Documents / Official release
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.
“Gray”4 pages
G~El0ENTIAL , look like you were sitting in the middl11 of a fire barrel . Boy! When those retros go off , the whol e spacecraft ' s enveloped in flames jus·; looks like the whole place is burning all over bac:c there . This flame comes all the way back over che spacecraft and all the way up -- Conrad At SEP OAMS , electr ic and adapter, though , we didn 't see much of anything. Cooper No. I saw a flash at SEP ADAP. Conrad I I saw a l ittle flash , but I thought maybe we d see a lot more f lashing- type f l ame . Actual l y , no big prob- l em in that night retro , but I 111 tell you one t hing , I you re not ever going to do it out t he window. Cooper You ' re never going to see anything out the wi ndow i n a night retro . You ' re just completely enveloped in f lames. Conrad Those RCS ' s are firi ng away like mad and there ' s al l kind& of light outside and everything, so night r etr o is an instrument- type thing. Cooper It's purely instruments . If you don ' t have i nstru 1 ments , you re just not going to shoot :i. t . Conrad But otherwise , I don ' t think t here was any di ff erenc e . Cooper No . Conrad We were completely in the dark f or a l)ng time . We
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Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 223 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.