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).

®@r ◄ r1~Tr~t 159 E
•
in Australia was a good example. Two different
days it was completely clobbered in where you
couldn't see anything on the ground in that imme
diate area. This point Rhir was clobbered in
one day. We were going to get an Apollo landmark
on it and it was just back in under the clouds in
fact. And Kano we were going to get a shot of
the Kano air field , wasn't it?
Conrad Yes , that was clobbered .
Cooper Yes, it was clobbered. We got right up close to
it and there were these low cl ouds hanging in
there just scattered to broken clouds and we
couldn't see.
Conrad Actually on the D-6 stuff most of the time the
experimenters were up on what was clobbered and
they didn ' t even bother to give it to us , or if
they gave it t o us it became clobbered before we
got there . They usually were able to tell us that
it was going t o be clobbered and then many times
they gave us that the weat her was pretty good ,
but there 's three tenths cloud coverage so you
may or may not. It didn't bother us too much
around the coastal regions .