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.
“Nevers”56 pages
- 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…
182
Conrad At 30 000 we shut off the propellant valves to the
RCS. It was still working away merrily there trying
to steady it down on the drogue. As :: ar as I know,
there was propellant in both Ring A and Ring B when
we shut them down.
5. 5 1 Retropack Jettison
Cooper We jettisoned the retropack right in retro attitude -
FCSD Rep You didn't see the retropack burning up or anything?
Conrad Yes, I saw it reenter behind us but nowhere near like
those guys did. It was miles behind us when I saw i t .
Cooper I thought I saw something way back thEire burning. I
guess that was it.
Conrad Yes. Up and on the left side of where? I was looking .
I saw it burn up behind us . But it was miles behind
us by then. You see, it had been chaf:ing us in the
dark so we never did see it close up. We never saw
anything like pump packages blowing O\;.t when we set
the retros.
•
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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.