What are the basic data of Gemini 8 spacecraft in the United States?

Gemini 8 spacecraft is one of the Gemini spacecraft series of American manned spacecraft. Gemini spacecraft carried out 1965 from March to 1966 165438+ October. The main purpose is to carry out maneuvering flight, rendezvous and docking, and astronauts' on-orbit attempt of extravehicular activities. Make technical preparations for Apollo manned landing on the moon.

Gemini spacecraft weighs about 3.2 ~ 3.8 tons, with a maximum diameter of 3 meters, and consists of two parts: cockpit and equipment cabin.

After the "Mercury" program ended, then-President Kennedy of the United States made it clear that landing on the moon was the development goal of manned space flight. Therefore, NASA spent two years designing the second generation spacecraft, Gemini spacecraft, as a transition plan between the moon landing program and project mercury. Moreover, the purpose of this plan is quite clear, mainly to improve the key but untested technologies needed to fly to the moon, including orbit change, orbit rendezvous, orbit docking and on-orbit extravehicular activity.

In order to control the spacecraft accurately, the designer installed several rocket engines for Gemini, so that it can move forward, backward and sideways in the orbit to change the orbit. Complex tasks require two people to fly the spacecraft, which makes the spacecraft bigger. Moreover, the space flight time of Gemini spacecraft usually takes one to two weeks to determine whether the human body can withstand long-term weightlessness, so it needs a lot of electricity and energy. In order to meet this requirement, Gemini spacecraft added equipment cabin and installed power supply system, propellant storage tank and other equipment.

At that time, the ordinary chemical battery used was low in power and short in life, which was not enough to maintain long-term flight, and the solar cell technology was not mature, so the designer adopted the fuel cell, which released energy by the chemical reaction of fuel and converted it into electric energy output.

With two astronauts, plus additional support systems, materials and propellants, the Gemini spacecraft weighs twice as much as Mercury. To send it into space, the Cosmos launch vehicle used by Mercury has been powerless, and the Hercules 2 launch vehicle has become the launch vehicle of the Gemini spacecraft. After a long investigation, the designer found that the probability of the launch vehicle exploding during launch was extremely small, so Gemini canceled the escape tower and adopted the ejection seat as a life-saving measure in an emergency.