I N the journalistic sense, the process I of developing, reporting, writing, editing and putting to press a TIME cover story is in many ways similar to the carrying out of a space mission. There is the large organization whose talents and resources stand behind and contribute to the effort; there are top-level decisions to be made that involve personalities, performance and timing; there is the intense period of preparation; there is need for contingency plans that can be put into effect in case events force a change from the original schedule.

On this analogical basis, the flight director for this week's stories on Christopher Columbus Kraft Jr. and Gemini 5 is Senior Editor Richard Seamon, who edits a number of sections including SCIENCE, and for whom this was the sixth cover story on space flight. Working under Seamon's guidance, the key two-man team handling the vehicle was made up of Houston Bureau Chief Ben Gate and Science Writer John Wilford, two young men who, by age, condition of reflexes and general alertness, might well be taken for astronauts.

Cate, 33, born in Paris of American parents, was Yale '55, served two years in the Army, came to TIME in 1960 after three years with the St. Petersburg, Fla., Times. He is a familiar figure around the space center in Houston, did most of his interviewing for this week's stories at the flight director's console in the Mission Operations Control Room (where Artist Henry Koerner painted the cover portrait). Wilford, 31, is a native of Kentucky, was University of Tennessee (B.S., '55) and Syracuse University (M.A.), joined TIME in 1962 after a stint with the Wall Street Journal. The kind of material he is busy with week after week is suggested by the fact that his two previous cover stories were the Computer (April 2) and the Mars mission's William Pickering (July 23). There is a third member of this crew for whom it is difficult to find a counterpart in the space analogy. This is the SCIENCE researcher, Fortunata Sydnor Trapnell, whose store of facts and figures on the subject might startle some of NASA's experts.

The saga of Gemini 5 was widely reported for the ear on radio and the eye on television, and in the daily headlines. The aim of TIME'S mission is to go to a substantially greater depth than the sounds and sights and to present a coherent, meaningful story of the flight -its drama, its trials and its significance -in terms that reach not only the ear and eye but also the mind.

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