Project Gemini: The Most Dangerous Space Program

Video from the channel Spark about Project Gemini, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 52:11. Language: English. Video type: Documentary.

A documentary about Project Gemini, the NASA program that, between Mercury and Apollo, had to demonstrate the techniques essential for reaching the Moon: orbital rendezvous, docking, extravehicular activity, and long-duration flight. It goes through the missions one by one, from the uncrewed tests to Gemini 12, and dwells on the failures and dangers that marked them.

After Kennedy's 1961 announcement, NASA still did not know how to carry out the Moon landing. The documentary explains the debate between direct ascent, Earth-orbit rendezvous, and lunar-orbit rendezvous, the method championed by a group at the Langley Research Center that was ultimately adopted. Gemini used a two-stage launch vehicle derived from the Titan II missile, with hypergolic propellants, and a two-seat capsule built by McDonnell, featuring jettisonable modules, hatches that opened in flight, a maneuvering system, a flight computer, and ejection seats instead of an escape tower. The Rogallo wing, intended for land landings, was dropped due to deployment problems.

Gemini 1, in April 1964, served to validate the Titan II ahead of crewed flights. On March 23, 1965, Grissom and Young made Gemini 3 the first crewed spacecraft to change orbit. On Gemini 4, Ed White carried out the first American spacewalk, and Gemini 5 set the duration record despite fuel cell failures. After losing the Agena for Gemini 6, that mission rendezvoused in orbit with Gemini 7 in December 1965; Gemini 7 stayed in space for 14 days. Armstrong and Scott's Gemini 8 performed the first docking, but a stuck thruster forced an emergency return to the Pacific. See and Bassett died in 1966 when their T-38 crashed into a McDonnell building in Missouri. On Gemini 9, the substitute target kept its fairing attached and docking could not be completed. The spacewalks by Cernan, Collins, and Gordon proved exhausting, until underwater training and new handholds allowed Aldrin to work outside Gemini 12 for 2 hours and 6 minutes.