Documents / Official release

Gemini 7 Technical Debriefing, 1965

National Aeronautics and Space Administration · 1965 · 222 pages · text from the file's own layer

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.

  • p. 25 15 Borman Could you identify any type of the debris? Lovell No, pieces.That is all…
  • p. 61 …LoveJl Frank thought it was in the reef ed con<lition for 3 months . Borman It…
  • p. 64 …Meanwhile , Frank ' s got the checklist out and the guys out there are putting on the…
  • p. 83 …Lovell We might mention here that both Frank and I think making adjust maneuvers without a…
  • p. 90 …We had no problems with air flow. :Borman It would have been a very, very difficult…
  • p. 93 …When I was out of the suit and Frank was in it, we put my suit…
  • p. 118 …Lovell Frank's was better than mine. Whenever I could I would give him the cameras…
  • p. 125 …Lovell It was a necessary evil, Frank. Borman We were a little concerned when we opened…
  • p. 141 131 Borman The reception on HF during the fl i ght was very poor. Lovell Right…
  • p. 172 …Lovell The magnitude of this laser is a lot less than either Frank or I suspected…
109
Room was dismantled, was not there this time.
Intensity control was good, no problem. We had two white
lights in the center cockpit, this was our request a long
time ago, and after using it I think we ma.de a mistake. We
never did use the thunderstorm light that we stuck in place
of the red light. Right now Frank and I think we could
have used the red light again because we both did use red
lights a lot more than we thought we were going to, for
night work. It gets your eyes accustomed to the night, and
you can see the airglow and stars a lot better. If you have
bright lights on in the cockpit , at night, with glare off the
window and your eyes adjusted to the white lights, you could
never see out. It ' s just black.
Onboard data: checklist cards preparation, excellent. I
think the people who made them up , Chuck Stough, has to take
a personal bow because I think that he did an outstanding
job of making up all the onboard data books and cards. They
are very, very good. What we did was, tear off the lift-off
cards prior to reentry and just had the reentry section, so
we wouldn't get mixed up. There are several minor things
which we could change to make it a little bit more compatible ,
like getting one card with all the data on it so we didn't
have to flip the cards back and forth when MCC gave it to us.
As a matter of fact that i s exactly what I ended up doing,

About this file

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.