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.
153 we had to read the digital clock to get an exact time of the reading, the reflection from the Moon, all that stuff complicates visual sightings. Borman Row about picking out a proper horizon? You even had trouble doing that. What horizon were we going to use? Lovell That is right. We don't know what horizon we are going to use. Borman The horizon is dependent upon the Moon. Lovell So sextant sightings are going to be very difficult. Borman And the accuracy of this instrument, as advertised, is phenomenal. But the accuracy to what? If we do not know what horizon we are measuring to. Did you mention the fact that the green filter cuts out everything? Lovell Well that is right. Yes, the green and blue filters , one of the modes as a matter of fact , was to use the green filter for the horizon. Unfortunately you stick the green filter in there and then look for the horizon and it is gone . Borman Everything is gone. There is nothing. All you see are the stars up above, you do not see any horizon. Lovell So the filter idea was useless as far as the sextant goes. Borman Also the blue filter, you stayed dark adapted and then tried the blue filter in daylight as was requested.
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.