Gemini 7 Technical Debriefing, 1965

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.

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a stream into a vacuum, it is going to go right on over
board. I do not understand wby•••okay. The defecation
bags were fine. And we really used them this time. The
defecation bags were really put to use in this flight. I
think we used a total of 15 of them.
Lovell Yes.
Borman And they were fine. I have no comments on those. It seems
to be the best solution you can have to the situation.
Lovell For this particular type spacecraft.
Borman For this particular type••• For the Gemini Spacecraft. I
do not know what other approach you could have to them. I
thought their marking was easily done. The finger hole I
never used that at all. One of the big assets, we might as
well put it in here, was the fact that the food that we ate
caused well formed bowels, so we did not have any loose
stools or any of that problem. I never had any occasion to
use that finger device in there at all . Any other comments?
Lovell No.
Borman The water intake, the W&ter counter number. The gun was
satisfactory. The recording that goes with it is completely
unsatisfactory. I think the only way we should