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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Conrad
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almost in the McDonnell simulator when we got the
REP out? Just exactly. That training that we
did up there with the visual presentation was
invaluable .
A lot of people don't realize how time critical
that whole REP maneuver was. We didn't realize it
even when we ran it a t McDonnell. When we ran at
McDonnell , we had a visual di splay and no outside
encumberances and no other systems. We had a
computer. Gordo had a ball and an out-the-window
di splay, a reticle and a hand controlle:c-. I had
a computer and an MDIU over there and t ·:iat was it.
And we would sit there, shoot the breez,= , talk to
the guys out the window and run that tb:i.ng. I
don ' t think we became aware of how crit :i.cal it was
until we came down to the Cape and got :m that
first sim-net -sim . Then we had the ground honking
on the horn. They wanted information. We had a
spacecraft around us in the GMS , and theiy could
throw in little cliches every once in a while,
which t hey did . It turned out tha t we e~t little
cliches in flight starting out. The one• thing that
we spent an awful lot of hours on was the REP.