Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Neil Armstrong's First Time in Space

Episode Date: July 23, 2020

Everyone knows who Neil Armstrong is and why he is famous. Being the first person to set foot on the moon has placed him in a unique position in world history, and he is a name that people will probably remember for thousands of years. But Apollo 11 was not his first spaceflight. His first flight aboard Gemini 8 was, in many respects, far more exciting and impressive than his exploits on Apollo 11. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Everyone knows who Neil Armstrong is and why he's famous. Being the first person to step foot on the moon has placed him in a unique position in world history. And he has a name that people will probably remember for thousands of years. But Apollo 11 was not his first space flight. His first flight aboard Gemini 8 was, in many respects, far more exciting and impressive than his exploits on Apollo 11. Learn more about his short yet important flight aboard his 1966 Gemini 8 flight on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. This episode is sponsored by G Adventures. These are very troubled times. Even though things are starting to get better and more countries are opening up, people are still hesitant to travel, and that is totally understandable.

That is why Gadventures has announced its new Travel with Confidence Plus collection. The Travel with Confidence Plus collection are 37 tours in 27 countries that have increased safety and sanitation protocols to protect you and other travelers. These tours will have smaller group sizes, private transportation, and cheaper options to get your own room, as well as more personal space. G-Adventures has also earned the World Travel and Tourism Council's Safe Travel Stamp for their health and hygiene protocols and has implemented the Adventure Travel Trade Association's COVID-19 Health and Safety Guidelines. The Travel with Confidence tours are available for booking today and will be departing from October 2, 2020 to the end of 2021. For more information and to book your tour, click on the link in the show notes. The Gemini program was a series of space flights which took place in 1965 and 1966. The purpose of the program was to serve as a bridge between the Mercury program, which was the first experiment to see if humans could survive in space, and the Apollo program, which was to land people on the moon.

Each Gemini mission was designed to test various aspects of spaceflight, which would become necessary in the Apollo program. Gemini 3 tested spaceflight with two people in one capsule. Gemini 4 conducted the first U.S. spacewalk by astronaut Ed White. Gemini 5 was a week-long spaceflight and was the first use of fuel cells. and orbital navigation systems, which would be used in later flights. Gemini 7 was actually launched before Gemini 6, and the primary goal of the mission was to see if humans could live in space for two weeks. Gemini 6 took place during Gemini 7, and it was the first time two spacecraft rendezvoused in orbit. The reason why Gemini 6 and Gemini 7 were out of order

is that Gemini 6 was originally going to be the test of the first docking in space. Gemini 6 was going to dock with an unmanned device called the Aegina Target vehicle. The Aegina was going to be launched first, and then Gemini 6 was supposed to rendezvous with it, dock with the target, and fly with the two devices attached. It was an extremely important test in what would be necessary for the Apollo missions to be successful. Unfortunately, the Aegina exploded during its first flight while Gemini 6 was waiting on the launch pad. So the mission was scrubbed, and the mission objectives of Gemini 6 were changed. to rendezvous with Gemini 7 while it was in orbit.

This meant that the important Aegina rendezvous in docking would take place on Gemini 8. The crew of Gemini 8 consisted of two first-time astronauts, Neil Armstrong and Dave Scott. Armstrong was a civilian test pilot and Scott was an Air Force test pilot. Both of them were in the second class of astronauts recruited after the original Mercury 7. This flight marked the first time that an American civilian ever orbited the Earth. The launch took place on March 16, 1966, the day of the 40th anniversary of the launch of the world's first liquid-fueled rocket by Dr. Robert Goddard. The launch of the Agena took place first, and everything was flawless. The problems from Gemini 6 didn't recur. Gemini 8 launched about

90 minutes later, and this too went well. Everything was going to plan so far. The goal was for Gemini 8 to catch up to the Egena vehicle, do the first docking in space between two vehicles, and then do a series of tests during the course of their three-day mission. About five hours into the mission, they had rendezvoused with Agena and were given the go-ahead to dock. Armstrong moved the Gemini capsule in at 8 centimeters per second and made the first docking in orbit. Dave Scott radioed the ground and said, Flight, we are docked. It's a real smoothie. And that was when things started to go wrong.

After they docked with the Agena, they started to roll. This wasn't supposed to happen. Armstrong stopped the roll with the thrusters aboard the Gemini capsule, but it started again as soon as they got it under control. Ground control was worried there might be something wrong with Agena, so they gave the order to undock so they could assess the problem. The problem was, as soon as they undocked, having lost the mass of the much larger Agena vehicle, the capsule started spinning even faster. The capsule was spinning at almost one revolution per second. At this rate, they would soon be rendered unconscious. When you're in space, you do not want a spinning spacecraft.

In their attempts to stop the roll while attached to the eugenia, they had dropped the fuel in their orbital maneuvering thrusters down to 30%. Armstrong realized that the problem was probably with their capsule. Armstrong used the re-entry control thrusters to stop the spin. After several minutes of terror, they managed to get the spin under control and stabilize the spacecraft. Once they were stable, they tested the orbital control thrusters and realized that one of them had been stuck on which caused the spin to go to control. The problem was stopping the spin used up 75% of the re-entry maneuvering fuel. There wasn't enough fuel in the capsule to complete the mission as originally planned.

For the first time in the history of the American Man Space Program, they had to abandon a mission and conduct an emergency landing. The original landing site was supposed to be in the Atlantic, but that was supposed to be three days later. Now they were going to have to re-enter over China and splashed down in the Pacific several hundred miles east of Okinawa. The U.S. Navy ship, USS Leonard F. Mason, was immediately ordered to the recovery point, as were spotter planes, to try to confirm the landing. The landing went according to plan, and despite some sea sickness, both astronauts were recovered. This was the first real emergency that NASA faced in the manned space program.

It was a much smaller version of what would happen years later with Apollo 13. After another problem docking the vehicle on Gemini 9, they managed to get it right finally on Gemini 10. The problem with the thrusters led to changes in the electrical system for the rest of the Gemini missions as well as for the Apollo capsule. In the future, all the electrical connections to thrusters would be on separate circuits. It also showed the flying skill of Neil Armstrong, who would again show his skill on the Apollo 11 mission when he took manual control of the limb in the final phase of the moon landing and managed to set down with only 3.000. 30 seconds left to fuel. The follow-up to the mission also instigated the first ever set of NASA Mission Failure Investigation Policy and Procedures. This was a similar investigative system that would be

used after the Apollo 1 disaster and Apollo 13. Today you can see the original Gemini 8 capsule, which is on display at the Neil Armstrong Air and Space Museum in Wapakoneta, Ohio. For the best and really only dramatizations of the events of Gemini 8, I'd recommend the movie First Man with Rheing Gosling playing the role of Neil Armstrong. Executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is James Mackala. Special thanks to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon. Please remember to leave a review over on Apple Podcasts. Even a simple review can really help the show get discovered in the sea of other podcasts that are out there.