked toward the West Coast of the U.S., White reported: "I'm looking right down, and it looks like we're coming on the coast of California. There is absolutely no disorientation association."

White had a 35-mm. camera attached to his hand jet, and McDivitt had a 16-mm. movie camera attached to the spacecraft interior and fixed to peer out through the window. Grissom reminded them from the ground: "Take some pictures." McDivitt said to

White: "Get out in front where I can see you again." White moved to a better position and Grissom told the space walker: "You've got about five minutes." But Ed White was enjoying himself immensely: "The sun in space is not blinding but it's quite nice. I'm coming back down on the spacecraft. I can sit out here and see the whole California coast."

"Right Over Houston." A few moments later, McDivitt cried excitedly to Grissom: "Hey, Gus, I don't know if you read us, but we're right over Houston." White chimed in: "We're looking right down on Houston." McDivitt to White: "Go on out and look. Yeah, that's Galveston Bay right there. Hey, Ed, can you see it on your side of the spacecraft?" White: "I'll get a picture."

Discussing their photographic endeavors, White told McDivitt: "I've only shot about three or four." Said

McDivitt: "All right, I've taken a lot, but they're not very good. You're in too close for most of them. I finally put the focus down to about eight feet or so."

The two kept chattering over VOX, a voice-activated system that cut off messages from controllers on earth whenever McDivitt and White were conversing. Again and again Grissom tried to break through: "Gemini 4, Houston. Gemini 4, Houston." The space twins kept talking to each other. Finally, McDivitt acknowledged the calls from earth: "Got any messages for us?"

"Ed! Come in Here!" Grissom burst in urgently: "Gemini 4, get back in!" McDivitt replied: "O.K. We're trying to come back in now." Grissom, more calmly now: "Roger, we've been trying to talk to you for a while here."

McDivitt: "Back in. Come on."

White: "Hate to come back to you, but I'm coming."

McDivitt: "O.K."

White: "I'm trying."

McDivitt: "O.K. O.K. Don't wear yourself out now. Just come on in. How you doing there? O.K. Whoops! Take it easy now."

White: "O.K., I'm right on top of it now."

McDivitt: "Come on in then."

White: "The handhold on the spacecraft is fantastic. Aren't you going to hold my hand?"

McDivitt: "No! Come on in. Ed!

Come in here!"

White: "All right."

McDivitt: "O.K., let's not lose this camera now. I don't quite have it. A little bit more. O.K., I've got it. Come on. Let's get back in here before it gets dark."

Tired, Safe & Elated. Grissom chimed in again: "Gemini 4, Houston." White: "I'm fixing to come in the house." McDivitt: "Any message for us, Houston?" Grissom: "Yeah! Get back in!" McDivitt: "He's standing in the seat now and his legs are down below the instrument panel." Grissom: "O.K. Get him back in now." McDivitt: "He's coming in. He's having some trouble getting back in the space cabin, looks like." Grissom: "You got your cabin lights up bright in case you hit darkness?"

Moments later, White was back inside--tired but safe and elated as Gemini 4 sped through the black night over the eastern Atlantic Ocean.

The Medical Report. NASA officials in Houston were delighted at the EVA performance. Medically, White had responded well. His usual on-the-ground pulse beat of 50 soared to 178 as he re-entered the capsule, but that was not considered dangerous under the circumstances. When reporters asked if White might have become euphoric during his voyage, Dr. Berry quickly said: "I think it's just elation at being out there, doing this task."

As the flight went into the weekend, the medical tests continued. Dr. Berry was particularly concerned about orthostatic hypertension, a drop in blood pressure combined with an abnormally rapid heartbeat, which can bring on fainting spells. "What this means," said Berry, "is that the cardiovascular sys tem simply gets lazy because the heart doesn't have to work anywhere nearly as hard to circulate the blood. In weightlessness, there's no pressure on the heart -- being a muscle, it gets lazy and merely does what it needs to do."

Throughout their flight, both White and McDivitt did nip-ups. Using a "bungee cord" -- a tough length of rub ber with a loop at one end, a T handle at the other -- the astronauts put their feet in the loop, pulled up on the handle 30 times in 30 seconds. It took 60 Ibs.

of force to stretch the rubber. For com parison purposes, White was to exer cise four times a day, McDivitt just once. Before the flight was half over, McDivitt requested--and received-permission to exercise more often. "I just haven't moved around very much," he said.

Dehydration was another potential danger, and the Houston controllers often reminded White and McDivitt that they should take a drink of water. Astronauts require at least two quarts of water a day--more than double the usual earth-bound need--because their space suits' cooling systems evaporate perspiration as it forms, thus increasing the loss of body fluids. If McDivitt and White failed to drink their quota, they could return to earth as wrinkled as prunes.

The menu aloft included dishes such as beef pot roast, banana pudding and fruitcake. It even catered to McDivitt's Roman Catholicism by having fish dishes for Friday. But the food was less than tasty: either freeze-dried or dehydrated, it was mixed with water in plastic bags, kneaded until it became mushy, and it had all the consistency of baby food.

Sanitation was another problem. Neither astronaut could shave during the flight. They had only small, damp wash rags with which to mop their faces. Liquid body wastes went overboard through a urine transfer system. Solid wastes were stored in the craft in self-sealing bags containing disinfectant pills.

Party Line. Once the excitement of White's walk beyond the capsule had subsided, both astronauts took four-hour naps. Because they could not turn the volume in their headsets all the way down, they were occasionally jarred from sleep by radio transmissions from the ground. During the 33rd revolution, Gus Grissom told McDivitt: "Look, we don't have very much for you to do in the flight plan for the next 18 hours. So we would like for both of you to get a good long sleep, and we want whoever is asleep to unplug his headset so he can get a good solid, sound sleep. O.K.?" McDivitt gratefully agreed.

Yet at other times during the first two days of the flight, the ground-to-space communications system was as chatty as a rural party line. At one point, Gus Grissom sent up to McDivitt the news that his son's Pee Wee League team, the Hawks, had defeated the Pelicans 3 to 2, and to White the fact that his son had got a hit in a Little League game that day.

Both the astronauts' wives got on the line for four minutes.

When McDivitt's wife Pat came on the radio, he said, "I'm over California right now." She said, "Get yourself over Texas." He asked her: "Behaving yourself?" She said, "I'm always good. Are you being good?" McDivitt replied, "I don't have much space. About all I can do is look out the window." When White's wife, also named Pat, got the mike, she said, "It looked like you were having a wonderful time yesterday."

White said, "Quite a time. Quite a time." Mrs. White said, "I can't wait to talk to you about it." White replied, "O.K., honey, I'll see you later."

The girls came on the line later with some advice that sounded more official than wifely. Said Pat White to her husband: "Now have a drink of water." White answered: "Roger. Standing by for a drink of water." Pat McDivitt told Jim, "Disconnect your headset communications at the neck ring from now on at the start of your sleep period. No static on that. Did you get the message to disconnect your headset?" McDivitt came in loud, clear and obedient: "I sure did."

On their 22nd revolution, White and McDivitt broke the American record in space--34 hr. 20 min.--set by Gordon Cooper's Faith 7 flight on May 15, 1963. "I would like to congratulate you on the new American space-flight record," said the controller in Houston.

Laconically, White said, "We got a few more to go."

Ready for More. As the flight sped into its third day, the orbit held fairly firm with a 173-mile apogee and a 101-mile perigee, indicating that Gemi ni 4 could stay aloft well into this week.

Life aboard Gemini 4 settled into a routine that seemed almost mundane after Ed White's excursion into raw space. Yet even as the mission con tinued to circle the earth, there was new Project Gemini activity. Work had begun at Cape Kennedy to mount and prepare another Titan II missile, topped by another spacecraft: Gemini 5, which will carry Astronauts Gordon Cooper and Charles Conrad on a seven-day space expedition in late August.

After the Project Gemini series will come Project Apollo, aimed at landing an American man on the moon in its first shot some time in 1970. But the man on the moon is only the beginning of the Apollo program. After that, it will send the spaceship many millions of miles on the way to the planets.

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