Documents / Official release

Preliminary Gemini 4 Crew Debriefing, Part I, 1965

National Aeronautics and Space Administration · 1965-06-09 · 340 pages · text from the file's own layer

This is a preliminary transcript of Part I of the Gemini 4 (GT-4) flight crew debriefing. The Spacecraft Operations Branch of NASA's Flight Crew Support Division prepared it on June 16, 1965, from recordings of the debriefing held aboard the USS Wasp on June 9, 1965. In it, astronauts McDivitt and White describe the mission from an operational viewpoint, covering countdown, powered flight, insertion, orbital operations, reentry, landing and recovery. According to the preface, visual sightings were left for a later part.

From the source:Release of 2026-06-12 Incident: 6/9/65, North Atlantic Ocean. This document is a preliminary transcript (Part I) derived from voice recordings of the Gemini 4 flight crew debriefing taken aboard the recovery ship, USS Wasp, on June 9, 1965. Astronaut Ed White recounts seeing “sparkles” during the flight.

White
McDivitt
McDivitt
1.6 Sounds
McDivitt
11
I was convinced of that, too, after the mix-up
in putting all the water in the lithium hydroxide
tan.ks.
There would have been about a 30 minute four-day
mission.
The people that built the thing don't know how
it is supposed to go . They had better decide
this and let us know. I felt that George Roe at
the Cape knew what was going on except the Cape
personnel got the valves in the wrong position and
almost lost the lithium hydroxide canister full
of water with no water in the tanks. I ' m not
pointing a finger at George Roe • I think he'·s
pret.ty knowledgeable about the system.. Maybe
somebody just wasn't following directions. But
somebody ought to find out about the water
management system and make it clear to everybody
how it is supposed to be operated.
You can hear the prevalve~ both first and second
s tages. The prevalves and the fluid gushing are
very loud noises comparable to the engine gim--
baling. I wasn't really aware that they were ~
going to be that loud.
C-0t~FIDf~qflAb

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Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 340 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.