Chapter 6

Challenge and Change

Going into its second full year, the Gemini Project Office had just finished moving into new quarters. The office had been split between two sites, with project manager James Chamberlin at the Farnsworth& Chambers building (interim headquarters for the Manned Spacecraft Center) and the rest of the Gemini office across the Gulf Freeway in the Houston Petroleum Center. By December 1962, the office had doubled its original staff of 44 and outgrown its former space. Chamberlin and all of his people moved into the old Veterans Administration building on the edge of downtown Houston by 10 December, and the Gemini Procurement Office of MSC’s Procurement and Contracts Division followed in March 1963.¹

Putting all of Gemini under one roof no doubt helped as the program became more taxing. The early months of 1963 soon showed that many technical problems were far from resolved end that the question of money was not fully settled by the reprogramming efforts. But Gemini’s first big worry of the new year had little to do with technology or funding. The Air Force had long been interested in orbital rendezvous and manned space flight, as reflected in its unmanned satellite interceptor project (Saint) and the maneuverable manned Dyna-Soar program. That interest now expanded to include Project Gemini.

Blue Gemini

"Blue Gemini” was the tag name for an Air Force manned space flight program to develop rendezvous, docking, and transfer for military purposes, using Gemini-type spacecraft. The germ of the idea first surfaced in February 1962, during congressional hearings on the defense budget, as part of a far-ranging Air Force Space Plan for the development of military space technology over the next 10 years. The concept became firmer in June, when the Air Force Space Systems Division (SSD) began working on plans to use Gemini hardware as the first step in a new Air Force man-in-space program called Mods (Manned Orbital Development System), a kind of military space station with Gemini spacecraft as ferry vehicles. The term Blue Gemini first showed up in August as part of a more specific proposal to fly six Gemini missions with Air Force pilots in a preliminary orientation and training phase of Mods.²

Blue Gemini was neither clearly defined nor officially sanctioned. Air Force opinion was divided on the best approach to the goal of military manned space flight. Some, like Air Force Chief of Staff Curtis E. LeMay, wanted nothing to do with Gemini, fearing that entanglement in the NASA program might jeopardize Dyna-Soar. Others, like Major General Osmond J. Ritland, deputy for manned space flight in Air Force Systems Command, urged a more active Air Force role in Gemini, since Dyna-Soar would not fly for at least two years. Civilian officials in the Pentagon remained skeptical of any military man-in-space proposals, for much the same reason that had tended to block such efforts all along: the absence of any clear-cut military need for manned operations in space.³

By the fall of 1962, the situation was in flux. The Saint program suffered a sharp cutback in December, following cost overruns and schedule slippages. This made Gemini look even more attractive to those Air Force planners still convinced of the military importance of orbital rendezvous but now lacking a program to test their ideas. Techniques for rendezvous between remote-controlled machines, as in Saint, would differ from those suited for manned rendezvous, but manned work in space looked more exciting anyway. Dyna-Soar, a winged glider boosted into space by a Titan III to orbit Earth and fly back to an airfield landing, had lost much of its promise as a result of changes and delays. The exciting potential of such a program, when it took shape in the late 1950s, looked much less impressive by the end of 1962, especially in contrast to Gemini. No decision had yet been made in the Department of Defense, but the entire military manned space role was under review and forecasts of Dyna-Soar’s extinction were rife.⁴

Meanwhile, the Air Force role in Project Gemini was limited to the one set out in the “NASA/DOD Operational and Management Plan” of December 1961, SSD acting as contractor to NASA for launch and target vehicles.⁵ The idea of Blue Gemini - a larger part for the Air Force in the program - had a good deal of support within NASA, especially from MSC Director Gilruth. Gemini had been designed as an operational spacecraft, and the Air Force was the most likely customer. The Air Force could also be expected to pay for what it wanted, and Gemini could use an infusion of Defense funds. At a meeting in November 1962, Chamberlin and some of his staff described salient aspects of Gemini to a group of SSD representatives.* This meeting was intended to lay the groundwork for coordinating Air Force planning with MSC and to set up channels for future collaboration.⁶

NASA Administrator Webb and Associate Administrator Seamans visited the Pentagon for a talk with Roswell L. Gilpatric, Deputy Secretary of Defense, in an effort to convince Pentagon planners that an augmented role for the Air Force in Project Gemini was a good idea. Chance brought Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara to the meeting. His response to their offer was more than the two NASA spokesmen had bargained for; it took the Air Force by surprise as well. McNamara not only welcomed the idea of cooperation - he proposed merging the NASA Gemini program with the Air Force project and moving the combined effort to the Department of Defense.⁷

That was too much for NASA. W. Fred Boone, a retired admiral who had become NASA Deputy Associate Administrator for Defense Affairs on 1 December, took charge of building the case against Gemini’s transfer to the Air Force. In NASA’s view, not surprisingly, “the Gemini program should continue under the direction of NASA.” The keystone of NASA’s case was that Gemini was integral to the step-by-step climb from the first moves into space in Mercury to the final landing on the Moon in Apollo. Any delay in Gemini might delay the lunar landing. Increased Air Force participation “to further DOD objectives in space” was all right, but it must not hamper NASA in promptly carrying out the Gemini program.⁸

To support his position, Boone asked each of the NASA staff offices for a statement on the effects of an Air Force takeover of Gemini. The replies stressed the clear threat that such a move might disrupt NASA’s manned space flight effort in general and the manned lunar landing program in particular. Beyond this most pressing danger, they feared nasty responses from outside NASA: increased criticism from a Congress already perturbed by signs of military influence in NASA programs; rising concern from a public disturbed by questions about the viability of a civilian space program; and growing disquiet in foreign nations about the United States being a peaceful explorer of space, which carried the added threat that some countries might expel NASA tracking stations from their territories.⁹ After going over these arguments, Boone concluded:

It is in the national interest that the management of Project Gemini remain with NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center. A change in program management would seriously delay and substantially increase the cost of the manned lunar landing program. Any delay would reduce the chances that the United States will make a manned lunar landing before the Russians do.

A much better choice than giving Gemini to the Air Force would be to enhance the role of the Air Force within the framework that already existed.¹⁰

Just as surprised by the McNamara proposal as NASA was the Air Force, which shared NASA’s distaste for a Gemini takeover, partly because it might jeopardize Dyna-Soar, partly because the costs of a few fully “blue” Gemini flights would far outweigh any foreseeable gains.¹¹

NASA’s arguments for keeping Gemini seemed convincing enough when presented to top Pentagon officials on 9 January 1963, bolstered as they were by the Air Force’s unwillingness to take the program. McNamara and Gilpatric readily agreed not to press for transfer of Gemini. However doubtful the future role of military man-in-space, they thought the Air Force remiss in failing to accept NASA’s offer of a larger part in Gemini. That was what McNamara now wanted as a formal pact between the two agencies; and he wanted it soon, before he began to present his case for the coming year’s Defense budget to Congress on 21 January. Perhaps as much as $100 million in Defense funds could go to Gemini. McNamara’s key idea was a joint management board to run the project and he promised to forward a draft agreement soon.

A jointly managed Project Gemini had no more appeal for NASA than an outright transfer. Boone dismissed the proposed board as “a completely unnecessary organizational appendage"¹² even before he saw the promised draft. It arrived on Saturday, 12 January, and did nothing to soften Boone’s judgment. Claiming that “both parties [DOD and NASA] consider that the national interest requires the program to be jointly managed,” McNamara proposed an eight-man Gemini Program Steering Board to approve program and funding plans, to safeguard both Defense and NASA experimental objectives, and to resolve schedule and resource conflicts. Although GPO would report to the new board, project management would remain unchanged. Defense intended to pay for its enlarged role with money for current Gemini needs, as well as future board-approved changes.¹³

NASA’s top management discussed the plan on Monday afternoon, 14 January, and Boone drafted a reply. McNamara’s “joint management,” in Boone’s view, equaled “rule by committee,” which “in this case would be ineffective, uneconomical, and in fact unworkable.” Changing Gemini also threatened Apollo and might cost the United States its chance to win the space race. The proposed joint board also violated the Space Act of 1958, certainly in spirit and probably in letter. There seemed to be room enough for the Air Force in the current Gemini setup. If not, a joint planning and review (as opposed to management) board to advise the NASA Administrator ought to serve the purpose. Boone concluded by stating “NASA’s strong interest in the Dyna-Soar program,” hinting that NASA would endorse the Air Force project if Defense relaxed its demands on Gemini.¹⁴

NASA’s revised version of the Defense draft altered enough words and accents to transform its meaning. Gone was any hint of “joint management.” The steering board had become the Gemini Program Planning Board, limited to watching over a program of Gemini experiments. There was no mention of approving program plans or allocating resources. At most, the board could inform the NASA Administrator and the Secretary of Defense of such problems as planning defects or schedule conflicts. NASA repeated, and stressed, its claim to sole control of Gemini. GPO would not report to the board. The Air Force would be restricted to joining “in the development, pilot training, preflight check-out, launch operations and flight operations of the Gemini program to assist NASA and to meet the DOD objectives,” just as it had been doing.¹⁵

The Defense Department accepted NASA’s terms in a series of meetings between spokesmen for the two agencies over the weekend of 19-20 January. Willis H. Shapley, Deputy Chief of the Military Division of the Bureau of the Budget, arranged the meetings and prepared a series of notes designed to clarify the intent of the agreement proper and to distinguish it from some rumored proposals that had surfaced in the press. Aviation Week and Space Technology, for example, had reported in its issue of 10 December 1962 that NASA and the Air Force had agreed on a cooperative Gemini/Blue Gemini program: NASA would fund Gemini development and fly the first missions; the Air Force would fly copilots on one or two of the early missions and buy the last four or five Gemini spacecraft for its own flights plus a few extra beyond the twelve NASA had ordered.¹⁶

Shapley’s notes mostly covered management relations between NASA, Defense, and the proposed Gemini Program Planning Board; but they also touched on funding and the domestic and foreign impact of the new arrangements. Gemini was not to be thought of as a joint program, but rather as a program serving common needs, with the Department of Defense paying for the military features, NASA in full charge of the program, and the role of the board strictly advisory. Defense funds were to be used for nothing but the changes geared to military needs; the money was specifically not to be used to speed up the current NASA program nor to make up slippages and overruns. No major change in policy toward the Air Force role in space was intended, and the new agreement was to be presented to the public as the latest in a series of efforts to enhance cooperation and to avoid duplication between NASA and the Pentagon.

Webb signed the revised agreement and sent it, along with a slightly edited version of Shapley’s notes, to McNamara on 21 January. The notes were not part of the formal document, but they helped fill out the record of understanding between the two agencies.¹⁷ The new pact was made public the next day. Webb and McNamara “joined in stressing the national character and importance of the Gemini project” and in their determination to see it “utilized in the national interest, and to avoid unnecessary duplication of effort in this area as in all others” - citing the agreements on the management of Cape Canaveral (also announced on 22 January) and on such earlier undertakings as Dyna-Soar and the national launch vehicle program as examples of similar cooperation.¹⁸

How a seemingly larger Defense role in Gemini might affect international opinion was the subject of still further concern. NASA assured the State Department that Gemini’s goals remained unchanged, its peaceful scientific character unaltered. NASA still ran Gemini and planned to make Gemini’s scientific data as widely available as Mercury’s. The new agreement simply augmented military support of the same kind already known to the manned space flight program. Gemini was still open, NASA still managed it, and its foreign network stations would have no military personnel except medical.¹⁹

Although the NASA/Defense agreement of 21 January left NASA clearly in charge of Gemini, rumors of an Air Force takeover persisted.²⁰ Real changes were small. The major innovation was the Gemini Program Planning Board, a strictly advisory body whose planning was to be confined to military experiments for Gemini flights. Its co-chairmen were Seamans for NASA and Brockway McMillan for Defense. McMillan was Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Research and Development. Holmes and Boone were the other NASA members; and the Department of Defense named General Bernard A. Schriever, Commander of Air Force Systems Command, and Lawrence L. Kavanau, Special Assistant for Space to the Director of Defense Research and Engineering. The group held its first meeting on 28 February 1963 at NASA Headquarters in Washington.²¹ The board in this as in later meetings did attend to the place of military experiments in Gemini. But experiments did not remain its only concern, nor did they turn out to be the board’s signal contribution to Gemini.

Chamberlin Departs

The dispute between NASA and the Department of Defense about who was to have the last word in Gemini, whatever might be its long-range impact, agitated only the highest echelons. MSC engineers knew little of what was going on and, in any case, had their hands full with their own problems. Gemini reprogramming had slowed the rate at which money was being spent, but costs still spiraled upwards. Although stretching out the program was bound to offset immediate savings by larger total costs unless parts of the program were chopped out, the size of the increase soon surpassed anything that might have been expected. Meanwhile the revised program suffered from the growing severity of the technical problems that had afflicted it before and during the fall budget crisis. Paraglider testing and Titan II anomalies loomed largest.

Despite some talk about dropping paraglider from Gemini to meet fiscal constraints, paraglider development came through largely unscathed. While other major systems suffered more or less drastic cutback paraglider’s budget expanded. By the end of 1962, contract changes and overruns had raised the price of the current phase of paraglider development from four and a half to over seven million dollars.²²

North American Aviation, the paraglider contractor, was still having problems with flight testing. The success of 23 October 1962, which concluded the test series of a half-scale model launched with its wing already deployed, proved only a respite. The next step was trying to deploy the wing in flight. North American refitted the half-scale test vehicle at its plant in Downey, California, and shipped it back to Edwards Air Force Base for its first flight test, scheduled for 27 November. The all-too-familiar pattern of minor problems, mostly electrical, delayed the flight day by day until 10 December, and then the results were disappointing. The capsule tumbled from the helicopter, fouling the drogue parachute intended to pull the can in which the wing was stored away from the paraglider. Wing inflation intensified the tumbling and the emergency drogue parachute ejected too soon. When the capsule spun down past 1600 meters, the minimum recovery altitude, radio command detached the wing and allowed the capsule to descend on its emergency parachute.²³

The next attempt, on 8 January 1963, after its share of delays, produced even worse results. There was no tumbling, but the storage can was late in separating; so the capsule was falling too fast when the wing started to inflate and its membrane tore. As the capsule fell below 1,600 meters, its wing not yet fully deployed, emergency recovery was ordered to no avail. The main parachute remained packaged, and the capsule crashed. Picking through the wreckage, North American inspectors found that a squib switch in the emergency parachute’s electrical system had misfired. That was not the only problem, but it was the most discouraging--the switch was a standard item, much used in the space program and not known to have failed in 30,000 successive firings. GPO warned North American to be sure everything that had gone wrong was corrected before trying again.²⁴

A month later, North American reported to the paraglider coordination panel that five distinct failures had been spotted, studied, and fixed. The panel was convinced, but Chamberlin was not. After an extended meeting with George Jeffs, manager of the paraglider program for North American, Chamberlin decided to give the trouble plagued half-scale flight-test program another chance.²⁵ Once again, the current crop of troubles had little impact on plans for the next phase of development, which covered the rest of flight testing, pilot training, and paraglider production. Part of Phase III, gearing up for production, was worked out and under way by 22 January. North American’s proposals for the rest of the program were ready by the end of the month. GPO approved and, with the concurrence of NASA Headquarters, readied a new contract.²⁶ But the Office of Manned Space Flight had second thoughts and stopped the procurement action “for the time being.”²⁷ The halt proved to be permanent.

The Gemini paraglider program foundered on North American’s third attempt to deploy a half-scale wing in flight. Although the first two flights had been at least partial successes, the third, on 11 March, offered no comfort at all, The storage can failed to separate, so the wing could neither eject nor inflate. When the radioed command to deploy the emergency parachute produced no response, the second half-scale test vehicle joined the first as wreckage.²⁸ Paraglider testing came to an abrupt halt.

Gemini’s other major headache early in 1963, Titan II, posed a far greater threat to the program as a whole. There would still be a Project Gemini without paraglider, but not without Titan II. Despite some hopeful signs, the status of the launch vehicle remained very much in doubt. The central problem was still the lengthwise vibration, or Pogo, that bounced the vehicle while its first-stage engine was burning; but other technical problems began to compete for attention. Efforts to resolve them were coming up against a crucial disparity between Air Force and NASA goals in Titan II development.

The Martin Company’s proposed answer to Pogo - a surge-suppression standpipe in the first-stage oxidizer feedline - was installed in the soon to be infamous Missile N-11, the eighth Titan II that the Air Force launched in its missile development program, on 6 December 1962. The supposed cure, far from damping the Pogo effect, raised it to +Sg, and the violent shaking induced the Stage I engines to shut down too soon.²⁹ A rueful Robert Gilruth told his fellow members of the Manned Space Flight Management Council that he saw one hope: “the fact that the addition of the surge chamber affected the oscillation problem may indicate that the work is being done in the right place.”³⁰

The next Titan II, launched on 19 December, carried no standpipes, but increased fuel-tank pressure, which had shown good results on some earlier flights, again reduced the Pogo level. This missile also featured oxidizer feedlines made of aluminum instead of steel, which seemed to have some bearing on the sharply lessened amplitude of oscillation. This was disconcerting, no reason for the effect being readily apparent. The Pogo problem clearly needed more study.³¹ In the tenth flight, on 10 January 1963, Pogo hit a new low of six-tenths the force of gravity (±0.6g) at the spot on the missile where a manned spacecraft would be located. This was getting close to the level tolerated on Mercury flights, roughly ±0.45g. But Gemini’s astronauts were supposed to take a larger part than Mercury’s in flying their craft into orbit. NASA’s goal for the Titan II remained ±0.25g at most. Nonetheless, despite the still large gap between performance and goal, increased fuel-tank pressure had so reduced “POGO type oscillations” that Gilruth could say, “this now becomes a secondary problem.”³²

He may have been more concerned about another problem than he was optimistic about Pogo. Despite the low Pogo level on the tenth flight, the missile’s second-stage thrust was only half what it should have been. On some earlier flights, the failure of second-stage engines to build up to full thrust had been blamed on Pogo. That now appeared doubtful. Another source of unease, and the one Gilruth now tabbed as the major problem, was the threat of unstable combustion in the second-stage engine. Static firing tests during January 1963 showed that the Aerojet-General motors might have trouble reaching a steady burn after the shock of starting.³³

But this was as yet mostly surmise, and Chamberlin’s concern still centered on Pogo, chiefly because he was not at all certain how far the Air Force Ballistic Systems Division (BSD), which was in charge of Titan II missile development, would go to meet Gemini’s much stricter demands.³⁴ His fears were confirmed on 29 January, when BSD’s Titan Program Office froze the missile design with respect to devices for cutting vibration levels, since increased pressure in first-stage fuel tanks and aluminum oxidizer feedlines reduced Pogo below specifications for the missile air frame and systems.

This was an answer only for the missile. Tank pressures were nearing structural safety limits, and more pressure could not lower the vibrations much further, anyway. But the level was still too high for Gemini. BSD intended to keep looking for a way to achieve the lower value NASA wanted, but early in March, BSD decided that it could no longer accept the costs and risks of efforts to reduce the oscillations any further.³⁵

Chamberlin had no direct line to BSD, his only channel being through SSD. With BSD in charge of missile development and SSD of Gemini launch vehicles, NASA was largely a spectator. Chamberlin could do little more than appeal to SSD to intercede with BSD. Since there was no flight test program for the Gemini booster, the Titan II missile research and development program was the only chance to solve Gemini problems. But BSD was responsible for a weapon system, not a launch vehicle, and was understandably loath to risk the missile for the booster.

During March, therefore, Chamberlin spent a lot of time on the telephone, asking Richard Dineen, in charge of Gemini launch vehicle development for SSD, for help not only with Pogo but on the threatening combustion instability problem. Chamberlin hit hard on his long-standing demand for a rigorous qualification program but now stressed that qualification must be “followed by a suitable number of successful flight tests” to reach the required level of confidence in a booster for manned space flight. Me wanted to know what plans Dineen had for making sure that the Air Force test program would meet Gemini’s needs, and Dineen promised a report in short order.³⁶

Word of Titan II’s troubles was slow to reach NASA’s upper echelons. When James Marsh, head of the Gemini launch vehicle program at Aerospace Corporation, discussed the current status of the booster at a meeting of the newly formed Gemini Program Planning Board on 7 March, he was far from alarmist. Seamans got the impression that things were well in hand. A detailed redesign of the turbopump impellers in the first-stage engines would take care of the Pogo problem, according to Marsh, and the unstable burning in the second-stage engines was no risk to Gemini.³⁷

This view was rudely shattered a week later, when Seamans traveled with Secretary McNamara and a party of Defense officials to Houston for a close look at Gemini. He learned for the first time that MSC was now thinking of two unmanned flights, rather than one, cutting the number of manned missions to ten, the first delayed five months until August 1964. Trouble with Titan II was offered as the main reason for this drastic change in schedule, and combustion instability was cited as potentially a greater problem than Pogo. McNamara assured Seamans and MSC that Titan II would be fixed, but Seamans was still doubtful.³⁸

This was only three days after the crash of the second half-scale paraglider test vehicle. The conjunction of the newly revealed impact of Titan II problems and the latest in the series of paraglider mishaps suggested that Project Gemini was in deep technical trouble. To make matters worse, Gemini had new money worries. The reprogramming effort of the last quarter of 1962 had slowed the rate at which Gemini was spending money but at the expense of stretching out the program. In the nature of things, a longer program was liable to cost more overall; when Holmes reported, early in February, that Gemini’s total cost would reach $834.1 million, the figure was not too disturbing. That was about $60 million over the lowest estimate in September 1962 but well short of the $925 million that had then appeared to be a possibility.³⁹

Just a month later, however, on B March 1963, MSC’s revised preliminary budget for fiscal year 1964 reached NASA Headquarters, and it was a shock. Gemini’s estimated total had shot over the billion-dollar mark. The new figures was nearly twice the cost first approved in December 1961 and almost $200 million higher than the figures Seamans and other NASA officials had been using as the basis for NASA’s fiscal year 1964 budget request, most recently in House hearings earlier that week.⁴⁰ So large an increase, coming on the heels of what had seemed to be a resolution of Gemini’s funding problems, took NASA Headquarters by complete surprise. Chamberlin, as manager of Gemini on the field level, knew what was happening. But, waiting for an opportune moment to break the news, he was overtaken by events.

Unexplained cost increases combined with seemingly critical problems in paraglider and Titan II development to bring Chamberlin’s tenure to an abrupt end.⁴¹ On 19 March, Gilruth relieved Chamberlin of his duties as project manager and assigned him to the post of Senior Engineering Advisor to the Director, cutting him off from any direct connection with Gemini. Charles Mathews took over as acting manager. He came to Gemini from the Engineering and Development Directorate, where he had recently added the job of Deputy Assistant Director to his work as Chief of the Spacecraft Technology Division. Mathews was a charter member of Space Task Group, having come with Gilruth from Langley’s Pilotless Aircraft Research Division. He had headed STG’s Flight Operations Division until 17 January 1962, when he moved over to the Engineering and Development Directorate as chief of what was then called the Spacecraft Research Division.⁴²

When Chamberlin left Gemini, an era ended. In the large and complex undertakings of modern high technology, one person can seldom be credited with so large a share in the shaping of a project as Chamberlin deserved for Gemini. Much of the ultimate success of the project had its roots in Chamberlin’s brilliance as a designer and skill as an engineer, but so did some of the current harvest of troubles. The talented engineer can always see new ways to improve his machines, but the successful manager must keep his eyes on costs and schedules, even if that sometimes means settling for something good enough instead of better.

But perhaps in a deeper sense, Chamberlin can be seen as a victim of the way Gemini was created and funded. Approved as something of an afterthought in the American manned space flight program, absent from NASA long-range budget plans, Gemini began with shaky finances. Crushing time pressure made things worse. Gemini, although in most ways just as sophisticated as Apollo, began later and had to finish its flight program much sooner than the lunar program. As Chamberlin later remarked, “we went ahead as fast as possible with whatever funding could be scrounged. . . . If Gemini were too late, there would be no need for it, and it would be canceled.” In this setting, technical problems that might otherwise have appeared little more than routine assumed a more ominous guise.

Chamberlin’s colleagues in and out of NASA deeply respected him as an engineer and designer but also saw his flaws as a manager and recognized the difficulties of the situation. His sudden and largely unexpected departure was thus not the blow to project morale that it might have been. The shock was also eased by the identity of the man who replaced him. Mathews was well known and widely esteemed. He took over a program that did seem to be in trouble.⁴³

Gemini Regroups

The shaky status of Gemini costs and schedules was the major factor in Chamberlin’s ouster, and it was to those matters that Mathews first turned in his new role as acting program manager. An early move was a critical review of the Gemini flight program. This produced one quick decision: an unmanned mission would be flown in place of one of the manned flights; only 10 of the 12 Gemini flights were now to carry crews. This was largely a response to the stubborn problems in Titan II development. The first flight had been planned most recently as a suborbital ballistic shot to test spacecraft heat protection and validate spacecraft structure and systems. With launch vehicle status uncertain, however, this no longer seemed sufficient qualification for manned missions. Another question mark was the spacecraft itself, which did not seem likely to be ready in time.⁴⁴

GPO had a new flight schedule to submit to Manned Space Flight Director Holmes by 11 April. It differed sharply in some key ways from earlier plans. The major change was that the first flight, still due in December 1963, was to be orbital, its primary objective the flight qualification of the booster. The spacecraft would serve chiefly as an instrument carrier, neither separating from the launch vehicle’s second stage nor being recovered. Gemini’s second flight, postponed from March to July 1964, was now what the first had been - a suborbital ballistic flight intended to prove the spacecraft could withstand high heating rates but also to qualify all launch vehicle and spacecraft systems for manned flights.

The first men to fly in Gemini now had to wait for the third mission, in October 1964, five months later than had been scheduled for the third flight and seven months past the former date for the first manned flight. The mission was not only late, it was much reduced in scope. First planned for a full day, or 18 orbits, the mission now seemed likely to be no more than three orbits, mainly for systems evaluation.⁴⁵ The three-orbit limit became official in mid-June 1963. This raised the question of what to do with the package that both of the first two manned spacecraft were supposed to carry into orbit to practice the final stages of rendezvous. Three orbits hardly seemed long enough. By the beginning of July, the rendezvous evaluation pod was cut from the first manned mission.⁴⁶

The pod stayed on the fourth flight and second manned mission, scheduled for seven days in orbit during January 1965, three months after the third. This longer interval between launches was planned for the rest of the program. The two months that had been allowed no longer seemed time enough to check out machines and train crews. Another change in the flight program inserted a rendezvous mission between the two longer flights, so the fifth would be a rendezvous mission and the sixth would remain in orbit 14 days. The two long missions had been back-to-back, but this left little time to absorb the lessons of one such flight before launching another. The last six missions, each about three days long, all focused on rendezvous. The final flight was scheduled for January 1967, nearly two years after the date first approved in December 1961 and more than a year later than expected after reprogramming in late 1962. The new flight plan also reflected the uncertain status of the paraglider landing system, now scheduled only from the seventh flight on. Earlier spacecraft would rely on parachutes, and the first land landing was not expected until October 1965.⁴⁷

NASA Headquarters approved the new Gemini flight plan on 29 April 1963.⁴⁸ The lengthened schedule and spaced-out launches eased the pressure on Project Gemini in terms of both time and money. Technical problems and money shortages were the proximate cause of the changes, but throughout 1962 the shape of Gemini had been subtly shifting. Mercury technology proved less easy to transfer to Gemini than expected, partly for technical reasons - the planned coupling of two Mercury environmental control systems to provide for a Gemini crew, for example, went by the board as engineers tried and failed to convert the concept into detail specifications⁴⁹ - but mainly because the image of Gemini had altered in the eyes of its makers. “Instead of being merely a transition between Mercury and Apollo,” Gilruth told his colleagues in the Management Council on 30 April, “the Gemini program now actually involves the development of an operational spacecraft.”⁵⁰

Holmes spelled out what this meant in a lengthy memorandum to Seamans on 3 May. By building into Gemini the most up-to-date technology, rather than merely modified Mercury equipment, “Gemini would have extensive and most useful applications in earth orbital space operations,” even, ultimately, “as a resupply vehicle for future space stations,” It would also produce a beneficial side effect: the new Gemini promised to be a much greater help to Apollo in such areas as systems development, preflight checkout, and mission training. None of this came cheaply, either in time or money, but Holmes argued it was worth it because “we have a much more valuable and worthwhile Gemini Program than could have been had if we had not taken advantage of our increased knowledge to develop and design the best spacecraft possible within the limits of our present technology.”⁵¹

These were the arguments that NASA spokesmen used to explain the higher costs that Gemini had incurred in the past fiscal year and to defend their budget request for fiscal year 1964 to congressmen growing restive in the face of soaring NASA needs. Gemini, Holmes told the House Subcommittee on Manned Space Flight, was “much more than a big, overgrown Mercury.”⁵² It had, said Webb, “what I would characterize as the potential for the first workhorse of the Western space world in very much the same way that the DC-3 airplane became a great workhorse of aviation for many, many purposes.”⁵³

How much of this was merely after-the-fact rationalization may be open to question, but whatever hopes NASA officials might have for using Gemini or helping Apollo depended on solving some urgent problems. Development of the new technology that was to transform Gemini was lagging. The most advanced spacecraft systems - propulsion, escape, and fuel cell - were running into trouble; the paraglider program had faltered; and, worst of all, the Titan II launch vehicle posed a question mark for manned space flight. Maybe Gemini would become a workhorse, and maybe that prospect was good reason to delay the flight program. But the many technical problems, Gemini’s new acting manager admitted when interviewed by a leading trade journal, had already wrecked the old schedule.⁵⁴

Attacking Paraglider and Titan II Problems

The most pressing worry when Mathews took charge of the project in mid-March 1963 was what to do about the trouble-plagued paraglider development program. Back-to-back failures, as North American tried to deploy the wing in flight, had destroyed both half-scale test vehicles. GPO had been funding paraglider on an interim basis since February, little money was left, and North American was ready to quit unless it got new directions. With neither time nor money enough to replace the two lost test vehicles, GPO had to work out a new test program with North American, using the hardware still on hand or almost ready - the two full-scale test vehicles slated for deployment tests, the half-scale boilerplate left over from emergency parachute system qualification, and the paraglider trainer that North American was building.⁵⁵

Spokesmen for North American and MSC met in Houston 27-28 March to discuss the options. Telephones in GPO, in the Gemini Procurement Office, and in North American were busy over the next two weeks as the main features of a revised test program were argued, talked out, and settled. The key decision was to divide the flight sequence in half and work through the problems of each phase separately before trying to demonstrate a complete flight from deployment through landing.⁵⁶

Spreading the wing in flight was still the crucial problem, and it was to be tackled with the two full-scale test vehicles. The new test plan, however, was simpler than the old. As the vehicle dropped from a high-flying aircraft, its wing would inflate and deploy to convert its fall into a glide down to 3,000 meters. That ended the test sequence. Explosive charges would sever the cables that suspended the test vehicle from the wing, and the now wingless vehicle would descend to Earth beneath a large parachute. The rest of the flight sequence, gliding from 3,000 meters to a landing, was to be studied with two tow-test vehicles, modified versions of the paraglider trainer. Towed by a helicopter to the proper altitude and then released, this vehicle would be flown by a pilot down to the California desert. In the final stage of the program, Gemini static articles would be fitted with standard paraglider gear and flown through the complete flight sequence from deployment to landing.⁵⁷

If everything went according to plan, the paraglider landing system could be ready for the seventh Gemini spacecraft. By the time McDonnell started building the tenth spacecraft, paraglider gear could be installed at the proper place on the production line.⁵⁸

On 12 April 1963, Mathews outlined for North American what had to be done at once to put the new program into effect. The company was to stop all work on landing gear for the full-scale test vehicle, since it would now land via parachute, and to forget about trying to convert the half-scale boilerplate into a half-scale test vehicle. Instead, the boilerplate would be used as a tow-test vehicle to work out takeoff techniques needed later for manned flights. North American also had to qualify the new full-scale parachute system, which differed substantially from the emergency system - using three Mercury-type parachutes - that North American had tried hard to qualify, without much success, during the summer and fall of 1962. By the end of April 1963, North American had shifted gears and was working along the lines laid out earlier that month.⁵⁹

The reoriented paraglider program was formalized in a new contract between North American and NASA on 5 May 1963 that also closed out the earlier contracts. MSC and the contractor agreed on a year-long program (to May 1964) more tightly focused on the basic design of a workable paraglider system than the old had been, with such matters as flight training and production postponed until the design had been proved.⁶⁰ NASA settled the earlier contracts with North American for $7.8 million and negotiated a $20-million price for the new effort that was intended to save paraglider landing for Gemini.⁶¹

Although doing something about paraglider was the most pressing problem Mathews faced when he took over Gemini, Titan II was the greater concern for the program as a whole. So far, Air Force efforts toward clearing up the troubles had been limited to what was needed to make its missile work. Nothing extra was yet being done to see that Titan II met Gemini’s needs, although Bernard Schriever had assured Holmes that any Titan II problems that threatened Gemini would be taken care of.⁶² Pogo seemed to Mathews, as it had to Chamberlin, the most urgent, and Mathews, like Chamberlin, insisted that ±0.25g at the spacecraft was the highest level of vibration that NASA could accept. BSD, however, professed to be content with the g-level of ±0.6g already achieved, well below earlier levels as high as 5g. That was low enough for the missile, and BSD firmly refused to spend any more of its money to lower it further.⁶³

GPO could do little to change BSD’s stand, but Schriever, whose command embraced BSD, did have something to say about it. He ordered top officials of both BSD and SSD to his headquarters at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland on 29 March 1963 to present a status report on Titan II problems related to its role as Gemini launch vehicle. Spokesmen for the major Titan II contractors - Martin, Aerojet, Aerospace, and Space Technology Laboratories - were on hand to discuss their efforts. What Holmes and the other NASA representatives Schriever had invited to the meeting heard was far from reassuring.

Brigadier General John L. McCoy, Director of BSD’s Titan System Program Office, led off with an account of the two outstanding problems, longitudinal oscillation and combustion instability. Neither, he stressed, now threatened missile development. Trying to meet Gemini standards by changing any of the missiles still to fly in the development program was too chancy. McCoy’s job was to develop a weapon system, which he objected to risking for Gemini.

The contractors argued that the problems were just about solved. Both Aerospace and Martin-Baltimore endorsed the optimistic view of Aerojet General’s chief project engineer for Titan II engines, Alvin L. Feldman. Feldman pointed out that Pogo had already responded to increased fuel-tank pressure, and he saw even more promise in a combination of standpipes in the oxidizer lines and mechanical accumulators in the fuel lines. Unstable burning might be handled by modifying the baffles on the injector that fed propellants to the engine or by starting the flow of propellants with some inert fluid.

A closed-door session limited to NASA and Air Force officials followed this open session. Here Holmes vented his frustration at the parade of numbers, statistics, and percentages on Titan II problems he had heard. The crucial point, he insisted, was that no one knew what caused either Pogo or unstable burning; without that knowledge, the booster could not be judged man-rated. Since the Air Force was now a bigger partner than before in Gemini, Holmes thought that Defense funds ought to pay a share of whatever the price might be to fit the launch vehicle to Gemini. But even if NASA had to pay the whole bill, even if Gemini had to face more delays, Holmes wanted these shortcomings corrected. Lieutenant General Howell M. Estes, Schriever’s second-in-command, agreed. They decided on a joint development and test program expressly designed to bring Titan II up to Gemini standards, with Air Force Titan II money to get it started and the question of funding the rest to be referred to the Gemini Program Planning Board.⁶⁴

Just three days later, on 1 April, McCoy was heading a new Titan II/Gemini Coordination Committee,* which, by 5 April, had drawn up a “Joint Titan II/Gemini Development Plan on Missile Oscillation Reduction and Engine Reliability and Improvement.” It spelled out the work needed to cut Pogo levels to NASA standards and to reduce the incidence of combustion instability in the second-stage engines. It also outlined an “augmented engine improvement program” to clean up the design of the first- and second-stage engines and to enhance their reliability. McCoy’s committee planned to direct the effort, with funds supplied by BSD’s Titan System Program Office. The plan to improve and man-rate Titan II had two major restrictions: the weapon-system’s flight test program was not to incur undue delays by waiting for Gemini items; and McCoy had the final say on if and when to fly Gemini improvements, with missile program objectives taking precedence.⁶⁵

The Gemini Program Planning Board concurred in the plan a month later, on 6 May, and recommended that the Department of Defense pay for it, starting at once with current Defense emergency funds. This meant $3 million from fiscal year 1963 money and another $17 million from the next year’s budget. The Air Force provided half the $3 million by the end of the month, with a firm promise for the balance.⁶⁶

In acting on the Titan II plan, the board was moving beyond its charter, which called for it simply to decide what military experiments should be carried on Gemini flights. Its roster of members, however, included Holmes and Schriever, as well as Seamans and McMillan, making it the logical group to coordinate a high-level attack on Titan II’s problems. When the board submitted its recommendations to Secretary of Defense McNamara and NASA Administrator Webb on 29 May, no one was surprised that it covered not only experiments but the pursuit “with utmost urgency of” the Titan II improvement plan, using Defense funds and the missile test program.⁶⁷ McNamara and Webb endorsed the board’s findings. McNamara specifically agreed to pay for the program and directed the Secretary of the Air Force both to fund it and to flight-test the improvements in the missile program. In a memorandum to the board members, Webb stressed

the urgency we attach to the development of the Gemini Launch Vehicle. It is of the utmost importance that the cause of the present deficiencies in the Titan II be determined and remedial action accomplished as expeditiously as practicable . . . to eliminate the launch vehicle as a potential source of delay in the Gemini schedule.⁶⁸

The delay was already more than potential, as attested by the major role Titan II problems had played in Gemini’s new flight program. But further delays loomed ahead as the Titan II missile test program unexpectedly faltered during the spring of 1963 and threatened to undo the improvement plan before it had fairly begun. The 18th flight test of the Titan II missile was launched on 24 May 1963, It was only the 10th fully successful flight and the last for months to come.⁶⁹

The next launch, five days later, produced a particularly disappointing failure. Martin, Aerojet, Aerospace, and Space Technology Laboratories had worked hard to confirm the hypothesis that Pogo during first-stage flight was caused by coupling between the missile structure and its propulsion system, the couple making an unstable closed loop. A study of year-old static-firing data led Sheldon Rubin of Aerospace to believe he had found the missing link in the analytic model; the partial vacuum produced by pumping caused hydraulic resonance in the fuel suction line. If valid, this finding would correct the two major shortcomings of prior analyses, which had failed to predict where oscillations ceased during flight and had wrongly predicted that oxidizer standpipes alone would suppress Pogo. Rubin’s corrected model showed why Missile N-11 in December 1962 was less stable than other Titan IIs and how adding fuel accumulators as well as oxidizer standpipes would suppress Pogo. The missile launched on 29 May carried Pogo suppression devices for both oxidizer and fuel to test their combined effect. But, leaking fuel in its engine compartment, the missile burst into flame as it lifted off. Its controls damaged by the fire, the missile pitched over and broke up 52 seconds later. In contrast to Missile N-11, the Pogo devices were absolved from any blame for the failures, but the flight ended too soon to provide any Pogo data and the problem remained unsolved.⁷⁰

This setback was followed by another, on 20 June, in the 20th Titan II flight. This was purely a military test, the missile being launched from a silo at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. First-stage flight was troublefree, with Pogo levels low enough (±.62g) to meet Air Force standards. But partial clogging of the tiny holes in the oxidizer injector of the second-stage gas generator caused thrust to fall off shortly after staging to about half the required value. The same thing had happened in two earlier tests; had the missile been carrying a spacecraft, its crew would have been forced to abort the mission.⁷¹

Back-to-back failures at this stage in the program compelled BSD to suspend Titan II flight testing. Only half the 20 flights so far launched could be called fully successful, and McCoy now faced the task of making good on at least 12 of the 13 flights still left him, to prove that Titan II was ready to join America’s strategic deterrent forces. The missile had to come first, and McCoy again ordered a halt to any further attempts to lower Pogo levels as too great a risk to what remained of his test program. Although Major General Ben I. Funk, SSD commander, appealed McCoy’s decision to Systems Command Headquarters, the whole question of Gemini-Titan development, and particularly of flight-testing a cure for Pogo, was once more unsettled.

A Clouded Future

In the aftermath of reprogramming, Gemini was buffeted by new crises. An offhand Defense Department bid to take over the program flustered NASA’s top echelons briefly, but technical problems began taking on fearsome proportions early in 1963, with paraglider and Titan II looming as the greatest question marks. When the first months of 1963 also revealed that Gemini’s money troubles had not been settled, the stage was set for a change of project managers. Charles Mathews replaced James Chamberlin as head of a faltering program. The framework was solid enough, a tribute to Chamberlin’s engineering efforts, but costs, schedules, and administration were not. Mathews moved swiftly and smoothly to take these problems in hand. In short order, the status of the program was reviewed; its schedules, budgets, and objectives reassessed; and its revision outlined. By mid-1963, Gemini’s managerial worries, both internal and external, had been at least temporarily resolved by a tightened organization, a lengthened schedule, and a modified program. But the major technical problems persisted and even worsened.

With many of the Gemini launch vehicle’s parts still short of flight status and with BSD firmly opposed to risking its own program to solve Gemini’s problems, the prospect of meeting the December 1963 deadline for the first Gemini launch was dimming. NASA was no longer concerned simply with the status of the vehicle and the effect of specific problems like Pogo and unstable combustion on its chances of being ready in time. Although its promise had been great, Titan II’s flight record was so poor that NASA was beginning to wonder whether it belonged in Project Gemini at all.⁷²