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
:Borman
a.a you could possibly get. It was just fantastic . I t was
really well done , and the reentries were also. We got
a real good feel for the reentriea. We had the people fro.m
FOD and the people fro.m FCSD up there at the time. we
understood not only the procedures f or flying the
reentries, but the wlJSr 's, the how's, the l imitations
of the systems.
Well, that's where we dug out the procedures a ctually
for the reentry technique.
That's right. That's where we developed the procedure
of following the roll needle up to 3 G's . That was
probably as good a week in training as we bad the whole
time.
14.4 Translation and Docking Trainer
Lovell
:Borman
In the little work that I did, it is
representative of the actual case , if not more
sensitive.
It's more sensitive. It is a more simple t ask to
dock in space that it i s in the Translation and Docking
Trainer .
Lovell As long as it is .more co:mplioated there is no problem.