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.
I • 17 White McDivitt 8.3 RCS McDivitt was 127 feet/second which, incidently, happened to come out exactly 2 minutes and 40 seconds. suspect that we selected OAMS retrofire on the basis of time, rather than on the basis of t::,.V. Very convenient , wasn't it? Very convenient. It -was obvious there is no more difficulty in timing 2 minutes 40 seconds during our OAMS retrofire than it is during any other thing. We had no trouble with it . I was convinced that when we got through with it, that was really the proper conversion factor between t::,.V and t::,. T. We had exactly 127 feet/second, and we sure had the time nailed down. The operational checks that we did on the RCS occurred at about TR minus an hour. When I checked the system out it seemed like I had a lot less authority and a lot sloppier Rate Command than I had in OAMS . The operational check consisted of pitching up and down , yawing left and right, rolling lef+ and right on each ring in Rate Command and Direct. Direct worked as I expected it to. In Rate Coremand, however, as I pitched up and down I noticed that my top left yaw thrus ter was doing
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.