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In the movie, First Man, Neil Armstrong and his colleague David Scott, as part of the Gemini 8 program, attempt to dock with the Agena but it turns out to be disastrous as they go into a continuous roll over.

What caused the continuous roll over and how did the RCS Brakes help in stabilization of the vessel?

penguin99
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  • Welcome to space stack exchange! You should separate these 2 questions. You should only have 1 question per post. The first one has been addressed many times on this site, the second one is an interesting question. – Organic Marble May 03 '19 at 15:28
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    Could you please link the answer to the first question? I've edited my question to include only the second one. – penguin99 May 03 '19 at 15:28
  • Search the site for 'nova rocket apollo' This is probably the most relevant: https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/19450/why-werent-saturn-v-and-the-soviet-n-1-moon-rockets-made-larger-in-order-to-sim/19455#19455 – Organic Marble May 03 '19 at 15:29

1 Answers1

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A yaw thruster failed on in the Gemini's Orbital Attitude and Maneuvering System (OAMS) causing the attitude problems. Suspecting the Agena target to be at fault, they undocked, which made it worse because the spacecraft mass was now much less.

The fix was to turn off the OAMS and switch to the redundant Re-entry Control System (RCS). This disabled the failed-on thruster but terminated the mission early due to mission rules regarding the use of the RCS.

Source

Organic Marble
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    Why do you say redundant? – penguin99 May 03 '19 at 15:35
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    Redundant in spacecraft design is not a bad thing. It simply means that there is a backup system. If the primary system never fails, the 'redundant' system may never be used. – Organic Marble May 03 '19 at 15:36
  • Why did the roll over continue for a really long time? Is it because the earth's gravity was causing it to revolve that way without any opposing friction? Like a never ending car drift on a smooth road? – penguin99 May 03 '19 at 15:39
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    It didn't have much to do with the earth's gravity (although that is what holds it in orbit). A spacecraft in orbit will accelerate (start to move or rotate) when a force pushes on it. It will continue to accelerate as long as the force acts on it. If the mass of the spacecraft suddenly gets smaller, the acceleration gets bigger. The famous equation F=ma describes this. In this case, the force was the jet firing. They couldn't stop the ship from accelerating because they couldn't shut the jet off. – Organic Marble May 03 '19 at 15:44
  • Ah, alright. On a side note, it's really nice to be answered by an actual space flight engineer. Thank you so much, sir! :) – penguin99 May 03 '19 at 15:48
  • Why was the mission terminated after the use of the RCS? If RCS propellent was not to be used until re-eentry anyways, why would they have not completed docking and then re-entered using the remaining propellant, as it was evidently sufficient enough to maintain attitude during re-entry? – Anton Hengst May 06 '19 at 16:45
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    @kikjezrous if the information in the linked source is not sufficient for you, please ask a separate question. – Organic Marble May 06 '19 at 16:59