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).

,,,.
in PULSE .
Cooper That's right. We actually only bad it in PULSE.
Conrad And really what it is--as a matter of fact , firing
in PULSE and everything--you could always keep
the ~9rizon in sight.
Cooper You could keep the horizon in sight and we had the
red lights on, and only we didn't have them down
dim and firing just in pulse you could hold the
attitude visually very well, but when you go into
any amount of RCS thruster firing you've lost the
horizon.
Conrad Yes.
Cooper Okay. One thing we have here on thruster firing
both attitude and translation. I think we covered
attitude pretty well. I think our OAMS was a
very good attitude system to begin with. I
think it was gradually degrading as the flight
went on. Getting worse and worse and worse and
mushier and sloppier so it was not fair to evaluate
it later on in the flight because it was pretty
miserable. But the RCS attitude was beautiful .
It was really good. It was crisp and real precise
and just a real pleasure to fly. Translation, we