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.
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168 9.2 Apollo Yaw Orientation White McDivitt White McDivitt Okay, I 'll probably go into this a little bit, and then we can go over the data on it. This was a fairly simple test. All we did was start at a zero zero reference and establish rates of 3 degrees/ second simultaneously in all axes. We had a sec ondary objective, to see when we established these rates and put them in three axes simultaneously if we got a scanner i gnor light. And I 'll clear that one up real y quick . We put them in at t wo different times and neither time di d we get a scanner ignore light . We di d this at night the first time , didn't we? That was really the only time we did it. Jus t the night one. That's right . That's right. We did i t once at night . I estab lished the rates in t hree axes and allowed them to bui l d up for about 30 seconds . Then , I told Jim to go ahead and take control of the spacecraft , and using visual references to move to a retrofire at titude . I did this in Pulse Mode, I believe , because we were trying to save fuel. I think I did it in Direct, but I did not do it in Rate Command . I did it in Direct . The first thi ng I did was t ry to find t he horizon so I would have some reference point to fifffD Er>,TIA'lr
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.