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

330
First Steps into Space: Projects Mercury and Gemini
McDivitt
I think so.
[4-51]
White
And it was perfect timing, because I could see Jim or I could see the hatch come
down each time that I was yelling HEAVE! I think it was probably the most--.
McDivitt
The most interesting moment of the flight.
White
Yes. It was the most interesting moment of the flight, but I think it was probably
the most, if you want to say, dramatic. I don’t know the right word. But it was
probably the most dramatic moment of my life – about those 30 seconds we spent
right there. The dogs started latching. I could feel them going in, and then I
could feel them come over dead-center. Jim called out that the dogs were in.
McDivitt
I knew that once we got them moving we’d be all right.
White
Yes, once they started coming in. As long as we got those dogs to engage, with the
little lever that permitted them to come out and lock, I knew that we had it hacked.
McDivitt
Yes. So did I. Even if we would have had to reenter with the hatch in that position,
we’d have been all right. I don’t think that the heat leaks were that tremendous.
White
I knew we could continue and dog it on in all the way. It seems like whenever
you know you’re right on something, you want to be darn sure that they fix it.
This was going through my mind then. And I remember that I felt I was right
in that the bar and the attachment on that bar and lanyard were not strong
enough. I remembered that, and I knew how hard you were pulling on that thing.
I think, if nothing else, they ought to be sure. Howe many times did we break that
attachment at the bar?
McDivitt
We broke the attachment about three or four times on the zero-g airplane. Every
time they kept telling us it wasn’t made out of the right kind of stuff, and the stuff
we were going to have in the spacecraft would be the right material. Well, it didn’t
break in the spacecraft, just coincidently, or maybe because we both had doubts
about the strength of that particular piece. The same thing crossed through my
mind. I was thinking that the success or failure of this hatch closure depends on
whether this hatch closing device stays hooked onto that spacecraft and doesn’t
break off.