SpaceCenter Houston's Rocket Park Fills In A Missing Piece

By Richard Connelly Thu., Jul. 1 2010 at 6:59 AM

Categories: NASA

Photo via CollectSpace

The Gemini-Titan, ready for refurbishing

Last week, with little fanfare, a truck rolled up to the Johnson Space Center with a unique cargo.

It was a replica of a Gemini-Titan rocket with capsule, and it means SpaceCenter's Rocket Park will fill in a missing piece of JSC history.

As CollectSpace reports, JSC had been missing a Gemini-Titan, the rocket used for 10 manned pre-Apollo missions, some of them the most thrilling of the 1960s.
"It's the missing piece," Paul Spana, exhibits manager for SpaceCenter Houston, told the website. "We've got the Apollo and Mercury-Redstone but we don't have anything that represents the Gemini out there. So this is going to add that missing piece to the story about the history of manned spaceflight... and Johnson Space Center."

JSC was able to get the rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida because they came across a better version, including parts that were headed to the scrapyard. They had taken down their Gemini-Titan for refurbishing, but instead sent it on to Texas.

Among the astronauts who flew the rocket are Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Gus Grissom and Jim Lovell.

Once it's ready for display, the rocket will seem laughably small compared to the Saturn V, but its place in space history is beyond argument.