Gemini: A Personal Account of Man's Venture into Space [Hardcover]

Virgil I. Grissom (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1968

"The heroic astronaut's personal account of his day-to-day experiences with one of man's greatest ventures into space:the Gemini program'. "The story of the historical flight aboard the Molly Brown as Gus Grissom named the Gemini 3 is breathtakinly descripted : the minute -by-minute sensations and experiences of Gus and his fellow astronaut John Young.

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: MacMillan Publishing Company (May 1968)
• ISBN-10: 0025458000
• ISBN-13: 978-0025458000
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,816,354 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Astronaut Gus Grissom's Personal Experiences in Space Flight, September 4, 2007

By 

Jan Peczkis "Scholar and Thinker" (Chicago IL, USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Gemini: A Personal Account of Man's Venture into Space (Hardcover)

Virgil "Gus" Grissom recounts his experiences, starting with the early days of space flight. He writes about the dramatic sinking of his Mercury spacecraft, the Liberty Bell 7. [In recent years, the Liberty Bell 7 has been recovered from off of the ocean floor]. He then rounds out discussion of the remaining Mercury flights.

Grissom and Young flew on Gemini 3 in March 1965. Grissom devotes considerable detail to that flight. It was the pioneering flight of the Gemini Program, and was the very first time in history where a crew in a manned spacecraft deliberately changed the orbit of their spacecraft. He also discusses, in less detail, most of the remaining Gemini flights.

Unfortunately, Gus Grissom did not live to complete this book. He perished in the tragic Apollo 1 launch pad fire of January 1967. Betty Grissom, his widow, had to complete the final part of this book.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gemini - Gus Grissom., April 25, 2010

By 

L. G. Manofsky "Larry Manofsky" (Asheville, NC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gemini: A Personal Account of Man's Venture into Space (Hardcover)

Gus figured out early how to become first in line to fly Gemini and Apollo. After his Mercury flight he spent months at McDonnell Aircraft in Saint Louis, volunteering as the astronaut office design rep. If it weren't for his hard work and insight, the Gemini spacecraft would not have evolved into the `hot rod' every following astronaut described it to be. Most of the astronauts who flew the vehicle commented that it was `built to fit Gus - who was 5-foot 3-inches.' After his flight in Gemini, Gus Grissom them volunteered to be the astronaut office rep to oversee the design of the Block I Apollo Capsule at North American Aviation. He again spent months overseeing and making inputs into the minute details of the design. As he was the astronaut office expert, he was given the commander seat of Apollo I. Gus was a consummate test pilot and engineer - as hard working as they come. Deke Slayton in his book Deke! stated that his intention was to select a Mercury astronaut to be the first to set foot on the moon. This person would have been Gus Grissom instead of Neil Armstrong. In a few passages from this book, Gus mentions his sons in the present tense, heartbreaking to read. The comment he made on the last page of the book is sobering: "...and sooner or later, inevitably, we're going to run head-on into the law of averages and lose somebody." This book is a good read, but hard to find.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Down to Earth Book about Being an Astronaut, May 17, 2007

By 

Robert C. Francis "radioflyer6" (Belvidere, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Gus Grissom was one of the original Mercury 7 astronauts and flew the first manned Gemini mission with John Young. While the book does fill in the reader on the flight of the Molly Brown and his earlier flight aboard Liberty Bell 7, it describes the everyday life of an astronaut better than any other book I have read.

He describes his office with a steel desk and a bare bookshelf. Over the first few months of Mercury, the bookshelf gets piled with books and papers relating to everything he needs to know. The medical experiments, the jungle training and other "right stuff" elements are interspersed with just the immense amount of studying he has to do in order to not just fly into space, but help design the spacecraft he's going to be flying.

Grissom came across as a gruff no-nonsense kind of astronaut, but the book contains a number of amusing anecdotes as he works his way through training, watching the successes and failures (often scary, spectacular failures; he flew alongside a rocket that exploded). After his first spacecraft was lost at sea, Grissom describes the scene when he tells NASA that he wants to name Gemini 3 the Molly Brown. They refuse, so he comes back with his second choice: Titanic.

Molly Brown it is.

Sadly, Grissom's life was cut short, dying in a fire aboard Apollo 1 during a simulation. This book was published posthumously. Grissom's last chapter tells what a great spacecraft Gemini is and thinks "we haven't seen the last of it." Read the book and let Gemini live again.