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

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First Steps into Space: Projects Mercury and Gemini
what was wrong. I realized that our tether was mounted on a plane oblique to
the angle in which I wanted to translate, I remember from our air-bearing work
that everytime you got at an angle from the perpendicular where your tether was
mounted, it gave you a nice arching trajectory back in the opposite direction.
You’re actually like a weight on the end of a string. If you push out in one direction
and you’re at an angle from the perpendicular, when you reach the end of a tether,
it neatly sends you in a long arc back in the oppo site direction. Each time this arc
carried me right back to the top of the adapter, to the top of the spacecraft, in
fact, toward the adapter section. One time I was so close to the thrusters back
there that I called Jim. I said, “Don’t fire any more”, because I was right on the
thrusters. I was even closer than that foot and a half which I noted to be the length
of the thruster plumes, and I didn’t want to sit on a firing thruster.
White
We were discussing the EVA and I was saying that I spent approximately 70 percent
of my time, it seemed, trying to get out of the area back above the spacecraft in
the adapter area.
McDivitt
Yes, you intended to go toward the position that was directly over the cockpit. You
always arced past it because you were coming from the front.
White
This was exactly right because that’s exactly where my tether was connected. Chris
had been very emphatic that he wanted me to stay out of this area, and I had
agreed to stay out of there, I tell you, I was doing my level best to keep out, but the
tether dynamics just put me back there all the time.
McDivitt
Let me interject something here. When we were talking about the control modes
and how we were going to control the spacecraft, we decided on the Pulse Mode
rather than the Horizon Scan Mode, or anything like that. The Horizon Scan
Mode would leave me free to use both hands to take pictures of you, and that way
I wouldn’t have had to control the spacecraft. But since it was an automatic mode
and it fired whenever it felt [4-34] like firing, it didn’t give us any flexibility, and this
is why I felt that the best mode to be in was Pulse, in case you did get back there.
White
That’s exactly what happened.
McDivitt
I didn’t have to worry about the thruster going off in your face. I didn’t want the
thrusters to fire, and they didn’t fire because I didn’t touch them. It was a wise
choice.
White
I think this was good. When you look at it from a picture-taking viewpoint, it gave
a wider spectrum of pictures. You got different views of the earth and the horizon.
I’m glad we weren’t held to a specific mode.