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Static from Moscow. They were, indeed. The astronauts carried out 17 experiments—ten more than Gemini 4. Five of them involved photography. Clicking away with a modified Hasselblad 70-mm. reflex camera and a 35-mm. camera, Cooper and Conrad photographed the moon, the eye of Hurricane Doreen east of Hawaii, and the zodiacal light above the horizon just after twilight and just before dawn—gaining invaluable information for meteorologists and astronomers. They sighted and photographed the firings of two Minutemen missiles, launched to coincide with Gemini's passover. They took infra-red measurements of volcanoes, land masses and blasts from rockets to determine what infra-red heat sensors could find out about earthbound objects. A primary object of these exercises was to prove out the usefulness of spacemen in military surveillance.
Gemini 5 had more military research assignments than any previous civilian space flight—a fact that caused Moscow to talk and squawk more about Gemini 5 than any earlier U.S. space mission. Moscow's Tass at first charged that the U.S. was recklessly gambling with the lives of the spacemen on an ill-prepared mission. When it became clear that Gemini would succeed and lead the U.S. far along on its timetable for reaching the moon, the president of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, Mstislav Keldysh, tried to deflate the news by proclaiming that nobody knows enough about the terrain of the moon to land there any time in the foreseeable future. Later, noting gravely that Gemini would pass 16 times over North Viet Nam, 40 times over Red China, eleven times over Cuba, the Soviet Defense Ministry newspaper Red Star fumed that the spacemen were "spying." Against this backdrop, President Johnson last week gave the go-ahead for a major military effort in space, announced plans for the Air Force's $1.5 billion Manned Orbiting Laboratory (see following story).
Electronic Tag. At Houston's Manned Spacecraft Center, unflappable Chris Kraft every day faced the decision of whether to keep Cooper and Conrad going for still another day. From start to finish, the "go-no go" decision hinged on Gemini's cantankerous fuel cell. A failure in its liquid oxygen supply tank nearly terminated the mission on the first day, and the faulty heating unit that caused the problem never did kick on. As the flight soared into the second day, the oxygen pressure slowly moved upward—and optimism soared at Houston command. "The morning headline," broadcast Kraft to the astronauts, "says your flight may splash down in the Pacific on the sixth orbit." Replied Conrad: "I'm sorry to disappoint them."