Project Gemini

Gemini ran from 1961 to 1966 and flew ten crewed missions in twenty months, using a two seat capsule on a converted Titan II missile. It exists because NASA committed to lunar orbit rendezvous and then noticed that rendezvous and docking had never been attempted by anyone, which made Apollo a bet on techniques that did not yet exist.

How it went

1. 01

   The choice of lunar orbit rendezvous meant two spacecraft would have to find each other and join up a quarter of a million miles from any help, so the technique had to be learned close to home first.

2. 02

   Ed White went outside on 3 June 1965 for the first American spacewalk, and the flight showed that moving and working in a pressurised suit is far harder than it looks from inside.

3. 03

   Gemini VII spent fourteen days in orbit in December 1965 while Gemini VI-A came up and flew formation with it, settling endurance and rendezvous on the same pair of flights.

4. 04

   Neil Armstrong and David Scott made the first docking in space on 16 March 1966, then had to break off and come home early when a stuck thruster set the joined vehicles spinning.

5. 05

   The tenth and last crewed flight landed in November 1966, and the procedures went straight into Apollo with the ink still wet.

What it flew

• Titan II GLV

What it cost, what it got

Ten crewed flights, nobody lost, and every technique Apollo depended on proved in Earth orbit before it mattered. It cost about 1.3 billion dollars in 1967 dollars, roughly 9.3 billion in 2024 terms, and it is the reason Apollo looked easy.

Sources

1. 1What Was the Gemini ProgramNASA
2. 2Project GeminiWikipedia