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. 5 …257 MISSION CONTROL 13. l GO/NO GO ••. . ... •. ....... ... ... . . . . ...... •• •. •• • ... . 261 13. 2 FLA and CLA Updates .. .. .... ... ... ....... . .. ... .. . .. 261…
  • p. 275 I Conrad We didn't always agree with Mission Control. One example--! would have l oved…
  • p. 276 …Anything else on the fuel cells , batteries, or mission control? Conrad No . 13 . 4 F'light…
  • p. 277 …Cooper I do to , but we are talking here about flight plan changes in mission controlling…
  • p. 278 …Mission Control for syst ems . I think the biggest handle you have on systems is right…
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That was a very poor plan.Cooper
Conrad That wasn't thought out very well. I think, in that
particular case, we had all the time in the world
to discuss that with the ground . We could have
gone a couple of revs talking that one over and it
wouldn ' t have made a hill of beans .
Cooper I think the time that they chose to do it was ill
planned . Every test that they laid on us wound up
to being a test in the middle of the night . I don ' t
know why. I ' m sure this wasn't planned that way,
but that is the way it turned out. Anything else on
the fuel cells , batteries, or mission control?
Conrad No .
13 . 4 F'light Plan Changes
Cooper Flight plan changes--I think here is one thing that
we want to say about mission control. I ' m well
aware that the flight plan people were kept extremely
busy having to do this tremendous amount of real
time flight planning. I think in general Flight
Planning back there did a fine job . I'm sure there
were a lot of the people coming in and adding this
and that and changing this and changing that.
There wasn't enough thought given to the crew. The
crew was extreme~ co,.u.romised throughout the whole
€0NFl91!1'~ 1-1Ai.

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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.