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…
195
White
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
White
and closer and closer, these things really star t
standing out, but when you ' re looking from up
around 125 or 150 miles , and you're out 60 degrees ,
you ' re a long way from your target . It ' s just
that you can ' t see that far through all that
atmosphere, I guess .
I think one more comment on the geographical is
that I think we ' re r eall y going to see some things
down there when we get some type of magnification.
Yes , a telescope is what you really need.
If you can get some kind of telescope to help , I
think we can really see something. I wonder if
there isn ' t some way that, while we know we can't
carry some things inside the spacecraft , we can
work with something outside the spacecraft- -
camera equipment or some kind of optical equipment.
that we might be able to have mounted on the out
side . We can store it somewhere and mount it on
the outside after we get up there --mount a
te l escope right through , with the eyepiece on the
inside .
Boy that would be great ! Wouldn't it?
And then when it comes time to come in, you just
punch the thing off and forget about it . But

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.