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).
39 which calls for putting the computer to CATCH- UP. I had gone through and zeroed 25 , 26, and 27, talcing the ascent routine numbers out of it . So that I knew that we were getting the right readings . I had put the computer back in PRELAUNCH, also had this discus sion at that time and that ' s when I didn't blow the cold IR doors until the REP was out . Cooper I've said it before, and I also said it after my Mercury flight ; that is , "If you continually shove things in on people very early in the flight, the quality of it is going to be degraded." You need the first two or three orbits to check the systems over, to get oriented , learn how to aline the platform, to learn how to use the systems , to learn where things are, to do these things before you start giving -people complicated tasks . You just aren ' t going to get the quality out of them unless they're flying exactly the same vehicle for the second or third time and they 1 re very experienced in it and they 're familiar with everything that 's onboard and there ' s no change in equipment , no change in control system, no change in any of these things . Then , perhaps they could leap right off and go right into the first orbit and do these things. But to put somebody into iottf ~~ •
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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.