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Apollo 1's Fire: The Disaster That Rebuilt a Spacecraft
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Gemini proved rendezvous, endurance, and spacewalking were possible — then Apollo 1 burned on the launchpad and nearly ended the Moon program entirely. This chapter follows the bridge nobody remembers and the tragedy that forced NASA to rebuild from the ground up.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Without Gemini, there is no Apollo. That's not a debatable point.
To understand why Gemini existed, you need to understand where NASA stood in nineteen sixty-one. Alan Shepard had flown.
The Gemini spacecraft was a two-person capsule. Larger than Mercury, designed specifically to run the tests that Apollo would need.
By the time Gemini finished in November nineteen sixty-six, Apollo was moving fast. Too fast, some within NASA believed.
One of the things that gets compressed in most retellings is the sheer scale of what followed. Apollo wasn't rebuilt by a room of engineers.
By late nineteen sixty-eight the lunar landing program was back on track, but the Moon itself had not yet been reached. The decision was made to send Apollo eight all the way to lunar orbit without a lunar module.
Apollo eleven launched on July sixteenth, nineteen sixty-nine. Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins.
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