posted 05-31-2014 04:48 PM               

Watching the presenter show the interior of the Gemini capsule in such detail was fascinating.

However, as a collector I almost choked when the presenter casually mentioned that the meal pack he cut open and tried out was actually a flown unused meal pack from Gemini 7. He actually drank a flown juice drink and used a flown wipe!

posted 01-27-2026 06:13 PM            

I correctly guessed that the early voice-over was that of Frank Borman, and the programme featured interviews with Borman, Dr Charles Berry, flight controller John Hodge, and Walt Cunningham. Borman told how he and Jim Lovell pulled shutters over their windows to sleep, and that during their sleep-period, slight leaks of oxygen and cooling water would put the spacecraft into a 7 or 8 degree per second yaw, which they knew nothing about until they opened the shutters.

Dr Berry had a plastic medical dummy to demonstrate medical experiments which had a face that looked disturbingly like Dave Scott.

Bearing in mind that the documentary took place before Apollo 1, the most poignant comment was by Walt Cunningham who said that he hoped that when they eventually lost a crew, the American people would have the maturity to accept that such things happen in test programmes.