Documents / Official release

Gemini 7 Technical Debriefing, 1965

National Aeronautics and Space Administration · 1965 · 222 pages · text from the file's own layer

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.

  • p. 186 …GPO was very cooperative about everything. Of course, the big thing that we wanted, that we…
  • p. 219 …Everybody was very cooperative , I thought . But that was another it em that I strongly recommend…
176
Lovell There is no doubt about it. The only way you can plan
a mission of this length of time is real time flight
planning. Call up the data you want for the day, it is
a regular work day schedule. Call up what you want, and
we will put it down and we will work at it; we will run
it off that night.
12.3 Spacecraft Changes
Borman I do not know of one major change in the spacecraft that
we wanted that we did not get. GPO was very cooperative
about everything. Of course, the big thing that we
wanted, that we got after a hassel, was the ability to
operate suits off. We planned this from the beginning
with our first stowage review, and we finally made it by
going the route of getting the suits that we could take
off. And I think this contributed much to the satisfactory
completion of the mission. Don't you? I have got
personal notes here that were made during the flight.
Every other page it says suits off was the only way to
go, "I do not know how I stayed in the suit for six
days," and so on. The suit I am sure has done more to
increase the bugaboo of physical deterioration in space
flight than a:n:y other single item. Fa.r more than zero g.

About this file

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.