SPACE GLOVES
This full pressure glove is part of the pair worn by astronaut Ed White during the Gemini 4 mission in June 1965. The gloves were designed and constructed by the B.F. Goodrich Company. The David Clark Company modified them for use in the Gemini program.
The glove is constructed of two layers - an internal rubber/Neoprene pressure bladder, and a nylon upper cover-layer, with a neoprene-impregnated nylon palm which was designed to prevent objects from slipping out of the astronaut's hands during weightlessness.
The NASA - Manned Spacecraft Center transferred the gloves to the Museum in 1967.
Gemini IV EVA: The glove that got away
The Gemini 4 crew debriefing indicates that it was Ed White's right thermal glove that floated out the hatch during his EVA.
White removed both thermal gloves to open the right hatch and handed the gloves to Jim McDivitt. After mounting the EVA camera outside the hatch, White asked McDivitt for his left thermal glove and put it on.
From the flight crew debriefing:
WHITE: ... it was really quite a sensation to see the glove floating off. I asked Jim a few minutes before about the glove, or Jim had asked me, "Hey, do you want this other glove?" About a minute later, I saw it go floating out of the hatch.
McDIVITT: All I can say, Ed, was about a half hour later I was sure thankful that we had gotten rid of something. We had so much other junk that we didn't want.
WHITE: I saw the glove come floating out of the right-hand hatch, and it was a perfectly clear picture of the glove as it floated out. It floated out over my right shoulder and out -- it looked like it was on a definite trajectory going somewhere. I don't know where it was going. It floated very smartly out of the spacecraft and out into space.
McDIVITT: I think this had a lot to do with that outgassing. There was a definite stream --
WHITE: Yes. It was following the streamline right out of the spacecraft.
McDIVITT: It went out perpendicular to the spacecraft, whichever direction that is.
WHITE: Back to getting back in the spacecraft -- I had one thermal glove on the one hand, my left hand. I always wanted my right hand to be free to operate that gun and the camera ...
Text: www.spacecollect.com