THE TWELVE GEMINI MISSIONS NASA GEMINI PROGRAM FILM 78084

Video from the channel PeriscopeFilm II about Project Gemini, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 15:55. Language: English. Video type: Archive footage.

NASA film reviewing the twelve flights of the Gemini program: two uncrewed tests and ten crewed missions, organized around six objectives. Those objectives were long-duration flight, rendezvous and docking, control of the reentry trajectory, extravehicular activity, training of crews and ground teams, and scientific experiments. It combines flight footage, such as Earth seen from orbit, rendezvous maneuvers, parachutes and recovery, with excerpts from crew communications.

It is a period production, assembled after the program had already ended: it takes stock of the results and mentions that a Gemini flight director later sat at the console for the first Apollo flight.

Gemini 3 completed three orbits on March 23, 1965. The long-duration missions lasted four days (Gemini 4), eight (Gemini 5) and fourteen (Gemini 7, with Frank Borman and Jim Lovell). Gemini 5 was the first to use fuel cells. The first space rendezvous was performed by Gemini 6A and Gemini 7 on December 15, 1965, and the first docking by Gemini 8 in March 1966. In total, the program achieved ten rendezvous and nine dockings. Using the Agena engine, Gemini 10 reached 414 nautical miles and Gemini 11, 741. Splashdown accuracy improved from 57.5 nautical miles on the first crewed flights to four tenths of a mile on Gemini 9A. After the problems with the spacewalks on Gemini 9A, 10 and 11, underwater training and restraints allowed Buzz Aldrin to complete 19 tasks on Gemini 12. The final tally adds up to 12 hours and 22 minutes of extravehicular activity, 1,940 man-hours of flight and 52 experiments, including the photograph that mapped 80% of Peru in three minutes.