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. 160 …I saw individual houses up in Tibet. One thing I didn't see for Gordo was…
  • p. 242 …shots down of Saigon, Tibet , Tibet , China, Japan , Arabian desert , Tibet , Tibet, China, Arabia, Hanoy, Phillipine…
  • p. 243 232 storm Doreen, West Coast , South Americ a , Andes , Formosa, big Islands of Japan , Tibet mountains…
  • p. 244 …Greed on Tibet? No , that was Gordo -- he real ly goes for that Ti beten country…
139
Cooper
FCSD Rep
Cooper
Cooper
"
Okay, let 's see, going down on the 9 , 0 Operational
Checks - Acquisition . .
That's Apollo Landmarks.
All right, the--I think to find these landmarks,
things of this type , one thing that I feel pretty
strongly that you really need is a platform. You
need a platform to operate from. You need pointing,
something to give you pointing information . Now,
you can find it approximat ely with the plat -
form off, and by knowing about what BEF or SEF are ,
and by yawing approximately so many degrees , knowing
what time to look for it, approximately what degrees
to pitch down . Chances are, if it is fairly dis
tinctive you are going to find it. But for certainly
very accurate acquisition , you certainly need a
platform up and some accurate pointing information,
then you real ly got it pinned.
We tried it both ways and there is no comparison.
If you really want to make sure you get on a target,
if you ' ve got a time and a t the time you are at
this time, then the pitch angle and the yaw angle
to be at, boy, you just can ' t miss it . If you go
to those angles just a few seconds ahead of time
and set right there and as you come up on the time ,

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