Ed White Performing an EVA during Gemini 4
The American space program, with Project Mercury, began with the Original Seven.
These were Scott Carpenter, Walter Schirra, Alan Shepard, Gordo Cooper, Gus Grissom, Deke Slayton, and John Glenn.
Some of these men walked on the moon and one of them died in the effort.
The Gemini Project was the intermediary step between Mercury and Apollo and was begun in 1961 and concluded in 1966.
The basic objectives were to see if human beings could live outside of Earth in a spacecraft for an extended period, to rendezvous and dock with another vehicle beyond the Earth's atmosphere, and to conduct Extra-Vehicular Activity (EVA), i.e. "space walks."
Each of these stages were necessary to fulfill the human desire to walk upon the face of the moon.
The Gemini astronauts - also known as the New Nine - included Neil Armstrong, Jim Lovell, Frank Borman, Pete Condrad, Ed White, John Young, Jim McDivitt, Elliot See, and Thomas Stafford.
Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee, the last of whom belonged to Astronaut Group 3, died in the Apollo 1 fire of January 27, 1967.