page_title: David Scott
section_title: Gemini 8
hierarchical_section_title: David Scott / NASA career / Gemini 8
caption_attribution_description: Description (1965) The Gemini-8 Astronauts David B. Scott (right) and Neil A. Armstrong (center) are suited up for water egress training aboard the NASA Motor Vessell Retriever in the Gulf of Mexico.
context_page_description: Col. David Randolph Scott, USAF, Ret. is a retired test pilot and NASA astronaut who was the seventh person to walk on the Moon. The commander of Apollo 15, Scott was selected as an astronaut as part of the third group in 1963. Scott flew three times in space, and is the only living commander of an Apollo mission that landed on the Moon and one of four surviving Moon walkers. Following the deaths of James Irwin in 1991 and Alfred Worden in 2020, Scott is now the last surviving crew member of Apollo 15.
  Before becoming an astronaut, Scott graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point and joined the Air Force. After serving as a fighter pilot in Europe, he graduated from the Air Force Experimental Test Pilot School and the Aerospace Research Pilot School. Scott retired from the Air Force in 1975 with the rank of colonel, and more than 5,600 hours of logged flying time.
  As an astronaut, Scott made his first flight into space as pilot of the Gemini 8 mission, along with Neil Armstrong, in March 1966, spending just under eleven hours in low Earth orbit. He would have been the second American astronaut to walk in space had Gemini 8 not made an emergency abort.
context_section_description: After the conclusion of Gemini 5, Director of Flight Crew Operations Deke Slayton informed Scott that he would fly with Neil Armstrong on Gemini 8. This made Scott the first Group 3 astronaut to become a member of a prime crew, and this without having served on a backup crew. Scott was highly regarded by his colleagues for his piloting credentials; another Group 3 astronaut, Michael Collins, wrote later that Scott's selection to fly with Armstrong helped convince him that NASA knew what it was doing.
  Scott found Armstrong something of a taskmaster, but the two men greatly respected each other and worked well together. They spent most of the seven months before launch in each other's company. One part of the training that Scott undertook without Armstrong was riding the Vomit Comet, where he practiced in preparation for a planned spacewalk.
  On March 16, 1966, Armstrong and Scott were launched into space, a flight originally planned to last three days. The Agena rocket with which they were to dock had been launched an hour and forty minutes earlier. They carefully approached and docked with the Agena, the first docking ever accomplished in space. After the docking, there was unexpected movement by the joined craft. Mission Control was out of touch during this portion of the orbit, and the astronauts' belief that the Agena was causing the problem proved incorrect, for once they performed an emergency undocking, the spin only got worse. With the spacecraft spinning, there was risk of the astronauts blacking out or the Gemini vehicle disintegrating. The problem was one of the craft's OAMS thrusters firing unexpectedly; the crew shut down those thrusters, and Armstrong activated the Reaction Control System thrusters to negate the spin. The RCS thrusters were to be used for reentry, and the mission rules said if they were activated early, Gemini 8 had to return to Earth. Gemini 8 splashed down in the Western Pacific on the day of launch; the mission lasted only ten hours, and the early termination meant that Scott's spacewalk was scrubbed.
  According to Francis French and Colin Burgess in their book on NASA and the Space Race, "Scott, in particular, had shown incredible presence of mind during the unexpected events of the Gemini 8 mission. Even in the middle of an emergency, out of contact with Mission Control, he had thought to reenable ground control command of the Agena before the two vehicles separated." This allowed NASA to check the Agena from the ground, and use it for a subsequent Gemini mission. Scott's competence was recognized by NASA when, five days after the brief flight, he was assigned to an Apollo crew. He was also promoted to lieutenant colonel.
caption: Scott (right) and Neil Armstrong (center) train for water egress.
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