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. 124 …Lovell We never had any l arge amounts of dandruff or anything floating around. Borman The…
113
did you?
Lovell No, I think we have enough stars on there. I think they're
adequate.
Borman Stowage at l aunch was a l i ttle gruesome. When we got in we
found all the stuff stuffed on the floor over our feet.
Once we got into orbit and started going through our pre
arranged procedure there was absolutely no problem. We used
the food bags to put the refuge from each meal in. We usually
stored three meals in the front until we were ready to
dispose of them, and then we would put them behind the seat.
We filled the debris guard areas we had behind the seats in
about eight days. A.fter that we stowed the used ones in the
bags we had. For reentry, we placed them over the seats as
we had done before. It worked fine.
Lovel l When we first started training for the flight , there always
seemed to be a de-emphasis on exactly how much we were going
to stow. For instance , the size of the food bags was a lot
smaller than i t turned out. The size of the tissue we used
was a lot smaller. I think that we ought to look at it
realistically early and make sure that we get the right
s i zes. We were led down the path there on that first
stowage revi ew in St. Louis.
Borman Yes . We caught up with it on the third one though. We
doubled the si ze of everything.

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.