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

306
First Steps into Space: Projects Mercury and Gemini
White
The first indication of trouble was when I unstowed the handle to open the
hatch. The handle freely moved up and down with no tension on it at all. I knew
right away where the trouble was. It was up in that little spring on the gain pawl.
So, I went up and manipulated it back and forth in hopes that I could break
the lubrication loose in the spring to get it to work. We must have spent several
minutes with the hatch. I thought perhaps it might have been stuck in the manner
that the hatch got stuck in the Wet Mock, where it just was stuck. You could ratchet
it open, but the hatch itself wouldn’t open. It was pretty apparent the trouble was
in the gain pawl. I jimmied it back and forth, and then I decided to go ahead and
try the technique of actuating it in sequence with the hatch handle. If you actually
replaced the operation of the spring with mechanically moving the gain pawl up
and down, you can do the same work that the spring does.
McDivitt
Your fingers sort of take the place of the spring and rive this little pawl home.
White
This is the first time we actually tried this in a suit. It requires you to press up with
your left arm to get at the gain pawl, and at the same time to hold yourself down.
And I think later on this was a source of some of our problems which I brought
out now so that we can find out later on. I felt it start to engage and start to ratchet
the lugs out. Jim also verified that they were coming open. I backed them off, and
I remember Jim saying “Ooop! Not so fast!” and at that time it popped. The hatch
actually popped open, jumped open about 3 or 4 inches.
McDivitt
I was expecting the hatch to come open with a bang. Although we had the cabin to
vent and it had bled on down to where there was nothing indicated on the Cabin
Pressure Gage, we still really had the repress valve on. He was bleeding right into
the spacecraft. We never got down to a vacuum and, even though we had a cabin
pressure of only a tenth of a psi, we spread it over the entire area of that hatch,
and that puts a pretty good size force on it. I had a real tight hold on [4-27] the
hatch closing device, and when it popped open I was able to snub it.
White
It didn’t really open with much force, did it?
McDivitt
Well, it did. It opened with a fair amount. It popped and I couldn’t stop it the first
inch or so. Then, of course, as soon as it opened, that much pressure bled off. I just
sort of snubbed the thing to keep it from flying all the way open. Now if I hadn’t
been holding onto it, I don’t think it would have gone open more than 2 or 3 feet.
White
This is another point too. There’s more force on the hatch actuator than I thought.
I didn’t just flip the door open with my hand. I had to actually forcibly push it
open, sim ilar to the force with which I opened the hatch lying on my back under
1-g. That’s about the force that I had to on the hatch to open it.