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.
3 White McDivitt use to us. We knew the stars along our track but you couldn't see enough of them. The quickest way to get the yaw reference was to look down at the ground. Once we got the platform caged, aline ment was quite simple . All you had to do was just hold the needles at zero and the platform alined itself. Of course you had to have the scanners on , The modes--the SEF and the EEF wer e identically the same except the spacecraft is pointing in different directions . You tended to null the needles by using pulses and just hold the needles very close to null and the platform alined itself through the horizon scanners . Orbit Rate was a satisfactory mode, I thought. As a matter of fact, it was very good. I liked that Orbit Rate, Yes, because we finally had a reference where we didn't have to look out and s ee the ground . It 's like having the old altitude indicator back in an airplane . The only thing was, we had the wrong orbit rate in the spacecraft because it was s e t for an orbit rate t hat was to take care of, I think, a 60 nautical mile circular orbit. This was to take care of the short period of time between ~~ SQ -lii4Q"itsll-lM.- .
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.