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. 72 …The sea condition was very goon ; 2 to ,1. foot waves . We bobbed around, although I…
  • p. 132 …Borman The Red Sea area was one of the clear areas all the t i me…
  • p. 135 …The Suez Canal , the Red Sea, and the coast of Arabia were loud and clear the…
  • p. 136 …Lovell The Red Sea and the Gul f of Eden as it goes into the Arabian…
  • p. 140 …We evaluated them looking at the Cairo area and the Dead Sea, and I see no…
  • p. 146 …About the only area that was consistently clear was the Sahara and the Red Sea a…
  • p. 166 …You could pick out the area of the Salton Sea there even from where we were…
178
Lovell
Borman
Lovell
Borman
Lovell
Borman
Lovell
Borman
Lovell
Borman
Lovell
When we were first introduced to the equipment back at the
stowage review up at St. Louis, we didn't lmow enough about
the experiment to really analyze the equipment, to find out
whether it would be adequate or not.
That is right. We should have. picked up the reticle light
ing on that.
Because we did not pick up the reticle lighting and we did
not pick up the green filter.
No. The green filter looked all right when we used it on
the ground. It is just the fact that we were not able to
observe .from .far enough a~ to pick it up.
That is right.
The lighting contrast ... • ..
Also, experiments to the M-1 experiment was sort of a last
minute glitch.
Yes.
We had a lot of compromise. Not compromise but a lot of
failures.
Putting the M-1 into the ECS system you mean.
AlthoulJh, I will have to admit that the whole thing worked
out fine. The mechanics of the M-1 experiment did l ast
14 ~sand was absolutely no problem as far as operation of
spacecraft or the ECS system.

About this file

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.