Aborted Launch - Gemini 6 (CBS)
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- čas přidán 27. 05. 2010
- 12th December 1965 - The aborted launch of Gemini 6 as seen on CBS. I have included the start of the broadcast (but the editing between it and the countdown did not come out very well - my apologies).
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I remember watching this and being really disappointed. I didn't understand why they didn't try again a little later. My Dad explained that the astronauts were in danger until back on the ground, that rocket fuel could explode everything; it could take months to find out what went wrong and to fix it before another try. Then I got scared and ran to hide in my closet. If my parents saw I was scared or crying, I knew they wouldn't let me watch anymore. So I said three Hail Marys like my Grandma taught me and came out.
Thanks so much for posting this!
I remember when Challenger and Discovery both did this as well in the Shuttle program.....got so nervous (I was at the 41-D Discovery launch abort in the press site).....could hear my heart pounding in my ears - can't imagine being part of the crew or Launch Control personnel I think my blood pressure would have hit new highs for humans....
Fantastic story!!!
Marie Katherine Great story! I don’t remember the Gemini launches but from watched from Apollo 11 on.
Wow, smart kid to notice that crying would cause you to not be allowed to watch this stuff anymore.
I was dense as a brick
The on-board flight clock actually started, which indicates actual lift-off. If the ship had lifted off it would have crashed back down and an ejection would have been the only option in order to save the lives of Schirra and Stafford. Fortunately Schirra didn't believe the ship had lifted off and decided not to eject. This was a split-second life or death decision he had to make, and he made the right one.
The balls on these men was beyond belief.
This is in part why Deke Slayton always made sure a test pilot served as a commander of the Gemini and (all but the last) Apollo missions (Gene Cernan being the only Apollo lunar landing mission commander to not be a test pilot).
Also, Al Bean (who was responsible for watching the booster) didn't call liftoff, as he shouldn't have
I just love the Bwoooop of the Titian 2 starter cartage!! I did not like the screech of the engine shutdown. :)
Same here. Sounds like a banshee. I only recently learned what that sound was. Never meant to be man rated, just a bad ass missile.
The sound is cool, but talking with some gentleman that actually worked on the Titan rocket when it was used as a satellite launcher, the sound was not the start cartridge itself, but actually the gear train that connected the gas generator turbine to the fuel and oxidizer pumps. Also the oil in those gearboxes had to be changed ever 6 months and cost $5,000.
Gemini 7 saw the engines start up . . . _from space_. That's awesome.
Ah, Jack King... the quintessential voice of authority during America's space program!
Especially when you get these noodniks yammering about SpaceX and New Shepard launches… 🤮
@@kevinmcgovern5110 I wish they would just shut up!
My man! Compared with Jack King they sound like they have diarrhea of the mouth.
@@richcook2007The current NASA PAI staff at JSC are even worse. The Artemis launch was a new low; the announcer seemed to have no clue what was going on.
Wally was cool as a cucumber. That was seat of the pants flying. he felt on the seat what was happening. Pure test pilot and experience.
Ok ...we're still here breathing.
It was a computer automated abort
You mean seat-of-the-pants sitting and watching things happen.
@@zelmoziggy I think he means Schirra and Stafford had every opportunity to eject themselves (within about a three second timeframe) and did not. When the engines ignited, but the rocket didn’t lift, they could have ejected, which, who knows where they may have ended up and how that may have felt upon landing.
Spent so long looking for the Titan II launch sound and when I finally find I also get the shutdown sound as reward!
I remember watching this "launch" with my Dad.
He told me many years later that I said "Oh Well" and I went back to bed!
Thank you so much for posting this video! I had been looking for footage of this incident for a long time. This is the one pad abort that's worse than STS-68's pad abort, which occurred at T-1.9 seconds from liftoff. The crew is very fortunate that the pyrotechnic bolts didn't release otherwise the rocket could have exploded on impact even at an inch or two. Schirra and Stafford are TRUE space heroes.
I was ten years old when I watched Gemini 6. I remember like yesterday my heart was pounding. I watched mercury Gemini and Apollo launches. I loved listening to Jack King his voice was great during these launches. thanks for posting this video
Welcome Joe! Thanks for your comment
Ah, Jack King... the quintessential voice of authority during America's space program!
Cool-as-Ice Schirra felt like he hadn't lifted off the pad even though his instrumentation said he had. Made a gutsy call NOT to eject, saving the mission.
i would imagine that liftoff in a rocket would be a very obvious thing to feel
@@demonikfunk after listening to astronaut interviews it's not really obvious that it has lifted off.
Not ejecting saved their lives. They were in a 100% oxygen atmosphere. They would have incinerated themselves.
I remember hearing that Wally said, "We're just sitting here, breathing."
Ejection on the pad would have been a VERY dangerous procedure -- the ejection seats were angled slightly to give them some altitude for parachutes to open, but not very much. The primary presumption with ejection seats is you are already off the ground far enough for parachutes to open.
I remember seeing this as a kid. I also remember a few days later the news media saying that Schirra's heartrate barely rose when this happened - he was extremely cool under pressure.
First rule of spaceflight personified during this launch attempt; If you don't know what to do: DON'T DO ANYTHING!
Love Beowulf Schaeffer
...least ye step into shit.
I heard later that day that church attendance that Sunday morning, especially on the East Coast (where the launch attempt was at 9:54 A.M. Eastern time) was way down with people staying home to see it on TV.
I also heard that some churches put TV sets in their chapels so parishioners would be able to see the launch attempt, and once things at Cape Canaveral settled down, services began with, in this case, priests, ministers, and pastors leading prayers of thanks that the astronauts were okay.
That Borman saw the launch and shutdown from orbit is fascinating. He and Lovell had seen a submarine Polaris test launch a few days before this, saw a Minuteman reenter the atmosphere, and caught a glimpse of the successful Gemini VI launch three days later.
catguta Well, Borman said he saw it. I doubt if he saw the Titan rocket itself. I think he could have seen the cloud.
catguta In his 1963 Mercury flight, Gordon Cooper saw a lot of detail from orbit. A lot of people didn't believe him, but NASA decided to run visual observation tests on Gemini flights, including Cooper's own Gemini 5 in August, 1965.
These tests often involved placing tarps, 2-by-4's set-up in patterns, and agricultural fields cut in certain ways underneath the spacecraft's orbital paths.
Tests made by astronauts since the 1960's have proven that the human eye can see quite a lot of things on the ground from a low Earth orbit of about 100 to 200 miles.
Frank Borman probably saw a bright dot from his perch in Gemini 7 some 180 miles up, which faded. The bright dot was the ignition, the fading was the shutdown.
I don't think its that amazing. Go up 200 miles in Google Earth and you can see a ton of things.
Maybe I am easily amazed?
Seeing two launches from orbit and one re-entry would do it for me.
Yeah. I'm just that easy to please.
+catguta When you are up on a mountain or in a building, you can see about 35 miles, until the heavy atmosphere and curvature of the earth basically reduce visibility to zero. To see things on the ground from LEO, you are only looking through about 5 miles of dense atmosphere. Hence, you can actually see some types of things from a long way off (like explosions, or anything that generates light).
Nice to hear these voices again. I grew up with them!
I've never been convinced that ejecting into a burning cloud of hydrazine was going to do anything other than kill the astronaut in multiple ways.
They are wearing a full pressure suit.
@@hoghogwild They would have ejected horizontally out of the spacecraft which was only about 80ft above the ground. Not enough time for their chutes to open. I think one of them joked later that their chutes would've opened about 50 feet after they landed in the dirt.
@@Petefx86 Probably Wally Schirra. He'd be the type to express gallows humour.
Hydrazine and red fuming nitric acid. The red cloud is mainly red fuming nitric acid.
@@knobdikker it’s actually Aerozine 50 (mix of UDMH (unsymmetrical dymethyll hydrazine) and hydrazine) as the fuel and Nitrogen tetroxide as the oxidiser if I remember correctly.
IRFNA was used on the agena as oxidiser and UDMH as fuel
My mom would let me stay home from school to watch these launches
No problem on the editing. I'm just thankful I (and we) can see these gems! Nothing like as-it-happened TV coverage...historic stuff. Give me the old days of news coverage.
Pumps grinding to a hault. Damn that sounded violent.
I was a copy boy at the Denver Post when this happened and I remember reading a wire service report off a teletype machine of the successful launch of Gemini 6 that day. The wire services would write stories in advance with a "hold for release" contingent on some event happening.
Walter Cronkite was awesome when anchoring NASA missions.
And the fact he did his homework. That's a sign of a true pro.
Wally Schirra: "I said LAUNCH, not "LUNCH"! ;)
Awesome reference! Loved "Far Out Space Nuts"
Reinvention of the word: BALLS. Now that's BALLS!!!
@TheSpiritof1969 The Titan II was a military missile and used storable, hypergolic, propellants. They would burn but not explode so Gemini had ejection seats. While not a fun ride they should have been sufficient to clear the pad if something had gone really wrong. What was amazing was that the instruments told Wally Schirra that the clock had started but he physically knew the rocket wasn't moving. That instinct told him not to pull the ejection handle that would have ruined the mission.
I remember watching this one live and everyone holding their breath wondering what may happen next ...
I was a little kid, and I erupted in tears. My parents kept trying to take me out of the room and I wouldn't go. I was *certain* it was going to explode and they were going to be killed.
@Starwing1272 You're right - no zero/zero seats on Gemini. Gemini was originally slated to land using a "para-wing", which looked like a hang glider, rather than chutes. The seats were designed for an ejection due to para-wing failure. When the para-wing concept was scrapped, the spacraft design had already been locked down, so they kept the seats. A pad eject was always questionable not only due to lack of 0/0 seats, but also because the Titan rocket smoke plume is highly toxic and corrosive
It takes a special kind of man not to take an involuntary dump in a situation like this!
I was watching this with my dad and uncle, while playing with a toy rocket.
They considered ejecting. And as Gemini had no launch escape tower like Mercury and Apollo, that would have meant each astronaut being shot out in a different direction in a system many were not convinced was reliable anway. But if an explosion were seen as likely or imminent, they would have been flung out, with great risk of death or injury.
The failure analysis determined that the reason it did not launch was due to the sheer weight of Wally Schirra's balls. They added more fuel and finally flew.
"5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0 *screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeech*"
I believe that’s the turbine running the engine.
But there’s a video about it on the channel “vintage space”
And then +1, +2 Screeeeeech again as the turbopumps decelerated again as the engines shut down.
Those are the propellant turbopumps. On the Titan these are relatively small. The Saturn V would scream like a moose in labor as each engine was started, you just can't hear them over the roar.
it sounds like a car crash 😳
Startup sounded awesome
This abort was very scary! The fact that Wally Schirra didn't abort and kept his cool is to be lauded. They launched either the next day or the one after that and rendezvoused with Gemini 7. Gemini 7 was up there, in a smelly capsule with Jim Lovell and Frank Borman orbiting Earth for a full two weeks. But this mission was just another milestone that got us to the Moon by the summer of 1969.
As Gomer Pyle used to say, "Well, surprise, surprise!!"
james woody Also if you figure you are asking for an ICBM to stop launch once the engines start firing. that is CLOSE!!!
skyprop Too close for any kind of comfort!
james woody The actual Gemini 6 launch came three days later, on December 15th.
Did you mean,three days later?
The screeching whooshing sound you hear maybe created by the Kaufman starter cartridge beginning the launch process.
Jeffrey314159 pretty sure everyone interested in this video knows that😉
@@ethanjogola2718 I didn't. Wiseass. :p
Then why is the same screech heard when the Shuttle/SLS main engines shut down?
Countdown timer on the screen. Cutting-edge stuff back then!
The answer is - very carefully! In Gemini and Apollo they used a bag that was sealed to the skin with an adhesive, that, according to Jim Lovell meant that if you had any amount of hair "down there" you darn near killed yourself trying to get it off. Each bag contained a disinfectant which the astros had to squeeze the contents together with and a small wetwipe to clean themselves with. On Apollo astros say it took an hour to do, they stripped naked to do it and passed oxygen masks to crewmates!
So you wanna be an astronaut?
Project Gemini - Two Weeks in a Soiled Diaper.
@HeliosPhoenix I think that's the turbopump assemblies spooling up in the engines. These were actuated by the release of Nitrogen stored in two K bottles at 3000 PSI. and supplied the fule mix to the combustion chamber of the engines.
RIP Elliot See.
...and Bassett... the two gave all.
A shipping dust cover on one of the engine pumps had not been removed during assembly of the rocket motors......they figured this out right away and took only a few days to turn the Titan ll around and launch Gemini 6.
Today is 12/12/12.This happened 47 years ago today.It was m mother's 40th birthday.I was 18.I wasn't sure if they were going to rendezvous with Gemini 7 or not. i went on to church and somebody with a radio finally got the message we would launch three days later.I was relieved.When it was launched and they rendezvoused with Gemini 7,I knew we had finally passed the Russians.We launched two manned vehicles in spaced like they had only in our case it wasn't planned that way.
Astronauts had fears like everyone else, The difference is that they rarely panicked and kept on focusing on resolving the problem instead of crying about it.
I THIRD the above comments. :) Thank you again for locating and posting these gems!
Yeah, that is what I recall also. The pull out plug was the size of an old TV camera cable with 81 conductors that would plug in underneath to feed telemetry back to the blockhouse on engineering data. Frank McGee of NBC News demonstrated the size of a cable like that, one from a (TV camera), in the New York studio. The pull out plug dropped just a split second before it was supposed to and that it caused the rocket computer logic to make the decision of the shutdown, if I remember it right?
No that was on one of the early Mercury Redstones, unmanned test flight. On this launch a plastic cover was forgotten in place in one of the propellant ducts and it slowed the thrust buildup enough that it triggered an automatic shutdown abort. Later! OL J R :)
..I remember watching this live...
Very important in the Gemini to Apollo program on learning how to dock and do EVA's.
Actually based on the flight rules, they SHOULD have ejected just in case the vehicle was released from the pad; the crew recognized they hadn't moved and decided not to punch out.
Much more dangerous than a Shuttle RSLS Abort, due to the nature of the Titan rocket (requires a certain amount of pressure to keep from collapsing) and also the very explosive and toxic hypergolic propellants.
The reason for the abort was due to a rushed preparation of the GT-6 rocket. Gemini 7 launched on the same pad bearly a week before after Gemini 6 was scrubbed due to the loss of its Agena docking target vehicle. The idea was then floated to use Gemini 7 as a target for Gemini 6 (a time and money savings). The only issue was the rushed prep of the GT6 stack. During the prep, a dust cover was inadvertently left in the engine that caused a loss of fuel pressure. As luck would have it, a plug fell out of the bottom of the booster right at engine start which triggered the abort. Had it not, the booster would have lifted but probably fell back on the pad.
Most astronauts did not like to idea of the ejection seats. Ejecring into that orange cloud of hypergolic oxidizer would be a fate worse than death.
I remember one of my teachers saying she felt like she almost had a heart attack watching this.
Often overlooked, but this was as close as it gets 😓
@DumbYankies I think I'm right in saying taht Gemini 6 was the failed launch and Gemini 6A was the actual launch a little later. Correct me if I'm wrong
Talk about remaining cool under pressure.
I remember one of the space shuttle launches was aborted right after main engine ignition. Don't recall which one?I remember this one too!
I remember seeing this.I was used to the countdown reaching 0 and the engines igniting and the rocket taking off.It was scary to see the engines ignite and the rocket just sitting on the launch pad.I didn't know what caused it,but thought that rendezvous with Gemeni 7 wasn't going to happen.I was relieved when Schirra and Stafford were out of danger and that they rescheduled the flight for three days later.This was day 8 in the Gemini 7 flight and on day 11 they did it and returned the next day.
I remember this distinctly, sitting watching our black & white TV in Reno NV, the rocket starting and then stopping. Pretty disappointing for a little kid, I had no idea that the commander almost hit the launch escape system. I was enraptured with the progress of the Gemini flights and spacecraft. It's impossible to communicate to a younger person how big a deal space was back then. You only had 4 or 5 channels on TV and at least three of them would be tuned to the flights.
Wow! Now that was close. Kudos to the engineers..
that screeching sound you hear, is the turbo pumps slamming to a halt within a second
Anon ymous Agreed as well as the Main fuel Valves!
Anon ymous The screeching sound at engine start is the so-called "Titan screech," audible in every Titan launch and well-known to Cape engineers. It is very unlikely the turbopumps "slammed to a halt," or there would never have been a launch of the same ship three days later. My guess is that even in abort mode the turbos are allowed to spin down to zero RPM at their own pace. The several loud noises AFTER shutdown are more likely mechanical adjustments being made by the computers to "safe" the vehicle: fuel valves closing, pressure relief valves and propellant tank vent doors opening, etc. These sounds were new to most observers and could only be heard because the main engines had stopped running.
the sound is caused by the starter cartridge driving the turbo pumps pressurizing the Oxidizer & Fuel lines. All of the Titan II fuel systems used a solid fuel starter cartridge to get the pumps going fast, this is a feature of the 'fast launch' missile system that the ManRated Titans shared with the ICBM models.
Actually, all of you claiming the sound is the turbopump starter cartridges are right and wrong.
The sound of the starter cartridges are heard, that's the loud WHOOOOP! sound heard an instant before ignition. The sound being the turbopumps coming rapidly up to speed.
Then there is the blast of ignition and immediate cutoff. The instant after the cutoff is the screeching sound to which anon ymous is referring to. You all are referring to two completely different sounds.
I agree it's NOT the turbopumps "slamming to a halt" as he claims, I don't know what it is. But I do know this... He is referring to a screeching an instant AFTER shutdown. The sound you guys are correcting him on is an instant before ignition.
Two different sounds.
Cg23sailor Could be pressure being released. Titans were touchy in the best of times. Just saw a show on Netflix (Command and Control) about a Titan ICBM that blew up in it's silo in Demascus Arkansas after a repair crew dropped a tool and it hit the fuel tank in the 1st stage.
stunningly clear video. Almost better than modern shuttle stuff. This is Gemini 6A isnt it??? Much better commentary, even by the media types, back then than the dribble you get today which has been dumbed down unbelievably.
I'd love to see what Gemini 7 saw from orbit!
Probably saw the big yellow plume of smoke similar to what they saw from ISS after the WTC collapse
I believe that the twin Gemini 7/6 mission was the only time in the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo era that Walter Cronkite anchored a manned launch from the New York studio and not from the Cape.
"Ugh, Cape Canaveral... I am going to need to change my spacesuit"
"Roger that Wally, standby one"
I am almost certain that happened as well.
Not with Wally Schirra.
What was that huge cloud of smoke on the left just as the countdown hit zero?
"Control, this is Gemini, we are in need of an immediate diaper change......"
They didn't even pull the LES though, you should give them more credit :D
That sure is one LOADED diaper.
The Titan sounds like a wounded beast - we forget about the pumps used to push fuel into the engines.
I was 13 years old and I remember seeing this live.
There's a video on you tube labeled "Atlas-Centaur 5 pad fallback, 1965" very scary looking. Good thing that the Gemini 6A Titan II did not let go of the pad after the shutdown.
2:12 to 2:20 Scariest sound you will ever hear at a rocket launch. The sounds you hear are the Titan's engines igniting, throttling, and then violently shutting down, which caused the metal skin on the rocket to groan and creak. Amazing that the safety system shut it down before the entire thing exploded.
Poor Gemini 6! That's the second time the mission was aborted before they could get going!
I wonder how loud that sound was at 2:11 irl
+The Monty Cat
You would go deaf if you stood too close. I don't know exactly how loud, but too loud would be an accurate description.
It was probably loud enough to rattle windows and china in cupboards five miles away. In the 1970s I lived near a rocket test facility, and the sound from rockets in the thrust range of the Titan was so loud that even a deaf person would have felt it.
Gemini had ejection seats...no escape tower. Schirra clearly felt safer sitting on a bomb than pulling that eject button.
Especially since they were still on the pad. I don' t know what they could have done to get the crew to eject and then deploy the chutes fast enough for them to do any good before the astronauts hit the ground.
Was this a computer shutdown or a manual shutdown? And if manual, who shut it down? The astronauts or flight control employees? Thanks for posting. Dramatic stuff, indeed!
I just learned that the reason the rocket failed was that technicians forgot to remove a plastic dust cover from the oxidizer inlet manifold inside the gas generator. One engine started but one failed to start so it shut down.
Unusual piece of flight test trivia - 12 December is a hazardous day:
12 December 1953 - Chuck Yeager's Mach 2.44 flight in the X1-A at Edwards ("Operation NACA Weep"); major inertia coupling event sends X1-A out of control and into a 51000 foot dive/spin before Yeager is able to recover control and land.
12 December 1965 - GT6-A launch pad abort shown here.
No.
Gemini 6 never left the pad.
Mercury-Redstone 1 did apparently go up for about four inches and settled back harmlessly on the pad, causing the escape tower to jettison and the parachutes to come out of the capsule. You can find film of it elsewhere on You Tube.
here you go, known as the 4 inch flight. czcams.com/video/p0w_xyePC_0/video.html
those engineers can sure design a manifold....
pretty good timing. the umbilicals did not retract.
In a crowd full of guys with big balls on that day Wally Schirra had the biggest set of balls of them all
Schirra would have been the first man on the Moon if he didn't lead the mutiny on Apollo 7
Nicky - Wally had already told Deke Slayton this would be his last flight, so I dont think he was in the running for the 1st on the moon and crew rotations meant he was probably down the pecking order after 7. If he had stayed he would probably have BU an early Apollo landing flight as CDR and flown on the 14-17 series.
Schirra must have made up his mind way before the launch that if this scenario happened that he would not abort the mission. So this is not a completely surprising event. As long as the rocket did not move, he would not abort.
I know this is 6 years late. LOL
That is why they picked test pilots in the beginning, assess the problem and then react.
Plus Wally Schara was a pretty cool cucumber if anyone was to be in the commanders seat it was him.
I remember seeing this when it happened.
Same here. I was in first grade and had just turned six!
@lunarmodule5 i wold like to thank you for posting these marvelous clips. This was the United States at it's height of greatness.
The men and women that worked in the manned space program were pure genious
Reportedly, Schirra announced to NASA before Apollo 7 that he would leave the program after the flight, after reportedly being offered command of an early lunar landing mission.
Was this the famous "4 inch flight"?
I have no idea how Gemini 7 could have seen this.
Of course, this reminds me of Apollo 17's pretty scary, cut off with about 30 seconds to go before launch with smoke or vapors shooting out of the center of the rocket.
7 would have been almost directly over the pad at the time of the launch, and they knew exactly where to look.
Based on the number of people on-board the ISS who've seen launches from either the Cape or Baikonur, it's apparently not hard to do if there's little or no cloud cover.
The astronauts needed to see the "abort" light come on in the capsule (and hear it said over the radio) before they would eject. Neither happened. Mission control in those days was as cool as the other side of the pillow.
Incorrect. The flight clock started and by mission rules they should've ejected. They didn't feel any upward movement so they didn't eject.
Didnt know the LR-87 had a shutdown scream as well.
They misnamed this mission here. It's actually Gemini 6A. The original Gemini 6 was cancelled when the Agena Targeting Vehicle was destroyed during launch.
There is an abort water spray that automatically sprays inside the engine to prevent any fires after abort. These engines shut down because a plug was accidentally left inside one of the gas generator feed lines.
Cronkite said this is the first time they have had a shutdown on manned space flight. It had happened on unmanned flights,but this was the first one in a manned flight.
This shutdown unerved me as I have never seen it happen before.They were concerned at the cape as well,waiting for the fuel pressure to drop down.The second time Gemini 6 didn't go up and I was wondering if the flight would have no rendezvous with Gemini 7.There was a concern I had that maybe they put Gemini 6 back up too quickly.December 12,1965 was my mother's 40th birthday.I decided to get dressed and go to church.Some guy I knew was listening to it on a radio and finally said it was re-scheduled for Wednesday,December 15.That was such a big relief and gave thanks to God.When it did launch I was still nervous that something might still go wrong but was determined to believe it would not and was pushing the rocket up all the way until it reached orbit.That was such a big relief.On the 4th orbit,it finally rendezvoused with Gemini 7 and I knew we were way ahead of the Russians.
Twice the Russians had launched two manned spacecraft in to orbit during the same mission.We finally did that without having it originally planned that way. On Gemini 7 we found that men could live in space for 14 days and with Gemini 6 we were starting to learn how to return from the moon.
Right....it did not happen again for 19 years when space shuttle Discovery shut down on the pad on what would have been its maiden voyage.
@Skytroop It was reliable enough for the Soviets to not want us to test it on them!
Anyone who doesn't think that Walter M. Schirra was the best astronaut of the Mercury 7 just needs to watch this footage. Going by test pilot instinct instead of by the book saved the mission and likely saved his life as well as Tom Stafford, who went on to also have an illustrious astronaut career. The book said to eject, but ejecting was a very risky proposition (supposedly during one test, the ejection seats blew right through the hatches on the spacecraft, prompting John Young to say "That's one h*** of a headache, but a short one!"
You definitely did not want to exit the spacecraft right after all those propellants spewed out! Even the shuttle astronauts had to wait until the thrusters were purged before getting out.
Holy Crap! This could have been a major disaster!
I like how they couldn't program the timer to countdown in increments of 60 second minutes, so once it went down from 1:00 it just quickly counts down from 99 to 59 before resuming the normal countdown.
Those were the old mechanical/digital clocks; I had an old (new at the time) Sony clock radio with those "flapper" digital mechanisms. Very reliable; worked for years!
Just curious, how long did they sit on the bomb (rocket) before they got out (were extricated)? I would assume not, as least until, the tanks depressurized (the fuse went out)? Were there other concerns?
First thing I noticed as well
If you stop and think about it the Titan II was our primary ICBM for a time. After seeing all the scrubs and delays with this missile during GEMINI one has to wonder how reliable it was and how this impacted out national defense.
Go 2:06 for launch
“Launch”
Had they used the ejection seat, it would have been one hell of a bad headache (a bit a short one) and due to the pure oxygen environment of the Gemini Spacecraft both astronauts would have been turned into human Roman candles.
they definitely had the right stuff.