Documents / Official release
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).
“Gray”3 pages
EOMFtDEl-~Tt~l don't know what it wasp'whether it wa s smoke or what it wasn't fla.rne--you could definitely see it trailing right along side our trail just like we were leaving a con . Cooper Yes , you could see our con--it was kind of a light color . I wouldn't say it was a flame color--it was kind of a light color. compared to everything else. Conrad We were looking at this in relation to what nobody else hadseen it to . We were still looking at this down sun relatively nebulous horizon that you have. We were looking at it ourselves , a trail back there in the terminator. Cooper Into the dark. Conrad Yes . And that ' s another thing. A very important point here-- no kidding, saying this spacecraft's i n s unl i ght doesn't • mean anything? That ' s ani ght retrofire. And we didn't have a definable horizon to fly on until we crossed the Mississippi River• . That 's way in the heck down the pipe on retrofire, because that terminator is nothing. Cooper One thing I ' d like to add here- -I really think a l l .of us always sweat~d night ret rofire and it wa s a pi ece of cake.
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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.