Documents / Official release
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.
70 McDivitt White McDivitt booster orbit had changed so much with respect to our orbit that if we really went down after it, it might jeopardize our lifetime . Honestly, I was concerned about that too , because, remember , I called and asked what the heck our orbit was right then . The booster looked like it was going down at such a rapid rate . By the time we got to the States I would guess it was 5 miles below us at least. My impression was even more . I thought maybe it wasn't more a t the time but it was going more . felt that if we really got back with tbe booster we might have a pretty good orbit , but we would be down in the neighborhood of 130 and this wasn ' t the altitude we wanted to be, . ,for. the six- day lifetime that we wanted. The other thing tha t bothered me was that we were going toward perigee where we should have been coming back together. And we weren't. We were pulling away so fast that it wasn't even funny . Frankly , I just couldn't figure out what kind of orbit the booster was in. It looked to me like , if we were having trouble , the place where we should have been the farthest from it was at Car- C.O f)J FID E~tt IA L I
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.