James McDivitt

[tape rewinding] [triumphant music] The heavenly twins return to Earth in triumph.

Copters from the carrier Wasp pick up Major James McDivitt and Major Edward White after they splash down in the Atlantic 98 historic hours from their blast-off at Cape Kennedy.

In four days, they completed 62 orbits and traveled almost a million and three-quarter miles, two and a half round trips to the moon.

Major White's walk, of course, had the world agog.

In 1963, he was picked to join the third group of astronauts and had yet to make a space flight when he was selected as the lunar module pilot for Apollo 1.

The backup crew from April to December 1966 were James McDivitt, David Scott and Rusty Schweickart, who all later flew on Apollo 9.

And the backup crew from December 1966 to January 1967 consisted of Walter Schirrer, Don Azili and Walter Cunningham.

After the tragic end of AS204, a number of changes were made to the Apollo modules, including a slower changeover to 100% oxygen, a hatch that could be opened from within in fewer than 10 seconds, and flammable materials being replaced with self-extinguishing ones.

When it was finally ready, Apollo 9 flew.

Jim McDivitt and Rusty Schweikert took the Lunar Lander Spider, codenamed, out for a test run for a few laps, flew the vehicle, tested the descent stage, did the...

The separation of the ascent and descent stage, fired up the ascent engines, made sure they work, make sure the spacecraft could fly in that configuration.

They did pretty much everything.

And if you watch the press conferences afterward, the space agencies present this unified front of total harmony.

The commanders smile and insist there were no conflicts.

Everyone supported each other perfectly.

But the sources make it explicitly clear that those press conferences are sanitized fiction.

Every new mission was another step leading to the ultimate goal of putting a man on the moon.

Gemini IV was the second crewed mission, carrying astronauts Ed White and James McDivitt on a four-day trip in orbit around the Earth.

On that occasion, White became the first American to perform a spacewalk, but McDivitt is the one who interests us in this particular case, because he reported seeing a white cylindrical shape with a pole sticking out of it.

Going over the mission transcript, he first mentions it shortly before the 30-hour mark while Gemini was orbiting over Hawaii.

Although not quite as grand, astronaut Scott Carpenter also noted that he could see these fireflies when he tapped the walls of the space capsule.

So no real mystery to this one, just flakes getting dislodged off the surface of the craft and floating into space.

The Gemini program had two unusual sightings, the cylinder spotted by James McDivitt during Gemini 4 and the bogey reported by Frank Borman during Gemini 7.

The, the, the cylinder with the sticky bit has to be something like space debris or space ice or something, right? Space ice, just ice or something, right? I guess it would technically be space ice.

At 9.36 p.m., Gemini 4 passed the American 22.9 orbits duration record set by Gordon Cooper in May 16, 1963.

At 9.41 p.m., McDivitt and White log more time in space, 68 hours and 51 minutes, than the total log by all eight previous astronauts.

Now we go to the sixth inning, and Eddie Cranepool is up against Bob Fred.

Ground ball bounced over the mound towards second, taken by Mazeroski.

The two astronauts have completed 22 orbits of the globe.

Less than an hour ago, they began the 23rd, with splashdown still set to follow completion of 62 orbits.

Command pilot James McDivitt... reported seeing a strange object whirling in space.

It seemed to have big arms sticking out.

Where, Peter and Bobby think they see a UFO.

They get all kind of hopped up on it because they see a TV interview with real-life astronaut James McDivitt.

Oh, it

was a real astronaut? He was a real guy?

If anything in the maze of wires, tubes, and pipes that make up this 11-story tall Gemini Titan rocket poses a threat to the safety of the flight, the count will be stopped automatically.

Otherwise, in a few moments, astronauts McDivitt and White should be airborne.

We will be getting another report momentarily on the status of the flight.

At this point, everything seems to be proceeding smoothly.

The count T minus four minutes and 30 seconds and proceeding.

This is Gemini Control Houston.

We're in the final minutes of the countdown as the Gemini Titan rocket's guidance system has given its commands to fly the astronauts to a point 100 miles above the island of Bermuda, where McDivitt and White will begin the longest flight yet attempted by the US.

If all goes well, they will spend almost 100 hours in their contoured seats to come within less than one day of the longest manned space flight, that of Russian cosmonaut Valery Bykovsky made two years ago this month.