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. 196 …But we were looking at that scr ewy gray- - Well , I 1 11 tell you , we…
  • p. 198 …jumbled and it's a real dim gray area there you ' re going through just for…
  • p. 317 …The gray interior paint flecks off of the guard bars and off several areas of the…
184
Cooper Wel l, I don't know . You could do it on the ball .
I t hink if I had my choice between ball and rate
needles I ' d rather have the ball .
Conrad Would you really? I'd rather have the rat e needles,
I think, because I could understand them even with this
crazy sensation ; where I might try to int erpret the
But , you see,
Cooper But , you see , our rat e needles never ven-;ured off
the middle . We never go t a rate on the :rate needles .
Conrad Yes , well that ' s fine. Then you know yo·11 re staying
right where you want to be.
Cooper And the ball--to me the ball i s the real good
i ndicator. If you keep your rates down ·;o zero you
still coul d actually get off slightly in attitude
and still have almost, you know , essentially
negligible rat es .
Conrad I t hink the point is it, it ' s pretty comforting to have
a whole bag of instruments .
Cooper Ye s , i t sure is .
Conrad I ' m not saying i t can' t be done, but rea lly there was
no sweat on night ret rofire. Gordo ' s ri15ht about
that. I mean, we went through that, turned the lights
up bright-- matter of fact, it's just likn you're
back in t he si mulator.
~lrl9i •

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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.