Gemini 5 Technical Debriefing, Part II, 1965

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).

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the addition of humidity in the air. If you have
high humidity and then low sun angles, you are out
of luck . If it is a very dry humidity, the low sun
angles don ' t hurt you nearly so much . The sightings
--there again the ease of which you are going to get
your sightings done, get on to them and get them
spotted and so on , i s going to be dependent on the
landmark itself . Those of them that we got, I think,
are certainly reasonably landmarks , although some
of the confusion things can be- -
Conrad I just found out why the whip antenna didn't go up .
It was my fault .
Cooper Why is that?
Conrad Because I powered down the common control bus.
Remember, I turned off all squib batteries to save
batteries later.
Cooper You didn ' t turn those off till later.
Conrad Well, I know I didn ' t, but I pr obably turned them
off before we ran the antenna up though , or tried
to. I ' m not really sure.
Cooper I don ' t think so .
Conrad Well, don't mind that. If it comes out , well , that
was the reason.
Cooper I remember when you powered those down. We had
t