Abstract
“All astronauts were equal –
just some were more equal than others.”
A fabled Astronaut Office ‘lore’.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
The sixth scientist astronaut, Dr. Duane Graveline, stood down just two months after selection in August 1965, over personal issues.
- 2.
The full crewing protocol of these missions will be explained in each of these subsequent titles.
- 3.
The Gemini 4 crew was officially announced on July 27 as James A. McDivitt, Command Pilot, and Edward H. White II as Pilot, with Frank Borman and James A. Lovell Jr., as their respective backups. This was followed on January 8, 1965 with the announcement of the prime crew for Gemini 5 as L. Gordon Cooper Jr., Command Pilot and Charles ‘Pete’ Conrad Jr., Pilot, with Neil A. Armstrong and Elliott M. See Jr., as their respective backups. These selections will be described in more detail in the relevant titles in this series.
- 4.
‘Zero-g’ was the popular epithet given to what we know today as microgravity. The other widely-used term was ‘weightlessness’. Neither of these are strictly correct, but they are recorded here to remain immersive to the terminology of the era covered in this book – i.e., the mid 1960s.
- 5.
This does not include the original Gemini 9 crew of See and Bassett, who were killed in an aircraft accident at the McDonnell plant in St. Louis on February 28, 1966.
- 6.
A percentile is a statistical measurement in which a variable for a population is divided into 100 groups with equal frequency. In this case, the 75th percentile is the value of the variable such that 75 percent of the relevant population is below that value. Such measurements are made to determine the size, volume and workspace area of human spacecraft, together with the size, posture, movement and mass of the human body.
- 7.
A pneumograph is an instrument used to record movements made during respiration.
- 8.
The medical specialist team included a radiologist, a neuropsychiatrist, a dentist, an ophthalmologist, an otolaryngologist, an internist-cardiologist and a flight surgeon.
- 9.
USNS stands for United States Naval Ship, meaning that it was a vessel owned by the USN that was not commissioned. In the NASA system every tracking station had a three-letter designation, so both Coastal Sentry and NASA’s other ship Rose Knot (T-AGM-15) had to adopt a third word into their names. The ‘Q’ for Quebec and ‘V’ for Victor from the phonetic alphabet were applied to Coastal Sentry and Rose Knot respectively, though no one can remember why these two names in particular were chosen. [21]
- 10.
Veteran suit technical Joe Schmitt passed away on September 25, 2017, aged 101. In a long and illustrious career, Joe Schmitt participated in the suiting up of every American astronaut from Al Shepard in May 1961 to the crew of STS-5 in November 1982.
- 11.
Gemini 3 had left behind a clean pad with minimal damage, much less than on Gemini 2’s launch two months earlier, indicating that a rapid turnaround on the pad was feasible to ensure the shortest possible time between future launches.
References
NASA MSC News Release 63-242, November 21, 1963.
New York Times, November 24, 1963, p. E1.
Failure Is Not an Option, Gene Kranz, Simon & Schuster, 2000 p. 122
Starfall, Betty Grissom and Henry Still, 1974, pp. 131-132.
New York Times, November 24, 1963, p. 2.
William Hines, Washington Sunday Star, November 24, 1963.
Washington Post, Associated Press, November 29, 1963.
NASA MSC Release 63-11.
Gemini: Steps to the Moon, David J. Shayler, Springer-Praxis, 2001, pp. 100-108
Project Mercury, NASA’s First Manned Space Programme, John Catchpole, Springer-Praxis, 2001; Friendship 7, The Epic Orbital Flight of John H. Glenn Jr., Colin Burgess, Springer-Praxis 2005; and Aurora 7, The Mercury Space Flight of M. Scott Carpenter, Colin Burgess, Springer-Praxis, 2016.
On the Shoulders of Titans, A History of Project Gemini, Barton C. Hacker and James M. Grimwood, NASA SP-4203, 1977, pp. 219-231
Undated document in the archives of the BIS, but probably originating from the meeting of the MSC Experiment Board on January 16, 1964.
Forever Young: A Life of Adventure in Air and Space, John W. Young with James Hansen, University Press of Florida, 2012, p. 74.
Gemini Spacecraft 3 Tested in Altitude Chamber, MSC Space News Roundup, Vol 4, No. 3, November 25, 1964, p. 8
Gemini 3 Mission Report, Part 7, Section 7.1.1.4 Training, pp. 7-7 to 7.9.
Project Gemini: A Technical Summary, p.173
Gemini 3 Mission Report, MSC-G-R-65-2, NASA, April 1965, Section 7.2 Aeromedical pp. 7-28 through 7-35
Information courtesy Manfred ‘Dutch’ von. Ehrenfried, via email, February 26, 2017.
The Rocket Men, Rex Hall and David J. Shayler, Springer Praxis 2001, pp. 251-262
NASA News Release 65-93, March 19, 1965.
Go Flight, The Unsung Heroes of Mission Control, 1965-1992, Rick Houston and Milt Heflin, Nebraska University Press, 2015, p. 58
Aviation Week and Space Technology, Editorial, Robert Holtz, March 22, 1965, p. 11.
Washington Daily News, Editorial, Samuel Lubell, March 22, 1965.
Tracking Apollo to the Moon, Hamish Lindsay, Springer-Verlag, 2001, p. 98.
Reference 3, pp. 126-131
FAA Release 65-21, March 22, 1965.
Gemini-Titan 3 Press Kit, NASA Release No. 65-81, March 17, 1965, pp. 41-42.
Spacesuit Development and Qualification for Project Gemini, James Barron II, December 2012, NASA US Spacesuit Knowledge Capture Series.
U.S. Spacesuits, Kenneth S. Thomas and Harold J. McMann, 2nd edition, Springer-Praxis, 2012, pp. 61-67 and 420-421.
NASA JSC Oral History Project, Joe Schmitt, 1998.
Gemini! Virgil ‘Gus’ Grissom, Macmillan, 1968, p. 104
Reference 31, p. 106
Elmer E. Barton, NASA JSC Oral History Project, April 12, 2000
Reference 31, pp. 104-106; also, Air Force Space and Missile Museum, Cape Canaveral, Florida on line website www.afspacemuseum.org, last accessed August 2017
Reference 4, p. 150
He’s on his way…and it couldn’t be prettier, Miguel Acoca, in Gemini’s Journey, Life Magazine, April 2, 1965 pp. 34-42
Reference 24, pp. 98-100
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Shayler, D.J. (2018). Preparations. In: Gemini Flies!. Springer Praxis Books(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68142-9_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68142-9_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-68141-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-68142-9
eBook Packages: Physics and AstronomyPhysics and Astronomy (R0)