When Gemini 11 Almost but Not Really Went to the Moon
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- čas přidán 16. 07. 2015
- After failing to take Gemini 11 to the Moon, Pete Conrad did the next best thing and just took it into a really high orbit.
Gemini 11 set a distance record for manned spaceflight reaching a peak altitude of 850 miles. The record was only topped when Apollo flew to the Moon. But Gemini 11 remains the highest Earth orbital mission; since the lunar landing program ended, the shuttle and the International Space Station have stuck to a roughly 250 mile orbit.
For more on the lunar and high-flying Gemini missions, check out the latest article on Vintage Space.
And for a lot more Vintage Space, be sure to check out the blog, and follow me on Facebook, Google+, Instagram, and Twitter as @astVintageSpace. - Věda a technologie
Sleeping in EVA suit, freefloating thousand miles above earth? To the bucket list!!!
Someone in the previous episode mentioned Soyuz, and I feel Soyuz deserves a whole series. Not just the Soyuz itself, but the Soyuz-LK proposed lunar vehicle, and Soyuz's involvement with the Salyut stations, and the development of the Progress unmanned Soyuz cargo transport.
While we're at it, how about an evolution of Salyut, From Salyut 1, to 4, to 6, 7 and finally the core module of Mir? While we're at it, we should mention Almaz too :3
Agree on Soyuz. May have to divide that between early Soyuz and then later upgrades. Same with Salyut of the 70s and Almaz.
I'd love to hear more about the Agena target vehicle. It always seems to be a footnote lost in all the cool stuff that was going on at the time. But it seems like this was actually a pretty interesting spacecraft in it's own right and I'd like to know more about it.
This.
Seconded
The rare occasion when the Agena worked as advertised. :)
The Agena Target Vehicle had a very checkered history with Geminii:
It was based on an existing Agena vehicle which had a good operational record, but the contractor had become over confident, didn't take the Geminii Target Vehicle conversion program seriously enough, consequently the design and engineering work for that version of the stage was not up to scratch.
The rendezvous/docking mission of Gemini VI was almost ruined by an Agena failure - they had to use Gemini VII as the target instead, and drop the docking attempt from that mission. Geminii IX had 2 Agena failures - the first never reached orbit, and the second failed jettison its nose cone....
The 2 stellar successes for the Geminii/Agena Target Vehicle were the two orbital boosts of Geminii's X and XI.
@@ChristopherUSSmith only 2 worked properly 100%. Lol
Neat idea. Pete Conrad was a NUT - in all the best ways
Great work Amy!
You know, at parties and meets, people are surprised when I tell them that ISS isn't "floating millions of miles away" but is only as high up as the distance driving between NYC and Washington DC. They are even further shocked that the shuttle and ISS astronauts don't see the whole earth as a globe but more like, as Mike Collins said in Carrying The Fire, the sight from near Earth orbit is not that different from a jet plane only higher. Our science education is in BAD shape! Please do a feature on how early nuclear rocket experiments as Project Rover were astonishingly successful and could've met the timetable for a manned Mars flight if call on! Keep up the great work!
I seriously love Vintage Space discussions. So much history, humanity and creativity involved ('61-'74?) that it's almost inexhaustible the interesting details. Hosted by the beautiful Amy! I have just a few buddies who love this subject as much as I, so it's much appreciated. Such a glorious era!
Don't know if I could fall asleep in space, but I'd love to try someday.
Ian Winston Apparently it's awesome. No need to roll over, ever. There are no hot spots because no gravity pushing body parts against each other or the sleeping surface. I wish we could replicate that here on Earth.
Chris Moore Closest thing would be an isolation tank, where you float on salt water heated to body temperature. You would still have pressure on your back, but it would be perfectly distributed.
It would be hard for me at first, for the obvious reasons. Zero gravity kind of sucks, looking down at the Earth (*especially* for a meteorology and tech nerd who can't sleep on airplanes because he wants to look at the clouds, and who sometimes watches CZcams videos about gadgets for waaaaaaay too long) would be so endlessly fascinating that the suckiness would soon be forgotten, etc. At some point, though, I could probably sleep pretty well for the reasons that astronauts have described, like the awesomeness of not having to figure out exactly *how* you would sleep (although I assume you would still have to find the cool side of the pillow).
Assuming that I would wake up and get to watch more clouds and planetary awesomeness, that is. And also assuming that I wasn't about to reach some record distance, because I would want to experience that just to know what it was like.
You are really doing high quality stuff; short sharp and no rubbishy padding. Amazing behind the scenes facts that are never covered in the mainstream docs. Enlightening and brilliant. Well done and keep it up; thanks very much.
The coolest part would be waking up
That had to be an interesting experience.
I really like your videos. They bring back a lot of good memories for me. Thank you.
Yay! More Gemini videos! I agree with Dick Gordon. I don't think I would sleep a wink if I had the chance to fly in space. I'd be too busy enjoying the view. I can also picture a future when you are riding in a commercial space vehicle and vlogging to us from orbit.
Love these videos!
Wonderful to know that Astronauts could make proposals for pushing mission parameters, and that were taken on board. The general perception still exists that they simply carried out the order of planners, because dependability was one of their main strengths.
I read in "Appointment On The Moon" that the artificial gravity created by tethering the Gemini 11 to Agena was not totally unnoticed. The book said one of the astronauts released an ink pen in the capsule as they revolved around the Agena the pen very slowly, like over two or three minutes, moved toward the back of the Gemini, finally "landing" on the back wall, making that down in the sense that the pen was falling due to the centripetal force.
hey excellent presentation! very cool about the high orbit!
I love your space series!
Hey, Amy I love what you do keep up the great work.
Good stuff as always
Thank you Amy for digging into that
Nice one.. Thanks from NZ 👍🇳🇿
Great channel!
Not certain if anyone else mentioned it, but Pete Conrad did the stand up EVA on Apollo 12. Nasa, Grumman and the DOD were all very interested in just how accurate they could get with the LM guidance system on landing so Pete performed a visual look around to actually see if he could locate craters and the Surveyor. I didn't know Dave Scott also did one however.
wait hold up. i just saw you and your name in a picture (and caption) on tumblr of the pluto new horizons team. THAT'S SO COOL i guess i didn't think about what else you do other than make vintage space videos but the PLUTO TEAM WOW THAT'S SO COOL
A recon Marine once told me that he hates flying because he's used to jumping out of the plane before it lands.
I'd sleep like a baby. I once fell asleep in the rear facing jump seats of a fire truck while enroute to a structure fire, with sirens and air horns blaring. Woke up just in time to go wrap a supply line around a hydrant.
It was roughly 50 years ago, I was a teen ager, but I specifically recall that there was a proposal at the time for one of the Gemini missions to dock with Agena and to break out of earth orbit for an Apollo-esk loop around the moon and return. The big reason it was cancelled was the Gemini heat shield and thermal external shielding was not designed to withstand lunar re-entry temperatures. However, the compromise was two high altitude missions, one of which being the one you discuss, and the suggestion of a lunar loop be delayed until Apollo. 3 or 4 years later, after a horrific year of two political assassinations and race rioting, anti Viet Nan war violence, a President dropping out of a re-election bid and a despised Richard Nixon being elected President, Apollo 8 went to the moon, a Christmas prayer for all mankind was read back to this blue marble of a planet, and we collectively held our breath for the safety of 3 men in the void of space. Sadly, America has devolved in such a way that those amazing days could never, ever be repeated again. Not politically correct, and someone's feelings might be injured by evoking a prayer on a US government spacecraft.
Gemini XI apogee of almost 1400 kilometers, but more importantly Conrad wore his personal Glycine Airman automatic GMT pilot watch for the second time, as on Gemini V in 1965...
Moreover, due to the open design of the Gemini capsule, his watch became only the second watchmake to be directly exposed to outer space... Up to 2020, only 6 watchmakes did so !
My respect for Pete Conrad just grows the more I learn about him!
Todd Howard Absolutely! Died in a Harley accident. One envelope he pushed beyond the point of no return. And yes, there is a right way to go! Gotta love those front teeth.
I would like to see a thorough examination of the Souyz 1 and Soyuz 11 accidents with as many photos as possibe. Also, there is a video (once broadcasted on A&E's "Time Machine" seriesshowing a cosmonaut entering a mock-up of their LK lander. Would be interesting to find out his identity along with any additional photos or videos of cosmauts training for a moon landing.
You can hear in the audio loop of Apollo 8, just after completing the TLI burn, someone says "Tell Conrad he lost his record!" Meaning they had just passed the 850 miles away from the earth point on their way to the moon!
I thought of something that seems to get left out of Gemini 11. It was the first to achieve rendezvous with the Agena target vehicle after 1 orbit.
Sleeping during an EVA? Omg. Fuck. I thought you would be so nervous and hard at it that that would be impossible.
Anyway are you making these videos in a hotel room?
NicosMind She's involved with the Pluto New Horizons Mission in some way, from what I can tell. She's doing "Pluto In a Minute" videos frequently. Check them out!
USWaterRockets It's cause of Pluto In a Minute that ive found her in the first place :)
NicosMind I liked the old format better, where she did these in her den.
NicosMind
From Pete Conrad's account, it was during one of Gordon's stand-up EVAs, meaning an EVA where they opened the hatch, Gordon would (naturally) stand up and hang half way out the hatch and take pictures, but not leave the capsule on a tether. Conrad said while the hatch was open, he fell asleep. I believe most of the EVA's during Gemini were stand-up EVA's, though the films we see are usually of astronauts floating around on a tether because these are more picturesque, There were even two stand-up EVA's in Apollo, Dave Scott on Apollo 9 and also Dave Scott on Apollo 15. On Apollo 15, they actually opened the hatch on top of the LEM, the docking hatch, after the moon landing but before the moon walk, and Scott stood up on the ascent engine cover and took pictures of the moon from way up high. This is kind of an unknown and forgotten feature of Apollo 15. There were actually 4 EVAs. One stand-up and 3 moon walks.
RRaquello So a stand up EVA is done within the hatch, or within arm reach of the hatch?? If im understanding you correctly then for me, its weird to even have a term for such a thing. Sounds like it happened often, yet my impression of EVAs is that theyre done only when they have to be done, and are for essential work which needs to be done outside the ISS for example. And when theyre out theyre they normally do several jobs at once, and partially do other jobs if they have spare time, making things easier for next time... As is my impression of it. Thanks for the comment.
Very Cool Amy
McDonnell - Douglas put together quite a few engineering designs for a "lunar Gemini"
Interesting to contemplate how it all would have worked out.
I was working there at the time, it wasn't mcdonnell douglas yet but was soon thereafter. I just ran a lathe. Your idea is sure intriguing though, after sitting in the capsule myself (a mockup) it doesn't seem like a vehicle up to the task.
You're teaching me new stuff all the time! Can you devote a future episode to the Soviet LK Lander?
^👍
Pete was a hoot. Everyone loves Armstrong and Aldrin, but Conrad was my favorite.
And, I couldn't sleep. I have a bed on earth for that. Like that Aerosmith song says, I wouldn't want to miss a thing.
Kind of cool to hear that Pete Conrad was on that mission. He was also joined with Gordon.
As for sleeping and feeling comfortable. So long as things seemed fine mechanically, I wouldn't have worried about too much!
oker59 The biggest worry I've ever heard of, that would make me queasy, would be the oxygen tanks on the Lunar lander(or even in the command module and the reentry vehicle. For awhile, I was like, the lunar lander was a great study in fitting things together; they must have an airlock somewhere on there. Well, I've determined there was no airlock! They just got in their spacesuits, bled out the air, and when they got back, they filled the space with oxygen again with compressed air oxygen tanks(or were they fuel cells?). Either way, that would be my biggest worry! Oh yes, the Apollo 13 mission was cut short by an oxygen tank blowout. Although that was more to do with the rocket oxygen supply, right?
I don't know if you read comment from a recent video, but could you do a video about the Orion spacecraft, and all of it's capabilities? (1950 version)
When you say four times further out from the space station do you mean, four times the distance from the Carmen line or sea level?
Gordon Cooper dozed off while awaiting launch on the last Mercury mission.
No pressure points, yeah!
Considering how much NASA put into the schedule for any Astronaut at that time. I can see how they would be tired.
This thing about astronauts lobbying for their own missions is another relatively unexplored corner of history. I saw Alan Shepard's "Freedom 7 II" (!) at the Dulles/Smithsonian hanger & didn't realize that Shepard's push for a four-day Mercury flight got as far as getting a full-fledged ship ready to fly. If NASA had given the green light, when do you think he would have flown? Fall of 1963? That would have at least come before the first signs of trouble with Al's inner ear. (Maybe?) What if it had been November of 1963? Early or late, it doesn't matter, because the possible time convergences become surreal, as alternate histories tend to be. Anything here for a future episode?
love your tee shirt where can i find one ?
Borman and Lovell deserved to have lots of sleep, during their 2 week mission. I was rough for them, I heard.
Slightly off topic, but who owns the abandoned equipment left on the moon, and in low earth orbit? Since it was all abandoned, could it be recovered as salvage? Theoretically of course.
Please make a video about the deep space EVA made by the astronauts of Apollo 16. Thanks.
I have indeed slept in conditions that I would have thought to be impossible. I was overworked and exhausted from stress, and when the stress let up, relatively speaking, I caught a few winks. You wouldn't think it is possible on an EVA, but who am I to judge?
This is one of the forgotten spaceflights of the 1960s !
Dick Gordon,Pete Conrad's partner on Gemini 11 and Apollo 12 died today at age 88. I remember him well. He lived a long life and made history being one of the few humans to go to the moon,although he didn't land.
What? Is there an å in astVintagespace?
Your cat was in space? WOW!!!!
I would love sleeping in space! I could completely relax and let every muscle relax.
what was in the big huge white cowling behind Gemini Capsules? I did not appear there were engines in the back with that big gold reflective material... was it just life support equipment? or was it a service module like Apollo had?
dregerclock That was the adapter section. It housed equipment and maneuvering engine propulsion tanks. So it's kind of like the Apollo SM in that sense but it is actually two parts. The retro module which has the engines that take the craft out of orbit, and the equipment module housed propulsion tanks and engines for maneuvering the Gemini vehicle on orbit. It also housed drinking water for the crew, power systems and other support systems. Of the two modules, the equipment module was the larger one with the gold colored mylar on back and it would be jettisoned first. Then the retro module engines fired before it too would be jettisoned to allow the Gemini spacecraft to re-enter the atmosphere.
***** so - wondering why they put the retro engines stage under the other accessories stage. does that mean that some of those stages were left in orbit rather than deorbited? Every good Kerbal knows it is not a good idea to leave too much debris in orbit. ;-)
dregerclock It would not have been a good idea to jettison the retro module and then have the equipment module fail to jettison which could cause a potential disaster for vehicle and crew. On a successful equipment module jettison which occurs first, the attitude control system would bring down the module once separated from the Gemini. I'm not aware of any adapter sections left in orbit for lengthy periods of time. Gemini orbits were usually low enough for any debris left by vehicles/crew to burn up in the atmosphere in a matter of months or a few years at most. Even Gemini 11s orbital perigee would allow anything it might have trailing it to eventually burn up in the atmosphere.
Space exploration has such an interesting history! Are there any books on space history that anyone recommends?
Moments in Minutes
It's a very old book (1969, doesn't have anything past Apollo 11) and out of print, though you can get it pretty cheap on Amazon or Abebooks.com, but check out "Appointment On The Moon" by Richard S. Lewis. This is my favorite book on the first ten years of the US space effort because it covers everything, on almost a launch-by-launch basis, unmanned and manned: Explorer, Ranger, Surveyor, Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, etc. Also early scientific, weather, communications and commercial satellites, launch hardware, computers, etc. It's very comprehensive and a good overview that may lead you into more specialized or narrowly focused histories. It's a good place to start.
Where did you get that shirt??
my gosh you are gorgeous!!!😍😍😍
That was the issue with Apollo. They were expected to sleep while on the Moon before disembarking, but they couldn't.
I would love to have a chance to sleep in space! As I've aged, I find that everything settles and then hurts. OUCH!
Who are you? Very nice vid. Im subscribed
I always thought that this was the best rebuttal to the nonsense about the Van Allen belts. There's no sane argument that Gemini could have been fake (not that there is about Apollo either).
Great as always! Just a suggestion: could it be possible to insert the metric conversions for us, the rest of the world?
There are 2 kinds of countries: those that use metric, and those that have been to the moon. :-)
Rob Dobson
Liberia hasn't been on the moon, AFAIK.
Just multiply miles by 1.6.
one word about sleeping in space ... stress... i wonder how long it will take me to get used to sleeping in space
I very much enjoy your postings-interesting history that is so easy to forget.
Please don't take offence but could I ask that you speak just a little slower??
I know time constraints are a problem-please keep up these interesting postings
thanks
Do you do these videos in batches or do you own more than one Apollo T-shirt?
TheStRyder91 Obviously she does them in batches.
TheStRyder91 I'd like to believe she just has a wardrobe full of Apollo t-shirts.
Amy Shira Teitel For Gemini !!! okay okay I don't know what to say for the Gemini program 😁 but maybe you will be in this mission too 😉
No way would I sleep in space! My face would be like one of those kerbals, staring wide-eyed and slack-jawed in wonder at everything!
I would love to hear more about the specifics of the two second launch window! Why so incredibly narrow?
That is a fantastic question! I suspect the answer is about the complex geometry in getting to the Moon with the exact landing point in mind, but I will look into it and add it to the topics list. Thanks, and keep an eye out for the answer!
I know you made this one nearly two years ago, and as a result I think you are confusing which of the "elevens" was covered in this video. In this vid, you mentioned a two second launch window for Gemini XI, not for the Apollo XI moon mission.
Oh! Sorry - I look at comments in a big page on the backend that shows them sequentially by time, not by video. Didn't realize you were after the Gemini XI launch window! In this case I think it had to do with joining the Agena in orbit. Still, this is an excellent question!
That certainly makes sense. At orbital speeds, every second would be critical in co-ordinating a rendezvous.
And now that you bring it up, the Agena target vehicles would be an interesting subject for a video or three as well. "The Angry Alligator" for one...
Two seconds? That's the shortest launch window I've ever heard of!
Brian Baker
It was because they were attempting to rendezvous with the Agena on the first orbit. On all the other Gemini flights they rendezvoused on the 3rd, 4th or 5th orbit, but they were trying an early simulation of an Apollo emergency lunar abort, where the LEM would have to rendezvous with the CSM on the first orbit.
Two questions...First, is Vintage Space limited to Mercury/Gemini/Apollo? I've always found the shuttle approach and landing tests interesting. I'm not sure the general public knows that the Enterprise was actually a functioning flight article...and that Fred Haise of Apollo 13 was one of the four astronauts that flight tested it. Second...are you aware of the space simulation game, Kerbal Space Program? If not, check it out!
I agree. I think more info on Shuttle development would interesting.
I'd probably be too excited to sleep at first but I couldn't go more than 48 hrs without zzzzzz.
I would most definately fall asleep at 850 miles above our beloved planet.
If they used the Agena as propulsion that means they flew 'eyeballs out'!
I like to sleep on my right side. So if I'm in a place where there's no up or down, sleep may be difficult.
I think so!
No , I would be a little nervous being about 700 miles outside the World, I could not sleep!!!
Me neither, being space is for few and I would be too thrilled to even sleep for a second in orbit.
would love to see more shows,debunking the idiots who claim there were no moon landing. also a new group of weirdos claim the moon is a hologram. I know this is not science,but any shows debunking this crap might help some people who lean toward believing this crap.
your show is great!
How was the hologram projection created thousands of years ago?
I can't sleep in cars and busses, but I can on trains and aeroplanes. I don't know If I'd be able to sleep in a spacesuit... from what I hear they're fairly noisy.
So Gordan only sleeps when flying when he's the pilot??? He's lucky to be alive... (is he still alive?)
Pete, everybody said you couldn't play Apollo 8, but nobody said you couldn't play Apollo 7.
I would be sleeping for sure.
Given enough practice or lack of sleep anyone can sleep anywhere. I have slept on planes, trains, ships, cars and even concrete. Seriously, sleeping in space is actually dangerous for some people, they can chock on their stomach fluids. This was a condition that NASA doctors check for.
I like the idea of being able to sleep in space! Other than that who knows
pilot fatigue is probably one very large reason you could fall asleep.
As a pilot, I cannot sleep on planes.
+AnthonyPPL3708822 - I was amused of the irony of the statement, "I can't sleep on an airplane if I'm not the pilot."
"I'll think I'll just take a quick nap"
*Woken five minutes later by everyone else on board screaming that they're going to crash*
Pete Conrad was a great guy. One of my favorite astronauts. It was a sad day when heard he crashed his motorcycle and died.
bremms1 He did, internal injuries. :(
Oh, fuck ya I'd sleep in space!
i would be so nice to sleep up there
With a centaur booster they may have done it.
You may be cool, but you’ll never be Dick Gordon falling asleep 853 miles above the Earth while on a spacewalk cool 😎
Van Allen belts 800 mile orbit? How long? Oops?
Your pronunciation of Gemini is different to how I've ever heard.
I've only ever heard it as "me n-eye", where your more like "me ne"
Is your pronunciation the way NASA did, or just different? Just wondering if there's a story.
John Grayson
That's her Canadian accent.
Listen to how NASA says it in their old videos. She is correct.
Teh erth is a conical, o k ?
Interesting videos, but could you talk a little slower?
As asked from Amy T. 2:The idea of going to the moon in the proposed configuration was a dangerous dangerous idea.If you go all the way back to Nazi Germany, you will observe they had both the propulsion and the booster construction technologies, but they did not have the wherewithal on life support factors for the crew.If you go forwards to the time of the Gemini space effort, same thing.
Even into the shuttle program.You see tremendous rocket engines along with solid boosters, however the care and watchfulness over the shuttle orbiter, was not there.This was for conflicted intended use and or economic reasons that issues had been this way._
In order for the shuttles to have been built correctly, they should have started four prototypes all at once.I feel that with the Russians that they short stopped their efforts because of the apparent difficulty with the thermal protective layer. But know the U.S., as far as space craft production, was in the habit of finishing what they had started._
Reference the side by side construction of the X--15s?What you begin to see there is a uniformity of work flow, information and information upgrade. Additionally' a flow and a better overall ideas of mission construction scope goals, which is unified when you flight-line build your spacecraft, during the primary construction phase?!
Notes *There is or could have been a lead tin or borate mixture of some sort sprayed upon the aluminum foil insulation on the Gemini, which would have greatly reduced the higher than usual radiation factor.However I don't feel that the primary builders were thinking that far ahead, then.
Lead can stop radiation at certain strengths with respects to a Source that is emitting a radioactive beam consisting of alpha, beta, or gamma radiation.If one goes one step further and can add borate to some degree in a light lead mixture, you may also achieve diffraction of incoming radiation, which may act as a trap for those rays.
They just plain were not using their thinking caps at that time.
vrendus522 Your right, Nazi Germany definitely did not have life support tech for supporting flight crews and they didn't have the advanced technology to build propulsion systems (F-1 engine for example) on the scale of the Saturn-V. But they were basically just building guided bombs.Gemini 7 orbited the Earth for two weeks or slightly longer than any of the Apollo manned missions. The life support technology was there and that was in fact, one of the goals of project Gemini...demonstrate long duration spaceflight, and Gemini 7 did just that.The shuttle program had quality assurance (the lack of care and watchfulness you mentioned) just as prior NASA manned flight programs did. An army of workers including quality assurance and quality engineering, both contractor and NASA was one of the reasons the shuttle ended up being so expensive. The Russians under Yeltsin did not see a real need for a Russian shuttle system. But like you, I suspect there were serious problems with the TPS on their orbiters. In any case, there was no official cancellation date to my knowledge. The Russian shuttle system was simply allowed to rot as Amy S. T. suggested. Lack of funding after the Soviet collapse killed any hope of the Russian system (Generally known as Energia Buran) from seeing service. One orbiter (I think it was Buran) was actually destroyed along with an Energia booster when the hangar facility roof collapsed in 2002.Starting four prototypes of anything at once does not guarantee any machine will be properly built. For one thing, staggered production techniques allow lessons learned on earlier vehicles could be applied to later ones. Case in point, the replacement of some lower temp thermal tiles with blankets as each new orbiter came on line. And it should be noted the 1973 shuttle traffic model was for production of 7 orbiters. Budget cuts reduced that number to 5. The Enterprise was to be put into space service last, but further budget reductions killed that idea.The X-15 was started on different dates and completed on different dates. Production can run concurrently as in several vehicles being in various stages of production, but even the 3 flightworthy X-15's were not started all at once as evidenced by the factory rollout dates shown in the link below.history.nasa.gov/x15/chrono.htmlAs for radiation on Gemini 11, even at 850 miles, the mission didn't come close enough to the highest concentration of the VA belts to warrant additional precautions. Spray on coating would add weight to the Gemini vehicle. Not much weight maybe, but the trade off was probably not worth the effort if NASA understood the belts well enough to allow the record setting mission. Conrad and Gordon didn't seem to have been affected in any case. Conrad was killed in a motorcycle crash in 1999, aged 69. Gordon is 85 years old and retired. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Allen_radiation_belt
Thanks for the detailed reply.I wished that they would have built them this way, the shuttles under one great flight line, but there is the problem of upgrades later on.I dont think that the shuttle was to be for long, now that I look back.The time that it did fly was incredible though._I personally feel that the project was dead-horsed to begin with.It just did not seem to me that overall care of the development of the project was that good.That crew module as it's placed on the shuttle, could have been hardened and afforded an almost standard heavy cargo parachute.This would have been an armored installation.The lines feeding into that crew module could have been made quick release of guitined, so if the shuttle were lost, at least the crew flight deck would have survived.In the challenger accident, they found that the astronauts lived all the way down to the surface of the ocean, but died upon impact.They said a few broken bones, but if this crew module was afforded a tough-out section, the parachute might have along with some level of flotation save them.I guess that my comments were of a defensive nature.When you poll your construction phases comparatively, ideas sometimes get flowing.I feel that this program was a wounded bird to begin with, but this is only my opinion.
vrendus522 The shuttle was definitely not given the support Apollo was. When the shuttle was approved, it's development budget was capped at $5.5B (1971 dollars). The original budget was for a $10B program involving an orbiter and a flyback booster which comprised a fully reusable system. The shuttle was projected to fly 512 flights into 1991 if I recall right...or close to 60 flights a year, 7 orbiters. And that assumed a March 1978 start date which was the original planned launch date for what became STS-1. NASA studied every possible way it could to provide better crew survivability. They did not like man rating SRBs, they wanted "Go around" jet engines for botched landing attempts, crew escape module, the works. All were deleted due to budget cuts and weight considerations and by 1984, the projected flight rate dropped to 24 annually which the shuttle never achieved. There is a book I highly recommend if you can find it called "Space Shuttle The History Of Developing The Space Transportation System" by Dennis R. Jenkins. It may be on Amazon and it shows just how extensively the shuttle was studied before NASA was finally forced to go with the compromise design. Despite the shuttle being a compromise, it was a spectacular technical success. We were the only Nation on Earth to repeatedly reuse five spaceworthy orbiters (Average 25 times per orbiter) and booster segments. but the shuttle was an equally spectacular economic failure. In my opinion, human spaceflight gradually suffered over the years the shuttle was in operation due to chronic budget shortfalls, lack of public and political interest and then suffered a major blow with the Challenger accident. The USAF wanted a 32.5 ton payload capacity to equatorial orbit (Reduced post Challenger to 25 tons.) while NASA wanted a more modest 10-15 ton capacity from the start. And of course, the AF didn't want to share the cost of the shuttles development. They even siphoned limited funds from the shuttle to support the B-1B project. The space station development story was a joke. The 1980s saw space station design and redesign by what I called Congressional space engineers. It even took longer to get the space station facility construction underway than it did to meet JFKs deadline in getting to the moon. I firmly believe NASA human spaceflight in the US would have ended permanently with the Apollo Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) had the shuttle not been approved, developed and operated.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Transportation_Systemen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_program
The shuttle program was a wonderful exercise in getting Earth Based mankind into the low realm of space."There's a man in the window".Dennis Hopper Easy Rider, the movie.Thanks
vrendus522
One of the ideas in using the Gemini to go to the moon was, if they thought the Russians were going to beat us, to use the Agena to boost the Gemini to do a loop around the moon. Not go into orbit around the moon, but a mere flyby, just to beat the Russians, so we could say we were the first to the moon. It wouldn't have been the spectacular that Apollo 8 was. There would have been no TV, for instance, and it's interesting to speculate what the reaction to such a flight would have been in 1966 vs. 1968. From what I know about Gemini (just from books, I'm no professional), this Gemini moon flight was definitely a feasible idea. It would have been risky, considering the spotty record of the Agena. Because the Russians were fumbling around with their own space program during those years (they didn't launch a single manned flight during the entire duration of Project Gemini), the Gemini moon mission was unnecessary.
I sleep in zero g exclusively.
Can I have your t-shirt please ?
You mean the earth isn't flat?
Im gonna be honest, i click on these videos because she is soooooooooo attractive...
From what I've learned, the Apollo 10 ascent mod was deliberately under fueled so the crew could not take history into its own hands and make the first landing. A lot of competitiveness among those crews.
David Olie You mean the descent mod. The ascent mod had small tanks already, and needed full fueling to do its rendezvous with the CM, so the descent stage was under fueled.