Climbing on top of a rocket is still nutty when you think about it. I mean you’re literally riding on top of a controlled explosion, sitting upon a column of flames until the blue sky turns black.

And because of the risky nature, it’s generally considered a good idea to have a backup in case things go wrong. Welcome to launch abort systems. Most human rated vehicles have some system to get people away from a failing rocket in a hurry, typically by pulling the crew capsule off of the rocket with a special set of abort motors.

But did you know that the United States’ second crew capsule, the Gemini spacecraft had an interesting solution for getting crew away from impending doom, an ejection seat… Today we’re going to take a look at an engineering solution to a problem that in hindsight would’ve almost certainly led to death... oh, and there’s much more to it than just the ejection seat that could’ve killed you, that’s only part of the equation…

EDIT!!! UPDATE!!! UPDATING EDIT!!!

Read Gordon Cress' enlightening comment pinned below!!! Besides the wonderful comment he posted, he also emailed me some awesome fact sheets about the performance of the Gemini Ejection Seat:

https://everydayastronaut.com/wp-cont...

https://everydayastronaut.com/wp-cont...

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