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

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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.

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.

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.

The late Virgil "Gus" Grissom finished the final draft of this book just before he, along with Ed White and Roger Chaffee, were killed in the fire inside their Apollo spacecraft in 1967. Even though the first flights of the Mercury program and the moon landings of the Apollo program received more press coverage and glory, this was a necessary step in American space exploration.
What we now take for granted, such as space walks, rendezvous and docking wth another vehicle, and long-duration flight, were pioneered in Gemini. As you read this book, which was aimed primarily at young readers (I receivedv this book as a high-school graduation present and still have it!), it seems as if Gus Grissom is there sitting with you on your living room sofa. He certainly lives on in our memories, as do his comrades-in-flight on Apollo I and the fourteen astronauts who lost their lives in the CHALLENGER and COLUMBIA disasters. In addition to telling us a little about his own life and marriage, a revealing glimpse into the post-World War II era as one who would make his mark on the future experienced it, he introduces us to other important figures, most notably his Gemini 3 pilot, John Young, who went on to land on the moon and later fly the first space shuttle mission.

As I remember, Gus Grissom wrote this book and was killed in the Apollo fire one week before he was to have reviewed the final draft. I found his book interesting and easy to read. His discussions of the space program up to the time of his death - January 1967 - and his experiences on his Mercury (boosted into space by the Redstone rocket) and his Gemini flights held my interest to the end. Gus was complimentary to the Martin Company (Martin Marietta Corporation) which built the Titan II missile that sent the Gemini into space and he expressed confidence in the missile and the people who worked on it. It was good reading. I would like to have this book but have been unable to obtain it.