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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learn things that really helped .
Cooper We were short on nominal time .
Conrad I can ' t say enough for the way Deke schEiduled the
things when he asked for t wo weeks . He was right
on the button. We could have used a couple more
days.
Cooper Yes.
Conrad A little more nomi nal training like that to polish
it off. If we had, I don't think Gordo woul d have
put the drogue out at 70 . And I don ' t t hink I would
have left all the Squibb batter ies off. We shouldn' t
make those kind of mistakes .
Cooper We would have had more time to run through the nominal
procedures and get them down.
Con.rad We ' re the first ones to admit that we maie them,
because we just di dn't have the f light checklist
. I
finished all the time . We didn't run· ~hat thing that
many times .
Cooper We ran very little orbita l training othe:r than the
REP . I think we spent a great deal of t'ime on the
rendezvous and the REP, because it was the first
priority.
Conrad One thing that slipped by us , too, was that it took
COt-c!FIDEt◄TIM.