powdered cream of chicken soup, and filled it up with water. The water came from a gray metal water pistol with a long skinny barrel which I stuck into a small opening in one end of the bag. The water gun was the same one John and I used to drink from, being attached by a tube to a large water tank in the
back of the spacecraft. Every time you pulled the trigger, it would squirt one half ounce of water into your mouth (or wherever it was pointed). Now I mushed up the soup by squeezing the tube until all the water was dissolved, and cut off the end of the tube with a pair of scissors. I stuck the open end in my mouth and squeezed. Delicious! The best soup I had ever tasted, even if it wasnât very hot (our water was kind of cold). Also, out my window I had the most exciting view I had ever seen, so my stomach and my eyes were very happy. Having finished my cream of chicken soup, I munched on squeezed bacon cubes and watched the world go by. To save fuel, we had turned off our control system, which meant that we were slowly tumbling. Having flown fighter airplanes for years, I was accustomed to rolling and looping and even spinning, but I had never flown sideways or backward before. Now the blunt snout of our Gemini was tracing graceful arcs in the sky, sometimes in front of our direction of travel, sometimes to one side or the other, sometimes behind. It was like a beautiful roller-coaster ride in slow motion, with no noise, no banging around, no hollow feeling in the pit of the stomach. It was really fun. We were supposed to be going to sleep shortly, and I was tired, but not sleepy, and I really wanted to take the time to enjoy what I saw and felt.
We were flying at an altitude of 200 miles above a sphere whose radius is 4,000 miles. In other words, we were skimming along just above the atmosphere, which is very thin, thinner proportionally than the rind on an orange. The curvature of the earth was apparent, but it was not startling. We were moving at 18,000 miles an hour, but there was not the blur of speed that one sees from a race
car. The reason for this is that our higher speed and higher altitude combined to make things go by the window at the same rate as if we had been going lower and slower. The colors were also familiar, although the sky was absolutely black instead of blue, and one noticed the blue of oceans and the white of clouds more clearly than the green of jungles or the brown of deserts. Well, then, what was so different, so unusual, that I felt I could spend weeks looking out my small window?
It was simply that I knew how different it was, from a lifetime of crawling around the surface of this planet. It gave me a feeling of power to know I was circling the earth once each ninety minutes. Those werenât lakes going by the window, those were oceans! Look at that! We had just passed Hawaii and here came the California coast, visible from Alaska to Mexico, and my bacon cubes not yet finished. San Diego to Miami in nine minutes, and if you missed it, it didnât matter, because they would be back again in another ninety minutes. Another difference was that we were high above all weather, in pure unfiltered sunlight which cast a cheery glow on the scene below. It seemed like a better world in orbit than it did down on the surface. The Indian Ocean flashed incredible colors of emerald jade and opal in the shallow water surrounding the Maldive Islands, then on to the Burma coast and lush green jungle, followed by mountains and coastline. Then out past the island of Formosa, looking like a giant, well-fertilized gardenia leaf, and across the Pacific, over Hawaii, and now time for California once again. Incredible!
But all good things must come to an end, and now it really was time to sleep, so John and I put thin metal plates
over our windows and blocked out the spectacular view. I slept well, being by now much more accustomed to my surroundings, and, besides, I was tired and pleased from my day of
back of the spacecraft. Every time you pulled the trigger, it would squirt one half ounce of water into your mouth (or wherever it was pointed). Now I mushed up the soup by squeezing the tube until all the water was dissolved, and cut off the end of the tube with a pair of scissors. I stuck the open end in my mouth and squeezed. Delicious! The best soup I had ever tasted, even if it wasnât very hot (our water was kind of cold). Also, out my window I had the most exciting view I had ever seen, so my stomach and my eyes were very happy. Having finished my cream of chicken soup, I munched on squeezed bacon cubes and watched the world go by. To save fuel, we had turned off our control system, which meant that we were slowly tumbling. Having flown fighter airplanes for years, I was accustomed to rolling and looping and even spinning, but I had never flown sideways or backward before. Now the blunt snout of our Gemini was tracing graceful arcs in the sky, sometimes in front of our direction of travel, sometimes to one side or the other, sometimes behind. It was like a beautiful roller-coaster ride in slow motion, with no noise, no banging around, no hollow feeling in the pit of the stomach. It was really fun. We were supposed to be going to sleep shortly, and I was tired, but not sleepy, and I really wanted to take the time to enjoy what I saw and felt.
We were flying at an altitude of 200 miles above a sphere whose radius is 4,000 miles. In other words, we were skimming along just above the atmosphere, which is very thin, thinner proportionally than the rind on an orange. The curvature of the earth was apparent, but it was not startling. We were moving at 18,000 miles an hour, but there was not the blur of speed that one sees from a race
car. The reason for this is that our higher speed and higher altitude combined to make things go by the window at the same rate as if we had been going lower and slower. The colors were also familiar, although the sky was absolutely black instead of blue, and one noticed the blue of oceans and the white of clouds more clearly than the green of jungles or the brown of deserts. Well, then, what was so different, so unusual, that I felt I could spend weeks looking out my small window?
It was simply that I knew how different it was, from a lifetime of crawling around the surface of this planet. It gave me a feeling of power to know I was circling the earth once each ninety minutes. Those werenât lakes going by the window, those were oceans! Look at that! We had just passed Hawaii and here came the California coast, visible from Alaska to Mexico, and my bacon cubes not yet finished. San Diego to Miami in nine minutes, and if you missed it, it didnât matter, because they would be back again in another ninety minutes. Another difference was that we were high above all weather, in pure unfiltered sunlight which cast a cheery glow on the scene below. It seemed like a better world in orbit than it did down on the surface. The Indian Ocean flashed incredible colors of emerald jade and opal in the shallow water surrounding the Maldive Islands, then on to the Burma coast and lush green jungle, followed by mountains and coastline. Then out past the island of Formosa, looking like a giant, well-fertilized gardenia leaf, and across the Pacific, over Hawaii, and now time for California once again. Incredible!
But all good things must come to an end, and now it really was time to sleep, so John and I put thin metal plates
over our windows and blocked out the spectacular view. I slept well, being by now much more accustomed to my surroundings, and, besides, I was tired and pleased from my day of
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