Abstract
“If there had been no Mercury program,
there would be no Gemini program;
if there had been no Gemini program,
there could be no Apollo program.”
Virgil I. ‘Gus’ Grissom, Gemini.
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Notes
- 1.
The early astronauts always preferred the term space ‘craft’ rather than space ‘capsule’. As most of them were seasoned pilots, they reasoned you could operate or fly a ‘craft’, but would usually take a ‘capsule’ for medical reasons.
- 2.
McDonnell Aircraft (founded in 1939), the primary contractor of the Mercury and Gemini spacecraft, merged with the Douglas Aircraft Company in 1967 to form McDonnell-Douglas, which was subsequently acquired by Boeing in 1997.
- 3.
In the United States, December 26 is known as ‘The Day After Christmas’ and is not always recognized as an official holiday.
- 4.
The Manned Spacecraft Center at Clear Lake, near Houston, Texas, officially opened in June 1964, but staff from Langley had been transferred to Houston in late 1961, into temporary offices (two vacant former dress shops) in the Gulfgate Shopping Center. Over the next two and a half years, further staff were transferred to or employed at the MSC facility, as it expanded concurrently with the Gemini program’s development towards its first flights.
- 5.
In October 1964, the Soviets had showcased their first manned Voskhod flight as a new type of spacecraft. Some years later, it was revealed that Voskhod was in fact merely a stripped-down Vostok with minimal improvements, to support a three-man crew or, as on the second flight, an EVA capability.
- 6.
Previously in manned spacecraft design, ejection seats had only been available on the six manned Vostok missions, both for crew escape and for a separate parachute descent at the end of the mission as the spacecraft’s parachute could not handle the additional weight of the cosmonaut. For the Apollo/Saturn era, launch escape rockets were provided, but for the first four orbital test flights of the Space Shuttle Columbia, ejection seats were installed for the two-man crews. These were deactivated for the fifth flight (STS-5) and removed prior to its sixth mission on STS-9. For the remaining flights of Columbia and all the flights of Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour, there were no significant crew escape systems fitted, though there were a number of abort flight profiles available and, from STS-26, a slide-wire escape pole system incorporated on the middeck. This was never used operationally.
References
Origins of NASA Names, Helen T. Wells, Susan H. Whiteley and Carrie E. Karegeannes, NASA SP-4402, 1976, pp. 104-106.
Mission Control Center/Building 30, Historical Documentation, Archaeological Consultants Inc. Sarasota, Florida, on behalf of NASA, October 2010.
For full details of the spacecraft and systems, see Gemini: Steps to the Moon; NASA Gemini 1965-1966 Owner’s Workshop Manual, David Woods and David M. Harland, Haynes Publishing, 2015; and Appendix 2 on page 306.
Development and Qualification of Gemini Escape System, Hilary A. Ray Jr., and Frederick T. Burns, NASA MSC, Houston Texas, NASA Technical Note TN D-4031, June 1967.
Project Gemini Technical Summary, P. W. Malik and G.A. Souris, McDonnell Douglas June 1968, NASA CR-1106, p. 173.
Reference 1, p. 25.
For further details of the development of the Titan for the Gemini program, see On the Shoulders of Titans; Gemini Chronology and Gemini: Steps to the Moon, as listed in the bibliography.
For further information on the flight profiles, see Gemini Steps to the Moon pp. xxxv – xxxviii.
Gemini Spacecraft Parachute Landing System, John Vince, NASA MSC, Houston, Texas, NASA Technical Note TN D-3496, July 1966.
Gemini Land Landing System Development Program: Volume 1: Full-scale investigations, by Leland C. Norman, Jerry E. McCullough and Jerry C. Coffey, NASA MSC Houston, Texas. NASA Technical Note TN D-3869; Volume 2: Supporting Investigations, NASA TN D-3870, both published in March 1967; also, Paraglider, Land Landing for Gemini, by Ed Hengeveld, X-Planes Monograph #3, HPM Publications, 1998.
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Shayler, D.J. (2018). Mercury Mark II. In: Gemini Flies!. Springer Praxis Books(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68142-9_1
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