MITCHELL, Ind. (AP) - NASA’s Gemini 3 mission, nicknamed “Molly Brown,” was a stepping stone to putting a man on the moon.
Monday celebrates that flight’s 50th anniversary, and Ray Boomhower will revisit Spring Mill State Park to talk about the Virgil “Gus” Grissom flight in 1965.
Years ago, he was asked to speak about the Mercury flights during a spring conference for the Indiana Historical Society. Back then, he talked about the Mercury flight involving Mitchell’s Virgil “Gus” Grissom.
Monday, though, Boomhower will discuss the importance of the Molly Brown mission, the first maneuverable space flight, which Grissom commanded.
“When I was young, my father took my two brothers and me to Spring Mill State Park,” Boomhower said. “One of my biggest memories was going to the Gus Grissom memorial and I got to touch the Gemini 3 Molly Brown spacecraft there.
“I’ve always been a fan of space travel, and Gus Grissom in particular.”
Boomhower, author of “Gus Grissom: The Lost Astronaut,” called the Molly Brown flight “the lost child of early NASA space programs.”
“It comes between the Mercury programs, which were so exciting, and the glorified Apollo programs,” Boomhower told The Times-Mail (https://bit.ly/1CdMFIs ).
Mike Newfeld, senior curator at the space history department of the National Air and Space Museum, specializes in the Gemini and Mercury space programs.
“It was a test flight mission,” Newfeld said. “It was the first human space flight to modify its orbit.”
The program also tested having two men share a spaceflight, whereas Mercury missions were one-man missions.
The Mercury missions were just used to put a person in space and prove he could survive in space for a day. “It had no capabilities,” Newfeld said.
“Gemini was building on Mercury,” Newfeld said. “It was a program designed to prove you could . walk in space and that you could survive a two-week mission, because those were objectives to go to the moon.
“It was completely successful.”
The Molly Brown flight was named after the subject of the popular musical “The Unsinkable Molly Brown” because Grissom’s first spacecraft, the Liberty Bell 7 launched in 1961, had sunk upon splashdown. The 1965 flight was a short program. The spacecraft wasn’t in space for even five hours, Newfeld said.
“It was only three orbits, which I presume was the idea to just show that the spacecraft worked,” Newfeld said. “The very next mission, the Gemini 4, was the first American to walk in space.”
At that time, the United States was still lagging behind the Soviet Union in exploring space. However, Gemini 5 put the U.S. ahead. Gemini 5 remained in flight for eight days, which broke the Soviet Union record, Newfeld said. And eight days in space was what NASA deemed necessary to prove a man could survive long enough to make a trip to the moon and back.
“It was important as a stepping stone in the Gemini project,” Newfeld said. “Each mission was a step, and this was a step to going to the moon.”
Despite its significance to space exploration, people tend to remember two more colorful aspects of the 1965 flight, Newfeld said.
One was the name. NASA did not approve of naming a spacecraft Molly Brown, but Grissom’s second choice in name was “Titanic,” so NASA allowed it to be called Molly Brown. However, NASA decided the rest of the Gemini projects would not be named by the astronauts.
The other odd thing that stands out about the Molly Brown flight was that one of the crew members bought a corned beef sandwich and gave it to pilot John W. Young. Young sneaked it onto the capsule in his spacesuit, brought it out midflight, and shared a few bites with Grissom.
“Young and Grissom got in trouble after the mission,” Newfeld said. “Nobody was allowed to carry food on the flight that wasn’t approved. They were worried about crumbs floating around with the equipment.”
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Information from: The Times-Mail, https://www.tmnews.com
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