Documents / Official release
This is a preliminary transcript of Part II of the Gemini 4 (GT-4) flight crew debriefing, prepared by NASA's Spacecraft Operations Branch, Flight Crew Support Division, and dated June 18, 1965. The debriefing began aboard the recovery ship USS Wasp and ended at the Manned Spacecraft Center. In it, astronauts McDivitt and White discuss how the spacecraft systems performed, including the platform, OAMS, RCS and control modes. They also cover operational checks, visual sightings, experiments, mission planning and training, and give recommendations for future crews.
From the source: Release of 2026-06-12 Incident: 6/9/65, North Atlantic Ocean. This document is a preliminary transcript (Part II) derived from voice recordings of the Gemini 4 flight crew debriefing taken aboard the recovery ship, USS Wasp, on June 9, 1965. Part II of this document contains the “Visual Sightings” section of the debriefing (pages 196-224), where astronauts James McDivitt and Edward White describe their observations while aboard the spacecraft.
4 White McDivitt going to Orbit Rate at T- 5 and firing the retros at TR. We wanted to have exactly the right rate in there so when we did our closed-loop reentry we wouldn ' t have an error. As I said , I had the most accurate platform in the world with nothing to do with it . I think the displays were adequate and the controls were adequate . After t he first couple of revs I really didn ' t have any confidence at all in the platform. I had done nothing to establish any confidence in it . I really didn't get the chance to get the thing alined, and I real ly didn ' t have the view out the window to check it with. We were hurrying and scurring through there . We finally shut the thing down before I really got a chance to use it very much. When we powered it up there on the third day and we saw that thing coming around there• -and cage properly, we compared the out- the- window attitudes and that old a ttitude reference was right there. That's when I got some confidence in the platform. This is where we lost a couple of bets . That ' s right . We lost a couple of beers on that platform . At retrofire I had a lot of confidence in the platform , but the first two and a half to
Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 290 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.