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).

72
Conrad
Cooper
Conrad
Cooper
I
There is plenty of time at night when you are
flying. Now the worst thing a t all wa s a guy
sleeping. If you turn on your instrument panel
lights it only lights your instrument and the· thing is
you are interested in most is that ce,nter panel
with the cabin press and the secondary o and
2
all these things in it. So , the big thing is
that you need an auxiliary light in t here, like a
pen light.
Yes, you did.
The umbilicals: I had about the right fit on the
umbilicals and all that s ort of jazz. The cabin
press was great. .The thing locked up a little
high on lift off like it was supposed to but then
a 4.9 never moved. We covered the co bit. Did
2
you c·over the comfort day night and how the high
rotation rates that effect us? We m~ver used
the cabin fan except just prior to l:Lft off
where it is cal l ed for in sequence SJ1d when we put
the cabin cooler to the full cold po::11tion and
brought on the cabin f an and fl ew it through ' -re
entry that was it. Primary o did vent quite a
2
bit. You covered that.
Yes .
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