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
130 Borman The number of primary targets photographed was 1. Evalua tion of sequence 350B and 35IB, I maintain that the maps are entirely adequate. We evaluated them looking at the Cairo area and the Dead Sea, and I see no reason for the photographs. Jim ha.a a different feeling about that. 9.2 Cabin Lighting Survey Borman We did not have. We have already talked about the lighting, glare, the dirty windows, and so forth. I felt that this was a pain in the neck, and I would like to make sure that somebody got some useful data out of that. We went around the earth in the HORIZON SCAN mode once with the HF transmitter on, and I wonder i f there i s anything at all going to be learned from it. Lovell I am beginning to wonder whether the HF system is worth the cost to put it into orbit. Borman You might be better off with another UHF set. Lovell That is right. Go to something that is compatible, like single side band. Borman HF was adequate when UHF was adequate . .As far as any over the-horizon transmission with HF, there was not any. Lovell It was very, very poor.
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.