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
126 determine those. Lovell The Red Sea and the Gul f of Eden as it goes into the Arabian Sea were very prominent. Borman Yes. Lovell The 90 degree bend was very , very prominent . Borman We have a difference of opinion here , but I thought the maps were entirely adequate. Mountains were, as far as we could tell , adequately portrayed, a l though , we did not have any landmarks that were in the mountainous area. Most of ours for some reason were in the tropical areas and they were cloudy all the time. The cities that we saw were by and large over the United States . Lovell We did not really see much in the way of cities. We saw the Australian cities at night , we could see the lights from them. Borman We saw small towns along the coast of Mexico. Lovell Also South America. I wonder what the difference in alti tude does to visibility of landmarks? I am sure that your visibility is going t o really go down . I think that is what happened. Borman Maybe , although when we were in an orbit of 120 by 178 , I could not tell the difference. One difference of course , is we were in the darkness at 178 . When we were r eally looki ng we were around 120 to 140. I never got the feeling
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.