Don’t Even Tell Me About It, Babe. I’ll Look Tomorrow.

Happy Gemini X launch day!  To celebrate, I embedded some crappy video, starting just before staging, and then SECO (Second Stage Engine Cut-off), which Pilot Michael Collins described in his book, Carrying the Fire:

The G level is getting noticeable now as the first-stage fuel tanks are nearly empty, but the two first-stage engines are still churning away at full thrust. “Staging” (the shutdown of the empty first stage, separation from it, and ignition of the second-stage engine) nears, as the clock approaches two and a half minutes and the G meter creeps up over 5. 

Staging is a shock. Too many things happen too swiftly for the brain to render a verdict. The eye barely has time to register catastrophe and rescue: the G load abruptly ceases, and I feel myself flying forward against restraining straps. The window is instantaneously full of reds and yellows and bright particles and whizzing pieces of debris, and then, as quickly as chaos has come, it evaporates, leaving black sky and quiet ride as the second stage hums serenely along. 

On the ground Pat watches her TV screen and thinks that the vehicle has exploded. She is right. An instant after the two stages separated, the first-stage oxidizer tank ruptured explosively, spraying debris in all directions with dramatic, if harmless, visual effect. Back in the cockpit we have no time to discuss the matter. John, up for his second time on a Titan, knows this one is different, but not me—I luxuriate in my ignorance and begin to enjoy this ride. 

We are now far above any aerodynamic disturbances, and are in fact “in space,” except that we don’t yet have the speed to keep us up here. If the engine quits now, we will ignominiously fall back down into the ocean. But the speed is coming, and the G forces herald its approach, as we build up past 5 and 6. At 7 Gs the discomfort begins, with a giant hand pushing hard against my chest, but it doesn’t last more than a few seconds, because we have arrived. 

Precisely on schedule the second-stage engine shuts down (SECO); we separate from the spent Titan and check our velocity. We are a paltry twenty miles per hour slow and we immediately correct for it by using our own thrusters to make up the difference.

Once in orbit:

John and I have our check lists out now, and we swiftly run through the routine we have practiced so many times in the simulator, converting our Gemini from a passive payload to an active, orbiting spacecraft. We must hurry, because in seven minutes we will be in total darkness and the first night is jam-packed with star sightings to use in our orbit determination (Module VI) calculations. 

The test pilot in me winces at the necessity to rush at this stage of the game: here we are with a brand-new machine airborne for the first time and we don’t even have time to make sure it is operating properly. Everything is rush—rush—rush to get ready for Module VI. 

The tourist in me is equally outraged, for outside my tiny window is the most glorious spectacle of sea and sky I have ever witnessed, and I have no time for it. I press my nose briefly against the glass, but John—half joking, half serious—allows me only a few seconds before ordering me back to work. 

Inside the cockpit I get my first manifestation of weightlessness: tiny bits of debris, washers, screws, pieces of potting compound, dirt particles—a miniature armada—are floating aimlessly about. In an hour or so they will be gone, sucked into the inlet screen of the ventilation system, but for the time being they are an amusing oddity as well as a sober reminder that this machine has been assembled by fallible hands which drop things which find their way into inaccessible and possibly dangerous crevices. 

My body doesn’t feel much different now that it is finally weightless. A slight feeling of fullness in my head, and a tendency for relaxed arms to float up in front of my face, praying-mantis style. That’s about all, confined as I am inside the tiny cockpit.

A while later, Michael would become the fourth person and third American to conduct an EVA, and the first to do so twice.  Both of his spacewalks were a bit dicey, and taught us great lessons about working up there.  

Space is hard.

PS - Found Collins' velcro-covered EVA checklist.

PPS - The mission also set an altitude record (475mi), which was broken by Pete Conrad and Dick Gordon on Gemini XI (850mi) in September.  Of course, Artemis II shattered all records by going 252,756 miles from Earth, besting the mark of 248,655 miles reached by ill-fated Apollo 13.