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.
-'-OtslF-tD-E~.l lA:L:;;. 21 operated as I thought they should. I've already mentioned I thought Rate Command was a little sloppier in RCS than it was in OAMS . It certainly did a fine job of holding the retro attitude during retrofire. Retrofire attitude control was excellent. We didn ' t deviate more than about a degree from the attitude we were supposed to hold, and I had plenty of authority there . From my standpoint it couldn ' t have been any better. I was really happy about it. I used the Reentry Rate Command with roll rate gyro off, so that I had essentially Direct in roll and Reentry Rate Command in pitch and yaw axes. It had the typical 4 degree deadband that it was supposed to have. It did do rate damping as it was supposed to. It performed just the way it should. Fd, you want to cover that heater-lights thing again? I think you've already got that thing pretty much in detail. White I have the precise times at which the lights came on. It started at about the 64th or 65th elapsed time hour . At 06:47, the first light, in the A-ring, came on . At 08:23 the A- ring light came on again. That was the last time . During that period of time the A and the B-rings cycled on and off inter- MWfiO,ftSl;QAJ•
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.