Hall of Fame Astronauts Take Journey Back in Time

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — The astronauts who rode the first spaceships to the moon in the 1960s rode in flashy convertibles Saturday for an old-fashioned parade before their induction into the Astronaut Hall of Fame.

Time turned back as nine Gemini veterans and the six surviving Mercury astronauts rode in a parade in their honor through neighboring Cocoa Beach. Two more Gemini astronauts showed up for the induction ceremony.

It was the largest gathering in more than a decade of Mercury and Gemini fliers, most of them now businessmen in their 60s.

“It seems like they’re resurrecting the dead,” joked James Lovell, 64, who flew Gemini 7 and 12 and Apollo 8 and 13.

Hundreds of people along the parade route cheered, waved flags and walked up to the astronauts for handshakes and autographs.

The crowd sighed loudly when the red sports car designated for Gemini 8 and Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong went by and the first man on the moon was not inside.

The big event was the induction, which Armstrong got to with just minutes to spare. There, as in space, the Gemini astronauts followed the Mercury men, who were enshrined in the Hall of Fame when it opened three years ago near Kennedy Space Center.

Gemini astronauts circled Earth in 1965 and 1966. There were 10 manned Gemini flights, which featured the first U.S. spacewalk and the first docking and rendezvous of U.S. spacecraft.

All 13 men moved on to Apollo. Six walked on the moon. Five others orbited it. One--Edward White II--died in a launch pad fire.