The Mercury program had been incredibly successful and President Kennedy had committed the nation to successfully launching a man to the Moon then bringing him home safely. The challenges before NASA were tremendous, there was so much unknown about space travel. Enter Gemini. Originally called the Mercury Mark II, Gemini was the stepping stone program between Mercury and Apollo that gave NASA the experience and practice to go to the Moon. Between 1961 and 1967, the Gemini program launch 12 rockets and 20 astronauts into orbit, achieving spectacular successes despite puzzling technical problems, rocket losses, and hair-raising near-disasters.

The Gemini program was actually started after the Apollo program. NASA’s bid for the Moon began in 1960, but Gemini didn’t begin until December 1961.

In the original design for the Gemini capsule, the reentry and recovery system was actually a large paraglider wing shaped like a hang glider. The capsule had three landing skids and the astronauts were supposed to fly the capsule to a landing on a hard runway.

In the event of a disaster during launch, Gemini capsules were equipped with ejection seats. NASA called these seats "rocats" - short for rocket catapults. After an astronaut bailed out, he would have used a hybrid balloon-parachute called a "ballute" to stabilize him as he fell back to the Earth.

All of the Gemini missions were launched atop the Titan II rocket. Originally designed as an intercontinental missile, the Titan II was selected for the Gemini program due to its simplicity, high reliability, and greater thrust than the Mercury program’s Atlas booster. The Titan II used hypergolic nitrogen tetroxide and unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine for propellants. Since these liquids were storable and ignited on contact, equipment on both the pad and the rocket was simplified. Additionally, in the event of a disaster, the propellants of the Titan were less explosive than the Atlas. This fact affected the final design of the Gemini capsule by eliminating the need for an escape tower in favor of ejection seats.

Each mission during the Gemini program was highlighted by numerous advances in space travel. Gemini 4 achieved America’s first space walk. Mission 5 was the first mission that was longer than the time to travel to the Moon. The first mission to succeed in having two vehicles meeting in orbit was actually two missions, Gemini 6 and 7. Mission 8 had the first orbital docking. Gemini 9 succeeded in docking and boosting the crew to the highest orbit ever achieved by a manned crew, and Gemini 10 both docked with an Agena and rendezvoused with Gemini 8’s Agena. Gemini 11 conducted an artificial gravity experiment by hooking a tether to an Agena and spinning them both.