"Now this is cool. The men who autographed this photo were pioneers in American space exploration, and some of them went on to walk on the moon. It's probably worth about $5,000."
-Expert
Facts[]
- Fact 1: Gemini was the follow-up to the successful Mercury program, and sought to work out various techniques that would later be used in manned lunar missions.
- Fact 2: An offshoot of Gemini dubbed Blue Gemini was secretly undertaken by the US Air Force in 1962, and refurbished used space capsules as manned ground observation platforms. The project was cancelled and replaced with spy satellites in 1963.
- Fact 3: Gemini was a series of firsts for US astronauts: the first tandem flight, the first spacewalk, the first docking maneuver, the first long-duration flight, and the first emergency landing.
- Fact 4: The Gemini project exclusively used Titan-II GLV launch vehicles, which were in reality repurposed intercontinental missiles. Each rocket was 109 feet tall and weighed over 170 tons.
- Fact 5: A 2010 study found the total cost of the Gemini program to be $1.3 billion ($7.3 billion in 2010 dollars). A single Gemini flight today would cost about $723 million.