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.
16 White McDivitt just smooth--we didn ' t come off with a rotational rate . I think one of the things you mi ght commant on , Jim , is that you fired most of those thrusters during that initial time . I ' m sure I fired the upward-firing thrusters a number of times . That isn ' t any more difficult to control than t he other one . Actually you can fire these thrusters whether you are in Rate Command, Direct or even in Puls e . When you fire them, you get a rate and you just damp t he rate out with the a ttitude controller . When you are firing the translation thrusters , th0 things t hat you r eally hear are not the translation thrusters, but the attitude thrusters . Those translation thrusters are really tough to hear , but the atti tude thrusters are very easy to hear. I doh ' t understand why. They must be mounted differently because their location isn't that much different. I think I fired the aft-firing thrust ers a couple of times and they didn ' t make any more noise than the f orward-firing thrusters, that I could tell . The up and down and left and right ones were just as easy to fire as t he other ones . Our OAMS retro
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.