rendezvous, the skill needed to reply spacecraft to change crews, the ability to operate in a new medium that is both fantastically rewarding and terrifyingly dangerous. gemini, moreover, is a rehearsal for apollo, the three-man spacecraft that will get us to the moon. the russians surprise with another first in the person of aleksei leonov, who they say became the first man to walk around in space. when he went outside the spacecraft we said no, he couldn t have done that. but the fact the soviets went outside and successfully came back was a shocker. the soviet union pushed americans back. it was part of this game at that time. i would say for most of the 60s we had a sense of being behind. is that for me? mhm aaaah! nooooo.