50, 47 and 40 years ago today.

[SkyMan]

50 years ago today, July 20, 1966, Gemini 10 was in day two of it's three day mission. The mission practiced rendezvous and spacewalking. It's crew was John Young commander and Michael Collins pilot. Three years later to the day, July 20, 1969, Collins was circling the Moon in Apollo 11, while Armstrong and Aldrin landed and walked on the Moon. Finally, on July 20, 1976 the Viking 1 lander soft landed on Mars and started looking for life. The results that came back have provoked dissension within the scientific community over the ensuing 40 years whether the signals from the experiments were caused by biological or chemical processes.

 

Here is a flown Gemini 10 Fliteline medallion from my collection. Flitelines are somewhere between the size of a quarter and a half dollar. Their designs are metallic representations of the mission patch. In this case the patch shows the Gemini spacecraft rendezvousing with the Agena spacecraft.

 

[johnny9434]

neat, i like

[DWLange]

Today is the anniversary of the first moon walk. My family watched it on a 13" portable black and white TV, which made the fuzzy transmission seem all the more remote.

 

The other thing I remember about that evening was a televised debate between radical activist Bernadette Devlin and sci-fi writer Ray Bradbury over the merits of spending so much money on the space program when there were many problems still to be solved on Earth. Bradbury held his own against a very angry IRA supporter, and four years later I had the pleasure of hearing him speak and meeting him afterward.

[johnny9434]

the first moon walk, they built the space suits around the corner from me and a i remember all the hoopla about it. neat/fond stories i remember about it.

[USAuPzlBxBob]

The Mercury missions were so ordinary; the single pilot, the single engine booster, the boring looking rocket, looking like what a rocket would look like, nothing more.

 

And then along came Gemini, the twins; double occupants, dual engines.

 

The Gemini Titan II rocket was so sleek, so "all business" with its "near crash dummy" exterior markings.

 

From memory, Gemini only had one mishap, which occurred when an Agena Target Vehicle had problems, spinning the coupled-vehicles out of control.

 

They were finally brought somewhat in control, and then the ATV was jettisoned.

 

50 years...come and gone.

 

Boy the way Glen Miller played...

 

 

[numisport]

Nice medallion. Great design. Are these flown medallions very rare ?

[SkyMan]

Nice medallion. Great design. Are these flown medallions very rare ?

 

No one is exactly sure which company produced the medallions used on the Gemini missions. The medallions all came in a plastic ~ 2" X 2" box that had Fliteline on it, so they were named Fliteline medallions. No one is exactly sure how many medallions were made for each flight, but the best guess is 100. The vast majority are silver colored (the underlying metal in some cases is basic white metal, while in other cases it is sterling silver), and some small percentage of medallions were gold plated such as the one above.

 

By the time of the Apollo missions the flown medallions were made by another company, Robbins (hence the name of the medallions are Robbins medallions). Robbins has continued to be the medallion maker for the US space program since 1968. The mintage of each flight, and the number of medallions flown on each flight is known. For the Apollo missions, numbers of flown range from 450 (for Apollo 11) to 80 (for Apollo 17). The early Apollo missions took all the minted medallions with them. The later Apollo missions left most of the minted medallions back on Earth. All medallions for a given flight were sequentially numbered, and for a flight where only a portion of the made medallions were flown, the flown medallions were always the earliest numbered (e.g. for Apollo 17 medallions 1 - 80 were flown).