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 …0 MISSION CONTROL 13.1 GO/NO GO ' s ............. .. .............. .... ........... 249 13 . 2 PLA and CLA Updates…
  • p. 92 86 McDivitt White McDivitt and near the end of the mission, we were down to 12…
  • p. 257 249 13.0 MISSION CONTROL 13.1 GO/NO GO 's McDivitt Okay. Mission Control. Mission…
  • p. 262 …Mission Control System. I think the Mission Control on this flight was nothing short of excellent…
  • p. 263 …0 TRAINING 14.1 Gemini Mission Simulator McDivitt Okay. Over on Training now. The first topic…
86
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
and near the end of the mission, we were down to
12 or 13 amp-hours on unpowered down configuration.
That was as low as I saw it go, down around 12 .
Another thing that we did was that when we wer en't
actually planning on transmitting on one of the
radios, we were always putting the mode control
switch to INTERCOM, which would then cut the trans
mitter off the line. You could actually see the
ammeter go down a little bit. So I think that
by really powering down the spacecraft and getting
all the non-essential items off the line , we helped
ourselves a lot. We got this 160 amp- hour cushion
because we really worked at it, not because it
just happened like that.
This takes a little diligence.
Yes , not because it was a miscalculation on the
guys who were planning the flight, but just the
fact that we really worked at keeping the lights
off , keeping the radios off, and keeping those
little bitty things down. You know, you only
have to save two amps per hour . We ran on a single
suit fan almost the entire flight, except when Ed
was getting warm when he was sleeping we ha d to

Cases discussed

About this file

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.