Posted by Ray Katz in NASA, featured, history
Gemini’s paraglider
The Gemini paraglider—never built.
America’s second manned space program, the Gemini project, originally planned to descend onto land—not water. But the plan didn’t pan out.
Gemini was to be attached to a paraglider, giving a controlled landing. This would be a big improvement over the earlier Mercury project. There would be no need for aircraft carriers and helicopters to recover astronauts and spacecraft. And space travel would become closer to being routine.
But Gemini was a rushed project. It was needed to quickly master the skills for the upcoming Apollo project and a moonlanding. The paraglider project required major innovation…and there just wasn’t time.
Successful project, but landed in water
Gemini, ultimately, was successful. In ten manned flights, NASA and its astronauts learned how to perform spacewalks, rendezvous and docking, and extened length spaceflights…including the (then very long) 2 week flight of Gemini 7. NASA was getting ready to put a man on the moon.
But, it wouldn’t be until 1981 that NASA would land a manned spacecraft on the earth—on the first mission of the space shuttle.
