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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Borman We got a lot of good reentries.
Lovel l Well, that ' s procedures. We got a lot of good reentries,
and we got a lot of good lift-offs with the trainer.
One thing that helped us out quite a bit on procedures
was the visual displays.
Borman For stowage we kept the wooden mock- up in Houston up
to our configuration. It came up better than I 've ever
seen it before . We did several exercises on the Gemini
Crew Station Mock-up . We used that as distinct from the
simulator for stowage.
Lovell The stowage mock-up was also used for ex:periments,
to copy down updates, to put together equipment,
to find out what electrical leads went where, and
to practice using equipment ins ide the spacecraft.
That wey we didn't have to tie up the valuable Gemini
Mission Simulator, that had a lot of electronics
attached to it , with training that required
only a s i mulation of space and envi r onment .
We acquired a pretty good knowledge of the systems
with the s i mulator.