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.
“Frank Borman”10 pages
107 of the serious deficiencies in the flight was the dirty window. Lovell I just talked to John Erinkman about the film. He said a lot of it was good, but a lot of it they could tell the window was dirty. Eorman What about the booster film? Lovell They haven't processed two rolls of film yet and they don't have the Polaris launch yet. The Houston one turned out sort of hazy and I thought it was a clear day. He told me there was haze on the ground. Borman Did they see Houston all right? Lovell They could make out the International Airport. :Borman You took that with the 250 mm. lens . Lovell The high speed film. They don't want to process it until they tal k to us to find out what kind of ex:posures we used. We had all kinds of ex:posures. I think the picture that was in the paper was from the 16 mm. camera. The window was very dirty. And I have a ... a picture was taken of it. Shows the ... Borman Jim drew a sketch of the window in the S-8/D-13 log. Lovell There was a greenish, greasy film over the whole thing right in the center. Outside of that was a sort of a haze or fog effect. Right along the outer edge, it was clear. If I focused on the nose of the spacecraft it would be blurry.
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.