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
190 Lovell Retrofires procedure-wise was very good. The horizon, visual display, really is a big item. It made all the difference in the world between what we had before with no display and what we have now. As far as training goes, that is a very big item. The Houston Simulator ought to have a visual display as soon as possible. Retrofire reentries were all as programmed. Borman We had visual at RoustonJ we just did not have the targets. We had the stare at night. Lovell We had the stars, but we had the occluding disc, and we did not have the horizon. Borman Reentry on the Mission Simulator was good, a very close approximation to what we flew in the spacecraft. I think that was very valuable. On GT-4, we had only flown about two or three reentries. We had to go up to St. Louis to fly these. Lovell GT-3 and GT-4 were both that way. Essentially what we are saying about the Gemini Mission Simulator at Houston is that it is the basic trainer for systems an:l procedures. The one at the Cape is a fine mock-up for the final flight plan simulator. We go right through
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.