A complex operation involving the coordinated launch of two spacecraft on the same day, since Gemini didn't carry the fuel necessary to chase an Agena in orbit as is standard for rendezvous with a space station. Organising that in and of itself was a significant advance in the space race and provided much operational experience in mission planning and execution. Apollo gets all the big press and glory, but without the groundbreaking experimental work carried out with Project Gemini, the achievements of Apollo would have been impossible.
Nice to see someone giving Project Gemini a little bit of the recognition it so richly deserves. I too realise Apollo would have been impossible without all the work done with Gemini. Project Surveyor also seems to have been forgotten, yet that was how America first learned how to land on the moon. Apollo was an absolutely awesome achievement, but it did so by "standing on the shoulders of giants"!
@@Warriorking.1963 Gemini was unique for several reason, it was the first spacecraft designed from the pilot's perspective, the first to use an on board computer (albeit rudimentary)and the first to use fuel cells in place of batteries, an absolute necessity for going to the moon
Gemini 11, with primary mission being rendezvous & docking of GATV in one orbit, validated the ability to perform same maneuver at the Moon for a LM Ascent stage to meet the CM/SM in orbit.
Notice how back in the day Gemini was pronounced (Gem en eeee)? Ryan Gosling, star of "The First Man" had to correct an English interviewer recently who called it (Gem en eye). In reality, the zodiac term is pronounced "Gem en eye" as per the Wordbook app. But for some strange reason back in the 60s most people referred to the Gemini project with an eeeeee at the end.
That was because of the American accent back in the day, a common stereotype which has become harder and harder to find nowadays as education has encouraged the use of proper English.
Well I am guessing Wiki got it wrong...according to NASA Spaceline - "A launch attempt on May 17, 1966 was scrubbed when the Gemini Agena Target Vehicle (GATV) failed to achieve orbit. The Atlas-Agena launch vehicle guidance system failed due to a short circuit in a servo control circuit."
Scottrchrdsn ..from NASA PAO at the JSC website (Who I would believe more than Wiki).... GT-9 was postponed when TLV 5303 with Gemini Agena target vehicle GATV-5004 malfunctioned on May 17. In its place, a substitute target was used for GT-9A; the Augmented Target Docking Adapter (ATDA) was launched by an Atlas on June 1, 1966 (TLV-5304) from Launch Complex 14. However, GT-9A was not launched the same day as planned due to a guidance system computer problem. After a brief hold, the spacecraft was launched on the 3rd day. GT9A was launched June 3rd....... From SPacelines Mission report for GT9...A launch attempt on May 17, 1966 was scrubbed when the Gemini Agena Target Vehicle (GATV) failed to achieve orbit. The Atlas-Agena launch vehicle guidance system failed due to a short circuit in a servo control circuit. The malfunction caused one of the two Atlas booster engines to pitch downward at Launch Plus 120 seconds, effectively turning the rocket back toward Cape Canaveral. The change in the flight path was sufficient to prevent the GATV from achieving orbit, and it impacted the Atlantic Ocean about 90 miles downrange of Cape Canaveral. Upon the loss of the GATV, NASA decided to launch an Augmented Target Docking Adapter (ATDA) in its place, and Gemini 9 was renamed Gemini 9A. The ATDA, also an Agena-based vehicle, was launched as the second stage of an Atlas-Agena rocket from Cape Canaveral Launch Complex 14 on June 1, 1966. Not to pour scorn on your memory Scott (because that is not my intention here), but history records a different launch schedule. If there was another launch of the Agena or if this flight was scheduled for March but was scrubbed then I stand corrected, but this paticular event happened, according to everyone I know and all the official websites and history books, on May 17th.
***** Well, perhaps, and I remember the ATDA mission also (Buzz Aldrin almost lost his Gemini 12 slot when he suggested that Cernan (I believe it was Cernan) cut a wire on the "angry alligator" shroud with some scissors that were onboard the Gemini 9 spacecraft). Presuming the Agena vehicle went into the drink on May 17th, the NASA website would have one believe that the ATDA was ready within two weeks! Which I find difficult to believe. There may be some date slippages here, I think. Well, no great matter one way or another. This all happened some 48 years ago.
WhiteCamry And a year later (5/27/15) . . . . . Apparently, Wikipedia was subsequently edited to show the following: "Gemini 9's Agena Target Vehicle (ATV) was launched on May 17, 1966 on an Atlas launch vehicle. The Atlas malfunctioned in flight, and the ATV failed to reach orbit.[3] This forced the cancellation ("scrubbing") of the Gemini 9 launch scheduled for later that morning."
Note that when Mission Control in Houston lost data on the Atlas/Agena, CBS cut away from it's animated simulation to a shot of Launch Pad 14 at the Cape, where the rocket had taken off from a few minutes earlier. A knowledgable news producer knew that the rocket might not be on-course, and thus, the animation would not be showing what was really going on. FYI: At the time, CBS owned the Terrytoons animation studio, and it's my guess it was Terrytoons that did the animated simulation.
I think that it would be awesome to have a full mission series of Gemini 9, especially seeing as this had Gene Cernan's famous EVA where NASA first started to get an understanding of how EVAs affect spacesuits and how huge the temperature difference is during the day/night sequences of orbit.
Were it not for the cloud cover at the Cape, TV viewers would have seen the Atlas "hard over" right around BECO and fall towards the ocean. Walter Cronkite (along with ABC's Jules Bergman and NBC's Frank McGee) would all have said "Look at the screen! The Atlas-Agena is off course! It's going to fall into the ocean and the Gemini 9 flight will have to be scrubbed!".
@@eeronat Nope. We landed just the "lander". What was impressive was that it was done with the tech they had at the time. "Landing rockets" would've meant "landing the Saturn V" in '69. Even today most people would laugh at the idea.
The central engine is lit at lift-off. It should've never need re-ignition. Obviously, the talking-heads were confused on this point. The whole point of the original Atlas design was to eliminate second-stage ignition issues -- by not really having one.
Yes, they had a sheet of the timeline, but they (Cronkite, Reynolds, Jules Bergman, Huntley and Brinkley, Eric Sevareid, etc.) also KNEW THEIR STUFF. They weren't just talking heads like today's "pretty boys and pretty girls". They actually knew what they were talking about and you could believe them.
NASA replaced the Atlas-Agena with the more powerful Atlas-Centaur, which launched the Surveyor moon landers. A variant of the Atlas-Centaur is still in use today, Now known as the Atlas 5
Al Chop. He was previously the PR person for Wright Patterson air force base, and the USAF assigned him the duty of handling all inquires about UFO sightings the government knew of anywhere in the world. He later professed that there was more than the government was letting on about.... Also, according to a film about his life, he named his son Chip. Really.
The same thing happened on Gemini 6.GT6 had no mission,so they decided to combine it with Gemini 7,a 14 day flight.The main crew on Gemini 9 was killed in an airplane crash in Feb.,1966.This was the backup crew and Tom Stafford was on Gemini 6 and Gemini 9.It happened again for him.They did have a smaller version of the Agena and they launched that,only the protective shroud failed to detatch and they couldn't dock with it.Stafford said it looked like an angry alligator.
@@bobjohnson4373 No, Gemini 8 had already done a hard docking with an Agena. That was the flight manned by Neil Armstrong and David Scott and the one in which the Gemini suffered the attitude control thruster malfunction that sent the docked craft into an uncontrollable spin that Armstrong had to null out and still save enough fuel to deorbit and return safely to Earth.
@@LordZontar It wasn't a malfunction. Don't know how that story got spread. David Scott entered the wrong command into the Agena. Instead of what he was supposed to enter, he entered "Start Yaw" which turned on the yaw thrusters. They couldn't figure out what they had done, so they detached, but then it took them a while to figure out how to stop the spinning. I guess people think telling the truth of the story somehow makes the astronauts look bad, but humans make mistakes.
Most likely no. At that altitude some things may have happened. 1) An explosion of the target vehicle. Result: Total loss 2) Survives explosion but breaks up due to atmospheric forces. Result: Total loss 3) Somehow survives atmospheric forces and smashes into the ocean. Result: Total loss. It was traveling so fast by the time they lost signal the atmosphere or the ocean would have had its way with Agena. EDIT: Sorry you had to wait 8 years. Hopefully you found your answer much sooner.
@@ludicrousspeed8177 The Atlas' booster had one engine gimbal when it wasn't supposed to. The rocket performed a "hard over" and dove, powered, into the Atllantic.
No, because it most likely broke into small pieces when it hit the water; besides they did not have the recovery technology back then like they do today
Conspiracy nuts, and other assorted morons who don't want to believe this is real but can't disprove it, so like a spoiled child they think they can feel important by disliking it, to make up for their sad lives.
I always thought the sustainer started on the pad so they could verify all engines before liftoff. Thought that's why they chose the atlas for first manned orbital flights.
It did ignite, but because the sustainer engine is optimized for high altitudes/vacuum, the engine exhaust is over-expanded compared to the booster engines, so it looks more like flames then a rocket exhaust plume. Also, the exhaust from the turbopumps gets dumped overboard via a separate exhaust pipe, which also causes a flamethrower-like appearance. As the Atlas gets higher in altitude and the outside pressure better matches the exhaust pressure, it will look more like a proper rocket exhaust. It appears Mr. Cronkite just got his words mixed up a little bit.
In the book "On The Shoulders Of Titans," the NASA history of the Gemini program (look it up if you don't know it,) the poor record of Atlas/Agena in relation to the Gemini program was unbelievable. It's pretty bad to think they were associated with a manned program. But otherwise it was a reliable vehicle, go figure. I think there were three failures. I don't remember whether that included the "angry alligator." That one was simply mismanaged. They never should have changed contractors like that.
Fifty State To many cooks in the kitchen on that one. The contractor who made the augmented docking target (as a replacement for the Agena that was lost) insisted on doing the installation at the pad rather than the normal team. Annnnd they beeped it up. They managed to tape a lanyard on the aero-shroud and it fouled up the sep.
Actually, in that book it indicates that the failure in this flight was not due to a failure of the Agena, but a failure of the Atlas ... You would not know that from watching the video of the launch. It was only later that they knew that it was the Atlas that failed.
There were 2 Agena failures,one on Gemini 6,the other on Gemini 9. The "angry alligator " was the augmented docking adapter which occurred on Gemini 9 ,it was the one and only time the ATDA was used; Apparently an electrical connection was not properly made and the protective launch shroud did not fully separate prompting Tom Stafford to dub it "the angry alligator "
@@dsny7333 There was no problem with the electrical connection - the strap that held the fairing was supposed to be installed with the end free, the McDonnell people taped it down, and the tape held it closed.
There were changes made from the standard Agena engine start configuration at NASA request, when the engine failed, they switched it back to the normal start sequence and had no more problems with it.
An investigation into the failure concluded that it was most likely caused by design modifications to the GATV versus a standard Agena D stage. The Agena D was designed to have its engine restarted just once while the GATV would need to be restarted five times. While a standard Agena D pumped oxidizer into the combustion chamber first and then followed with the fuel, the GATV was modified to do the reverse because the normal start method had a tendency to leak oxidizer. While this would not be a problem for the Agena D with its single restart, the multi-restart GATV would eventually lose all of its oxidizer before the stage's operating life (which would last weeks instead of hours) could be completed. Unfortunately, pumping the fuel into the combustion chamber first caused the engine to backfire and rupture from mechanical shock. It was found out that Lockheed engineers did not properly test the GATV to root out this problem (it had been tested at a simulated altitude of 21 miles up when actual Agena engine start would occur at around 75 miles up). The solution to the problem was switching back to the normal oxidizer-first engine start and also testing the GATV in appropriate conditions. Bell Aerosystems, the manufacturer of the Agena's engine, were also instructed to perform further ground-level tests.
That was Gemini 6. Gemini 9's ATV was destroyed when one of the Atlas' booster rocket engines gimballed and turned the Atlas Agena almost 180° in the opposite direction and the stack plunged into the drink. With the cloud cover, nobody saw it.
What was going on? Was the RSO taking a nap? As soon as that rocket started veering off course, it should have been destroyed. It should never have been allowed to start heading back toward the coast.
+Kyle Tekaucic at 6:33 you can hear a voice in the background say something about range safety then PAO announces Gene Kranz is attempting to "raise" the RSO at Cape Kennedy with no success.
I hate that they use standard units of measurement. Yeah I know it's the US but it makes things really irritating when I'm trying to recreate these things and I have to convert to metric all the time.
We believe we built the rocket, so we used our measurements. You are of course free to build your own rocket using whatever system of measurement you like.
R.I.P. Jack King, the Voice Of Launch Control.
A complex operation involving the coordinated launch of two spacecraft on the same day, since Gemini didn't carry the fuel necessary to chase an Agena in orbit as is standard for rendezvous with a space station. Organising that in and of itself was a significant advance in the space race and provided much operational experience in mission planning and execution. Apollo gets all the big press and glory, but without the groundbreaking experimental work carried out with Project Gemini, the achievements of Apollo would have been impossible.
Read Failure is not an Option by Gene Kranz
Nice to see someone giving Project Gemini a little bit of the recognition it so richly deserves. I too realise Apollo would have been impossible without all the work done with Gemini. Project Surveyor also seems to have been forgotten, yet that was how America first learned how to land on the moon.
Apollo was an absolutely awesome achievement, but it did so by "standing on the shoulders of giants"!
@@Warriorking.1963 Gemini was unique for several reason, it was the first spacecraft designed from the pilot's perspective, the first to use an on board computer (albeit rudimentary)and the first to use fuel cells in place of batteries, an absolute necessity for going to the moon
To say nothing of all the unmanned lunar exploration programs NASA was also running simulatneously.
Gemini 11, with primary mission being rendezvous & docking of GATV in one orbit, validated the ability to perform same maneuver at the Moon for a LM Ascent stage to meet the CM/SM in orbit.
Amazing informational experience!!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Sounds like you can hear Gene Kranz in the background.
You can.
I heard that too and it appears to be so
There was a 30 year period where it seems like Gene Kranz was involved in every major NASA initiative. He's a legend.
Gene has an incredibly distinctive voice 😊
Notice how back in the day Gemini was pronounced (Gem en eeee)? Ryan Gosling, star of "The First Man" had to correct an English interviewer recently who called it (Gem en eye). In reality, the zodiac term is pronounced "Gem en eye" as per the Wordbook app. But for some strange reason back in the 60s most people referred to the Gemini project with an eeeeee at the end.
That was because of the American accent back in the day, a common stereotype which has become harder and harder to find nowadays as education has encouraged the use of proper English.
I think its cute the way they say gemineeee
Test pilot-speak.
Must’ve been all the cigarette smoke that change peoples pronunciation.
Southern test pilots.
Is there film footage of one of the successful Atlas-Agena launches on TH-cam?
Were there any successful ones? (I’m kidding) 😂😂😊
Thought sustainer engine fired with booster engines ? Second stage not agena
Trip-up on words from Mr. Cronkite.
Tom Stafford doesn't have much luck does he !
That's why he was dubbed "The Mayor of Pad 19."
The Gospel According to St. Wiki says this was in March, not May.
Well I am guessing Wiki got it wrong...according to NASA Spaceline - "A launch attempt on May 17, 1966 was scrubbed when the Gemini Agena Target Vehicle (GATV) failed to achieve orbit. The Atlas-Agena launch vehicle guidance system failed due to a short circuit in a servo control circuit."
***** The St. Wiki Gospel is correct. I remember this occurring in March. The May launch was of another target for Gemini 9.
Scottrchrdsn ..from NASA PAO at the JSC website (Who I would believe more than Wiki).... GT-9 was postponed when TLV 5303 with Gemini Agena target vehicle GATV-5004 malfunctioned on May 17. In its place, a substitute target was used for GT-9A; the Augmented Target Docking Adapter (ATDA) was launched by an Atlas on June 1, 1966 (TLV-5304) from Launch Complex 14. However, GT-9A was not launched the same day as planned due to a guidance system computer problem. After a brief hold, the spacecraft was launched on the 3rd day. GT9A was launched June 3rd.......
From SPacelines Mission report for GT9...A launch attempt on May 17, 1966 was scrubbed when the Gemini Agena Target Vehicle (GATV) failed to achieve orbit. The Atlas-Agena launch vehicle guidance system failed due to a short circuit in a servo control circuit.
The malfunction caused one of the two Atlas booster engines to pitch downward at Launch Plus 120 seconds, effectively turning the rocket back toward Cape Canaveral. The change in the flight path was sufficient to prevent the GATV from achieving orbit, and it impacted the Atlantic Ocean about 90 miles downrange of Cape Canaveral.
Upon the loss of the GATV, NASA decided to launch an Augmented Target Docking Adapter (ATDA) in its place, and Gemini 9 was renamed Gemini 9A. The ATDA, also an Agena-based vehicle, was launched as the second stage of an Atlas-Agena rocket from Cape Canaveral Launch Complex 14 on June 1, 1966.
Not to pour scorn on your memory Scott (because that is not my intention here), but history records a different launch schedule. If there was another launch of the Agena or if this flight was scheduled for March but was scrubbed then I stand corrected, but this paticular event happened, according to everyone I know and all the official websites and history books, on May 17th.
***** Well, perhaps, and I remember the ATDA mission also (Buzz Aldrin almost lost his Gemini 12 slot when he suggested that Cernan (I believe it was Cernan) cut a wire on the "angry alligator" shroud with some scissors that were onboard the Gemini 9 spacecraft). Presuming the Agena vehicle went into the drink on May 17th, the NASA website would have one believe that the ATDA was ready within two weeks! Which I find difficult to believe. There may be some date slippages here, I think. Well, no great matter one way or another. This all happened some 48 years ago.
WhiteCamry And a year later (5/27/15) . . . . . Apparently, Wikipedia was subsequently edited to show the following: "Gemini 9's Agena Target Vehicle (ATV) was launched on May 17, 1966 on an Atlas launch vehicle. The Atlas malfunctioned in flight, and the ATV failed to reach orbit.[3] This forced the cancellation ("scrubbing") of the Gemini 9 launch scheduled for later that morning."
I saw what you did there...
OK
this is my least favorite looking rocket... its like a bowling pin
UFOs got it.
Note that when Mission Control in Houston lost data on the Atlas/Agena, CBS cut away from it's animated simulation to a shot of Launch Pad 14 at the Cape, where the rocket had taken off from a few minutes earlier.
A knowledgable news producer knew that the rocket might not be on-course, and thus, the animation would not be showing what was really going on.
FYI: At the time, CBS owned the Terrytoons animation studio, and it's my guess it was Terrytoons that did the animated simulation.
The space program would never have existed without Jack King’s presence.
He was the Vin Scully of space commentary
I think that it would be awesome to have a full mission series of Gemini 9, especially seeing as this had Gene Cernan's famous EVA where NASA first started to get an understanding of how EVAs affect spacesuits and how huge the temperature difference is during the day/night sequences of orbit.
Gene could have died then. It is true.
It was Doctor No in the Bahamas. Didn't you see the James Bond movie?
I got the connection right away. Poor Strangways!
As a kid, I always wondered where Agena came from.
It was the daughter of our spy satellite program -- and very secret -- until NASA needed it.
I wonder where Guenter Wendt.
Isn't it him at 0:24 on the left?
Were it not for the cloud cover at the Cape, TV viewers would have seen the Atlas "hard over" right around BECO and fall towards the ocean.
Walter Cronkite (along with ABC's Jules Bergman and NBC's Frank McGee) would all have said "Look at the screen! The Atlas-Agena is off course! It's going to fall into the ocean and the Gemini 9 flight will have to be scrubbed!".
The thingybob didn't discombobulate the whatchamacallit when the stages separated, that's all. It's all so simple...
LOL Basically so :)
Don't you mean the thingamebob? Please don't abbreviate these important elements in our nation's tech history. :))
C'mon guys, this was the 60's, it was definitely the doohickie.
Walter would be bat crazy if he was around to see what SpaceX is doing now. Landing rockets?
I thought we "landed rockets" on the moon back in '69, so...
@@eeronat Nope. We landed just the "lander". What was impressive was that it was done with the tech they had at the time.
"Landing rockets" would've meant "landing the Saturn V" in '69. Even today most people would laugh at the idea.
@@Gryflir perdiction: Elon is going to do away with the flying dustbin. The final product will glide back to earth.
No doubt he would love it!
At least it was an unmanned rocket that went into the drink. Ominous indeed.
That’s a guy named Al Chop doing commentary (whenever Cronkite isn’t overriding him). What a cool name.
I hadn't seen this footage since the live TV broadcast.
The central engine is lit at lift-off. It should've never need re-ignition. Obviously, the talking-heads were confused on this point.
The whole point of the original Atlas design was to eliminate second-stage ignition issues -- by not really having one.
at that time the Atlas was considered a one and a half stage rocket, I believe the only one to be so designated
Great stuff. Although I've known all about this mission for years, I've never seen this footage.
Cronkite knew his stuff.
they have a sheet of the timeline of the mission, or timeline as it should go anyway.
Yes, they had a sheet of the timeline, but they (Cronkite, Reynolds, Jules Bergman, Huntley and Brinkley, Eric Sevareid, etc.) also KNEW THEIR STUFF. They weren't just talking heads like today's "pretty boys and pretty girls". They actually knew what they were talking about and you could believe them.
Jules Bergman on ABC was much better. Cronkite was just reading.
well before Fake news.
@@knicklas48 Bergman had a "Mr. Wizard" approach to covering space missions; he would make practical demonstrations that viewers could understand.
To be honest, the rocket looks like a bowling pin. :)
Is THAT why they call it a missile "strike"?
NASA replaced the Atlas-Agena with the more powerful Atlas-Centaur, which launched the Surveyor moon landers. A variant of the Atlas-Centaur is still in use today,
Now known as the Atlas 5
You can hear the teletype printers hammering away in the background.
Here's footage showing how the rocket failed:
th-cam.com/video/Z99pGVDZhaY/w-d-xo.html
It starts at 22:39.
Nope... not in that video.
RIP headphone users.
Al Chop. He was previously the PR person for Wright Patterson air force base, and the USAF assigned him the duty of handling all inquires about UFO sightings the government knew of anywhere in the world. He later professed that there was more than the government was letting on about.... Also, according to a film about his life, he named his son Chip. Really.
We are so lucky compared to with private coverage via video of launches these days
Only today have I heard of SECO, when SpaceX sent a resupply mission to the International Space Station, March 14, 2023.
Who’s here from r/spaceflightsimulator
Someone should work on restoring the footage.
The same thing happened on Gemini 6.GT6 had no mission,so they decided to combine it with Gemini 7,a 14 day flight.The main crew on Gemini 9 was killed in an airplane crash in Feb.,1966.This was the backup crew and Tom Stafford was on Gemini 6 and Gemini 9.It happened again for him.They did have a smaller version of the Agena and they launched that,only the protective shroud failed to detatch and they couldn't dock with it.Stafford said it looked like an angry alligator.
9 was never meant to do a hard dock just rendezvous. The hard dock was not accomplished until 12.
@@bobjohnson4373 No, Gemini 8 had already done a hard docking with an Agena. That was the flight manned by Neil Armstrong and David Scott and the one in which the Gemini suffered the attitude control thruster malfunction that sent the docked craft into an uncontrollable spin that Armstrong had to null out and still save enough fuel to deorbit and return safely to Earth.
@@LordZontar It wasn't a malfunction. Don't know how that story got spread. David Scott entered the wrong command into the Agena. Instead of what he was supposed to enter, he entered "Start Yaw" which turned on the yaw thrusters. They couldn't figure out what they had done, so they detached, but then it took them a while to figure out how to stop the spinning. I guess people think telling the truth of the story somehow makes the astronauts look bad, but humans make mistakes.
Not the same thing - the Agena PPS failed at ignition on 6, the Atlas failed at booster cutoff on 9.
Some cosmonaut who can't let go of the Sov-ee-eh 'Chunion? That, or Stafford was bummed that he never got to dock with this Agena, and disliked it.
I LUV NASA!!!!!!!!! Thanks for posting. However, I have to ask, what happened to the Agena Target vehicle? Did NASA ever recover it?
Most likely no. At that altitude some things may have happened.
1) An explosion of the target vehicle.
Result: Total loss
2) Survives explosion but breaks up due to atmospheric forces.
Result: Total loss
3) Somehow survives atmospheric forces and smashes into the ocean.
Result: Total loss.
It was traveling so fast by the time they lost signal the atmosphere or the ocean would have had its way with Agena.
EDIT: Sorry you had to wait 8 years. Hopefully you found your answer much sooner.
@@ludicrousspeed8177 The Atlas' booster had one engine gimbal when it wasn't supposed to. The rocket performed a "hard over" and dove, powered, into the Atllantic.
No, because it most likely broke into small pieces when it hit the water; besides they did not have the recovery technology back then like they do today
4:23 the same guy who did "Space Angel"
Woke up at 4am in Los Angeles and turned on the tv with 3 channels so we knew we could see it.
anti-climactic
The CGI at 4:20 is the worst I've ever seen.
It was 1966…
Would those who voted "dislike" please explain why? Thank you.
Conspiracy nuts, and other assorted morons who don't want to believe this is real but can't disprove it, so like a spoiled child they think they can feel important by disliking it, to make up for their sad lives.
Americans being Americans traveling at 3000 ft per sec
3:07 It looks good. I can’t see a bloody thing!!
love that 240 line b&w 1965 vidio! just think that could have been john glenn?
Lol atlas able
Glad I wasnt ridin it
I always thought the sustainer started on the pad so they could verify all engines before liftoff. Thought that's why they chose the atlas for first manned orbital flights.
It did ignite, but because the sustainer engine is optimized for high altitudes/vacuum, the engine exhaust is over-expanded compared to the booster engines, so it looks more like flames then a rocket exhaust plume. Also, the exhaust from the turbopumps gets dumped overboard via a separate exhaust pipe, which also causes a flamethrower-like appearance. As the Atlas gets higher in altitude and the outside pressure better matches the exhaust pressure, it will look more like a proper rocket exhaust. It appears Mr. Cronkite just got his words mixed up a little bit.
Good ol Jack King
yes, he is still with us I believe.. I listen to his countdown on Apollo each day on the Dennis Miller radio show..
In the book "On The Shoulders Of Titans," the NASA history of the Gemini program (look it up if you don't know it,) the poor record of Atlas/Agena in relation to the Gemini program was unbelievable. It's pretty bad to think they were associated with a manned program. But otherwise it was a reliable vehicle, go figure. I think there were three failures. I don't remember whether that included the "angry alligator." That one was simply mismanaged. They never should have changed contractors like that.
Fifty State To many cooks in the kitchen on that one. The contractor who made the augmented docking target (as a replacement for the Agena that was lost) insisted on doing the installation at the pad rather than the normal team. Annnnd they beeped it up. They managed to tape a lanyard on the aero-shroud and it fouled up the sep.
Actually, in that book it indicates that the failure in this flight was not due to a failure of the Agena, but a failure of the Atlas ... You would not know that from watching the video of the launch. It was only later that they knew that it was the Atlas that failed.
There were 2 Agena failures,one on Gemini 6,the other on Gemini 9. The "angry alligator " was the augmented docking adapter which occurred on Gemini 9 ,it was the one and only time the ATDA was used; Apparently an electrical connection was not properly made and the protective launch shroud did not fully separate prompting Tom Stafford to dub it "the angry alligator "
@@dsny7333 There was no problem with the electrical connection - the strap that held the fairing was supposed to be installed with the end free, the McDonnell people taped it down, and the tape held it closed.
There were changes made from the standard Agena engine start configuration at NASA request, when the engine failed, they switched it back to the normal start sequence and had no more problems with it.
Ive done missions like this in KSP. Launch a "target", wait for it come back over and launch your ship
That was purposfull to make money by a contractor
Sure-because if there's one way for a NASA contractor to make money, it's to blow up rockets so they begin to think you can't get the job done.
It never ceases to annoy me that they mispronounced Gemini for this project.
An investigation into the failure concluded that it was most likely
caused by design modifications to the GATV versus a standard Agena D
stage. The Agena D was designed to have its engine restarted just once
while the GATV would need to be restarted five times. While a standard
Agena D pumped oxidizer into the combustion chamber first and then
followed with the fuel, the GATV was modified to do the reverse because
the normal start method had a tendency to leak oxidizer. While this
would not be a problem for the Agena D with its single restart, the
multi-restart GATV would eventually lose all of its oxidizer before the
stage's operating life (which would last weeks instead of hours) could
be completed. Unfortunately, pumping the fuel into the combustion
chamber first caused the engine to backfire and rupture from mechanical
shock. It was found out that Lockheed engineers did not properly test
the GATV to root out this problem (it had been tested at a simulated
altitude of 21 miles up when actual Agena engine start would occur at
around 75 miles up). The solution to the problem was switching back to
the normal oxidizer-first engine start and also testing the GATV in
appropriate conditions. Bell Aerosystems, the manufacturer of the
Agena's engine, were also instructed to perform further ground-level
tests.
That was Gemini 6. Gemini 9's ATV was destroyed when one of the Atlas' booster rocket engines gimballed and turned the Atlas Agena almost 180° in the opposite direction and the stack plunged into the drink. With the cloud cover, nobody saw it.
The son of Dr No perhaps?
What was going on? Was the RSO taking a nap? As soon as that rocket started veering off course, it should have been destroyed. It should never have been allowed to start heading back toward the coast.
Patrick Proctor RSO's on a different communications loop than what the Public Affairs Officer was passing to the TV networks.
+Kyle Tekaucic at 6:33 you can hear a voice in the background say something about range safety then PAO announces Gene Kranz is attempting to "raise" the RSO at Cape Kennedy with no success.
I think the RSO was a little busy. And with the cloud cover, no one was sure what was going on.
Cameras fucking sucked back then
Sure Did
I hate that they use standard units of measurement. Yeah I know it's the US but it makes things really irritating when I'm trying to recreate these things and I have to convert to metric all the time.
They believe hey are the rulers of the world and don't care about the International metric system...
The funny thing is, I'm an American.
We're going to change that from the inside bro.
We believe we built the rocket, so we used our measurements. You are of course free to build your own rocket using whatever system of measurement you like.
+Phildog1 They obviously didn't build this one very well, did they? :)