Project+Gemini+ICS16TOR

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Gemini#Retro_module

http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/5-8/features/nasa-knows/what-was-gemini-program-58.html

Sarah Torres

The Gemini space project was NASA's second project with humans aboard the spacecraft, a two person crew. It started in 1961 and ended in 1966. Gemini was launched between the major projects Mercury and Apollo. This project was used to expand the space travel techniques for Apollo's mission to land men on the moon. Gemini did achieve going to the moon and back, working outside of the spacecraft, and space rendezvous. During project Gemini, three astronauts died because of an air crash. Those three people were the crew that were supposed to board Gemini 9, so when the actual project launched, the backup crew was used, the only time that has ever happened in NASA history. Jim Chamberlin, Gemini's chief designer, believed that it could perform moon missions before Apollo was even launched, but NASA vetoed that idea.

The contributions to the space history were that before Gemini, NASA had limited experience in space. Previous missions from the Mercury project proved that astronauts could go into space. Before Gemini was launched, space exploration had not yet been tested. NASA still had to learn how humans could survive in space, how they would travel outside of their spacecraft, how to connect two spacecrafts during flight, and after project Gemini was completed, NASA could now do them all. Gemini 3 proved that astronauts could be carried into space, Gemini 4 proved that included astronauts actually walking in outer space, Gemini 5 stayed in or bit for more than a week, Gemini 6 and 7 were in flight at the same time and connected with each other mid-flight also staying in orbit for two weeks, Gemini 8 connected with another spacecraft with no men on it, Gemini mission 9 proved that one spacecraft could fly near another and also experienced with more spacewalk, Gemini 10 connected with another spacecraft and used its engine to move both, Gemini 11 flew higher than any spacecraft NASA had ever launched before, and the last mission, Gemini 12, solved all the problems from previous tests, including spacewalk.

This project affected Florida because all the flights for this project were launched at Cape Kennedy Air Force Station in Florida and it was the first project to use the new Mission Control Center at the Houston Manned Spacecraft Center for its flight control.