Abstract
“The only thing wrong with this one
is that we haven’t got a crew in it.”
Astronaut Richard F. Gordon, Jr.
commenting on the success
of Gemini 1, April 1964
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Notes
- 1.
The week before the STG report, Soviet cosmonaut Gherman Titov had spent 25 hours on the 17-orbit Vostok 2 mission, proving that a man could withstand at least a day in orbit, though he had reported nausea.
- 2.
The land-landing capability was removed from Gemini flight planning in February 1964.
- 3.
SFRRB members for this meeting were: Walter C. Williams of the Gemini Program Office who headed the meeting; Lester Stewart who recorded the events; Charles W. Mathews, Program Manager; F. John Bailey Jr., MSC Reliability and Flight Safety; Christopher C. Kraft, MSC Flight Operations; Donald K ‘Deke’ Slayton, MSC Flight Crew Operations; and G. Merritt Preston, Florida Operations.
- 4.
It has been a long-held misconception that when President John F. Kennedy challenged Apollo to reach the Moon by the end of the decade, he meant by December 31, 1969. In fact, the end of the ‘sixties’ decade was on December 31, 1970, but it is more widely accepted now to refer to the last year of a decade as the one that ends in ‘9’. In this case, therefore, “by the end of the decade” is taken to mean December 31, 1969.
- 5.
Begun in 1963, the International Designation is the official orbital object designation awarded by the international Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) to all spacecraft, satellites, rocket stages, deployed objects and fragments. It is based upon the numerical sequence within a given calendar year (January 1 through December 31). The letter code normally refers to the main instrumented payload (A), the rocket stage (B) and fragments or ejections (C, D, E etc.). Letters I and O are not used and if there are more than 24 elements, the sequence for identifying fragments after Z runs through AA to AZ, then BA to BZ and so on. Before this, in the years 1957-1962, the system utilized the 24 characters of the Greek alphabet, but as more objects began to be launched and debris from them increased, the new system was developed and adopted by the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) which supplies orbital elements for each object successfully reaching Earth orbit. In this system, Gemini 1 received an orbital designation, as did all subsequent Gemini missions and their successful Agena target vehicles, but the sub-orbital Gemini 2 did not, for either of its two flights.
- 6.
The MSFN stations used during Gemini 1 were: Kennedy; Grand Bahama Island; San Salvador, Bermuda; Woomera, Australia; Hawaii; Point Arguello, California; White Sands, New Mexico; and Eglin Air Force Base, Florida.
- 7.
April 12, 1964 also happened to be the fourth Cosmonautics Day in the USSR.
References
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On the Shoulders of Titans, A History of Project Gemini, Barton C. Hacker and James M. Grimwood, NASA SP-4203, 1977, pp. 55-64
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Information courtesy Manfred ‘Dutch’ von Ehrenfried, via email, February 26, 2017
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Courtesy Air Force Space and Missile Museum
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Shayler, D.J. (2018). A “clean and green” flying machine. In: Gemini Flies!. Springer Praxis Books(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68142-9_2
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