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…
J 193
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
White
see things . They were small; there ' s no question
that things don ' t get any bigger when you ' re
looking down at them, but in my opinion things
were much clearer. I could see with a higher
detail than I could when I fly over in a normal
airplane,as far as the object itself being
clearly defined. I also noticed this at night
when I looked down on it . In the clear stretches
the city lights were much finer defined than the
lights are in a city when you're flying over at
40 000 feet. Things are small but have a much
higher definition. I think it would be
interesting to find out in-mu- photographs the
degree of resolution that you have. I feel that
the resolution , if you have the proper contrast,
would go down to 50 feet or below.
Yes . I ' d agree with you there . Geographically,
there were just so many things that we could see.
I think that we took pictures of most of the
things that we thought would be interesting.
I ' m dying to look at those pictures.
Me , too!
I agree with Jim that if you look at a city,
particularly if you look a t a city in a desert
~~~◄ FJD.E~JTIAL--...,...__

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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.