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…
142
White
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
Go ahead and eat when you just get up and the
other guy is asleep. Eat just before you go to
sleep, and don ' t eat simultaneously. Eat while
the other guy is sleeping. I think you should
spend all the time, while you are up together,
working on productive experimentation.
Yes. I think you should keep these two six-hour
periods inviolate and then make the other ones
really flexible where you could move those sleep
ing periods around.
If you got tired you could go on and take four
hours for sleeping. If you needed it, you would
go on and take longer. If you only needed one or
two hours, you could go ahead and take that. I
didn't feel as strongly as you about being tired.
You said I was tired.
You commented on it a number of times during the
flight and also you looked like you were tired .
Several times I missed a rest period. I think
we got fouled up a couple of times on it. I did
get tired before I took that five hour rest. I
knew I was tired.
You had that one really good sleep right around

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.