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

338
First Steps into Space: Projects Mercury and Gemini
White
It would preclude operations in other areas. You would either have to accept
where we are going to operate or --.
McDivitt
You could have multiple attachment points around the space craft.
White
Of course, now, if you have a gun with a good air source, I wouldn’t particularly
care where it was attached. I think you could go ahead and, maneuver to any
point you want if you have a gun. Again, where you’re pushing off of surfaces, you
tend to go perpendicular to the surface from which you push off. I found when
I pushed as hard as I wanted to I’d still tend to go straight up above that hatch
instead of out toward the front. I think this is a fairly obvious conclusion, but it
proved out. Every time I pushed off I went straight up instead of at an angle to the
surface where I wanted to go.
[4-60]
McDivitt
Something that you should bear in mind is that you were push ing off from the
front, which tended to make the front go down as you went out.
White
Yes. Everything was working against getting where I wanted to go. Everything I did
tended to put me up.
McDivitt
When you started you went in a straight line forward and tended to push the
spacecraft down. I think, initially, where I was holding the attitude, you didn’t
have that much trouble. Of course, you weren’t pushing as hard either, be cause
you had the gun.
White
No, I wasn’t.
McDivitt
Later on, when we started free drifting, you were back behind me where I couldn’t
see.
White
Did you feel me stomping around back on the adapter and hit ting the adapter?
McDivitt
Well, I felt you hitting things back behind me, and once you went behind the line that
was directly overhead the space craft. I couldn’t see you through your open hatch.
White
I never really had a good contact with the adapter back there.