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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where you really begin to get the high g ,
after your high g , in fact, along about
..coincidental with a real high g, when you
begin to get some fairly good oe1cillations ,
very r apid rate, I had no problE'ms damping
them at all but I didn' t have tt.e time to
keep switching back and forth f rom rate to
attitude and go back to rate anc. damp them
real quick and then go back to &.ttitude and
decide where I was on the guide and then
go back to rate and damp them and go back
to guidance , so I finally--they got to
getting fairly good where I had to devote
a l i ttle bit of time to damping them , and
I f i nally just went to guidance and stayed on
guidance andJust flicked over tc single r i ng
rate command to damp the oscillati ons and
then used the attitude control i n the rate
command to steer the computer steers . Which
worked out versJ well and there was--there
never was really any oscillating-you never
really--I could go to rate on there and you
could hardly ever see the rate needles
CQNftO Etsi:filA L -..