GeminiToTheMoon0001
Back when Project Gemini was still "Mercury Mark II" NASA began studies on how the two man ship might be used to circumnavigate or even land on the moon. These studies continued, well into 1964, as both a backup to Apollo and as a possible rescue craft for stranded astronauts. Astronaut Pete Conrad was known to be an advocate of what the studies called the Highly Eccentric Orbit mission. HEO would have had a Gemini dock with a tandem Agena stage or a Centaur stage, in order to boost itself into an elliptical orbit, so high that it would allow the spacecraft to swing around the moon. This would provide a manned recon mission capability, well before the 1968 Apollo 8 mission.
GeminiToTheMoon0001
Back when Project Gemini was still "Mercury Mark II" NASA began studies on how the two man ship might be used to circumnavigate or even land on the moon. These studies continued, well into 1964, as both a backup to Apollo and as a possible rescue craft for stranded astronauts. Astronaut Pete Conrad was known to be an advocate of what the studies called the Highly Eccentric Orbit mission. HEO would have had a Gemini dock with a tandem Agena stage or a Centaur stage, in order to boost itself into an elliptical orbit, so high that it would allow the spacecraft to swing around the moon. This would provide a manned recon mission capability, well before the 1968 Apollo 8 mission.