Documents / Official release

Gemini 5 Technical Debriefing, Part II, 1965

National Aeronautics and Space Administration · 1965 · 325 pages · text from the file's own layer

This is a preliminary Part II transcript of the Gemini 5 (GT-5) flight crew debriefing, prepared by the Spacecraft Operations Branch of NASA's Flight Crew Support Division and dated September 2, 1965. It records astronauts Cooper and Conrad at the Crew Quarters, Cape Kennedy. They discuss how the spacecraft systems worked, including the platform and the OAMS thruster failures. The transcript also covers operational checks, visual sightings, experiments, training, premission planning, and medical aspects. It was originally classified Confidential.

From the source:Release of 2026-06-12 Incident: August 30 - September 2, 1965, Cape Kennedy, Florida. This document is a preliminary transcript (Part II) 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. Astronauts L. Gordon Cooper and Charles “Pete” Conrad described observing debris and “snow” and “all sorts of glittering pieces of this, that and the other thing” in the “Visual Sightings” section of the document (pages 157-220).

  • p. 119 …Waste disposal- pack harder. Yes . Pack tighter. That's a very grave problem, in the f…
  • p. 231 …It gets harder the higher they get. Especi ally the second stage. I got the first…
113
I final ly took them and gouged them down in al ong
side the s eat. I took my scissors and cr ammed them
down in there , and that is where they stayed the
whol e flight .
Conrad Yes , I ' m not convinced they are necessary.
Cooper That knee restraint belt was put in there so that
if you were ejecting at high al titude and you came
out in a pressuri zed condition - -
Conrad I think the arm restraints ought to be l ooked at the
same way.
Cooper My arm restraints stayed in the down position , I
l aunched with them down , I r eentered with them down,
and they never came out of the down position. They
could have s aved a good 2 or 3 pounds of weight on
my sea t by taking my arm restraints out . I t old
t hem that before and they said , "Well, they woul dn't
ever be abl e to get them of f . " You know the seat
was out s itting over there and I coul d have removed
them my~el f in 5 minutes when we were in Weight and
Bal ance . They said the paperwork involved in re
moving them would probab l y take a year. So,' those
two items I f l ew with I thought were compl etel y
worthl es s . And the lifevest- - I don ' t know what
you are going to do better . I really don ' t

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Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 325 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.