Documents / Official release

Preliminary Gemini 4 Crew Debriefing, Part II, 1965

National Aeronautics and Space Administration · 1965-06-09 · 290 pages · text from the file's own layer

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.

  • p. 166 …So ,the next target I had was Cairo -- Cairo Int ernational Airport . Now , we'd been…
  • p. 167 this , and I had l ooked down to find Cairo. I think we had had an…
  • p. 169 …I t hink that on the tracking tasks on Yuma, Cairo, and Basr a, I managed…
  • p. 202 …We had trouble when we came to El Paso in finding it, and Cairo blended right…
140
White
McDivitt
White
want ed two people to be up at the same time you
could really have three periods during the day .
You could take two of these six-hour sleep periods
and really make them sacred so that nothing could
touch them. Then you could just take those other
two six hour sleep periods, and maybe chop periods
off each end of the thing~in such a manner that
you ' d be able to get one good sleep period and
some rest periods in between. I think during a
six-hour sleep period you ought to plan to be in
a drifting flight and not do any experiments.
really think there ought to be one long sleep
period with no radios and no thrusters firing.
Then you've got a real chance.
You might be able to put i t in Horizon Scan .
Well, even then it goes, THUMP, THUMP , THUMP ,
every once in a while, you know.
I think you could almost do this by ear . If it
was bothering the gu:y, you shouldn't do it. In
my opinion I think we're pretty close to the same
thing. I had originally told Chuck I thought that
the four-hour sleep period wasn't satisfactory.
We should have one period of six hours of sleep,
I

Cases discussed

About this file

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.