I had a moment at the museum without guests, so i was able to spend some time with the Gemini II capsule! This was the first capsule to be flown twice, first as part of the Gemini program and second as the only flight of the Manned Orbiting Laboratory program. It's also the only crew capsule to have the Air Force's name on the side.
Notice that chunk taken out of the ablative heat shield? That was a hatch cut into the heat shield, which would have been a requirement of MOL in order to access the planned small space station from the Gemini capsule without requiring a spacewalk. Engineers weren't sure if the capsule (or the astronauts inside) would survive reentry with a hatch in the shield, so the Gemini II spacecraft was modified to test this concept.
