
Gemini - Steps to the Moon
By: David Shayler, Thomas P. Stafford (Foreword by)
Hardcover | 1 September 2001
At a Glance
472 Pages
23.5 x 17.15 x 2.54
Hardcover
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From the reviews:
"David J. Shayler has written a fascinating book which tells, with a fresh perspective from the end of the twentieth century, the achievements of Project Gemini. His book, which is based on extensive research of NASA archives and interviews with some of the Gemini astronauts, relives the pioneering years of American manned spaceflight." (John O'Donoghue, Astronomy & Space, July, 2002)
"David Shayler has an easy style of writing and an excellent way of putting over what could have been a difficult subject. ... With plenty of line drawings and black and white images, this book does the subject proud. It should appeal to anyone with an interest in spaceflight and to those wishing to understand how the US got to the Moon in under a decade from the first crewed spaceflight. ... I expect it to become the bible on Gemini for spaceflight enthusiasts everywhere." (Paul Money, Astronomy Now, September, 2002)
"David Shayler is well qualified to write a book about Gemini, and he has succeeded admirably. He deals with the project in all its aspects; the initial steps, the design and planning, the astronauts themselves, the flights ... . It is clear that a tremendous amount of research has been involved; the text is well-written, accurate, and very detailed. ... serious students and scientific historians will find it invaluable as a reference work, and it should certainly have a place in every scientific library." (Patrick Moore, The Observatory, Vol. 122 (1168), 2002)
"David Shayler brilliantly wrote the essential history of Gemini with his newest book ... . a highly entertaining and readable account of a unique program ... . The author has ensured the book contains an extensive study of these goals and the flights on which they were carried out. Often the information was completely new to me. ... Gemini: Steps to the Moon is a book that I can highly recommend to anyone interested in a little known era in the history of spaceflight." (Kate Doohan, CRCSS Space Industry News, Issue 93, March, 2002)
"David Shayler's superb history of the Gemini Project is subtitled 'Steps to the Moon' ... . An up to date biographical index of all astronauts involved in Gemini and its potential USAF developments is incorporated as an appendix. Shayler has obviously researched widely. His history is full of fascinating details that were previously unknown to this reviewer. ... With Shayler's history you need never research Gemini again for it's all here!" (John O'Dwyer, News Bulletin of the Astronautical Society of Western Australia, Vol. 27 (4), 2002)
| Foreword | p. xv |
| Author's preface | p. xix |
| Acknowledgements | p. xxiii |
| List of illustrations and tables | p. xxv |
| Acronyms, abbreviations and notes | p. xxxiii |
| Prologue | p. xxxv |
| Origins | p. 1 |
| To the edge of space | p. 2 |
| Controlling the high ground | p. 3 |
| Three-phase co-operation | p. 4 |
| The dawn of the Space Age | p. 6 |
| The creation of NASA | p. 8 |
| The Mercury Seven | p. 9 |
| USAF space policy in 1959 | p. 11 |
| Mercury Mark II | p. 12 |
| An advance programme | p. 13 |
| Three ways to go | p. 13 |
| Kazakhstan, Florida, Washington and the Moon | p. 15 |
| Mercury Mark II developments | p. 18 |
| Way out west | p. 19 |
| Choosing the way to go to the Moon | p. 20 |
| The heavenly twins | p. 21 |
| What's in a name? | p. 22 |
| Co-operation and division | p. 24 |
| Conflict and frustration | p. 24 |
| The clock is running | p. 25 |
| Hardware | p. 27 |
| The Gemini budget, 1962-1967 | p. 28 |
| Gemini spacecraft features | p. 29 |
| Construction of the Re-entry Module | p. 30 |
| The re-entry heat shield | p. 33 |
| Escape tower or ejection seats? | p. 34 |
| A window on the world | p. 35 |
| Re-entry Module power supply and control | p. 36 |
| Features of the Adapter Module | p. 36 |
| Spacecraft sub-systems | p. 38 |
| Launch vehicles | p. 55 |
| Titan II | p. 55 |
| Atlas-Agena D | p. 59 |
| Target vehicles | p. 60 |
| Agena D | p. 60 |
| The Augmented Target Docking Adapter (ATDA) | p. 61 |
| Ground support | p. 61 |
| Gemini mission management | p. 61 |
| The Manned Spacecraft Center, Houston, Texas | p. 62 |
| Building 30: Mission Control Center, Houston (MCC-H) | p. 66 |
| Mission Operations and Control Room (MOCR) | p. 66 |
| Gemini Mission Operations and Control Room (MOCR) | p. 66 |
| Cape Kennedy (Canaveral), Florida | p. 70 |
| LC 14 Atlas Agena | p. 74 |
| Tracking and communications | p. 75 |
| Recovery support | p. 76 |
| Preparations | p. 79 |
| The spaceflight logbook, 1961 | p. 79 |
| The Mercury Seven | p. 80 |
| The first USAF 'space pilots' | p. 80 |
| The Next Nine | p. 83 |
| Training the Next Nine | p. 85 |
| Astronaut 'grubby school' | p. 86 |
| CB technical assignments | p. 87 |
| Classrooms, deserts, jungles and a vomit Comet | p. 89 |
| ARPS Class III and Class IV | p. 91 |
| The Fourteen | p. 93 |
| The first black astronaut | p. 97 |
| Astronaut training, 1964 | p. 98 |
| Filling the seats | p. 100 |
| Initial Gemini crew assignments | p. 101 |
| Shepard grounded | p. 104 |
| The announcement of the first assignments | p. 105 |
| The first astronaut fatality | p. 108 |
| Long-duration crews | p. 108 |
| Rendezvous and docking crews | p. 109 |
| Gemini veterans move to Apollo | p. 110 |
| The loss of See and Bassett | p. 111 |
| Training for a Gemini mission | p. 113 |
| Launch | p. 115 |
| In-flight | p. 115 |
| Re-entry and landing | p. 121 |
| Practice makes perfect | p. 121 |
| Flight Operations | p. 125 |
| Planning for flight | p. 125 |
| Mercury Mark II flight plans | p. 125 |
| A new forecast | p. 127 |
| A new year and a new name | p. 128 |
| Test hardware | p. 129 |
| Boilerplates and test articles | p. 129 |
| Project Orbit | p. 130 |
| Escalation of costs | p. 131 |
| Objectives and manifests | p. 132 |
| The Gemini pre-launch sequence | p. 135 |
| The Gemini missions, 1964-1966 | p. 136 |
| Flight tests: Gemini 1, 2 and 3, 1964-1965 | p. 136 |
| (GT-1) | p. 138 |
| (GT-2) | p. 140 |
| (GT-3) | p. 141 |
| Extending the duration: Gemini 4, 5 and 7, 1965 | p. 141 |
| (GT-4, or GT-IV) | p. 143 |
| (GT-5, or GT-V) | p. 145 |
| (GT-7, or GT-VII) | p. 147 |
| Initial rendezvous and docking operations: Gemini 6, 8 and 9, 1965-1966 | p. 147 |
| (GT-6, or GT-VI-A) | p. 147 |
| (GT-8, or GT-VIII) | p. 149 |
| (GT-9, or GT-IX-A) | p. 152 |
| Pushing the envelope: Gemini 10, 11 and 12, 1966 | p. 155 |
| (GT-10, or GT-X) | p. 155 |
| (GT-11, or GT-XI) | p. 156 |
| (GT-12, or GT-XII) | p. 159 |
| Enter Apollo | p. 160 |
| Flight Tests | p. 163 |
| Testing the ejector seat system | p. 163 |
| SOPE tests | p. 164 |
| 'A hell of a headache, but a short one' | p. 165 |
| Ballute and SNORT | p. 166 |
| Trouble with the Titan | p. 168 |
| No risk to Gemini | p. 170 |
| Addressing the problems | p. 170 |
| More tests and more problems | p. 172 |
| Gemini 1A proposed | p. 172 |
| Replacing the Titan with the saturn 1B | p. 173 |
| Titan II success at last | p. 173 |
| Gemini test flights | p. 174 |
| 'Something wrong with the range clock' | p. 175 |
| 'A storybook sort of flight' | p. 177 |
| Flight 1 analysis | p. 178 |
| Gemini 2 (GT-2) | p. 179 |
| Battling with the elements | p. 179 |
| Three cosmonauts in one spacecraft | p. 180 |
| More delays | p. 181 |
| The flight of Gemini 2 | p. 182 |
| The condition of the heat shield | p. 183 |
| Houston monitors the flight | p. 183 |
| Gemini 3 (GT-3) | p. 184 |
| Leonov steps outside | p. 185 |
| 'You're on your way, Molly Brown' | p. 185 |
| Into orbit | p. 187 |
| The manoeuvres of Molly Brown | p. 188 |
| A bite to eat | p. 190 |
| The return of Molly Brown | p. 191 |
| 'That was no boat' | p. 192 |
| Tests concluded | p. 194 |
| Endurance | p. 197 |
| The 14-day target | p. 197 |
| The fuel cell issue | p. 198 |
| Biomedical instrumentation | p. 199 |
| The long-duration missions | p. 201 |
| Four days of Gemini 4 | p. 201 |
| Gemini 4 habitability | p. 201 |
| Are you being good? | p. 205 |
| The day the straw men fell down | p. 205 |
| Eight days or bust! | p. 206 |
| Gemini 5 habitability | p. 206 |
| Evaluation of the mission | p. 210 |
| From outer space to inner space | p. 210 |
| Up to the ears in garbage | p. 211 |
| 'Busting' the record | p. 211 |
| In the front seat of a Volkswagen | p. 213 |
| 'We're on our way, Frank' | p. 213 |
| The grass needs mowing | p. 215 |
| The G5C spacesuit | p. 215 |
| Gemini 7 habitability | p. 217 |
| 'Going back to Houston' | p. 221 |
| Rendezvous and Docking | p. 225 |
| Theory and practise | p. 225 |
| Space brothers | p. 226 |
| Heavenly twins | p. 226 |
| The Agena target vehicle | p. 227 |
| Agena B | p. 227 |
| The change to Agena D | p. 228 |
| Alternative concepts | p. 229 |
| Plans for Gemini-Agena | p. 230 |
| Rendezvous considerations | p. 232 |
| Docking with the Agena | p. 234 |
| Collision course docking | p. 235 |
| Rendezvous and docking activities | p. 237 |
| The learning curve | p. 237 |
| Gemini 4 and the other first step | p. 237 |
| The 'brute force' method | p. 238 |
| Rendezvous or EVA? | p. 238 |
| Orbital 'catch up' | p. 239 |
| Gemini 5 and Conrad's 'little rascal' | p. 239 |
| Phantom Agena | p. 240 |
| Seven... six... count-down to rendezvous | p. 241 |
| A dramatic loss of telemetry | p. 242 |
| Stalled on the pad | p. 243 |
| A rapid-fire launch | p. 243 |
| 'You're out of your minds' | p. 244 |
| Gemini 7 and a tumbling Titan | p. 245 |
| 'We saw it ignite--we saw it shut down' | p. 245 |
| Third time lucky | p. 246 |
| 'A lot of traffic' | p. 246 |
| 'We'll see you on the beach' | p. 249 |
| Agena, ATDA and an alligator | p. 250 |
| 'We'll take that one' | p. 250 |
| 'It's a real smoothy' | p. 251 |
| Tumbling end over end | p. 252 |
| A violent roll | p. 253 |
| New approach, new target, old problem | p. 254 |
| If at first... | p. 255 |
| 'An angry alligator' | p. 256 |
| Revised plans | p. 256 |
| Agenas, altitudes and tethers | p. 257 |
| Gemini 10's ambitious flight plan | p. 257 |
| Riding a rascal | p. 258 |
| From Agena to Agena | p. 259 |
| To the high frontier | p. 260 |
| From pad to Agena in one orbit | p. 260 |
| 'The world is round' | p. 262 |
| All tied up | p. 263 |
| Second rendezvous | p. 264 |
| The last mission | p. 264 |
| A second tether exercise | p. 266 |
| Summary | p. 266 |
| Eva Operations | p. 269 |
| EVA from Gemini | p. 269 |
| Gemini EVA guidelines | p. 270 |
| The EVA programme | p. 271 |
| Plans for the first stand-up EVA | p. 272 |
| Stand-up becomes full exit | p. 273 |
| Gemini 4 EVA | p. 273 |
| Gemini 4 EVA hardware | p. 274 |
| Stepping out | p. 276 |
| 'Absolutely no sensation of falling' | p. 277 |
| 'You dirty dog' | p. 278 |
| 'Get back in' | p. 278 |
| Physically exhausted | p. 279 |
| A difficult act to follow | p. 279 |
| The short-lived plans for Gemini 6/7 EVA | p. 279 |
| Gemini 8 EVA plans | p. 280 |
| Gemini 8 EVA equipment | p. 281 |
| Scott's EVA preparations | p. 281 |
| Learning the hard way | p. 282 |
| Tether or no tether? That is the question | p. 283 |
| Gemini 9 EVA equipment | p. 283 |
| The Astronaut Manoeuvring Unit | p. 285 |
| All fogged up | p. 287 |
| 'Getting in no problem' | p. 290 |
| EVA at Agena | p. 290 |
| Irritation of the eyes | p. 291 |
| Lessons learned | p. 293 |
| Penultimate EVA | p. 293 |
| Gemini 11 EVA equipment | p. 293 |
| 'Ride 'em cowboy!' | p. 294 |
| Asleep hanging out of the hatch | p. 296 |
| The EVA Review Board | p. 296 |
| The finale | p. 297 |
| Gemini 12 EVA equipment | p. 297 |
| Opening the door | p. 298 |
| The final steps | p. 298 |
| Tools, tethers, hand-holds and slippers | p. 298 |
| The final exit | p. 300 |
| Re-Entry and Landing | p. 303 |
| Development of the paraglider | p. 303 |
| Controlled re-entry | p. 304 |
| Rogallo's wing | p. 304 |
| Land landing for Mark II | p. 304 |
| Landing Gemini by paraglider | p. 306 |
| The paraglider development programme | p. 307 |
| FRC's Paraglider Research Vehicle | p. 308 |
| The North American Aviation test programme | p. 308 |
| The test vehicle programme | p. 310 |
| The test vehicle | p. 310 |
| The test profile | p. 311 |
| The drop test programme | p. 311 |
| Helicopter drop tests | p. 313 |
| Delays and redirection | p. 313 |
| Helicopter tows and parachute drops | p. 314 |
| Testing continued | p. 315 |
| The loss of the paraglider | p. 316 |
| Parachute recovery | p. 317 |
| Summary of re-entry and recovery | p. 318 |
| Gemini 2 | p. 318 |
| Gemini 3 | p. 318 |
| Gemini 4 | p. 318 |
| Gemini 5 | p. 320 |
| Gemini 6 | p. 321 |
| Gemini 7 | p. 322 |
| Gemini 8 | p. 323 |
| A pinpoint landing | p. 325 |
| The final three | p. 326 |
| The record of achievements | p. 329 |
| Experiments | p. 331 |
| Experiments on Gemini | p. 331 |
| From proposal to experiment | p. 332 |
| Technical regulations and procedures | p. 333 |
| The selection of experiments | p. 334 |
| Operational requirements | p. 335 |
| Public image | p. 335 |
| Integration of experiments | p. 336 |
| Mission integration | p. 336 |
| Crew integration | p. 337 |
| Mission planning | p. 337 |
| The experiments | p. 337 |
| Biomedical experiments | p. 338 |
| Manned Spacecraft Center experiments | p. 340 |
| Technological experiments | p. 343 |
| Department of Defense experiments | p. 344 |
| Space science experiments | p. 349 |
| Space photography | p. 356 |
| Military Gemini | p. 361 |
| The X-20 Dyna Soar | p. 361 |
| USAF co-operation in Gemini | p. 362 |
| USAF Gemini plans, 1963 | p. 363 |
| Discovery and Zenit | p. 364 |
| The Martin Marietta report, April 1963 | p. 364 |
| Possible DoD Gemini missions | p. 365 |
| The NASA/DoD Joint Ad Hoc Study Group report, May 1963 | p. 367 |
| Objectives of the Air Force programme | p. 367 |
| Blue Gemini | p. 368 |
| Air Force astronaut crew participation | p. 371 |
| Study group summary, collusion and recommendations | p. 372 |
| The demise of Blue Gemini and the emergence of the MOL | p. 373 |
| Gemini 2 flies again | p. 376 |
| Gemini B | p. 377 |
| Design considerations | p. 379 |
| MOL astronauts | p. 380 |
| Crew training | p. 383 |
| A Place in History | p. 385 |
| Lost missions of Gemini | p. 385 |
| Lunar Gemini | p. 385 |
| Rescue and logistics | p. 386 |
| Power to the cause | p. 387 |
| Space rescue | p. 388 |
| Logistics spacecraft | p. 389 |
| McDonnell's Big G study | p. 389 |
| A Gemini observatory | p. 390 |
| A satellite retrieval mission | p. 391 |
| A place in history | p. 392 |
| The end of the programme | p. 397 |
| Steps to the Moon | p. 398 |
| Appendix | p. 401 |
| The astronauts | p. 401 |
| Bibliography | p. 423 |
| Index | p. 427 |
| Table of Contents provided by Syndetics. All Rights Reserved. |
ISBN: 9781852334055
ISBN-10: 1852334053
Series: Springer Praxis Books / Space Exploration
Published: 1st September 2001
Format: Hardcover
Language: English
Number of Pages: 472
Audience: General Adult
Publisher: Springer Nature B.V.
Country of Publication: GB
Dimensions (cm): 23.5 x 17.15 x 2.54
Weight (kg): 0.65
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