courage, and confidence that we could get there. Even when the NASA chief later informed the president that it was going to cost twice the amount of their initial projections, the president stuck with his commitment. By publicly stating our goal and by putting a time period on a specific accomplishment, President Kennedy gave us no way out. We either had to do it or fail, and no one was interested in failing, especially with the Russians already peering over our shoulders from their spacecraft.
When I first heard about America’s space program from my friend and fellow fighter pilot Ed White, who had signed on with NASA, I was excited. If space was going to be our next new frontier, I wanted to be a part of getting there. So after I completed my tour of duty in Germany, I continued my education and received my doctorate in astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). For my thesis, I adapted my experience as a fighter pilot during the Korean War, where I had focused on intercepting enemy aircraft, and devised a technique for two manned spacecraft to meet in space, a procedure called manned orbital rendezvous. Little did anyone—including me—know how critical this work would later be to our successfully landing on the Moon.
The first time I applied to be an astronaut, NASA turned me down. I was not a test pilot, they said, and at that time, NASA wanted only test pilots. Other people, no matter how bright or how talented, need not apply. Sure, I was disappointed, but I was determined and I knew the sky was not the limit, so I applied again.
This time, my jet fighter experience and NASA’s interest in my concepts for space rendezvous influenced them to accept me in the third group of astronauts, eight men drawn from more than 6,000 applicants.
My MIT rendezvous studies really paid off. I knew that the critical key to our success would be our ability to separate the lunar landing module from a launch-and-reentry “mother ship,” a command module, land it on the Moon’s surface, then lift off and reliably rendezvous the two spacecraft in orbit around the Moon, a risky maneuver. If it failed, there would be no way to rescue the astronauts who had landed. Luckily, my MIT work was exactly what was needed to help figure out these complicated rejoining procedures. I thought about space rendezvous; talked about space rendezvous; ate, slept, and dreamed about space rendezvous so much that I became known to my astronaut peers as “Dr. Rendezvous.”
Mercury was the first phase in the American space efforts, followed by the Gemini program, which helped us refine our skills and maintained the nation’s fascination with space travel while the rockets were being developed for Apollo, the program that we hoped would take us to the Moon. Gemini was an integral part of our training, as it helped us learn to spacewalk. As an avid scuba diver, I was the first astronaut to train underwater to simulate weightlessness in space. Although not identical to the sensations in space, practicing movements underwater in neutral buoyancy and attempting to maneuver while wearing a bulky backpack gave me great confidence and helped me to overcome the challenges I thought I might experience once outside the space capsule.
During my first spaceflight as pilot of Gemini 12, I set a world record for spacewalking—which was actually more of a space float, rather than a five and a half hours’ “walk” in space—tethered to the spacecraft by a single, long umbilical cord that provided life support, while circling the globe every 90 minutes at a speed of 17,500 miles an hour. Because there is no air in space, there was no resistance, so the spacecraft and I drifted along at the same tremendous speed. What a sight to behold the Earth below while floating outside our spacecraft! It was such a fabulous ride, I only reluctantly climbed back inside our Gemini 12 spacecraft when it was time to come home, but not before I pulled a prank on Jim Lovell.
Most people know that astronauts are competitive with each other, even those working together as crewmates, as were Jim Lovell and I on Gemini 12. Knowing that I was scheduled to perform a space walk during our flight, I had packed a banner reading “BEAT NAVY” among my personal items. I was a West Point grad, and an Air Force fighter pilot, and Jim was a Navy guy. So while