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Old 12-18-2013, 03:01 AM
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JStarStar JStarStar is offline
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Indeed, Gemini had ejection seats -- no launch escape tower.

I really don't remember doing any in-depth reading on the background of the design decision on Gemini, but it does seem a curious decision.

Ejection seats would be no good at transonic speeds (the pilots would be killed by wind blast if not friction heating), so there would be a fairly significant segment of the flight during which there would effectively have been no functional escape system.

The Gemini-Titan had pretty serious takeoff acceleration. I am pretty sure it was pushing Mach 1 within 20-30 seconds of liftoff.

I suspect the bottom line reasoning was an escape tower system sufficient to pull the Gemini capsule free would have been fairly sizable and maybe push the total spacecraft weight over the Titan II's orbital launch capacity. As I recall it also had to do with the originally planned paraglider landing system.

If anyone else is more completely informed on the whole design discussion/debate on Gemini on the launch escape mechanism, I would certainly love to hear more about it. I would guess there were some fairly heated/pointed discussions of the matter when the astronauts were brought into the conversation.


HERE's a fairly extensive discussion on it:

http://www.collectspace.com/ubb/For...TML/000781.html
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