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.
“Frank Borman”10 pages
179 Borman Right . Lovell It did complicate the pre-mission planning. Borman Every other experiment I thought was well presented. The experiments division, with Dick Moke helpi ng out did a good job. I WP~ very , very satisfied in other words, with the whole business . 13.0 MISSION CON1ROL Borman Describe and discuss updating on the status of spacecraft and mission. Borman Once a day operation, where we r ead out certain parameters in the spacecraft , reported th~m to the ground, and they have a GO or NO GO for the r-ext area. 13.2 P1A and CLA _llE.dates Borman They were extrem~ly easy to handle . They came up in blocks of about 6 or 9, No problem, s i nce we dec i ded to use a rol ling reentry in the event of contingency landing. Lovell We had very little writing t o do . Borman Very little writing. And I might add, based on that reentry, i f I had to do it agai n, that is exactly what I ' d want : a rolling reentry, i f I did not have a l oad in that computer. Because I think it is very difficult to look out the window and observe a horizon during a reentry . At least it was during ours; especially duri ng a night reentry .
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.