Gemini

Gemini

By Jeffrey Kluger

Pages

304

Rating

4.36

Year

2025

TechnologyHistoryScienceSpaceNonfiction

Description

After we first launched Americans into space but before we touched down on the moon’s surface, there was the Gemini program. It was no easy jump from manned missions in low-Earth orbit to a successful moon landing, and the ten-flight, twenty-month celestial story of the Gemini program is an extraordinary one. There was unavoidable darkness in the program — the deaths and near-deaths that defined it, and the blood feud with the Soviet Union that animated it.

But there were undeniable and previously inconceivable successes. With a war raging in Vietnam and lawmakers calling for cuts to NASA’s budget, the success of the Gemini program — or the space program in general — was never guaranteed. Yet against all odds, the remarkable scientists and astronauts behind the project persevered, and their efforts paid off. Later, with the knowledge gained from the Gemini flights, NASA would launch the legendary Apollo program.

Told with Jeffrey Kluger’s signature cinematic storytelling and in-depth research and interviews, Gemini is an edge-of-your-seat narrative chronicling the history of the least appreciated — and most groundbreaking — space program in American history. Finally, Gemini’s story will be told, and we'll learn the truth of how we landed on the moon.

Without Gemini, there would be no Apollo.