Documents / Official release

Gemini 5 Technical Debriefing, Part I, 1965

National Aeronautics and Space Administration · 1965 · 223 pages · text from the file's own layer

This is a preliminary transcript of the Gemini V (GT-5) flight crew debriefing, prepared by NASA's Spacecraft Operations Branch, Flight Crew Support Division, and dated September 1, 1965. It records Cooper and Conrad's operational account from the debriefing held August 30 to September 1, 1965 at Cape Kennedy. Topics include countdown, window fogging, POGO vibration, fairing jettison debris, radio loss, reentry and recovery. Visual sightings are left for a later part of the debriefing.

From the source:Release of 2026-06-12 Incident: August 2 - September 2, 1965, Cape Kennedy, Florida. This document is a preliminary transcript (Part I) derived from voice recordings of the Gemini 5 flight crew technical debriefing. NASA conducted this debriefing between August 30, 1965, and September 2, 1965, at the Crew Quarters, Cape Kennedy, Florida.

  • p. 7 …cool the whole time. ECS was good. Never any problem with it . Sounds , I thought the…
  • p. 9 …that I had written u~ before and never got corrected, and they were the whole flight…
  • p. 14 …rest of t he flight the gage never budged off the 4.9. The gage stayed…
  • p. 16 …that you had to read, you would never be able to read any numbers. It was…
  • p. 18 …s ee the flash at the brig. Never saw a thing and I wasn't aware…
  • p. 20 …There was never through boost or second stage was there ever any rate except that one…
  • p. 22 …We never did get a reading on that, but whatever the total propulsive expulsion system wasn…
  • p. 25 …We never got a GO/NO GO beeause we lost our number 1 radio in about…
  • p. 30 …And had we never gotten our communications back we would have known tha t we were…
  • p. 32 …We heard every thruster on the whol e f l ight It never occurred in my…
  • p. 34 …There was never a time -- the only time the only fault we find was one or…
  • p. 36 …But we never did unstrap . We never unstrapped and never put the drogue pins in until…
  • p. 37 32 Cooper Conrad were never up . to reenter lready decided t hat I was not going…
  • p. 39 …But you never had any trouble ~ ting t o it. I didn ' t . / I let mine…
  • p. 40 …Conrad Where you coul d make the legstraps loose but you' d never disconnec t them…
  • p. 44 …So we never did get back to using it again . Cooper Well, we had other control…
  • p. 48 …See, we never had a simulator to show us . Never once did we have any darn…
  • p. 49 …horizon should look like through the window whic~ d requested several times and never got -- to…
  • p. 63 …Well , the range rate never got below a foo t per second . The range rate never…
  • p. 64 Cooper " Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad 59eNftOf We never got the point where it…
  • p. 72 …8, and a 59 of a 13~8 at .89 miles and we should have never…
  • p. 77 …I never had so much junk--we went wild. That '/s when we called up and…
  • p. 90 …I never saw it.
  • p. 95 …They never did call out a number on this nor did they have it listed here…
  • p. 96 …So , I guess they never did even call it up from the ground . You just saw…
  • p. 101 …We never did really get a good score . ThE·n at 18 : 50 again we alined…
  • p. 105 …So , from that point in time on we never used the hook-up that you can…
  • p. 106 …A second window scan was never done because the last 3 days of the flight we…
  • p. 112 …We never found it . That' s right. That ' s right. We never even found Venus on…
  • p. 121 …were supposed to track Nunki and we never could find it because it was-- It was…
  • p. 122 …Heck, we never navigated that way in the Navy. You go into star chart with local…
  • p. 128 …got to do anything else so we never got on that part of the flight plan…
  • p. 141 …And then tl:.ey were playing 'Never on Sunday' and that faded out at 15 hours…
  • p. 143 …the Laser. Laser out of White Sands . Never did see that darn Laser . And the D…
  • p. 144 …Conrad We never got any of the rest of the experiments on that day. They wanted…
  • p. 148 …We never f ailed to get a DCS light . And I was never reall y convinced…
  • p. 151 Boy, I ' ve never seen such fantastic big areas covered by .thunderstorms . Just , tremenious ! And they…
  • p. 153 …We never- - we always ran late on that . I ' d get the nap, but I'd…
  • p. 154 …We never used them in the whole flight. Cooper They are no good at all . Conrad…
  • p. 155 …The REP plan was never taken out and I never took the bag off the wall…
  • p. 170 …it somewhere around the time we put the other ring on , because we never got any
  • p. 171 …Cooper I ~ never was out of f uel before we put the other one on , 1…
  • p. 174 …I never got a DCS light on either the TR or the load . I quizzed him…
  • p. 177 …was to make sure that we were never rushed . We weren't until the guy sent…
  • p. 181 …Cooper You ' re never going to see anything out the wi ndow i n a night…
  • p. 187 …You see, it had been chaf:ing us in the dark so we never did see…
  • p. 190 …It never came off the peg. Then , we got in a little discussion, you know. I…
  • p. 193 …You'll never get back. But, then when I held the nominal bank angl e and…
  • p. 194 …t tried following the computer we would never have known ,,/ Yes, and I'll tell you…
  • p. 195 …We never did get t he cross range--cross-range was coming in--cross--range did…
  • p. 197 …It didn't ever run to 100 000 and it never had. It didn't do…
  • p. 201 …I never felt at all from there on . I never even felt like we had any…
  • p. 213 …Never got over a pound? Never got over a pound I don ' t believe. Then we…
  • p. 214 …Conrad It was never hot at any time. Cooper When we opened our face plates the…
  • p. 216 …Our HF antenna never did extend on the water. They don't lmow whats wrong with…
  • p. 217 …The one thing was, the blood pressure bulb wouldn ' t bleed down and Pete never could…
Conrad
2 . 2 Roll Program
Conrad
Cooper
7C.(&)Hft0ENTI:,\~~au, !to
our sight as we were lifting off, and I couldn't
tell any visual cues to lift- off, could you?
You had the feeling that you were moving visually.
After you get your roll program you see it visually
and you can see the pitch program starting visually,
but just at first l ift-off you don't really have
any visual cues . Cockpit displays are just l ike
advertised . The two stage - one lights go out, and
. .. just l ike the simulator.
Yes , I watched roll program on the gyro, I was
watching for it to come i n on time and in glancing
up when the roll program started I was still
looking at nothing but blue sky, but I was aware
visually as you say that the booster was rolling.
Yes , you can have a airplane when you are looking
at nothing but blue sky and start a motion and you
may not know exactly what the motion is, but you
know t hat you are moving.
Now on this cockpit display, something that I got two
different answers to from different people on how the
gyro and the actual case was going to be set and it
suddenly dawned on me that they actually set the gyro
so that you are launching down the 90 degrees. You're

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Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 223 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.