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).
“Mission Control”5 pages
I Conrad We didn't always agree with Mission Control. One example--! would have l oved to argue with them about the heater circuit on the OAMS. I was against turning it off . Cooper On fuel cell--do you want to go back tc OAMS. We ' ve already gone by it. Conr ad Yes , I ' m a curious person by nature and so is every body else that flies one of these spacecraft. When you s end up something you ought to tell them why you 're doing it . Especially when we get into these screwy conditions . We didn ' t have any choice when t hey said shut down the fuel cell but to shut down t he fuel cel l. It wouldn't have cost them another t wo words to s ay what they were trying t o do. I think i t was obvious to us what they were trying to do . I tell you , they made some decisions down there on t he ground t hat I 'll still sit back here and argue wi th them about . Cooper Yes , you are right on that OAMS heater . Conr ad OAMS heater was one of them and another one is the manner in which they conducted that solenoid warmup idea on the OAMS system to unfreeze i t . That was a poor way of doing it.
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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.