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. 6 …4 Flight Plan Changes ....................... .. .......... 250 13. 5 Systems ............................................... 254 14.0 TRAINING 14.1 Gemini Mission…
  • p. 265 …The things that were characteristic of Gemini 4 were being incor porated in the simulator down…
255
14. 0 TRAINING
14.1 Gemini Mission Simulator
McDivitt Okay. Over on Training now. The first topic
is Gemini Mission Simulator and I think we
touched lightly on this subject already. I
think that it's an excellent trainer for pro
cedures, system knowledge, launch, orbit,
retrofire, reentry, and crew stations. I think
t he big problem with it is that it takes too
long to turn it around. I think that we're fool
ing around with it too much, c~mmitting it to
supporting other functions besides flight crew
training. The simulator at the Cape was sup
posed to have been turned around at roughly
two weeks after GT-3's launch, and about six weeks
after the launch it still w~en't doing it~s job.
When we went down there to start flying this
completely checked-out simulator, we found that
the launch phase worked, the orbit phase did
not work, and the reentry phase did not work.
After we got the orbit phase squared away, we
found out that· we kept losing reentry eomm;:i.nd
system. We couldn ' t use Direct Control Mode
in anything. We never did fly reentries
OOi'IFIO EttlJiA ~ ~.

Cases discussed

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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.