Gus, John, and Molly Brown: 5 Fun Facts About Gemini 3
March 23, 2025 is the 60th anniversary of Gemini 3, the first manned flight of the Gemini program. The mission's command pilot was Gus Grissom, the second American in space and veteran of Mercury-Redstone 4. The pilot was rookie John Young, the first from NASA's second group of astronauts, the New Nine, to fly in space. The crew's backup astronauts were Wally Schirra and Tom Stafford, future prime crew of Gemini 6A. Let's look at five interesting facts about Gemini 3!
1. The Unsinkable Molly Brown
According to Calculated Risk: The Supersonic Life and Times of Gus Grissom by George Leopold, Grissom first considered naming his spacecraft Wapasha after several Mdewakanton Dakota chiefs who lived in Minnesota during the 18th and 19th centuries. However, after someone pointed out to Grissom that the spacecraft would be nicknamed the Wabash Cannon Ball, a mythical train described in the American folk song of the same name, Wapasha was dropped. Grissom and Young agreed on the name Molly Brown after the popular broadway show The Unsinkable Molly Brown as a nod to Grissom's sunken Liberty Bell 7 capsule (more on that later) [1]. NASA was not amused and made the crew choose another name. Grissom suggested Titanic. NASA was less amused by that one, so they reluctantly allowed Molly Brown. In fact, NASA disliked the name so much that it prohibited its astronauts from naming their spacecraft until 1969.
Though Gemini 5 was the first crew to wear embroidered space patches on their spacesuits, the astronauts of Gemini 3 and Gemini 4 designed their own insignias. Grissom and Young carried silver medallions with artwork of a Gemini capsule in the ocean. The inclusion of the crew's first and last names and middle initials is unique to Gemini 3's and Gemini 4's medallions.
2. Second Time Around
Gemini 3 marked the first time a person had flown in space twice. On July 21, 1961, Grissom became the second American in space onboard the 15-minute suborbital Mercury-Redstone 4 mission. Paying homage to the Mercury Seven astronauts and to the United States, Grissom named his Mercury spacecraft Liberty Bell 7, because in his words, his capsule was "shaped like a bell." After splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean, the explosive hatch blew prematurely, causing water to flood into the capsule. Grissom was safely recovered but Liberty Bell 7, too heavy to hoist, sank to the bottom of the ocean. This event was what inspired the name Molly Brown.
3. Two of a Kind
Gemini 3 was also the first two-man American space mission [2]. The two-person Project Gemini was approved by NASA in December 1961 as the bridge from the sole-pilot Project Mercury to the lunar Project Apollo. Originally called Mercury Mark II, Gemini is named after the constellation of the same name, also the Latin word for "twins". Gemini 3 was also the first manned launch of a Titan rocket and the first manned launch from Launch Complex-19.
There have been a number of two-person missions in American space history, beginning with the ten manned flights of the Gemini program in 1965 and 1966. The first four flights of the Space Shuttle (STS-1 through STS-4) carried two astronauts each. As of 2025, there have been three American two-person space missions in the 2020s: SpaceX Demo-2, the crewed test flight of SpaceX Crew Dragon, and Boeing Crew Flight Test, the crewed test flight of Boeing Starliner, both had a crew of two. SpaceX Crew-9 initially planned to transport a crew of four to the International Space Station, but due to technical issues with Starliner, launched with a crew of only two.
4. Food that's "Out of this World"
Off A1A in Cocoa Beach at the Ramada Inn stood Wolfie's Restaurant, a family-friendly joint frequently visited by astronauts. One of Gemini 3's mission objectives was to evaluate NASA's new in-flight food packaging, reconstitution method, and taste. Space food flown on prior Mercury missions came in toothpaste-like tubes and in the form of crumbly, bite-sized cubes. During Gemini, NASA had its astronauts try food cubes coated in gelatin to minimize crumbling and rehydrating food with a water gun. Astronauts did not like the cold, mushy food.
Wally Schirra, backup command pilot and one of Grissom's friends, got the bright idea to have rookie John Young bring a fresh sandwich on the flight to surprise Grissom. Schirra purchased a corned beef on rye from Wolfie's and Young smuggled it in the pocket of his flight suit. About two hours into the flight, Young pulled out the sandwich and presented it to his commander. Grissom took a bite, neither he nor Young expecting the smell to be so pungent. Crumbs and caraway seeds began to fill the small cabin so Grissom shoved the sandwich into his suit pocket. It was a miracle the crumbs didn't interfere with the spacecraft's electronics. And that would've been the end of the story had no one back on Earth taken notice.
Young and Grissom during suit-up. Grissom is talking with Schirra (NASA)
This 30-second stunt drew scrutiny from Congress and NASA Administrator James Webb, who felt the Manned Spacecraft Center needed to tighten its reins on its astronauts. George Mueller, the head of the Office of Manned Space Flight, promised Representative George Shipley, who was especially appalled at the astronauts' antics, that NASA would take steps "to prevent recurrence of corned beef sandwiches in future flights," while clarifying there was "no detriment to the experimental program that was carried on, nor was there any detriment to the actual carrying out of the mission because of the ingestion of the sandwich." Manned Spacecraft Center Director Bob Gilruth was more lenient, telling Congress that humor helps "break up the strain" of spaceflight. His boss Webb disagreed, stating the stunt "was not an adequate performance by an astronaut." Remember, this was over a sandwich. And it didn't even have mustard.
Neither Grissom, Young, nor Schirra, who orchestrated the whole thing to begin with, received any reprimand. Sixty years later, the infamous sandwich is probably what the first manned Gemini mission is most remembered for. True to Mueller's word, no corned beef sandwich ever flew in space again...with one exception: In 1981, when Young commanded his fifth spaceflight and the first flight of the Space Shuttle program, space-rated corned beef sandwich cubes were on his menu.
5. Orbit with Me
At the end of its first orbit, Gemini 3 became the first manned mission to perform an orbital maneuver. The spacecraft's Orbit Attitude and Maneuvering System engines burned for 1 minute and 14 seconds to lower Gemini 3's orbit from 87 x 121 nautical miles to a near-circular 85 x 91 nautical miles (or from 161.2 x 224.2 kilometers to 158 x 169 kilometers). Gemini 3 also evaluated the worldwide tracking network and Gemini spacecraft systems and was the final mission controlled from Cape Canaveral, Florida instead of Houston, Texas. Molly Brown is now on display at the Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom Memorial Museum in Mitchell, Indiana.
Honorable Mention: The Fighting I
Gemini 3 was also the first manned mission to perform a controlled reentry, though the capsule landed almost 100 miles from its recovery ship, the USS Intrepid. The USS Intrepid, known as The Fighting "I", was an Essex-class aircraft carrier built during World War II and participated in several campaigns in the Pacific Theater. Before retrieving Gemini 3, she recovered Scott Carpenter's Mercury-Atlas 7 capsule Aurora 7 in 1962. The Intrepid was saved from being scrapped after decommissioning in 1974 and was opened as a museum ship in 1982, even serving as the FBI operations center after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The Intrepid Sea, Air, and Space Museum on the Hudson River in New York now houses Space Shuttle Enterprise.
After serving as backup command pilot for Gemini 6A, Grissom was transferred to the Apollo program and assigned as commander of its first manned mission. He and his crew mates Ed White and Roger Chaffee were killed when their spacecraft's cockpit caught fire on the launch pad on January 27, 1967. Young flew in space another five times— as command pilot of Gemini 10 (1966), command module pilot of Apollo 10 (1969), commander of Apollo 16 (1972), commander of STS-1 (1981), and commander of STS-9 (1983)— and served as Chief of the Astronaut Office from 1974 to 1987. Retiring in 2004, Young is the longest-serving astronaut in history. Gemini 3 was a big success and the jumping-off point for the highly ambitious Gemini program. The next mission, Gemini 4, would push the human body to its limits by having an astronaut "walk" in space.
Author's note: Thanks for reading and be sure to like and share this post!
[1] The Unsinkable Molly Brown is about the real-life Margaret Brown, a survivor of the sinking of the RMS Titanic who helped with the ship's evacuation. She also worked with the Red Cross in France during and after World War I.
[2] The Soviet Voskhod 2 (launched on March 18, 1965) was the first two-person space mission in history. The mission before it, Voskhod 1 (October 1964), was the first multi-person space mission (it carried a crew of three).
Bibliography
Boyer, Charles. "Wolfie's - Corned Beef on High." Me and Old Man Par, 2022. https://old-man-par.com/2022/04/15/wolfies-corned-beef-on-high/
"Gemini 3." National Space Science Data Coordinated Archive. https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/display.action?id=1965-024A
Leopold, George. Calculated Risk: The Supersonic Life and Times of Gus Grissom. Purdue University Press, 2016.
Ross-Nazzal, Jennifer. "Fallout from the Unauthorized Gemini III Space Sandwich." NASA, 2025. https://www.nasa.gov/history/fallout-from-the-unauthorized-gemini-iii-space-sandwich/
Zorino, Mary C. "Virgil Ivan 'Gus' Grissom." NASA. https://www.nasa.gov/history/40thmerc7/grissom.htm
Intellectual Properties I don't own
"Orbit with Me" — performed by Sonny Sheather and the Stardusters
This post was written entirely without the use of AI (sorry HAL). Go Cats!
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