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).

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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…

252
FCSD Rep
Cooper
Everytime while setting, it seemed to have linear
polarity, somewhat vertical , but I never could pin
this down to anything well- defined. While the
sun was up, well into the sky, I could rotate
the filters and rotate them within themselves to
any degree and couldn't discern anything but
equal polarity coming out of them in all directions.
It didn't seem to have any linearity to it at all
or any well-defined specific axis of linearity.
never could see anything from the sun other than
with the polaroid filter in . After the sun had set,
you could see quite a glow with the polaroid filter
in, but at the same time you could see it without the
polaroid, too . A couple of times when we got the
Zodiacal light quite strongly--
Can you see the stars down through this airglow?
Oh yes. You can see the stars right on down through
the airglow. The Gemini window is much cleaner
in general , apparently, or much better visibility
out of it and night visibility than the Mercury
window, because we were seeing down to about
seventh magnitude of stars . We saw the clusters
in Orion and we could see seven stars in the belt
of Orion. We saw a great many stars which we couldn ' t
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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.