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.

White
McDivitt
235
the flight plan nailed down. I think our r.light,
though, was somewhat different than other flights in
that we did have some real major changes about
two and a half months prior to the flight . Con
sequently, we had to expect these things . So,I
think I'd be the first to admit that I lived with
these changes, because I had a great desire to do
the mission that we set out to do.
We both kind of got to the point where we knew
that we had a mission to do, and we knew it was
going to be tough as far ae getting a good flight
plan was concerned , a.nd we were just trying to get the
the best we could and go.
That's right. I think that the situation that
we finally ended up in was that we tried to have
a very good launch and first couple of orbits and
a good last orbit or two. All the stuff in the middle,
we knew we were going to have to handle re&l-ti.me.
I finally found myself forced into the situation
where I couldn't even worry about the middle fl~ght
plan. We had to lay it out in general and expect
a great number of changes. This is exactly what
we did. We handled it in real-time. I'm not
suggesting that we do tnis ~for future flights, £or
€0f'~FIDE~~TIAL

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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.