Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in ... - The Black Vault

Exploring the Unknown 287
available to retrieve passengers should a major failure occur. The
extensive ship and aircraft rescue forces which we deploy globally
for each manned flight now typifies this practice.
I would point out that [text redacted in document] rescue can
take place only to about 400 feet. As a result, a disabling accident
in the rather small part of the ocean where the bottom is between
400 [text redacted in document] feet deep would result in a similar
“stranding.”
I see no advantage for a specific study of the space rescue question at
this time. However, I wish to assure you that the matter of crew safety
will remain paramount in our manned military space program. In
view of the higher public attention to manned spaceflight, I would
note that we will continue to provide this program significantly more
crew safety precautions that we have in our similarly dangerous
aircraft testing programs.
[Signed Cyrus Vance]
MEMORANDUM TO THE PRESIDENT
Subject: Space Rescue
Document I-61
June 2, 1965
With reference to Dr. Welsh’s memorandum of May 21, 1965 on the subject of
space rescue, our concern for the safety of United States astronauts means that
we take steps to reduce risks by every conceivable means. We maintain intense
efforts in the fields of reliability, crew training, equipment check-out, design
redundancy, safety margins, and the use of short systems. We have also given
careful consideration to the practicability of space rescue within the current or
immediately predictable state-of-the-art.
It is obvious that we could not have provided a space rescue system in the Mercury
Project, which was devoted to demonstrating the feasibility of manned space
flight itself.
In the case of Gemini, the equipments and operational techniques essential to
space rescue are being developed as part of the Gemini Program. A considerable
number of the Gemini experiments are devoted to rendezvous, docking, manned
extravehicular activities, tether dynamics, and the use of tools and repair of
equipment in space – techniques which must be mastered before a practical
space rescue system can be developed. However, in Gemini, we are building on
all of the measures for safety that have come from our extensive experience in
test flying and such advanced systems as the X-15 – the measures which have