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Frontiers March 2015 Issue

March 2015 13 Bridge to the moon Project Gemini laid the foundation for the moon landings that followed by henry t. brownlee jr. Fifty years ago this month, two American astronauts, Virgil “Gus” Grissom and John Young, climbed into a spacecraft nicknamed “Molly Brown” and blasted into orbit from Cape Canaveral, Fla. Their flight, in the new Gemini spacecraft, marked another key milestone on the U.S. journey to a manned moon landing four years later. McDonnell Aircraft built the two-person Gemini capsule, as well as the smaller Mercury capsule that first carried U.S. astronauts into orbit. And North American Aviation built the Apollo spacecraft used for the moon-landing flights to come. Both McDonnell and North American are Boeing heritage companies. What became known as Project Gemini began in December 1961 when NASA signed a contract with McDonnell Aircraft as prime contractor for a second-generation manned spacecraft that could carry two people and bridge the gap between the Mercury and Apollo programs, proving concepts such as spacecraft rendezvous and docking that would be needed to land astronauts on the moon and return them safely to Earth. The Gemini spacecraft was a conical structure nearly 19 feet (5.8 meters) high, 10 feet (3 meters) in diameter at its base and weighing more than 7,000 pounds (3,180 kilograms). McDonnell Aircraft designed and built 11 of the capsules in its St. Louis factory. The program was officially designated “Gemini” on Jan. 3, 1962. In Latin, the word means twins, or double. It is also the name of the third constellation of the Zodiac and its twin stars Castor and Pollux. Much to the chagrin of NASA, Grissom, the mission commander, nicknamed his Gemini 3 capsule “Molly Brown,” a reference to the Broadway musical and film The Unsinkable Molly Brown. An American socialite, Brown was on the Titanic but survived the sinking of the ocean liner when it hit an iceberg on its first voyage across the Atlantic. Grissom was one of the original seven Mercury astronauts, and the second American into space. But his Mercury capsule sank when it splashed down in the ocean after a brief suborbital flight. The Mercury, Gemini and Apollo spacecraft were designed to float in the ocean after returning astronauts from space. But the hatch on Grissom’s Mercury capsule blew off upon hitting the water. Young was among the second group of U.S. astronauts selected by NASA. The Gemini 3 flight took place March 23, 1965. After being placed in orbit by a Titan II rocket, the spacecraft circled Earth three times before parachuting into the ocean almost five hours after liftoff from Cape Canaveral (later renamed Cape Kennedy). “The longer we flew, the more jubilant we felt,” Grissom later recalled. “We had a really fine spacecraft, one we could be proud of in every respect.” Their flight, and those that followed in the Gemini capsules, were a key step toward the moon. In a speech to Congress three weeks after Alan Shepard became the first American in space, on May 25, 1961, President Kennedy had challenged the country to send astronauts to the moon and back by the end of the decade. That first moon landing came July 20, 1969. Two unmanned Gemini missions were flown to check out systems and the spacecraft’s heat shield that protected the astronauts during the fiery re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere. Starting with the Grissom and Young mission, a total of 10 Gemini flights were made in 1965 and 1966. Astronaut Ed White became the first American to make a space walk, during the Gemini 4 mission in June 1965. NASA named Grissom to lead the first Apollo flight, which was to check out the new spacecraft in Earth orbit before the more ambitious moon flights. But Grissom, White and astronaut Roger Chaffee died when fire broke out in their Apollo spacecraft on the launch pad during a preflight training run. Young would go on to become the ninth U.S. astronaut to walk on the moon, as commander of the Apollo 16 mission in 1972. n henry.t.brownlee-jr@boeing.com Photos: (Far left) Launched into space by a Titan II rocket in March 1965, the Gemini 3 spacecraft carried astronauts Gus Grissom and John Young on three orbits of Earth and proved a key step toward future moon missions. (Below) McDonnell Aircraft Corp. employees make final adjustments and perform checks on the Gemini 3 capsule prior to launch. NASA


Frontiers March 2015 Issue
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