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.
“Gemini 4”4 pages
• Lovell Borman Lovell 203 like Systems Assurance and so on in St. Louie. It is a waste of time. At St. Louis you should plan on covering the SIM flights , the Altitude Chamber and the Horizontal SEDR. And, down at the Cape , I thought even though we cut out six days of testing and we did not have a Wet Mock , I saw absolutely no impediment at all to our launch training. I do not think that any of it is necessary. I do not think we cut out one necessary thing. I think that you could use your t ime more wi sely in simula tor training , in recovery training , and in training you are really going to use than in study of some of the sys tems assurance tests where you spend hours in the spacecraft just throwing switches. You reach a point there where you are not learning any more. I think you should follow, at St. Louis , the SIM f light , the Altitude Chamber, and the Horizontal SEDR. And down here at the Cape , we want to do the SIM flight, the Joint Combined Systems test , the EIIV test , and finally of course , the SIM flight and Stowage Review . That is somethi ng which we put in, and I think ought to be included in all._. the stowage is one thing that changes constantly right after launch, and it ought to be put i n just before launch. A week or so before launch to make sure everything is correct .
Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 222 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.