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.
74 C.Qt~FIDEtfflAt' booster, the way we separated . Well, anyway , we told Guaymas that we had to ge t resolution i mme diately if they wanted us to continue to chase the booster because we had used a lot of fuel and we weren ' t getting any closer and it was still pulling away from us . If they wanted to go for i t they had to make up their minds and we would really go after it . But I didn ' t think it was wise . They confimed this and said,'Knock it off!' For cloeing rates at rendezvous, I t hink you could handle 20 , 30 , 40 feet/second if you are coming at it , not if you are gomg away from it . You see we never got a chance to do a rendezvous . We never rendezvoused with it . The best thing we ever did was to get close enough to it where I could at least say I was at the same a l titude with· it for a change . It was the fi r st t ime I had gotten back to tee same altitude since we left it at insertion . Yoo just can't equate it. You don't do an optical rendezvous with the booster below you . You try to put it above you so you have the stars and the sky background. It was below us . You couldn't do any line· of· sight nulling because there wasn't anything to null the
Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 340 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.