Pat LeBlanc's Project Gemini Capsule Custom

Pat LeBlanc's Project Gemini Capsule

Submitted by Pat LeBlanc in 2012

Unfortunately I only  have a couple of images of this capsule from Pat's posts to the old Yahoo Groups. As I recall he started the build in 2004 then life got in the way until his completing the project in 2012. It's made much like the earlier Mercury 7 capsule using stiff printed paper that's reinforced.

From wikipedia:

Project Gemini was the second United States human spaceflight program to fly. Conducted after the first, Project Mercury, and while the Apollo program was still in development, Gemini was conceived in 1961 and concluded in 1966. The Gemini spacecraft carried a two-astronaut crew. Ten Gemini crews and 16 individual astronauts flew low Earth orbit (LEO) missions during 1965 and 1966.

NASA Image comparing Mercury to Gemini

Gemini's objective was the development of space travel techniques to support the Apollo mission to land astronauts on the Moon. In doing so, it allowed the United States to catch up and overcome the lead in human spaceflight capability the Soviet Union had obtained in the early years of the Space Race, by demonstrating mission endurance up to just under 14 days, longer than the eight days required for a round trip to the Moon; methods of performing extravehicular activity (EVA) without tiring; and the orbital maneuvers necessary to achieve rendezvous and docking with another spacecraft. This left Apollo free to pursue its prime mission without spending time developing these techniques.

Pat LeBlanc's Project Gemini - Cockpit

Pat LeBlanc's Project Gemini -Vacuform Seats

Hopefully Pat will at some point provide more images for me - I'm not sure if he documented the build to the same standard as the Mercury Capsule since it took so long to complete. In any case, you can see from the few images above how he accomplished the finished item.

You can reach Pat LeBlanc on Facebook.

Should anybody reading this have any similar information, additions or corrections, then we would very much appreciate hearing about them.

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