posted 09-23-2011 12:06 AM            

The astronauts onboard Mercury-Atlas 8 (Wally Schirra), Mercury-Atlas 9 (Gordon Cooper), Gemini 6A (Schirra and Thomas Stafford) and Gemini 9A (Stafford and Gene Cernan) remained inside their spacecraft as it was hoisted on board the recovery ship. The hatches were then opened on deck.

Was this just crew preference, or were there other reasons why the astronauts on those flights remained inside their spacecraft during recovery?

Unlike Apollo, the Skylab crews remained inside the command module after splashdown — most likely because those missions were long-duration flights.

posted 09-23-2011 04:00 PM            

Following a normal but hard splashdown, the command module flipped over, leaving the three men hanging upside down in their couches from harnesses. Brand, who was coughing the most because he was closest to the [349] steam duct opening, saw that Slayton was feeling nauseous and reminded Stafford to get their oxygen masks. The commander recalled:

For some reason, I was more tolerant to [the bad atmosphere], and I just thought get those damn masks. I said don't fall down into the tunnel. I came loose and . . . had to crawl . . . and bend over to get the masks. . . . l knew that I had a toxic hypoxia . . . and I started to grunt-breathe to make sure I got pressure in my lungs to keep my head clear. I looked over at Vance and he was just hanging in his straps. He was unconscious.52

After Stafford secured the oxygen mask over Brand's face and held it there, he began to come around. Once the entire crew was breathing pure oxygen, Brand actuated the uprighting system. When the command module was upright in the water, Stafford opened the vent valve, and with the in-rush of air the remaining fumes disappeared.

posted 09-24-2011 02:24 AM               

Apparently when Stafford stuck the mask on Brand's face, Brand was combative when he came around and he clocked Stafford with one of his flailing hands, knocked the mask off and passed out again. It took Stafford a couple tries to get the mask firmly on to the point where Brand came to full consciousness.

posted 09-24-2011 09:31 AM            

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Originally posted by LM-12:
They probably would have preferred to be down in sick bay at that point.

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posted 09-26-2011 04:29 PM            

This description of NASA photo number S66-18613 says that Armstrong and Scott were still onboard the Gemini 8 spacecraft when it was hoisted onto the deck of the USS Mason.

posted 09-26-2011 07:12 PM               

"The crew completed their postflight checks without difficulty but were quite uncomfortable due to the sea condition. Subsequent to attachment of the flotation collar, the hatches were opened and the crew became more comfortable as they awaited pickup by the destroyer, the U.S.S. Leonard F. Mason. Approximately 3 hours after landing, the U.S.S. Mason came alongside and attached a line to the spacecraft. The crew egressed from the left hatch with some difficulty due to the fairly severe bobbing caused by swells of 12 to l5 feet."

posted 09-26-2011 07:39 PM            

• MA-6 (Glenn)
  
• MA-8 (Schirra)
  
• MA-9 (Cooper)
  
• Gemini 6A (Schirra-Stafford)
  
• Gemini 9A (Stafford-Cernan)
  
• Skylab 2 (Conrad-Kerwin-Weitz)
  
• Skylab 3 (Bean-Garriott-Lousma)
  
• Skylab 4 (Carr-Gibson-Pogue)
  
• ASTP (Stafford-Slayton-Brand)

posted 09-26-2011 07:49 PM               

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Originally posted by NovaRob:
Dave Scott (the astronaut) told me during a signing that they indeed boarded via a Jacob's Ladder, and it was rather difficult.

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It is difficult with regular shoes or "boon dockers" (Navy term for ankle high boots) on, never mind a pressure suit and boots of that nature.

posted 09-28-2011 10:37 AM               

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Originally posted by LM-12:
How did Carpenter exit his MA-7 spacecraft to wait for rescue? Did he blow the hatch or climb out the top?

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Incidentally, Carpenter was never "lost." Immediately after retrofire the Californian tracking station was reporting the possibility of an overshoot. Initially this was not believed. However, as further radar data was received the extra miles were confirmed, as was the fact that a successful re-entry had been achieved. A minute before Carpenter hit the water he was able to acknowledge a message from Mercury Control that he was some 200 miles long and that recovery would take about an hour.

This makes nonsense of Tom Wolfe's statement that "Long after radio communications should have been resumed - nothing. It looked as if Carpenter had consumed all his fuel up there playing around - and burned up."

Re-entry was achieved using the remaining automatic fuel to stabilise the capsule. This lasted until the capsule was passing through 50,000 feet and it was at this time the oscillations started. The only worrying moments he had during re-entry were when he spotted some green coloured flame coming from the section of the capsule where the parachutes were housed. Thinking that this might indicate that this burning away, he amused himself by quoting one of astronaut Jose Jiminez's favourite lines - "Ooooh! I hope not."

Eventually, with the capsule swinging through an arc of 270 degrees, Carpenter released the drogue chute at 25,000 feet to stabilise his descent. It is worth noting that Glenn had the same problem but chose to deploy his drogue chute even earlier - at 30,000 feet. Carpenter's main chute followed at 10,000 feet, dumping Aurora 7 into the ocean, "Just like sitting down in a chair." It completely submerged, but soon bobbed to the surface listing at an angle of 60 degrees.

Rather than wait inside Aurora 7, Carpenter squeezed his way through the narrow eighteen inch gap in the neck of the capsule releasing the life-raft as he went. This inflated in the water upside down, so it had to be righted before Carpenter could make himself comfortable for his long wait for recovery.

Meanwhile, the recovery forces had not been idle. Using the radar tracking data, a SA-16 Air Rescue plane was launched to the predicted point of splash-down some eight minutes before this occurred. A possible radar contact was made by the searching aircraft about two minutes before splash-down though this was not reported for a further six minutes. Twelve minutes later these contacts were confirmed.

Thirty nine minutes after the capsule hit the water a visual sighting was made and a minute later Carpenter was seen to be sitting in the life-raft beside the capsule. Within an hour a pararescue team was dropped, the first indication that Carpenter had that this had happened being when the first of the two man team grabbed the life-raft and said, "Hello!"

posted 09-29-2011 05:34 PM               

Apparently the Navy nixed that idea though as there was a pecking order to who should recover to the astronauts and the Navy was tasked with the primary responsibility.

posted 09-30-2011 05:40 PM            

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Originally posted by ea757grrl:
As for Gemini 9A, the spacecraft landed so close to the recovery ship that it may have actually gone faster with the astronauts still in the spacecraft!

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The Gemini 9A splashdown was just 0.7 km from the target landing site. I think that is the record for a manned US spacecraft.

posted 10-01-2011 01:50 AM               

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Originally posted by LM-12:
The Gemini 9A splashdown was just 0.7 km from the target landing site. I think that is the record for a manned US spacecraft.

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posted 10-01-2011 08:56 AM            

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Originally posted by Jay Chladek:

It all turned out well in the end though, even if the myths about Carpenter and his Aurora 7 flight continue to this day.

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posted 10-01-2011 11:52 AM               

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Originally posted by Neil Aldrin:
Did this whole episode with Carpenter consuming excess fuel and the overshoot of the splashdown tend to tarnish his reputation as an astronaut? I remember seeing an interview with Chris Kraft in which he still seems ticked-off at Carpenter.

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Carpenter consumed more fuel than the flight plan dictated in the early stages and, with some justification, blamed the mission planners for overloading his work schedule. This was something he recognised in his first orbit. As he started the third, this useage was under control. Even though there was double useage at retro-fire, if you examine the flight records you'll see that both the Mercury three orbit flights ran out at roughly the same time.

Kraft just didn't like Carpenter, nor I suspect his association with Glenn who was the astronauts' spokesman when it came to disagreements with mission planners. After the flight of Aurora 7, its pilot was an easy target for Kraft to use to deflect the adverse comments made by the press. See the quote by Tom Wolfe to get a flavour of this and how wrong both he and the media were.

With regard to closest landing - do you mean to the recovery carrier or to the target point. Gemini 9 landed some 603 metres from the TP with Apollo 17 a close second at 644 metres away. However, Apollo 16 might just hold the record for at the time of the flight the landing was claimed to be ".. within 500 metres ..". Official numbers at the time were not released so I stand to be corrected on this.

posted 10-01-2011 02:07 PM            

The recovery data in NASA SP-4029 states that Apollo 16 landed 3.0 nm from the target point and 2.7 nm from the recovery ship. It says that Apollo 17 landed 1.0 nm from the target point and 3.5 nm from the recovery ship.

posted 10-01-2011 02:38 PM               

That is a very dangerous thing as if Scott didn't notice the problem or did a manual alignment, then Aurora 7 could have been off axis and the retrofire burn might not have slowed the spacecraft down enough to reenter. And since Mercury capsule retropacks only contain three solid fuel retrograde rockets, once they are fired, if the new orbit path doesn't bring it back the astronaut is not able to do much else (remember the original 1964 version of the Martin Caidin novel "Marooned"?). The Soviets had that problem on an unmanned Soyuz test as instead of doing a retrofire, the engines put the craft into a higher orbit and stranded it there (until they self destructed it).

Another little quirk of the Mercury system is the automatic thrusters (which could be operated manually with the "Fly by wire" switch) and the manual thrusters could both be fired by the same stick movement if the switches were actuated a certain way. So both sets of thrusters would fire at once. Carpenter got caught out by that once (I believe Shepherd or Grissom did as well and possibly Glenn) and noticed extreme fuel usage in combination with some rather fast roll rates. That was a poor design of the Mercury system as one would figure that having one system active would lockout the other. I believe they corrected it for a later mission (and this is why test pilots flew those first missions, to find out what DOESN'T work in addition to what does).

For Sigma 7, NASA went with more drifting flight in orbit where once the craft was aligned right, all the thrusters were turned off and the ship was allowed to just float along rather than continuously keeping itself oriented blunt end forward. In an emergency, Wally could always reactivate the systems and realign as needed, but drifting flight was pretty much a piece of cake with the law of physics dictating what the craft would do. The long duration Gemini flights did about the same thing.

So Carpenter landed a little long, but at least he landed. Lack of fuel during reentry itself wasn't quite as critical as the blunt design of the capsule and the aero-flap at the front would help ensure it flipped around to the proper attitude if it was coming back front first and had no fuel to correct.

As for a tarnished reputation, I believe Carpenter could have flown a future mission if he really wanted to, but he really didn't nominate himself for a Gemini flight as his interests were more oriented to the Navy's Sealab experiments at that time as he was more interested in the research aspects of how similar sea and space environments are to one another. When he broke his wrist in 1965 and it fused the rotation joint (meaning he couldn't rotate it from palm in to palm down, like what is needed for grabbing a throttle quadrant), that meant he couldn't fly high performance aircraft (or spacecraft) anymore. So by 1967 he retired from NASA.

posted 10-01-2011 03:58 PM               

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Originally posted by LM-12:
Those numbers don't agree with yours.

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posted 10-07-2011 03:16 PM               

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Originally posted by Lou Chinal:
As a side note I know the Mercury retro rockets were fired in a ripple pattern, were they also fired that way in Gemini?

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posted 12-01-2011 09:16 AM            

• Mercury 3, 4, 6*, 7
  
• Gemini 3, 4, 5, 7, 6A*, 9A*, 10, 11, 12
  
• Apollo 7, 9

• Mercury 8*, 9*
  
• Gemini 8
  
• Apollo 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17
  
• Skylab 2*, 3*, 4*
  
• ASTP*

posted 12-01-2011 03:34 PM               

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Originally posted by LM-12:
Six of those Apollo flights landed south of the Equator.

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posted 01-24-2012 12:05 AM            

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Originally posted by Rusty B:
John Glenn also stayed in his spacecraft until it was lifted onto a ship.

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