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…
88
McDivitt
fairly routine, and it appeared routine ' to me
too as it began to steer into zero and steered
right on into zero . As we approached iSEXJO the
error started to increase a little bit and in
creased out to a little less than a degree in
pitch-down on the error needle . Aside from that,
we didn ' t have ,,as far as I can see, any other error
that was worth talking about during launch.
Okay, at SECO + 20 the IVI ' s counted up as we
separated,rolled around, and did all the maneuvers
we were supposed to. The IVI's acted as they should .
When I got turned around and was faced toward the
spacecraft,I was in a hurry to get all these
things done . I started thrusting and I went from
Ascent to Catch-Up, and then hit the Start Comp
button.~ I lost a couple of feet/second here ,
but this was sort of insignificant at the time.
The IVI's counted up in the Catch-Up Mode and they
operated properly throuehout the rest of the chase
phase of the mission. We were getting the kind
of information that we needed right there early
in the flight . Ed had 52 punched in and it read
out at 30 feet/second, I think he said earlier .

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.