Documents / Official release

Gemini 7 Technical Debriefing, 1965

National Aeronautics and Space Administration · 1965 · 222 pages · text from the file's own layer

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.

  • p. 72 …The sea condition was very goon ; 2 to ,1. foot waves . We bobbed around, although I…
  • p. 132 …Borman The Red Sea area was one of the clear areas all the t i me…
  • p. 135 …The Suez Canal , the Red Sea, and the coast of Arabia were loud and clear the…
  • p. 136 …Lovell The Red Sea and the Gul f of Eden as it goes into the Arabian…
  • p. 140 …We evaluated them looking at the Cairo area and the Dead Sea, and I see no…
  • p. 146 …About the only area that was consistently clear was the Sahara and the Red Sea a…
  • p. 166 …You could pick out the area of the Salton Sea there even from where we were…
194
years ago. After you get assigned to a specific
mission, you better start learning the stars
you need to use for certain burns and things of this
nature. That's a good place to do it. I thought
pe~haps, since we had the visual display, tba.t we could
eliminate the Planetarium because the visual
display had more real feel for it, and it does .
However, the visual displays in the simulators don't
carry the .magnitude of the stars that you can actually
see.
Borman And they are not flexible enough.
Lovell Tba.t 1s right. They are not flexible .
Borman You can't change them.
Lovell So the Planetarium. was helpful .
Borman Spacecraft orientation. As Jim said, we studied the
burns and .ma.de the first two burns on the stars.
The Planetarium was very helpful for this.
Remember, you were all set to find Corvus
and then Spica and we had it all lined up before we
ever launched.
14.6 Systems Briefings
Borman We had. one hundred and twenty - six hours
and thirty .minutes of systems briefing'S and

About this file

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.