Dec 18 1965
From The Space Library
President Johnson sent letters to Astronauts James A. Lovell, Jr. (Cdr., N), Walter M. Schirra (Capt., USN), Frank Borman (L/Col., USAF), and Thomas P. Stafford (Maj., USAF), congratulating them on successful completion of the Gemini VI and Gemini VII space missions and advising them that promotions for new astronauts would be submitted to Congress for confirmation in January. (Pres. Doc., 12/27/65, 606)
Nike-Apache sounding rocket launched by Brazil from the Natal Range reached an altitude of 117 mi. The second Brazilian sounding rocket launch in a cooperative meteorological program with NASA, the flight was a nighttime twin-experiment of daytime experiment Dec. 15. (NASA Rpt, SRL; Reuters, NYT, 12/20/65, 45)
World records set by NASA's Gemini VII/GEMINI VI: (1) longest manned spaceflight (v11)-330 hrs, 35 min.; (2) first rendezvous of two manned maneuverable spacecraft; (3) total man hours in space for one nation-1,354 hrs. 38 min. compared with 507 hrs. 16 min. for U.S.S.R,; (4) individuals with most spaceflight time-Col. Borman and Cdr. Lovell with 330 hrs., 35 min.; (5) longest multimanned spaceflight; (6) most revolutions for a manned spaceflight-206; (7) most miles traveled on a manned spaceflight-5,129,400; (8) most manned flights-U.S. 11, U.S.S.R., 8; (9) most men sent into space-U.S. 16 (13 astronauts with three making two flights), U.S.S.R., 11; (10) most manned flights in one year by one nation-5; (11) most men sent into space in one year by one nation-U.S., 10. (MSC Gemini Proj. Off,)
All major goals of the Gemini program except actual docking of two spacecraft had been achieved with the flights of Gemini VI and VII, MSC Director Dr. Robert R. Gilruth said at an MSC news conference, Gemini program director Charles Mathews said the remaining five Gemini launchings, all scheduled for 1966, would attempt to demonstrate some complex rendezvous techniques useful for Project Apollo. (AP, NYT, 12/19/65, 69; AP, Wash. Post, 12/19/65, A17; MSC Roundup, 12/23/65, 6)
Physical condition of Gemini VII Astronauts Borman and Lovell was "better than expected," reported Dr. Charles A. Berry, Gemini medical director. (Waldron, NYT, 12/19/65, 68)
December 18-22: Dr. Robert Jungk, director of the Institute for Research into Problems of the Future at Vienna, told an international gathering of scholars at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions that man cannot allow forms of technology that destroy nature rather than cooperate with it, Jungk said scientists, philosophers, and experimenters in technology must act as intellectual missionaries to the common man and to the young. Intellectual leaders, he said, must try to influence the power structure to harness technological development and divert it toward the needs of man, Dr. Robert Maynard Hutchings, president of the center, in summing up the five-day symposium, said: "Technology, at this moment, in the United States, is not directed toward making a decent habitation for man... . It is directed in piecemeal fashion by the wrong people, in the wrong direction, to the wrong ends." (AP, Wash. Post, 12/24/65, A2)
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