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).

163EiO t◄ Ftl?>et◄ TIAt
'
FCSD Rep
Conrad
Cooper
Conrad
this big black cloud right down to the ground.
Very clear.
Another thing that was different that I noted
that was a little different than the usual type
of the whole big mass of clouds lighting up--
one long series of thunderstorms, I noticed where
there was horizontal kind of a chain--horizontal
lightning going over and you'd see it sort of
travel along horizontally through the clouds like
it was moving from cloud to cloud rather than from
cloud to ground .
Okay, thruster firing. You could see every thruster
on the spacecraft fire in the middle of t he night-
you could see the glow from it .
These aft firing thrusters too?
I don't know. I was just trying to think about
the aft firing ones and we were so busy everytime
we fired them that I wasn't aware of them.
I don't know . We had the lights up in the cockpit
when we were firing the aft -firing because we were
busy--
It ' s unfair to say without pulling the test, you
see, because when we were firing the aft firing