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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Lovell Right. One area that does need improving is the coordination
between the s imulators, the Cape and Houston.
Borman You're t alking about SIM Nl!i"'TS when we ran wi th Houston,
which was almost a total waste of time, on our part .
Borman That's right.
Lovell We wasted an awful lot of time just waiting around, because
there wasn' t the coordination between the two.
Borman It was not the coordination , it was just the interface.
Lovell That's what I mean, the interface. They weren't
connected properly. We did get a lot of bum dopeJ
it wasn' t the lack of training, it was the lack of
proper training.
Lovell Station keeping with the booster occurred down here
at the Cape only. I thought that was fairly realistic
when it was working. I thought it helped aome.
Borman I thought it helped a lot.