- Year
- 1977
- By
- Hacker, Barton C. / Grimwood, James M.
- Section
- Gemini
- Shelf
- R11
- Catalog
- Catalog F · NASA Missions
NASA SP-4203, the official program history of the ten-flight manned Gemini program that bridged Mercury and Apollo, with a foreword by Charles W. Mathews, who had headed the Gemini Program Office.
The narrative runs from Gemini’s origins as a scaled-up two-man Mercury capsule through its near-cancellation crises, the loss of an Agena target vehicle to a launch failure, the improvised Gemini VI/VII rendezvous flown as each other’s target, Gemini VIII’s uncontrolled spin after the first docking in space, and the extravehicular-activity difficulties worked out mission by mission, closing with an epilogue on the Gemini Earth-photography program.
This copy carries the elaborate personal bookplate of Robert C. Seamans Jr., who as NASA’s Associate Administrator (1960–1965) and then Deputy Administrator (1965–1968) had direct responsibility for the program the book documents, before going on to serve as Secretary of the Air Force and president of the National Academy of Engineering.
