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).
“Nevers”60+ pages
- p. 7 …I've never seen an a~tual drawing
showing the horizon line on a window a…
- p. 11 …Conrad J i m and Ed made the comment that t hey never alined
BEF, that…
- p. 14 …We just never had much occasion during the f light
to use FREE.
Platform displays .
Bal…
- p. 18 …When Gordo'd stick a
shot of Direct in to go someplace, it never
showed up…
- p. 23 …rest of the heaters, we'd have never froze
them up.
Cooper 'llie thrusters themselves were…
- p. 28 …junk out of there . "
Conrad We ' d never seen anything like that before and we'd…
- p. 31 …I never saw fuel usage in the sim1lator like
we saw in flight .
I t just…
- p. 32 …We never used Rate Command except for the
maneuver burns.
Cooper We were tracking the missile…
- p. 34 …I never used or need it on
the simulator . I never liked it.
Conrad Pilots aren…
- p. 35 …Inci
dentally, you can use Pulse just for a month of
Sundays and never see the…
- p. 36 …We never used it after we originally tried
it out and after we 1 d tried…
- p. 38 …He tracked
as well as he did in the simulator and we never had
this show…
- p. 39 …But we never fail ed t o have fairly
sizeable ones , like fa and fo fps…
- p. 43 …We had never run into this problem where
we'd gone through a complete insertion checklist
- p. 46 …Conrad It di d something like I 1
d never seen before!
Cooper I 1
d…
- p. 47 …I t was never
f ar away from us . During five night cycles it was
close…
- p. 51 …I really don't remember making a burn-
We never did anything in the day--
Yeah…
- p. 53 …like we could have had four or five
times the offset we had--and never have
,.
- p. 55 …Which
worked out versJ well and there was--there
never was really any oscillating-you never…
- p. 57 …I watched i t quite closely for
a while and then it never went beyond
that…
- p. 62 …stowed in the footwell ,
and they were never put on again until just
before retrofire . We…
- p. 64 …in the foot well and
they were never put on again until just before
retrofire . We…
- p. 65 …Then i t bled down slowly t o about 4 , 9 and never
budged from there…
- p. 66 …The cabin fan we never used at
all until we turned it on just before retrofire ;
- p. 67 …Cabin
pressure relief valve; never actuall;r did we . . .
the cabin pressure dual regulator , the release…
- p. 68 …Manual heater we never used. The controls ;
we did very little as f ar as doing…
- p. 69 …stayed, just like for the check list . Never saw
one quiver in either one of them…
- p. 71 …drowning
us out or whether they just never got us. At any
rate , nobody was getting…
- p. 76 …out I shattered it a.nd Gordo never used the one on
his side because it…
- p. 77 …supposed to but then
a 4.9 never moved. We covered the co bit. Did
2…
- p. 78 …It never bothered
us, of ~ odor. The normal type venting system
worked fine.
Cooper I covered…
- p. 79 …switched
out of reentry to prelaunch but never got any DCS
l i ght on either…
- p. 83 …Conrad Let ' s face it Gordo, once we got those controls
set, we never moved them…
- p. 88 …I never saw any big needle deviations.
I didn ' t see this big pitch transient at…
- p. 93 88
Cooper
Conrad
Cooper
Conrad
Cooper
Conrad
Cooper
Conrad
a@Q t 4Ft9€NII • b
never…
- p. 94 …Well, then we never did get ·to check '- a.ny
thing in the rendezvous mode.
Cooper…
- p. 95 …I wonder if that thing is on the bright-d im sequence
We never did put…
- p. 96 …Conrad But we never did have any reason to dim it in the
simulator. You never…
- p. 100 …I never had the occasion to use it.
That's the only time I used it…
- p. 102 …We never had any false lock problems
at all . We didn I t really give these…
- p. 104 …We never did burn our lights too steadily unless we
absolutely had to . The other problem…
- p. 107 …without
ever turning the lights on and never even looking at
the instrument panel when we…
- p. 112 …Just by folding them
a certain way, and this you would put away and never
pull…
- p. 115 …Then we thought , well , that ' s
odd. Never had noticed that. Where is that island
off…
- p. 118 …r eentered with them down,
and they never came out of the down position. They
could…
- p. 121 …Conrad We never had any t r ouble with them when w1~ put on a
new…
- p. 134 …And uh , then
I usually wound up having about 5 hours off , but
I never s…
- p. 148 …there
and our regular orbital map , we never would have be
gun to have found these…
- p. 153 …9,5 Thruster Illuminati on Checks
Conrad Never did it . We were supposed to do it…
- p. 154 …We never got more than a mile from him,
so we got that 3000 foot transient…
- p. 155 …after that over the Cape , but we never g~t the range
to read right . I…
- p. 158 …We started the flight plan right away and we never
turned around to look at it…
- p. 159 154
Conrad We never saw any of the scheduled ones but you ' ve
got to have…
- p. 162 …Celestial --
Gosh, we coul d see seventh magnitude stars--
Mercury never had a window. Our windows…
- p. 163 …pointed
out one night that I had never seen before. It
looked like an Aurora. It…
- p. 171 …him for 500 miles out and we
never lost t hem.
Just the lighting conditions were…
- p. 173 …Conrad Well , I tell you we saw some lightning· like I
just never dreamed existed. I…
- p. 195 …We never go t a rate on the :rate needles .
Conrad Yes , well that ' s fine…
- p. 199 …Let's see--
Spacecraft was- -boy, I never even saw-•
What do you recall on visual…
- p. 201 …left me plent,v of
attitude control . Never once when I cheJked the
rates were the…
190
than I needed. I had to be very careful to just
put a little teensy tweak in to damp the rates.
Later on, as we got on down, maybe half way
through the g pulse area, the rates began to in
crease in amplitude and in frequency . J still
was able to handle them very adequately. No
problem at all on tweaking the rates out on
pitch and yaw. However, at about this I1eriod
of time, it began to take so much time t o switch
back and forth from rate to attitude and get the
rates damp that I was getting concerned about the
math flow guidance in here and making sure I
stayed on it. At this point then, probably half
way through or somewhere on down through the
l atter part of the reentry, I just switched over
to the ACME position and allowed the RCS rate
command t o damp the rates . Then, I wouli reach
over and check the rat es once in a while to see
how it was damping. But, then, I could concentrate
on purely attitude .and just fly this same single
ring attitude control. It left me plent,v of
attitude control . Never once when I cheJked the
rates were the rate needles ever off zer). It
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About this file
Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 325 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.