Gemini, by Virgil "Gus" Grissom

Excerpts from Gus Grissom's book, Gemini!, completed just a couple of weeks before his death in 1968, and edited afterwards by Jacob Hay.

The Introduction
Grissom explains why he wrote the book, in part saying:

Newspapers and magazines yellow and crumble away. And my two sons, Scott and Mark, may, like thousands of other young people, never learn to read a technical report or extract records from a computer's memory...Technical reports aren't concerned with the feelings of the people involved, just the results-did Gadget A operate on schedule? Did Gismo [stet] B malfunction?A computer wouldn't say that Gadget A worked because Wally Schirra sweated for weeks to be absolutely sure it would work when we needed it. It wouldn't say John young [my co-pilot on GEmini 3] and I knew it would work, because we'd learned to have perfect confidence in our backup team, Wally and Tom Stafford.

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Heaven knows, in the years ahead, once we've gone on from GEmini to Apollo and far beyond, we're going to need all the scientists and engineers and technicians we can get. So that's why this book, too. If this brings only one bright, curious, hard-driving youngster into space science and technology, that's justification enough for me.

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This new dimension their fathers are just now starting to explore is going to need young women, too.

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So here it is: the story of GEmini as we've lived it.