Preparing for the Apollo Moon Landings | Project Gemini Documentary

Video from the channel Down The Rabbit Hole about Project Gemini, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 49:24. Language: English. Video type: Documentary.

This documentary, produced in 2003, looks back at Project Gemini as a bridge between the Mercury program and the Apollo Moon landings. It combines archive footage with testimony from astronauts and NASA officials covering the ten crewed missions and the problems they solved along the way.

In early 1965, in the midst of the Cold War, the Soviet Union held the lead in the space race. The United States had only completed Mercury, with two suborbital flights and four orbital ones totaling less than 54 hours. Mercury could not maneuver. Gemini set four objectives: computer-guided reentry, orbital rendezvous, long-duration flights of up to two weeks, and extravehicular activity.

Gemini 3 lifted off on March 23, 1965, with Gus Grissom aboard. It completed three orbits and splashed down far from the planned point due to an error in the lift-to-drag ratio. Gemini 4, launched on June 3 with Ed White and James McDivitt, carried out the first American spacewalk, lasting 22 minutes. Gemini 5, with Gordon Cooper and Pete Conrad, flew for eight days and debuted the fuel cell, the onboard computer, and the rendezvous radar. When the Agena intended for Gemini 6 exploded, Gemini 7 took over as the rendezvous target. Frank Borman and Jim Lovell spent fourteen days in orbit, and Walter Schirra and Thomas Stafford flew in formation just a few centimeters from them.

On March 16, 1966, Neil Armstrong and David Scott, aboard Gemini 8, achieved the first docking. A malfunctioning thruster forced them to use the reentry control system and return early. Gemini 9's primary crew, Elliot See and Charles Bassett, died in a plane crash in St. Louis. During that mission, Eugene Cernan endured an exhausting spacewalk with a fogged-up visor. Gemini 10 set an altitude record and Gemini 11 docked on its first orbit. After neutral buoyancy training was introduced, Buzz Aldrin completed five hours and 38 minutes of extravehicular activity on Gemini 12. The program ended on November 15, 1966, with more than 4,000 man-hours in space over twenty months.