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…
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Conrad Like a nice candle flame.
Cooper It just goes up in just a contained column almost -
in fact the column appeared t o me to be no bigger
around t han t hat saucer .
Conrad That 's right, if it was that round .
Cooper Some 4 to 5 inches maybe, in diameter at the most
and just went right s t raight up for a period,
distance of about 4 to 5 feet I guess where it
faded, something like t hat .
Conrad Oh, I didn't really think it went that high. I
really didn't think the thing stuck up more t han
about a foot . That i t was visible light that would
bother you.
Cooper Well , it would bother you, but I could actually
detect when they would fire, I could actually see
from the pitch down--I could see t hat going almost
to the t op of the window on something on the order
of about a 4 foot dent where you could see any
line a t all. I'm tal king about where it fades
you lmow completely. And it's act ually only a
couple of feet out from where the light is r eally
bright.
Conrad The t hing that I thought of when first I ever
co~~FIDEt~TJM:

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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.