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.

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McDivitt
White
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
So did I. The way I felt was that I knew that we
had to be as miserly with the fuel as we possibly
could, so we got as much out of as little fuel as
possible . There wasn ' t going to be anything to
change that velocity. We just went along and I
really didn't care how they were plotting that fuel
on the ground. I knew that we were starting to
get ahead of the schedule, because I was plotting
it roughly onboard the spacecraft . I could see we
were ~p above the line that we needed to remain
above to handle our OAMS retrofir~.
Actually , we followed the profile rather closely,
We leveled off there at first, and then when we
started using it , we we~c right down the profile,
We were a little below the line and we just held
the same fuel level until we walked out across it
and got up on top of i+ Then, we went on down
above it.
I think the controls and the switches were all
satisfactory.
I think so too. The attitude controller worked
fine and dandy. We didn't have any trouble with
it. The stick forces weren't too high. We didn't
get a chance to use it in any other mode besides

Cases discussed

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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.