One False Step by Richard Tongue Read Free Book Online Page A

management – it would weaken the case for Apollo.
     Apollo had been promulgated from the first as the lunar-landing spacecraft. A lot of care was being taken to associate 'Apollo' with the moon; proposals to send the cheaper Gemini to the moon years earlier would have resulted in a lot of questions being asked in relation to the necessity to develop Apollo at all, a spacecraft that all admitted would have superior capabilities to the more primitive Gemini.
     When the plans were submitted again, all mentions that the Gemini might orbit the moon were omitted, with only a vague suggestion that, “if a spacecraft such as the Centaur were used as the docking target, the spacecraft would then have a large velocity potential for more extensive investigations.” The door was left open for a potential flight if the opportunity allowed, but it was retained for in-house studies. Apollo remained supreme.
     The suggestion of using Gemini for lunar flights continued, however. The Gemini Project Manager, Jim Chamberlin, suggested that instead of simply flying around the moon, the Gemini could be used to make a landing on it. This would not use the Titan as a launcher, but would utilise the Saturn launcher being developed for the Apollo program, and would use the lunar-orbital rendezvous technique to land a man on the moon. This plan fitted into the accelerated Gemini program schedule that had been outlined. Gemini 13 and Gemini 14 would have flown the circumlunar mission as previously described, with Gemini 15 going into orbit around the moon. Gemini 16 – in January 1966 – would have landed a man on the moon.
     As an interesting footnote, this was one of the first times that lunar-orbit rendezvous was suggested as the method of landing on the moon, as opposed to the direct-ascent and earth-orbital-rendezvous plans under consideration for Apollo. Although this would be the method eventually adopted for Apollo, it still failed to convince NASA management as an option for Gemini. Were Gemini to be used for the lunar landing, it would have made the funding for Apollo harder to obtain; the mission was simply to land a man on the moon, with no set requirement as to how, and no mention of any sort of scientific program.
     Finally, in order to get the Mercury Mark II project approved, the final submitted development plan excluded any mention of the moon, stripping it down to twelve flights, ten of which would be manned, all of which would be used to support plans for Apollo operations. Even the deep-space sorties were removed from the manifest. There was still some risk at this time that 'Mercury Mark II' might have been skipped in favour of a stripped-down Apollo, known at the time as 'Apollo A'; the final twelve-flight proposal led to its acceptance as the interim program.
     This was far from being the death of Gemini as a lunar-landing vehicle. In 1962, while the discussion over the method of landing on the moon was taking place, a series of studies were commissioned on the best methods of reaching the moon at a realistic cost within the deadline imposed by President Kennedy; as part of a 'Direct Apollo' study, the idea of using Gemini to land on the moon was resurrected.
     Rather than employing any form of rendezvous, this would have used a Saturn booster to land a modified Gemini capsule on the moon itself, equipped with a landing stage to permit it to drop two astronauts onto the moon. (To get a good idea of what this configuration would have looked like, the Robert Altman movie Countdown uses a similar design for its 'Pilgrim' lander.) This design was never more than an in-house design study, but it proved that such a concept was feasible given the capacities of the Gemini system.
     Two years would pass before the idea of using Gemini for lunar applications returned. By 1964, Gemini was beginning its series of missions, and already proving a popular spacecraft. While in Mercury the astronaut was barely more than a