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.
“Sea”7 pages
12 Borman 17, 30, and 20. There might have been a 13, 17, a.nd 20... Lovell About what the numbers ca.me up with. Borman Spacecraft separation. We separated with minimum delay be tween thrusting and Spacecraft SEP. Jim actuated the space craft separation. I did not hear the thrusters firing. I could not hear them; and I did not even helU' spacecraft separation, but -- Lovell I heard Spacecraft SEP, but I o·ould not hear the thrusters firing. But you told me you were firing the thrusters-- Borman I ea.id th.rusting a.nd SEIP Spacecraft a.nd we did it and away we went. I thrusted for about 2 seconds. Almost immedi ately, as soon as we had £inished thrusting, I started a yaw right 180°, and the rates were right around, I think a.round --Of course, you should be able to pick this up off telemetry, but I would estimate they were 3° to 4° per second turning around. As soon as I ha.d the booster in sight, I thrueted be.ck 5 seconds. This is the way we tried in silllulations, The simulations in St. Louis were excellent. Lovell Turned out that was the best technique to use, 2 seconds for the 2 seconds forward a.nd a 5 second return. Borman We turned around a.nd there it was, bigger than the devil! Lovell At that distance there was no problem staying in there. Borman Now, I did have some problem because the booster was bending
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.