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.
“Sea”7 pages
164 Protective glasses. To tell you the truth the one time where I was really trying to get onto the Hawaii pass I took them off. I did not use them. And they were in the way, they were cumbersome and together with the telescope, it was just too hard to find. Borman I used mine, but I did not put them on until right before Jim was supposed to transmit . Lovell Of course, I had them, I had them on and I transmitted and found out that I could not see anything so I just pulled them off and started transmitting by going back... because as I understand it the operator really does not need them if he i s right next to it . Borman The big word on this one as far as the reticl e goes , w~ should go back to that is for the day time you do not want that green in there. At night time you are going to need a lighted reticle. You cannot see the reticle at ni ght. Lovell That is right . So you need a better acquisition device on the laser, a better, bigger telescope with more light gathering and clarity of the te.rrain of the target. I would imagine PULSE mode would be great for tracking the thing. Borman Yes. I tracked one at Hawaii very easily. No problems. The tracking is a nominal task, there is nothing to it.
Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 222 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.