Documents / Official release
This is a preliminary transcript of the Gemini 7 technical debriefing, dated December 23, 1965, from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. It was made from tape recordings of the crew debriefing held December 19 to 21, 1965 at the Crew Quarters, Cape Kennedy, Florida. In it, Frank Borman and Jim Lovell go through countdown, powered flight, insertion, station keeping with the booster, systems, experiments and training. The table of contents also lists a section on visual sightings during orbital flight.
From the source:Release of 2026-06-12 Incident: December 19-21, 1965, Cape Kennedy, Florida. This document is a preliminary transcript derived from voice recordings of the Gemini 7 flight crew debriefing conducted December 19-21, 1965, at the Crew Quarters, Cape Kennedy, Florida. Lights and flashes are mentioned and there is discussion about having proper illumination for vehicle docking. Borman and Lovell discuss celestial and terrestrial observational anomalies and note sightings of Mercury, meteors, aurora, and lightning. They also discuss not being able to see any stars once the Sun comes up.
“Coast to Coast AM”2 pages
104 Bo·-m.a.n Yes, that is a switch that is never moved unless there is a failure in the fuel cells. Lovell They should be a little better type of switch than they are. Borman Mirrors. Operating without suits on, I found that I seldom needed the mirror. I don't believe I used it more than 2 or 3 times except to check and see how far m;r beard had grown. Row about you, did you? Lovell Well, they were good for things like looking way back in the corner, and shining a light back there. Borman I was mobile enough that without a suit on I could turn around very easily and see all around. There is no question you need the mirrors. I am not suggesting even remotely that you take them out. With the suit off it cuts down the need for them. The swizzle stick we used once to pry up the center line stowage bracket. When we opened the center line stowage after launch, the bottom bracket sprung down about ~/4 inches, and we bad great difficulty to close it. We only closed it twice during the flight after that. We just kept it velcroed partially shut. Lovell I think the boost acceleration sprung it out of position. Borman Either that, or when they put that fix on there to beef it up, it resulted in an out-of-tolerance eitua.tion. I hope· that the people did not fo~ce it shut and then let us take off that w~. That was a pain in the neck to get it shut.
Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 222 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.