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.
47 McDivitt f '3@>rNfff)EttlIM:· Here we had an environmental control system that was supposed to protect us . We found out that the darn thing was overpressurizing. The first couple of times, to keep the ECS o2 bottle from venting, we vented the cabin it self . I found myself sitting in there vent ing this thing with my gloves off and my face plate open. It began to dawn on me that the pressure went down inside the cabin at a tre mendous rate. If this thing ever stuck open and I had my gloves off and my faceplate open, I would be a dead man . So we made it a proce dure to suit up when we were going to dump this thing . This meant that every four hours we had to put our gloves on and put our face plates down and lock them and get all suited up just in case this vent valve didn ' t reseat. Frankly, as much of an inconvenience as it turned out to be, I think that was a wise maneuver. I would never suggest that anyone vent that cabin again without being fully suit ed. I thi nk there is such a risk involved that you would be fool- hearty to do it . For
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.