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.
16 :Borman We were looking right into the sun; I hope they do too. The drogu.e pins were no problem. Jim got them, but again, not until well into the first orbit. As a matter of fact, I pulled my own yesterd.a.y morning there. The problem is solved; I think they a.re easy to get to. Lovell Yes. They a.re easy to pull out. Borman I think that we have covered station keeping wi th stage II booater,partially. I will mention that the booster, being without attitude control, translating also with this im pul se it was picking up from the venting, is definitely an order of magnitude more difficult than station keeping with a stabl e vehicle like Spacecraft 6. First of all, you do not have. anyone control ling the thing; you do not exactly know where it is going to go, and it might translate because it is venting and ha.a a slight thrust. Borma.n I know a couple of times we got in a little too close and I backed out, because you just do not da.re get as close as you do the way this thing is spewing. We got a real good picture, a good l ook at the nozzle. I thought that it looked like the nozzle was bent in on two places on the booster engine. It l ooked like the nozzle, the ablative skirt had been bent in. But then, it may have been just a
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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.