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).

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think that's about the time we really decided the
s canner wasn' t a ny good , or had we already tol d
them about that?
Cooper Yes. We 'd already t old them about that.
Conrad Yes , you ' re right. I know what it was . That's
when we discovered that the voice tape was out.
We were right i n the middle of s everal experiments
and it occurred approximate l y like 16:30: 54 on
the f i f th day. We r eported to Houston that the
voice tape was out, the number 7 yaw L~ft thruster
was out and that I had turned the OAMS heater back
on. I was suspicious of that all the ·;ime . That's
when they called up a nd gave us this m:i.nimum power
down. Why did we go i nto that? They had us power
down everything.
Cooper At about the same time that we came up with this,
they came up with this idea that the hrdrogen was
boiling off s o fast that we were going t o be out of
hydrogen by about the end of the f i fth day at the
rat e we were goi ng i f we d i dn't power down and stop
the usage of i t .
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