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
106 light. The center panel and the right panel were all right. There is no question that the lighting system on the LEM is superior. Lovell We used the red lighting more than I thought we would ever use it. We never used it in simulations. The red lighting turned out ve-ry nicely when we started looking out the window, using the stars, getting oriented and things of this nature. Borman The pedestal, console and circuit breaker areas just aren't lit. Same way with the water management panel, when you wanted to check that,the only thing you could do was use your flashlight. It was not a big problem. The little flashlight that CSD developed, and put in, was one of the most valuable pieces of gear we had. We used it continually throughout the flight, it is much more valuable than finger tip lights. I see no reason for fingertip lights because you're not going to fly with gloves on most of the time. If we would have had them, they would have been stowed. This little flashlight turned out to be a little jewel. The utility light I did not use once in the whole flight. Lovel l I turned mine on once to see if it worked. Borman The flashlight was much easier to get to. We velcroed it right in front of us, and it was very handy. And at the end of 14 days it seemed as bright as it was before. One
Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 222 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.