Author Topic: Big Gemini  (Read 69788 times)

Offline the_other_Doug

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Re: Big Gemini
« Reply #60 on: 05/27/2015 04:12 am »
Circumlunar Gemini had some fans at then-MSC, as well as at headquarters.  It was, in the final analysis, deemed too much of a stunt that would detract from (and steal funds from) Apollo, but had the Soviet Union shown signs in mid-1966 of launching a Zond manned circumlunar flight in the near future, I bet circumlunar Gemini would have been given a green light.

It was actually pretty simple -- the Titan II was capable of launching a Gemini heavy enough for the mission (the biggest weight gain was a beefed-up heat shield), and a Centaur had enough kick to put that stack into a free-return trajectory.  Put a Target Docking Adapter on the Centaur, rendezvous with it, and burn TLI.

Pete Conrad pushed strenuously for this mission for Geminis 11 and 12, and was ultimately shot down.  Some say he was given the 1,400-km-apogee maneuver with the Agena as a consolation prize.

Now, the follow-on proposal by McDonnell, to develop a small lander and use a combination of a Saturn IB (to launch the Gemini and the lander to LEO) and a Titan IIIC/Transstage (launching the transstage as a rendezvous target for the Gemini/Lander in LEO and providing TLI, LOI and TEI propulsion) to accomplish a one-man lunar landing by the end of 1967, was perhaps technically possible, but stood no chance of being approved.  It too directly tried to usurp Apollo's mission, and also would have required a super-fast one-man lander development program that there was simply no funding for.

With both lunar applications out the window, I guess McDonnell felt that Big G was their last chance to propose a Gemini variant that would keep them in the manned spaceflight business for another decade or more.
-Doug  (With my shield, not yet upon it)

Offline RanulfC

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Re: Big Gemini
« Reply #61 on: 05/27/2015 12:33 pm »
The impression on got was that there was a bit of a "huh?" factor in that NAA got the contract for Apollo, while McDonnell took as a challenge and an opportunity. I just never could see that Big G was as versatile as they claimed it was.

Randy
From The Amazing Catstronaut on the Black Arrow LV:
British physics, old chap. It's undignified to belch flames and effluvia all over the pad, what. A true gentlemen's orbital conveyance lifts itself into the air unostentatiously, with the minimum of spectacle and a modicum of grace. Not like our American cousins' launch vehicles, eh?

Offline notsorandom

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Re: Big Gemini
« Reply #62 on: 05/27/2015 01:44 pm »
Circumlunar Gemini had some fans at then-MSC, as well as at headquarters.  It was, in the final analysis, deemed too much of a stunt that would detract from (and steal funds from) Apollo, but had the Soviet Union shown signs in mid-1966 of launching a Zond manned circumlunar flight in the near future, I bet circumlunar Gemini would have been given a green light.

It was actually pretty simple -- the Titan II was capable of launching a Gemini heavy enough for the mission (the biggest weight gain was a beefed-up heat shield), and a Centaur had enough kick to put that stack into a free-return trajectory.  Put a Target Docking Adapter on the Centaur, rendezvous with it, and burn TLI.

Pete Conrad pushed strenuously for this mission for Geminis 11 and 12, and was ultimately shot down.  Some say he was given the 1,400-km-apogee maneuver with the Agena as a consolation prize.

Now, the follow-on proposal by McDonnell, to develop a small lander and use a combination of a Saturn IB (to launch the Gemini and the lander to LEO) and a Titan IIIC/Transstage (launching the transstage as a rendezvous target for the Gemini/Lander in LEO and providing TLI, LOI and TEI propulsion) to accomplish a one-man lunar landing by the end of 1967, was perhaps technically possible, but stood no chance of being approved.  It too directly tried to usurp Apollo's mission, and also would have required a super-fast one-man lander development program that there was simply no funding for.

With both lunar applications out the window, I guess McDonnell felt that Big G was their last chance to propose a Gemini variant that would keep them in the manned spaceflight business for another decade or more.
The Apollo LEM ran into a fair amount of schedule slip. I'd wager that all lander designs suffered from an overly optimistic schedule in the mid 60s. Had the one person lander and Gemini been given the go ahead they might very well have been in the position of waiting for the lander like Apollo did. Even worse they might not have been able to build it light enough to fly. The LEM at around 14 or so tones was already stretched pretty thin.

Many of the one person lander were also not enclosed and pressurized instead relying on the astronaut's space suit.  As Allen Bean said once if you threw up in the suit while trying to land you would likely die. So that was a much more risky approach. Two people on the surface also allowed for a reasonable chance that if one should become incapacitated the other could get them back to safety in the LEM.

The lander would also be a lot less capable than the LEM. Just being barely capable of getting one person to the surface the amount of science it could do on the surface would have been very limited. Even more so because there would have been only one person. Apollo did do the job of landing before 1970, so the Gemini lander scenario wouldn't have that over Apollo. I'm not sure it could have been done cheaply enough to have been sustainable. It was quite a bit more risky, had little room for growth, and had less capability. NASA would have been just as likely if not even more so to want to finish the program and move on to the shuttle. 

Offline the_other_Doug

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Re: Big Gemini
« Reply #63 on: 05/27/2015 04:52 pm »
Circumlunar Gemini had some fans at then-MSC, as well as at headquarters.  It was, in the final analysis, deemed too much of a stunt that would detract from (and steal funds from) Apollo, but had the Soviet Union shown signs in mid-1966 of launching a Zond manned circumlunar flight in the near future, I bet circumlunar Gemini would have been given a green light.

It was actually pretty simple -- the Titan II was capable of launching a Gemini heavy enough for the mission (the biggest weight gain was a beefed-up heat shield), and a Centaur had enough kick to put that stack into a free-return trajectory.  Put a Target Docking Adapter on the Centaur, rendezvous with it, and burn TLI.

Pete Conrad pushed strenuously for this mission for Geminis 11 and 12, and was ultimately shot down.  Some say he was given the 1,400-km-apogee maneuver with the Agena as a consolation prize.

Now, the follow-on proposal by McDonnell, to develop a small lander and use a combination of a Saturn IB (to launch the Gemini and the lander to LEO) and a Titan IIIC/Transstage (launching the transstage as a rendezvous target for the Gemini/Lander in LEO and providing TLI, LOI and TEI propulsion) to accomplish a one-man lunar landing by the end of 1967, was perhaps technically possible, but stood no chance of being approved.  It too directly tried to usurp Apollo's mission, and also would have required a super-fast one-man lander development program that there was simply no funding for.

With both lunar applications out the window, I guess McDonnell felt that Big G was their last chance to propose a Gemini variant that would keep them in the manned spaceflight business for another decade or more.
The Apollo LEM ran into a fair amount of schedule slip. I'd wager that all lander designs suffered from an overly optimistic schedule in the mid 60s. Had the one person lander and Gemini been given the go ahead they might very well have been in the position of waiting for the lander like Apollo did. Even worse they might not have been able to build it light enough to fly. The LEM at around 14 or so tones was already stretched pretty thin.

Many of the one person lander were also not enclosed and pressurized instead relying on the astronaut's space suit.  As Allen Bean said once if you threw up in the suit while trying to land you would likely die. So that was a much more risky approach. Two people on the surface also allowed for a reasonable chance that if one should become incapacitated the other could get them back to safety in the LEM.

The lander would also be a lot less capable than the LEM. Just being barely capable of getting one person to the surface the amount of science it could do on the surface would have been very limited. Even more so because there would have been only one person. Apollo did do the job of landing before 1970, so the Gemini lander scenario wouldn't have that over Apollo. I'm not sure it could have been done cheaply enough to have been sustainable. It was quite a bit more risky, had little room for growth, and had less capability. NASA would have been just as likely if not even more so to want to finish the program and move on to the shuttle.

Exactly.  You very clearly described why lunar Gemini was, in the final analysis, dismissed as a stunt -- worse, a dangerous stunt that would have left us *barely* satisfying the end-of-decade goal, while allowing little to no ability to take advantage of the landing scientifically.  (Also, note that lunar Gemini and its drawbacks, as you described it, also rather well describes the Soviet lunar landing system of the late '60s, too.  You do the math... ;) )

Even though Apollo was designed as a somewhat bare-bones way of landing humans on the Moon (certainly as compared to the kind of expedition you could mount using direct ascent or even EOR), it still provided the capability to perform sophisticated selenological investigations, including both remote sensor emplacement and geological traverses with targeted sampling strategies.  We stretched the system to its limits, and were perhaps lucky we never lost anyone in flight during Apollo, but it did provide an exploitable platform.  All lunar Gemini would ave done would have been to, at even greater risk, put a check in the box "land a man on the Moon before the end of the decade."  And, by extrapolation, that's pretty much all the Soviet program would have been capable of, I think.

This is why I think McDonnell concentrated on Big G, since they saw the writing on the wall and conceded, in 1967, that their lunar ambitions for their spacecraft would never come to pass.

Don't just blame McDonnell, though.  Jim Chamberlin, NASA's first program manager for Gemini, was pushing to dump Apollo and use Gemini to satisfy the lunar landing goal even before LOR was officially adopted as the mission mode for Apollo.  And Chuck Mathews, who took over from Chamberlin as Gemini program manager, himself became enamored of the circumlunar mission and was one of those I mentioned who was a friend of lunar Gemini at JSC.  So, it wasn't just old man McDonnell trying to get more business from NASA -- there were NASA people, as well, who saw merit in lunar Gemini concepts and pushed for them at various times.

A lot of good information about the evolution of Mercury Mark II into Gemini, and the discarded lunar Gemini options (and those who supported them), can be found in NASA's Gemini history, "On the Shoulders of Titans," BTW.  One thing that stands out in that history is the struggle NASA had to get the Air Force to develop the Titan missile to the point where it was safe and effective for the Gemini launch vehicle's mission.  I recommend the book.
-Doug  (With my shield, not yet upon it)

Offline notsorandom

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Re: Big Gemini
« Reply #64 on: 05/27/2015 06:03 pm »
Exactly.  You very clearly described why lunar Gemini was, in the final analysis, dismissed as a stunt -- worse, a dangerous stunt that would have left us *barely* satisfying the end-of-decade goal, while allowing little to no ability to take advantage of the landing scientifically.  (Also, note that lunar Gemini and its drawbacks, as you described it, also rather well describes the Soviet lunar landing system of the late '60s, too.  You do the math... ;) )
The Soviet scheme was at an even greater disadvantage not being developed from a Gemini like program. Two major problems with it were docking and the EVA transfer of the cosmonaut. Both are something the Gemini based landing would need to do but were perfected, though not easily, during the Gemini program. The Soviets were still having difficulty in docking well into their early station program. A failure to dock in lunar orbit would have been fatal without some amazing piloting and a equally amazing EVA. But that is all for another historical spaceflight thread.

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Big Gemini
« Reply #65 on: 10/07/2015 06:43 pm »
My Big Gemini article is now published in Spaceflight magazine. Go buy a copy. Lots of Big G goodness.

Offline Archibald

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Re: Big Gemini
« Reply #66 on: 10/16/2015 09:39 am »
www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/729770.pdf

Rand Corp (not NASA) study, October 1970

Quote
SIX-MAN APOLLO SPACECRAFT

For those alternative space plans in which the shuttle operation
would be delayed or in which there would be no shuttle, a six-man modified
Apollo spacecraft would be used. This vehicle would have a gross
weight of 20,000 ib, a development cost of $1 billion, a first-unit cost
of $300 million, and a launch-operations cost of $73 million.
Han shot first and Gwynne Shotwell !

Re: Big Gemini
« Reply #67 on: 12/01/2015 12:54 pm »
Blackstar,
Just purchased November's Spaceflight and really enjoyed the Big G article. Have been weighing up doing a comparison of the Soviet TKS and the Big G with the expanded compartment - interesting similarities. Great to have some quality new Big G info rather than my collection of poorly photocopied documents!

Offline Archibald

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Re: Big Gemini
« Reply #68 on: 12/05/2015 12:45 pm »
Chris Petty - just for you, an alternate ASTP (BGTTP - Big Gemini TKS Test Program)



Picture based on Giuseppe de Chiara superb renderings
« Last Edit: 12/05/2015 12:48 pm by Archibald »
Han shot first and Gwynne Shotwell !

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Big Gemini
« Reply #69 on: 12/05/2015 05:45 pm »
My Big Gemini piece is going to run online soon.

Also, I hope to do an updated version with substantial new information sometime in 2016.

Offline beb

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Re: Big Gemini
« Reply #70 on: 12/05/2015 06:00 pm »
RanulfC, you don't have to use quotation marks unless you're quoting somebody.

There valid reasons for using "scare" quotes. One is as a sarcasm marker. So when one talks about doing something the "right" way it obviously means they are doing it the wrong way...

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Big Gemini
« Reply #71 on: 12/07/2015 10:23 pm »
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2879/1

The Big G
by Dwayne Day
Monday, December 7, 2015


By 1967, McDonnell Douglas Astronautics Company, which built the Gemini spacecraft earlier in the decade, had a contract to build several Gemini Bs for the Air Force as part of the Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) program. The Gemini B would be launched atop the MOL on a Titan IIIM rocket. The Gemini astronauts would leave their spacecraft through a hatch in the heat shield of their spacecraft and travel to the MOL through a tunnel.

Like all government contractors, McDonnell Douglas was looking to expand their customer base. The company had pitched civilian versions of MOL to NASA even though NASA was planning on using Apollo hardware as the basis of future space stations. In summer 1967, McDonnell Douglas proposed a new variant of its Gemini spacecraft known as the “Big Gemini,” or “Big G.” By December 1967, the company prepared a 100-page briefing booklet for NASA with “Big G” printed on the cover. The briefing booklet made the case for a new spacecraft for NASA even though NASA was not in the market for one.


Offline Ronpur50

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Re: Big Gemini
« Reply #72 on: 12/07/2015 11:56 pm »
Great article.  Is it the same as the one in the Spaceflight magazine?

Offline Brovane

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Re: Big Gemini
« Reply #73 on: 12/08/2015 05:19 pm »
My Big Gemini article is now published in Spaceflight magazine. Go buy a copy. Lots of Big G goodness.

I went ahead and purchased this issue online and read through your article today.  Excellent work.  Would you be willing to share your reference material that you used in L2 sometime in the future? 
"Look at that! If anybody ever said, "you'll be sitting in a spacecraft naked with a 134-pound backpack on your knees charging it", I'd have said "Aw, get serious". - John Young - Apollo-16

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Big Gemini
« Reply #74 on: 12/08/2015 06:41 pm »
My Big Gemini article is now published in Spaceflight magazine. Go buy a copy. Lots of Big G goodness.

I went ahead and purchased this issue online and read through your article today.  Excellent work.  Would you be willing to share your reference material that you used in L2 sometime in the future? 

Sure. I have a file. I can scan and post it here.

Offline Antilope7724

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Re: Big Gemini
« Reply #75 on: 12/08/2015 08:16 pm »
In March 1969, at the Congressional NASA 1970 Budget Authorization hearings
McDonnell-Douglas gave a presentation on Gemini Applications and a proposal for the Big Gemini as an interim space station ferry concept leading up to a small space shuttle type space station ferry.

Here are some illustrations from that presentation and a link to the Congressional document below:

From the U.S. House Committee on Science and Astronautics

1970 NASA Authorization, Mar 4, 5, 1969 - Page 900 to 945:

The Congressional report was scanned by Google and is available on the Hathi Trust website.
I believe it's only viewable from inside the U.S.

http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=umn.31951d03576130j;view=1up;seq=1034

Here are some illustrations from the McDonnell-Douglas presentation to Congress.

Offline Antilope7724

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Re: Big Gemini
« Reply #76 on: 12/08/2015 08:17 pm »

Offline Antilope7724

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Re: Big Gemini
« Reply #77 on: 12/08/2015 08:17 pm »

Offline Blackstar

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Re: Big Gemini
« Reply #78 on: 12/08/2015 10:18 pm »
Note that the congressional document is from March 1969, but the final report was not produced until August 1969. There were a number of key differences by the final report, including elimination of the Saturn IB and changes to the design of the rear of the vehicle. Not sure why all of those happened, but I hope to get to the bottom of it.

Offline Archibald

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Re: Big Gemini
« Reply #79 on: 12/09/2015 07:19 am »
What a great find, so interesting.
Han shot first and Gwynne Shotwell !

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