Word: roped
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Scene: a junk-filled empty lot near London's seedy Portobello Road. Rain clouds. Children swinging from a rope tied to a tree. A crowd of corduroy jackets and miniskirts respectfully watches a German painter named Wer ner Schreib tack a huge picture of Ludwig Erhard to an easel, then set it afire...
From a box behind the Agena's docking collar, Gordon pulled out the looped end of a 2-in.-diameter, 100-ft., Dacron rope, slipped it over the end of Gemini's l-ft.-long docking bar and clamped it tight. As he crawled back toward his hatch, exhausted by that seemingly simple task, perspiration temporarily blinded his right eye. With that, Conrad ordered him back into Gemini's cabin, wiping out planned exercises with a hand-held jet maneuvering gun and a power tool for tightening bolts...
...Skip Rope Outside. By managing to secure the Dacron tether between the Agena and Gemini 11 before abandoning his space walk, Gordon had set the stage for the most spectacular of Gemini's maneuvers. On the third day of the flight, Conrad undocked Gemini and used his thrusters to back slowly away from the Agena until the 100-ft. rope was taut between them. As soon as the thrusters were shut off, however, both ships began to gyrate erratically, the rope oscillating between them. "It's like the Agena and I have got a skip rope between...
...drift toward and finally "fall" on the rear wall of Gemini's cabin. It was the first artificial gravity created during a manned orbital flight. After three hours of tethered orbiting, Conrad flipped a switch that jettisoned Gemini's docking bar, freeing the spacecraft from the connecting rope. As Gemini drifted away, the tether-now attached only to the Agena-slowly wrapped itself around the target vehicle like a python around its prey...
...green duffel bag and a green foot locker that bore the stenciled words, "Lance Cpl. C. J. Whitman," he stuffed provisions to sustain him during a long siege and to cover every contingency: Spam, Planters peanuts, fruit cocktail, sandwiches and boxes of raisins, jerricans containing water and gasoline, rope, binoculars, canteens, transistor radio, toilet paper, and, in a bizarre allegiance to the cult of cleanliness, a plastic bottle of Mennen spray deodorant. He also stowed away a private armory that seemed sufficient to hold off an army: machete, Bowie knife, hatchet, a 6-mm. Remington bolt-action rifle with...