Early in the U.S. space program, astronauts were few in number and flight assignments were exceedingly hard to come by. Two airplane crashes in the 1960s involving American astronauts set in motion a chain of events that altered the history of the early U.S. space program—and in some ways all of spaceflight history.
The first of these two crashes took place on February 28, 1966. Elliot See (accepted into Astronaut Group 2) and his partner, Charlie Bassett (accepted into Astronaut Group 3), were the prime crew assigned to fly the upcoming Gemini IX mission. Both experienced test pilots, they would have been
