Abstract
As with each flight before and since, Gemini 4 was all about achieving its mission objectives not breaking records, although such records were – and still remain – a supplementary achievement and a headliner for the media. By the end of their second flight day in orbit, Jim McDivitt and Ed White became holders of two world space ‘firsts’ and had set three U.S. space records. A few minutes after surpassing Cooper’s record at 21:41 EDT, the two astronauts together logged more time (68 hours 51 minutes) than all the eight previous U.S. astronauts combined. About six hours earlier, the Gemini 4 astronauts had also surpassed the duration record (26 hours/17 orbits) for a multi-crew spacecraft, set by the Voskhod 2 crew of Pavel Belyayev and Alexei Leonov less than three months earlier. It was also reported that White became “the first man to use a self-propulsion unit to maneuver in space away from his capsule,” during his EVA on June 3. [ 1 ] That same day, Gemini 4 achieved an altitude of 183 miles (294.4 km), surpassing the record attained by Wally Schirra on Mercury 8 in October 1962 by seven miles (11.2 km); and there were still three days of flight remaining before splashdown.
“[We] would like to congratulate the new
American space flight record [holders]. Congratulations!”
Hawaii Capcom to Gemini 4 upon surpassing
the single U.S. space flight record of 34 h 19 m 49s
set by Gordon Cooper aboard Mercury Atlas 9 on May 16, 1963.
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Notes
- 1.
The slang term ‘sawbones’ derives from the 18th and 19th century, perhaps earlier, when surgeons often had to amputate limbs by sawing through them. This procedure, with such a drastic outcome, naturally caught the attention – and fear – of the public and so the word stuck as a nickname for a surgeon, often shortened to just ‘bones’.
- 2.
The KC-135 was assigned to the 6th Air Refueling Squadron. It had descended below the glide slope on a night instrumented approach to runway 21 and had lost electrical power. [ 2 ]
- 3.
Prior to the flight, it was reported that the MSC had purchased 34 special propelling pencil sets, comprising a nylon cord, take-up reel and baseplate, to be installed in each Gemini spacecraft. Each set cost $128.84. It was hoped that restraining the pencils would make it easier to take notes in space. The first were due to be installed in Gemini 4, but the crew’s in-flight discussion indicated that this had not been the case.
- 4.
This was exactly the type of inward-opening hatch design that contributed to the outcome of the Apollo 1 pad fire and the loss of White with Grissom and Chaffee in January 1967.
References
Gemini Sets 2 World, 3 U.S. Space Records, California Desert Sun, June 5, 1965, #261.
Voices from an Old Warrior: Why KC-123 Safety Matters, Christopher J.B. Hoctor, 2013, Galleon’s Lap, e-book pdf www.theboomsignal.net/pdf/Voices_from_an_Old_Warrior.pdf last accessed April 11, 2018.
Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1965, p 271, entry for June 6.
The Gemini UFO: A Skeptical Analysis, James Oberg, UFO Report Magazine, Fall 1981.
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Shayler, D.J. (2018). Something else up here. In: Gemini 4. Springer Praxis Books(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76675-1_9
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