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

300
First Steps into Space: Projects Mercury and Gemini
White
Then, we weren’t worrying about anything else.
McDivitt
Then, we weren’t worrying about staying with the booster. We probably started it
about 1:35 or 1:40. Over the States we started our egress preparation. We went
to our other check list.
White
You were over Ascension, calling off the checklist.
McDivitt
I started reading the checklist off to Ed and we went through it. He unstowed
everything. Why don’t you tell them what you did there, Ed? I just read the
checklist off to you, and you went ahead and did it.
White
Okay. I had to get back into the right-hand box, and I un stowed the items there.
The first time I went back in there, I took the first items out, and I did not unstow
the full box, I remember I told you, “It’s all coming out, Jim. I’m going to bring
them all out on the lanyard.” Remember?
McDivitt
Right.
White
We’d take them off piece by piece if we need it. At that time I pulled the whole
lanyard out and the cockpit was full of little bags. I was quite happy that they had
prevailed upon me to put a lanyard, on all this equipment. I had thought at one
time that it would be more desirable not to put a lan yard on. We’d been working
a lot in our simulations without the lanyard and it seemed pretty easy. But looking
at it now, I highly recommend that everybody keep that stuff on a lanyard.
McDivitt
We would have really had a mess if we’d had all those things floating around. It
was bad enough as it was.
White
Yes, eight or ten of those little bags, and I was glad they were all tied on to one
string. I could control them in that manner. They were quite simple to unsnap.
I thought the snap attachment made it pretty easy to unstow and selectively pick
out the items that I wanted. I unstowed the pouches that I needed, and then we
got ready to take the long umbilical out. I had a little difficulty. It took me about
three tries to get it out. It’s fairly big package to come through a small hole. It
was a good thing that we had taken the Velcro off of the batch, because there no
tendency for anything to hang up as we removed it. On the third try I got it out.
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