Gemini 7

Uh, Gemini 7 here.

You Houston on your 8?

Loud and clear.

Following on from Grissom, he was the pilot of the Gemini 4, and accordingly on the 3rd of June 1965, he became the first American to make a spacewalk.

He was also the backup command pilot for Gemini 7, and because of the usual pre-rotation process, he was due to pilot the Gemini 10, which would have made him the first of his group to fly twice.

Instead, he was promoted in 1966 to be the command module pilot for AS204.

The final member of the crew was pilot Roger B. Chaffee, a rookie.

These objects didn't just show up once.

They appeared during Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions.

Individually, every incident could be dismissed as a technical anomaly, a weird light aberration, debris drifting outside the spacecraft, or a crew member misunderstanding what they're seeing.

But taken together, is it possible they form a pattern stretching across the entire history of human spaceflight, a pattern of sightings, uncertainty, and even control? Because the question is no longer whether astronauts are seeing strange things in space, the question is what NASA believed those objects were.

And NASA never really has to lie about a coverup or do anything because NASA never conducted an investigation that would produce anything to cover up.

But that doesn't change the fact that the astronauts saw something that they thought was weird.

Now, one of the earliest sightings was around December 4th, 1965, when Frank Borman and Jim Lovell launched on Gemini 7.

The mission was brutal.

[laughs]

"Leaves a bad taste in your mouth and coating on the roof of your mouth," Jim Lovell complained to Mission Control during Gemini VII.

And again, on other missions, astronauts just chose to, like, not eat these things.

On Mercury 9, which lasted 33 hours, astronaut Gordon Cooper ate only 700 of his 2400 calories.

Yeah.

I mean, that way it'll at least surprise them, you know? [laughs]

Ge- Gemini VII-

But then you prepare the meal

In the next few episodes, you will see how this knowledge got put to use effectively.

That December, the Gemini 7 mission was launched, which completed over 200 orbits over the course of nearly 14 days.

It set another long-duration spaceflight endurance record, helping scientists ensure that humans could survive a lengthy trip in such an environment.

While up there, Gemini 6A was launched.

The circumstances demanded an abrupt change of plans.

NASA quickly changed Gemini 6A's course and had them stay about a foot apart for roughly five hours.

Though Gemini 6A and Gemini 7 lacked the docking mechanisms to physically attach, they verified orbital mechanics calculations and paved the way for future lunar module docking procedures.

In March of 1966, Gemini 8 was launched with Armstrong and Scott with the objective of docking with an unmanned vehicle.