space walking. After a hearty breakfast, John and I performed a couple of hours of experiments, and then it was time to come home. We did this by firing our retro-rockets, four solid-propellant rockets mounted in our tail. We were to point backward when we fired them, so that they slowed us down enough to allow gravity to bend our orbit back into the atmosphere. We were scheduled to fire our retro-rockets over the Pacific Ocean, west of Hawaii, whereupon we would begin a gradual descent and finally splash into the Atlantic Ocean east of Florida thirty minutes later.
Before we could retrofire, however, we had a long checklist to wade through. And did John and I take our sweet time! We could fire those rockets only once, and everything had better be right. If we fired them while we were pointed forward instead of backward, instead of reentering the atmosphere we would be boosted into a higher orbit, with no way to get down from it. So as we went around on our final orbit, we double-checked everything except the direction we were pointing. We checked that at least ten times. It was also traditional to use the last orbit to say goodbye to the people in the various tracking stations who had helped us. âWeâll be standing by,â they told us. âHave a good trip home.â âRoger,â said John. âThank you very much. Enjoyed talking to you. Itâs been a lot of fun ⦠Want to thank everybody down there for all the hard work.â John wasnât kidding. The people on the ground had really been helpful, especially in thinking up ways for us to
save fuel after we had used so much in finding our first Agena.
Finally the moment arrived, and a voice from below counted us down: 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1 - RETROFIRE! After nearly three days of weightlessness, I had forgotten what acceleration felt like, except for those brief bursts from the Agena. Now I counted the four rockets as they fired one after another, and they really felt powerful. I was pushed back in my couch with an acceleration of one half G, but it felt more like 3 Gs to my sensitized body. As we descended, John flew the spacecraft while I worked with the computer to figure out where we would come down. As we entered the upper atmosphere, there was a five-minute period in which we were âblacked outâ; that is, we couldnât talk on the radio. This strange fact is caused by an electric charge which surrounds the spacecraft, and which in turn is caused by the great friction produced when the spacecraft hits the atmosphere at high speed. Our heat shield was forward and our heads were pointed down toward the earth. John banked this way and that, depending on the steering information coming from our computer. It was like making gliding turns to an airport, except that we were coming in upside down and backward.
As I looked out behind us, I could see that we were developing a long tail. This was caused by little pieces of our heat shield burning up and coming off, as it was supposed to do, to protect us from the searing frictional heat. At first the tail was very thin, but then it became thicker and brighter, glowing red and yellow in the dark sky. It was very pretty. As our G level built up to 4, I really felt heavy, but it didnât last long, and then we were down below the
greatest heat and deceleration, and it was time to try the parachutes. First out was the drogue, a small parachute (six feet across) designed to slow us down enough to open our main chute. When the drogue came out, we began to swing back and forth wildly and I got slightly nervous, but then things quieted down a bit, and at 10,000 feet we unfurled our main chute, nearly sixty feet in diameter. It inflated with a great whap and filled our windows with red and white nylon. Beautiful! Soon after the main chute deployed, we noticed a strange thing. In addition to coming straight down, we were turning sideways. Apparently we were spinning on the end of our parachute
Before we could retrofire, however, we had a long checklist to wade through. And did John and I take our sweet time! We could fire those rockets only once, and everything had better be right. If we fired them while we were pointed forward instead of backward, instead of reentering the atmosphere we would be boosted into a higher orbit, with no way to get down from it. So as we went around on our final orbit, we double-checked everything except the direction we were pointing. We checked that at least ten times. It was also traditional to use the last orbit to say goodbye to the people in the various tracking stations who had helped us. âWeâll be standing by,â they told us. âHave a good trip home.â âRoger,â said John. âThank you very much. Enjoyed talking to you. Itâs been a lot of fun ⦠Want to thank everybody down there for all the hard work.â John wasnât kidding. The people on the ground had really been helpful, especially in thinking up ways for us to
save fuel after we had used so much in finding our first Agena.
Finally the moment arrived, and a voice from below counted us down: 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1 - RETROFIRE! After nearly three days of weightlessness, I had forgotten what acceleration felt like, except for those brief bursts from the Agena. Now I counted the four rockets as they fired one after another, and they really felt powerful. I was pushed back in my couch with an acceleration of one half G, but it felt more like 3 Gs to my sensitized body. As we descended, John flew the spacecraft while I worked with the computer to figure out where we would come down. As we entered the upper atmosphere, there was a five-minute period in which we were âblacked outâ; that is, we couldnât talk on the radio. This strange fact is caused by an electric charge which surrounds the spacecraft, and which in turn is caused by the great friction produced when the spacecraft hits the atmosphere at high speed. Our heat shield was forward and our heads were pointed down toward the earth. John banked this way and that, depending on the steering information coming from our computer. It was like making gliding turns to an airport, except that we were coming in upside down and backward.
As I looked out behind us, I could see that we were developing a long tail. This was caused by little pieces of our heat shield burning up and coming off, as it was supposed to do, to protect us from the searing frictional heat. At first the tail was very thin, but then it became thicker and brighter, glowing red and yellow in the dark sky. It was very pretty. As our G level built up to 4, I really felt heavy, but it didnât last long, and then we were down below the
greatest heat and deceleration, and it was time to try the parachutes. First out was the drogue, a small parachute (six feet across) designed to slow us down enough to open our main chute. When the drogue came out, we began to swing back and forth wildly and I got slightly nervous, but then things quieted down a bit, and at 10,000 feet we unfurled our main chute, nearly sixty feet in diameter. It inflated with a great whap and filled our windows with red and white nylon. Beautiful! Soon after the main chute deployed, we noticed a strange thing. In addition to coming straight down, we were turning sideways. Apparently we were spinning on the end of our parachute
Similar Books
