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…
"
13 . 5 Systems
Cooper
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they did a fine job . I think they made a good effort
to salvage all we could ou of a poor situation . .
I think they really did a fine job . As a resul t
of what we found , and we didn't know before we got
into the real time situation; we discovered that the
people compromised are the flight crew. They
wound up cutting into sleep periods and certain
functions were performed at the wrong time for each
one of us. It could have been better planned as
for as who did what when.
Mission Control for syst ems . I think the biggest
handle you have on systems is right on board , and
I still think so . I think we had a good handle on
what was going on. The things that presented a
real question were the rate of decay , the rate of
dwindling, some of these cyros , etc . The ground
got a good handle on them and began to give us some
good informat ion on what we could expect. Although ,
I think some of them were new enough that the ground
wasn't aware of what was going to happen. For
example, they didn't know when they would vent and
when they wouldn't , what the rate would be when
they vented , etc .
£:Of4£10E~~TIAL

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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.