Chapter 4

Organizing Project Gemini

When Mark II was approved on 7 December 1961, much of the groundwork had already been laid. Aside from the paraglider, however, whose development was not directly tied to the Mark II project, none of the pieces was yet under contract. The Manned Spacecraft Center itself was not going to build spacecraft, booster, target, or paraglider. In line with the practice pioneered by the Air Force after World War II, NASA relied on private firms to develop and produce most of its hardware. The first priority, even before getting the project office fully in order, was putting the spacecraft under contract and making arrangements with the Air Force for booster and target vehicles.

The Prime Contracts

Because so much of the preliminary design work had been done, MSC had a letter contract for the spacecraft prepared by 15 December.¹ Since it called for a “Two-Man Spacecraft” to be developed from “the present Mercury Spacecraft, retaining the general aerodynamic shape and basic system concepts,” there was no question of seeking competitive bids. The choice clearly fell to the McDonnell Aircraft Corporation, which had not only developed and was building Mercury but had also been an active partner in drawing up the new design. The company’s president, James S. McDonnell, Jr., signed the contract on 22 December.²

The contract did spell out some major changes demanded by the broad goal of ending up with “a versatile general purpose spacecraft for the accomplishment of space missions of increasing complexity.” There were, of course, more specific goals: 14 days in Earth orbit, controlled land landing, rendezvous and docking in orbit, and simplified countdown procedures. All this meant that the new spacecraft had to be larger to carry two men; include ejection seats; have an adapter section that stayed with the spacecraft in orbit to house stores and special equipment; carry systems that would allow it to be maneuvered and docked in orbit and to be controlled in flight and landing; and have its equipment packaged in modules, each independent of the others and located outside the cabin so they would be easy to reach while the spacecraft was being tested and readied for launch.³

Despite these changes, the two-man spacecraft was still viewed as an improved Mercury. The contract required McDonnell to outfit the new spacecraft chiefly with equipment that had already been developed so that in most instances expected changes were small. This permitted a much compressed schedule. McDonnell was to provide full-scale mockups of spacecraft and adapter within six months and of the target vehicle docking adapter (TDA) within ten. The TDA, though McDonnell-built, was to be mounted on the target; it carried the gear needed to connect spacecraft and target in orbit. McDonnell had 15 months to produce the first spacecraft, with others due every 60 days until 12 had been delivered. Because docking came later in the program, the contractor had 23 months for the first TDA.⁴

The new contract between NASA and McDonnell replaced the earlier contract that had authorized the company to procure long-leadtime items for extra Mercury capsules. Since it was a temporary device to cover expenses during the time it took to negotiate a final contract, the letter contract had a ceiling of $25 million. The final contract was expected by 20 April 1962.⁵

Although NASA could deal directly with McDonnell for spacecraft development, launch vehicles were another matter. Titan II and Atlas-Agena belonged to the Air Force, and the Air Force was clearly going to have to serve the new project in some role. Just what that role was to be, in fact, may have been the first question tackled after formal approval. On 7 December 1961, the same day that NASA Associate Administrator Robert Seamans approved the project, he and John Rubel, Assistant Secretary of Defense and Deputy Director of Defense Research and Engineering, issued a joint statement on “the division of effort between the NASA and the DOD in the development of space rendezvous and capabilities.”

Seamans and Rubel agreed that the program belonged to NASA but that using the Air Force, in essence, as a NASA contractor could help the civilian agency achieve its goals and permit the Air Force (and other Defense elements) “to acquire useful design, development and operational experience.” The Air Force, acting as contractor, would see that NASA got its Titan II launch vehicles and Atlas-Agena target vehicles. (As in the case of the spacecraft, the nature of the project precluded any choice of vehicles to he used.) The Department of Defense also intended to provide launch and recovery support for Mark II missions (the project had not yet been named Gemini) and to help NASA in choosing and training astronauts. Making “detailed arrangements . . . directly between the NASA Office of Manned Space Flight and the Air Force and other DOD organizations” was the next step.⁶

This task was turned over to an ad hoc group that met for the first time on 13 December. Paul Purser, special assistant to MSC Director Robert Gilruth, headed the MSC contingent, and Colonel Keith G. Lindell led the Air Force team.* Group cooperation was so marked that a first draft of the plan was ready two days later.⁷ It was passed around in both NASA and the Air Force, and two weeks were enough to put it in final form as the “NASA-DOD Operational and Management Plan” of 29 December 1961.⁸

The plan assigned launch vehicle development - Titan II and Atlas-Agena - to the Los Angeles-based Space Systems Division (SSD) of the Air Force Systems Command. The set-up was simple for Titan II: SSD would simply act as MSC contractor. Like NASA, SSD itself developed and built nothing. Its role was to manage the “associate industrial contractors” who actually provided the vehicles, with help from the non-profit Aerospace Corporation of El Segundo, California, in general systems engineering and technical direction.⁹

Arrangements for Atlas-Agena added another organizational layer, however, because NASA was already using the vehicle in its unmanned space flight programs and there was a working Agena Project Office at Marshall Space Flight Center. NASA’s newly created Management Council for Manned Space Flight** simply decided to let the Marshall office take care of Atlas-Agena for the manned program as well. MSC, in other words, had to order the vehicles from Marshall, which, in turn, procured them from SSD.¹⁰

MSC set the guidelines for launch vehicle development and had the last word in any technical dispute, but the day-to-day direction of the work belonged to SSD. MSC was to be allowed only limited contact with SSD’s contractors, watching but not touching. If MSC saw something that needed to be done, it told SSD, which would pass the word on to the contractor.***

The “Operational and Management Plan” assigned two other major functions to the Department of Defense, with SSD acting as agent. One required SSD to oversee the modification of launch facilities at Cape Canaveral, Florida, to meet the needs of the new program. The other involved SSD in the support of program operations - launching, tracking, recovery - along the same lines already worked out for the Mercury program.¹¹

On 26 January 1962, the plan was endorsed as a working arrangement between NASA’s Office of Manned Space Flight and the Air Force Systems Command by the heads of the two agencies, Brainerd Holmes and General Bernard A. Schriever.¹² At the next step up the ladder, Seamans and Rubel were not so sure that everything had been taken care of. They had questions about the plan’s provisions for Defense operational support and its failure to define in detail a pilot safety program, the astronaut selection and training process, and project scheduling and funding. These matters seemed less pressing, however, than getting on with the development of Titan II and Atlas-Agena. Seamans and Rubel decided to let the plan stand as an interim measure, until a better defined version could be worked out.¹³ That took another six months and largely confirmed the arrangements already in force.¹⁴

Contracting for launch vehicles was in motion even while NASA and Air Force spokesmen were framing the Gemini Operational and Management Plan. NASA Headquarters juggled its fiscal year 1962 research and development funds to come up with $27 million, which it allotted to MSC for Titan II on 26 December 1961. As soon as notice came that funds were on hand, MSC wired SSD that work on the Titan II could start. SSD told the Martin Company’s Baltimore Division to go ahead on 27 December.¹⁵

In the meantime, the MSC group that was to take charge of Gemini was writing a formal statement of work for Titan II. Ready on 3 January 1962, it went to SSD with a formal request to buy 15 launch vehicles for Gemini. Although it could hardly have been a surprise, Titan II now appeared to require many more changes than had been allowed in the NASA-Air Force agreement only a month earlier. The terms of the memorandum that Seamans and Rubel had signed on 5 December 1961 explicitly limited changes to the fewest needed to adapt the missile to its spacecraft payload. But that was not going to be enough. To fit Titan II for Gemini would require new or modified systems to ensure the safety of the crew during countdown and launch. This included specifically a system to detect existing or impending malfunctions and signal them to the crew. MSC also expected changes in Titan II to enhance the probability of a successful mission, though what these were to be was not spelled out. The Air Force had Martin Baltimore under letter contract by 19 January 1962.¹⁶

Putting Atlas-Agena under contract took longer, despite just as quick a start. The first steps had been taken before the Mark II project was approved. After its mid-November meeting with McDonnell,¹⁷ the MSC rendezvous group had been able to define what would be required of Agena in greater detail and to check back with Lockheed Missiles& Space Company, its builder, about how these needs might be met. The MSC group outlined its views on Agena requirements in a note on 19 December 1961¹⁸ and requested that Lockheed be asked to assess Agena’s role in a rendezvous mission. Lockheed responded on 26 January 1962 with a report on Agena systems related to rendezvous - propulsion, communications and control, and guidance - and some informed guesses about further development that might be needed.¹⁹

By the end of January, MSC had evolved a fairly clear idea of the rendezvous techniques it planned for Gemini²⁰ and had prepared a statement of work for Atlas-Agena. This was forwarded to Marshall on 31 January, along with a request to buy 11 Atlas-Agenas. Atlas as launch vehicle for Agena was no problem, since it was already being used for just that purpose in other programs. But Agena needed a good many changes to adapt it to its rendezvous role - radar and other tracking aids, a restartable engine, better stabilization, more elaborate controls, and a docking unit were only the more important. Fortunately, time was not so pressing for Atlas-Agena as for the spacecraft and Titan II since it was not scheduled until later in the program. MSC wanted the first target vehicle delivered in 20 months, or about September 1963.²¹ MSC did not pay its first installment to Marshall for buying Atlas-Agena until early March 1962, and another two weeks elapsed before SSD told Lockheed to go ahead with Gemini-Agena development.²²

By March 1962, all major Gemini systems - spacecraft, booster, target, and paraglider - were under contract. This reflected the care and forethought that had gone into the project plan. It also mirrored the absence of any competition for major Gemini contracts. The project had been designed around an improved Mercury spacecraft, which made the company that built Mercury the only reasonable choice to receive the contract for Gemini. Of boosters powerful enough to lift the new spacecraft, only Titan could be ready in time for Gemini schedules. Atlas-Agena was the only likely target. And paraglider, the only major system to undergo the competition and elimination process and not really tied (on paper) into Gemini, had been under contract before the Mark II project was approved.

Running the New Project

Informal working arrangements and ad hoc groups had carried the Mark II project through its formative stages and handled the first steps in putting it under contract. But something more settled would be needed to oversee the future career of Gemini. By the end of December 1961, a Gemini Project Office was taking shape, though without official status as yet.²³ Its first report,* issued on 5 January 1962, was little more than an educated guess at potential problems in meeting Gemini launch schedules. Original launch dates were revised, with the first flight optimistically set for late July or early August 1963 (instead of May). One notable, but unremarked, change spaced the first, second, and third launches only six weeks apart - mid-September for the second, late October or early November for the third - while the remaining flights remained at two-month intervals. Since hard data for real analysis did not yet exist, the report did little more than point up the need for placing subcontracts promptly.²⁴

Setting up the project office was only part of the complicated task of reorganizing the Manned Spacecraft Center and moving it from Virginia to Texas. On 15 January 1962, Director Gilruth announced the formation of separate Mercury, Apollo Spacecraft, and Gemini Project Offices.²⁵ The old Engineering Division was abolished, its staff divided between the new Gemini and Mercury offices. Chamberlin, former head of Engineering and prime mover of the Mark II project, took over as Manager of Project Gemini. Kenneth S. Kleinknecht, Gilruth’s technical assistant, became head of the Mercury Project Office (then in the throes of trying to launch John Glenn into orbit aboard Mercury-Atlas 6, an event that took place on 20 February).²⁶ Chamberlin’s deputies separated - William Bland remained with the ongoing Mercury program and André Meyer moved into Gemini with Chamberlin. Meyer recalled that he and Kleinknecht “split the Engineering Division in half. Just about as evenly as we could split it, put half the talent in one group and half the talent in the other group . . . just the two of us sitting across a desk and arguing - ‘No, I don’t want this man.’ ‘We want this man.’"

Gemini came out of these sessions with a roster of 44, Mercury with one of 42.** The 18-person staff of MSC’s liaison office at the McDonnell plant in St. Louis, headed by Wilbur H. Gray, was assigned to Gemini but served both projects. Meyer took over as chief of project administration in the new office with a staff of 10. The other members of the project office were temporarily grouped in spacecraft management, launch vehicles integration, and flight operations support.²⁷

The first members of what was to become the Gemini Project Office (GPO) arrived in Houston during December 1961; the transfer was largely complete by February 1962. Gemini was among the first MSC elements to be resettled in Houston, once it was fully divorced from Mercury. Meyer’s chief task during this period was to recruit, interview, and hire people to fill out the project office, specifically seeking experts with at least ten years’ experience in each of the essential disciplines required to manage work on both spacecraft and launch vehicles. This was the central function of the project office: to plan, direct, and coordinate all aspects of the Gemini program and, more specifically, to see that Gemini contractors produced systems that allowed the program to meet its objectives. GPO enjoyed a degree of autonomy that permitted Chamberlin to deal directly with McDonnell and Air Force Space Systems Division. He reported only to MSC Director Gilruth, and that was chiefly a matter of keeping Gilruth informed on the status of the project.²⁸

One of Chamberlin’s first concerns was choosing his key staff members. He had Meyer, but for his other two chief lieutenants he turned to the Astronautics Division of General Dynamics Corporation, in San Diego. When interviews with Duncan R. Collins and Willis B. Mitchell, Jr., convinced Chamberlin that these were the men he needed, he got NASA Headquarters to approve his choice, a necessary step because both Mitchell and Collins were appointed at salaries above civil-service levels - so-called excepted positions. Collins became spacecraft systems manager and Mitchell launch vehicle systems manager. Mitchell also took over most of the personnel and functions of “flight operations support” when that branch of the project office quietly disappeared.²⁹

When GPO officially settled in Houston in March 1962, the Manned Spacecraft Center was an organization without a home. Plans were under way for building a physical plant for the new center at the Clear Lake site south of Houston, but during most of its first two years MSC was housed in rented buildings (eventually a total of 13) scattered over much of the city and at Ellington Air Force Base, about halfway between Houston and Clear Lake. GPO, minus its manager, was installed in offices at the Houston Petroleum Center, a sprawling set of one-story buildings just off the Gulf Freeway. Chamberlin’s desk was some distance away on the other side of the Freeway in the Farnsworth& Chambers building, which served as MSC’s interim headquarters.³⁰ Such mundane matters as getting from one office to another, phoning a colleague, or even finding a desk complicated life but scarcely slowed the pace of the program.

Coordination meetings between GPO and its prime contractors were already beginning.³¹ These meetings were Gemini’s central management device. Chamberlin and Meyer set up six coordination panels, three for the spacecraft - mechanical systems, electrical systems, and flight operation - and one each for paraglider, Atlas-Agena, and Titan II. The panels provided a setting where design and engineering problems could be talked out and settled as they arose. They also helped to short-circuit such complex chains of command as might have slowed, for example, the target vehicle program, in which GPO had to deal with Marshall, the Air Force, and Lockheed - spokesmen for each sat on the panel and were able to resolve problems with far greater dispatch than might otherwise have been possible. Panel membership was not fixed, but shifted with items on the agenda for each meeting. But the essential experts were permanent, and outside help could be called in as needed.

Decisions reached at each panel meeting, usually once a week, were submitted to Chamberlin. They could be implemented only after he or Meyer had signed the minutes. This had the double advantage of letting those most familiar with the specific problems work out the technical details and, at the same time, keeping the project manager fully informed about what was going on. These coordination meetings remained the heart of the day-to-day decision-making process throughout Gemini’s developmental phase. The number of panels grew as problems mounted and new areas needed closer attention. Later in the program, panels concerned mainly with development programs tended to give way to panels oriented more toward operations. At the same time, panels met less often, since there were fewer technical problems to reconcile as development faded into production and operation.³²

GPO’s function was to manage Project Gemini, not to build spacecraft or boosters. That was the task of the contractors who, early in 1962, were gearing up for their part.

The Contractors Get Moving

Gemini management at McDonnell comprised six functional divisions corresponding, for the most part, to divisions within the company as a whole, each under a manager who reported to Walter Burke, company vice-president and general manager for spacecraft.* ³³ The key position was that of the Gemini Engineering Manager. Robert N. Lindley, like Chamberlin, had found himself without a job when the Arrow project was canceled and had also moved from Canada to the United States. Unlike Chamberlin, however, Lindley found a place in industry.³⁴ As engineering manager for Gemini, his central responsibility was the design and development of the spacecraft. This included not only the work that McDonnell itself was to do but also the specification and technical management of the effort to be farmed out to subcontractors. Under Lindley were three project engineers: Raymond D. Hill, Jr., had charge of electrical and electronic design, Fred Sanders of mechanical design, and William Blatz of design integration and testing.³⁵

The first engineering task was to define the spacecraft as a whole and each major subsystem to conform to the job required by the terms of the NASA contract. Since the basic form and function of the vehicle had already been decided by the time the contract was awarded, the definition phase centered chiefly on refining details and was largely complete by the end of March 1962. The products of this effort were SCDs for each major spacecraft system. The SCD, or Specification Control Drawing, was not the simple document its name implied. Often running to several hundred pages, it set out precisely what McDonnell expected the final system to look like and to do. After each SCD was discussed and cleared with NASA, McDonnell sent it out to potential subcontractors for bids. With minor exceptions, McDonnell developed and built only the spacecraft structural shell and electrical system. All other major spacecraft systems were developed under subcontract, with McDonnell acting as supervisor and integrator.

Like so much else in Gemini, subcontracting plans were well along before the project received formal sanction. McDonnell had convened a review board early in November 1961, at which procurement and engineering specialists began going over the spacecraft to decide which parts to buy.³⁶ Within a week after James McDonnell signed the contract with NASA, his company was able to present MSC with a list of the major items it planned to procure rather than make and to propose a set of bidders for each item.³⁷

This was the prelude to a January 1962 meeting between Chamberlin, Burke, and Gray to reach an understanding on a standard procedure for securing NASA approval in the company’s choice of subcontractors.³⁸ This could become a delicate matter, since a number of Gemini systems were to follow Mercury closely enough to suggest sole-source procurement - that is, asking only one company for a bid instead of seeking competitive proposals from several firms.

McDonnell awarded its first subcontract on a sole-source basis. It was for the development of the spacecraft environmental control system, which supplied the oxygen, regulated the temperature, and disposed of wastes for the crew. In broad terms, it was to be little more than two Mercury systems hooked together, so McDonnell simply selected the company that had developed the Mercury system, AiResearch Manufacturing Company of Los Angeles, California.³⁹ NASA agreed, and McDonnell told AiResearch to go ahead on 19 February 1962.⁴⁰

McDonnell’s second subcontract set the pattern for those systems that had no real Mercury counterpart. The Gemini spacecraft was going to have to maneuver in orbit to achieve rendezvous, and this meant that it had to carry a propulsion system (called OAMS for Orbit Attitude and Maneuvering System). Besides letting a pilot steer the spacecraft, the OAMS also held the ship steady in orbit and, at the start of the mission, provided the power to push the spacecraft away from the spent second stage of the launch vehicle and to insert the craft into orbit - or, in case of trouble, to abort the mission. The complete OAMS had 16 small engines, which burned hypergolic propellants fed under pressure from one fuel (monomethylhydrazine) and one oxidizer (nitrogen tetroxide) tank. All engines were mounted in fixed positions and were run at fixed levels of thrust. Eight of the OAMS engines were rated at 111 newtons (25 pounds of thrust) and fired in pairs, allowing the pilot to pitch, roll, and yaw the spacecraft and so control its attitude. The other eight engines were rated at 444 newtons (100 pounds of thrust); two were oriented to fire forward, two backward, and two to each side. This was the maneuvering part of the system. In July 1962, the rated thrust of the two forward-firing engines was reduced to 378 newtons (85 pounds).

A second spacecraft rocket system, the reentry control system, was functionally distinct from the OAMS but used the same kind of engines, so the same contractor would develop them. The reentry control system comprised two rings of eight 111-newton (25-pound) thrusters located forward of the crew cabin. Either of the rings alone could handle the job, but the function was crucial enough - holding the spacecraft attitude steady during its reentry into the atmosphere - to justify complete duplication.⁴¹

McDonnell decided that any of four companies might supply the OAMS and the reentry control system and asked each of them to submit a technical proposal. The prime contractor rated the bids and sent a survey team of engineering, quality control, and procurement personnel to grade each of the prospective subcontractors on resources and capabilities. North American Aviation’s Rocketdyne Division in Canoga Park, California, won the highest combined rating. Although Rocketdyne’s quoted cost was highest, it included an extensive test program unusually early in development, a feature that particularly impressed NASA, which made the choice. McDonnell told Rocketdyne to commence work on 26 February 1962.⁴²

By the end of March, most of the major subcontractors had been instructed to proceed, and all had been selected by the end of May. The Air Force Space Systems Division, acting as NASA’s contractor for Gemini launch vehicles, moved just as quickly. SSD set up a Gemini Launch Vehicle Directorate to manage booster development, naming Colonel Richard C. Dineen as director and Colonel Ralph C. Hoewing as deputy.** ⁴³ General systems engineering and technical direction of development, with special stress on man-rating - making sure that Titan II was a safe and reliable booster for manned launches - was contracted to the Aerospace Corporation, which filled much the same role in Mercury for the Atlas booster. Aerospace set up its own Gemini launch vehicle program office under James A. Marsh.⁴⁴

Gemini launch vehicle development was assigned to Martin’s Baltimore plant, although the Titan II missile was developed and built in Denver. Baltimore got the nod chiefly to avoid any conflict between booster and missile work, although the decision did also help to sustain a facility that might otherwise have had to shut down.⁴⁵ Bastian Hello took over as Gemini Program Manager, reporting directly to Albert Hall, Martin vice-president and general manager of one of the three Martin divisions located in Baltimore.

Martin did not set up a Gemini project organization as such. Rather, each of the nine functional departments in Hall’s division appointed a Gemini manager, who took charge of the program work in his area but remained in the normal departmental chain of command.*** Hello also had the help of a program manager at Denver, where the booster’s propellant tanks would be built since the tooling required was too costly to duplicate in Baltimore, and a Martin-Canaveral program manager responsible for launch facilities and operations.**** Subcontracts played a much smaller part in the Martin than in the McDonnell scheme of things, largely because the booster differed much less from the missile than the Gemini spacecraft did from the Mercury capsule. For the most part, Martin could simply buy what it needed.⁴⁶

Those systems that did need to be developed - engines, airborne guidance, ground computers - were not handled by Martin through subcontracts. Instead, they became the subjects of separate SSD direct contracts. The contract for propulsion systems went to Aerojet-General Corporation’s Liquid Rocket Operations plant in Sacramento, California, in March. Two other major contracts followed later, one with General Electric in Syracuse, New York, to furnish the booster radio guidance system (the missile used inertial guidance), the other with the Burroughs Corporation of Paoli, Pennsylvania, to supply ground computers and implement launch vehicle guidance equations.⁴⁷

The target vehicle for Gemini required even less in the way of special arrangements. Both Atlas and Agena were ongoing programs, already well established, and there seemed little need at the outset for anything more than fitting them to Gemini. The Agena Project Office at Marshall, headed by Friedrich Duerr, bought these vehicles for all NASA programs, and Gemini was simply another customer.# For the target as for the booster, SSD acted as NASA’s contractor. Atlas-Agena programs were managed by SSD’s SLV-3 Directorate, commanded by Colonel F. E. Brandeberry. The Directorate’s Program Integration Division, under Major John G. Albert, took care of NASA Agena programs.## ⁴⁸ SSD authorized Lockheed to proceed with Gemini Agena development on 19 March 1962, and Lockheed assigned Herbert J. Ballard to manage the Gemini program.⁴⁹

At the time NASA was arranging to buy Agena for Gemini, the model in use was Agena B. Agena B was essentially hand tailored for each of its missions, but the Air Force had decided to develop a more advanced Agena D, needing only to have the proper equipment modules installed to carry out any particular mission. On 10 May Brockway McMillan, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Research and Development, invited NASA to join in this program. This appealed to the engineers, but the managers hesitated for much the same reasons that had obtained in the case of Titan III. Agena D was a distinctly less ambitious effort than Titan III had been, however, and Duerr wired Albert on 11 June that Gemini would use Agena D.⁵⁰

The Atlas for Gemini was also to be a standardized vehicle, the SLV-3. This improved version of the Atlas included many mechanical and electrical changes designed to make it more reliable, less troublesome. Its total engine thrust was upped by about 10 percent, mainly to offset the weight added by these changes.⁵¹ On 23 July Seamans notified Rubel that NASA would support the SLV-3 program and planned to use the standard booster in all NASA activities that required an Atlas. For its projected role in Gemini, Atlas needed nothing that resembled development. The Air Force bought it from the Convair Division of General Dynamics Corporation right off the production line in its San Diego, California, plant.⁵²

The Paraglider Controversy

The one real exception to Gemini’s smooth progress through its first half year was paraglider. Its development was a step ahead of the rest of Gemini, North American having been authorized to begin work on 20 November 1961, and the headstart may have accounted for the earlier signs of trouble.

Paraglider was controversial. Although GPO, and Chamberlin in particular, stoutly defended the concept, others in MSC had strong doubts. The Engineering and Development Directorate under Max Faget had been notably cool to the idea from the outset. The key question had been, and still was, “whether the deployment reliability of a single paraglider will equal that of a main and back-up chute system.”⁵³ The long-time efforts of Langley’s Francis Rogallo, inventor of the paraglider, to sell his concept had been repeatedly countered by the argument that parachutes had proved they could be relied upon to recover spacecraft. Instead of wasting time on an untried concept, Faget’s group favored efforts to improve parachute technology to permit land landing. They advocated using a new form of parachute that could be steered, with landing rockets to cushion the final impact as the spacecraft touched down.⁵⁴

Another source of opposition to paraglider was the Flight Operations Division under Christopher C. Kraft, Jr. Questions of reliability here took second place to concern for the operational problems posed by paraglider in the Gemini program. For Kraft’s division, using paraglider and using ejection seats were two sides of the same coin: one required the other, neither was reliable, and both promised immense practical obstacles to the safe return of the astronauts.⁵⁵ Kraft himself urged on Chamberlin, and later on MSC Director Gilruth, his objections to both systems.⁵⁶

Paraglider critics found plenty of ammunition in North American’s slow progress toward a working system. At first, paraglider development aim at landing system for manned spacecraft in general. Early in 1962, however, GPO decided that the program ought to be oriented explicitly to Gemini. North American faced a large new effort and a major delay, and not just because the Gemini spacecraft was much larger than the generalized model first planned for. The half-scale free-flight test vehicle would have to be redesigned to carry a flight control system, just as the full-scale model did. North American had to join with McDonnell to design a compatible landing gear system and check it out in a test program. And, finally, North American now had to develop and qualify emergency parachute systems for both half-scale and full-size test vehicles.⁵⁷

This last demand, in particular, delayed North American, and it was mid-March before a subcontract for the emergency parachute system could be placed.⁵⁸ Norbert F. Witte, North American’s project manager for paraglider, planned to begin free-flight tests of the half-scale model toward the end of May. With its wing inflated and deployed before it left the ground, the test vehicle needed no emergency parachute. It would be towed into the air by a helicopter and released to fly under radio control. This series of tests would allow North American engineers to see how well the paraglider flew, how precise flight control could be, and whether the vehicle could flare - raise its nose to increase wing lift and drag and slow its rate of descent - just before landing.⁵⁹

These were all questions that needed answers, but the most crucial was still whether or not the wing would deploy in flight. That had to wait for the emergency parachutes, since the test vehicles were too costly to risk without a backup system. Witte expected to have the half-scale emergency system tested by the start of June, when deployment tests could begin. The full-size emergency parachute would take longer but ought to be ready by mid-July. There still seemed to be a reasonable chance to complete this phase of the development program by September 1962.⁶⁰

Timing was critical for paraglider development, since its place in the Gemini program depended upon its meeting the very tight launch schedule. Despite snags in the current phase of the program, Chamberlin decided that North American needed to get started on the next phase, a 14-month effort to design, build, and test an advanced two-man paraglider trainer, to start a flight simulation program, and to design and develop a fully man-rated prototype Gemini paraglider landing system.⁶¹ That was in March 1962; by May the task was scaled down to require only the design of the prototype system, rather than its complete development. This was expected to reduce the time to five months from the date of the contract award.⁶²

The project office still expected the paraglider to be ready on time, but warned in a 4 May schedule analysis that the program “will require close monitoring to prevent slippage.” Paraglider was scheduled to be installed in the second Gemini spacecraft, which would be the first to carry a crew. The first spacecraft, since it was unmanned, was slated to come down by parachute. A prudent response to delays already incurred dictated that plans be laid for using a parachute system in the second spacecraft as well. By mid-June, GPO conceded that the paraglider would not be ready until the third flight.⁶³

A Quick Smooth Start

Despite some doubts about the paraglider, Project Gemini was moving smoothly in the spring of 1962. GPO noted a certain tightness in launch vehicle schedules a might constrict the time needed to resolve any unexpected problems but concluded that close monitoring would help to bring the modified Titan II out on time. Late delivery of some components from McDonnell subcontractors threatened schedules for building the first two spacecraft, but the threat seemed modest. The target vehicle and its booster, Atlas-Agena, appeared to present no problems, even after a slow start, since a target was not needed until the fifth mission.⁶⁴

Overall, August 1963 still seemed like a reasonable prospect for the first launch. But the ambitious timing of the second launch (the first manned flight in Gemini, earlier scheduled just six weeks after the first),⁶⁵ was now adjusted to allow a more realistic three months and set for November 1963. The rest of the program held to an every-other-month schedule, the 12th and final flight to be in July 1965.⁶⁶ From the viewpoint of the project office as it surveyed Gemini progress and prospects in its first half-year, there were no serious problems.⁶⁷

Project Gemini had won approval in late 1961 over several competing rendezvous development proposals because its design was further along than those of its competitors and because its scope seemed to be limited enough to fit the relatively compressed span of time between the last flights in Mercury and the first mission in Apollo. That these reasons were valid appeared amply borne out by the rapid placement of contracts during the first months of the project’s official existence. Within a matter of six months, most major contracts had been awarded and a firm organizational framework had been established.

Even Congress appeared unperturbed that NASA had embarked on a large new project with scarcely any advance warning to those expected to furnish the money for it. In doing so, NASA had not exceeded its authority. Although obliged to lay out its spending plans during budgetary hearings, NASA at that time received a single appropriation for research and development and was largely free to distribute the money as it saw fit. The $75 million in fiscal year 1962 funds needed to get Gemini started were provided simply by shifting money from one account to another inside NASA.⁶⁸

In hearings early in 1962 on the upcoming fiscal year 1963 budget, NASA spokesmen felt no need to apologize for the new project. Quite the contrary: from Administrator James E. Webb on down, they described it in glowing terms, stressing its role in the development of rendezvous techniques and in extending the length of man’s stay in space - but all within the context of a merely enlarged (or advanced) Mercury. This was, of course, a fair picture of the thinking that lay behind Project Gemini, and none of the listening congressmen challenged it.⁶⁹

Chamberlin summed up the optimism that pervaded Gemini during its first half year in his monthly report on project office activities as of 28 May 1962. He saw no problems that might imply delays for the program, although “all elements of the schedule are extremely tight.” There were no technical problems that contractors and project office could not handle. “As technical problems arise they are being assigned to capable organizations for solution with close project office monitoring to assure progress. No technical problems are particularly outstanding at this time.”⁷⁰

Despite its complexity, Project Gemini was meeting only success. The project office remained silent about any doubts it may have had that Gemini’s objectives could be achieved on time.