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. 128 …to me because if I ' m wor king I eat a lot and if I ' m…
  • p. 178 …I'm tal king about where it fades you lmow completely. And it's act ually…
130 •
night that I did . There was one night that Gor do
slept maybe 6 or 7 hours and I let him Eleep that
whole time because we were just exhausted. And
that was the same reciprocal thing -- he let me
sleep for 6 or 7 hours . That was the only time in
the f l ight that we both real ly s l ept any long period
of time . The rest of the time I don't t hink we ever
slept longer than 2 hour s at the most -- And most
of the time it was 50 minutes between s t ations.
Cooper Well, that ' s the whole thing , that the -- on this
schedule thing there are many , many, many inter
fer ences to sleeping and these stations just calling
in letting you know that they have TM sclid and are
standing by, interfere with you-- they wake you up.
Conrad They shouldn ' t even do that--on backside passes un
less they got something to give you , they shouldn ' t
even call you.
Cooper And then too , when they start handing ycu a bunch
of flight plan updates and they want yoi:.. to do this
and that and one man is trying to be-- ttey ar e try
ing to keep one man real busy whil e the other sleeps ,
just doesn't work out. Configuration , i,,ell , just
close your eyes . The best configuration t o s l eep
is to turn all lights off and s l eep . I will say one

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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.