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The original crew for Gemini 9, command pilot Elliot See and pilot Charles Bassett, were killed in a crash on February 28, 1966, while flying a T-38 jet trainer to the McDonnell Aircraft plant in St. Louis, Missouri to inspect their spacecraft.
See and Bassett were the prime crew assigned to the Gemini 9 mission. They and the backup crew for the mission, Tom Stafford and Gene Cernan, were flying to St. Louis from their normal training base in Houston for two weeks of simulator training for rendezvous and docking procedures at McDonnell Aircraft, the prime contractor for the Gemini spacecraft.
The Gemini astronauts were sixteen pilots who flew in Project Gemini, NASA's second human spaceflight program, between projects Mercury and Apollo. Carrying two astronauts at a time, a senior command pilot and a junior pilot, the Gemini spacecraft was used for ten crewed missions. Four of the sixteen astronauts flew twice.
The fourth and final rearrangement of the Gemini crew assignment occurred after the deaths of See and Bassett when their trainer jet crashed, coincidentally into a McDonnell building which held their Gemini 9 capsule in St. Louis. The backup crew of Stafford and Cernan was then moved up to the new prime crew of Gemini 9A. Lovell and Aldrin were ...
Charles Arthur "Charlie" Bassett II (December 30, 1931 – February 28, 1966), (Major, USAF), was an American electrical engineer and United States Air Force test pilot.He went to Ohio State University for two years and later graduated from Texas Tech University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering.
Less than a year later, he returned to space with Eugene Cernan on board Gemini 9. Stafford was originally scheduled to be the backup crew for that flight, but the primary crew died in an airplane ...
When the prime crew of Elliot See and Charles Bassett was killed in the crash of NASA T-38A "901" (USAF serial 63–8181) at Lambert Field, Missouri, on February 28, 1966, the backup crew became the prime crew—the first time in NASA history this happened. [9] Gemini 9A encountered a number of problems; the original target vehicle exploded ...
The February 28, 1966, deaths of the Gemini 9 prime crew, Elliot See and Charles Bassett, in an air crash, led to Lovell and Aldrin being moved up one mission to backup for Gemini 9, which put them in position as prime crew for Gemini 12. [44] [45] They were designated its prime crew on June 17, 1966, with Gordon Cooper and Gene Cernan as their ...