How Project Gemini Won the Space Race for America

Video from the channel Absolute Sci-Fi about Project Gemini, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 49:25. Language: English. Video type: Documentary.

Documentary about Project Gemini, the second of NASA's three crewed programs with which the United States aimed to land a man on the Moon. It combines narration with testimony from astronauts and engineers of the program and covers the crewed missions from Gemini 3 to Gemini 12. Its thesis is that Gemini allowed the United States to catch up with and overtake the Soviet Union in the space race.

In early 1965, in the midst of the Cold War, NASA had only the experience of Mercury: two suborbital flights of about 15 minutes and four individual orbital flights that together added up to less than 54 hours. The Soviet Union had already carried out rendezvous between two capsules, had launched two- and three-man crews, had completed a spacewalk, had sent the first woman cosmonaut, and held the endurance record, at nearly five days. The Mercury capsule could not maneuver, so Gemini was conceived with four objectives: computer-controlled reentry, orbital rendezvous and docking, long-duration flights of up to two weeks, and extravehicular activity (EVA).

Gemini 3, the program's first crewed flight, launched on March 23, 1965, with Gus Grissom and his crewmate for three orbits of the Earth, and tested manual maneuvers and lifting reentry. On Gemini 4, Ed White performed the first American spacewalk, lasting 22 minutes. Gemini 5, with Gordon Cooper and Pete Conrad, flew for eight days with the first fuel cell, despite malfunctions. After the Agena intended as a target was lost, Gemini 6 (Wally Schirra and Tom Stafford) rendezvoused in orbit with Gemini 7 (Frank Borman and Jim Lovell), which spent fourteen days in space. On March 16, 1966, Gemini 8 (Neil Armstrong and David Scott) docked with an Agena, but a malfunctioning thruster set the combined vehicle spinning and forced an emergency splashdown. Elliot See and Charles Bassett, Gemini 9's prime crew, died in a plane crash, and on that mission Eugene Cernan's spacewalk ended with his visor fogged up. Gemini 10 (John Young and Michael Collins) set an altitude record. Gemini 11 docked with its Agena on the first orbit. With Gemini 12 (Jim Lovell and Buzz Aldrin, trained in neutral buoyancy), the program added 5 hours and 38 minutes of EVA, and ended on November 15, 1966. According to the documentary, the ten missions accumulated more than 4,000 man-hours in space over about 20 months.