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.
20 they only had two l ights on there. We had four lights on and I will be darned if I will try to judge distance by four lights or fifty lights. You have got to have illumination or you have to have a stable vehicle. Lovell You have to have something that illuminates the vehicle, not a light that flashes because you cannot tell from a flashing light. Borman Especially on vehicles rotating. I do not think that i t is possible to control them. You have to have a controlled vehicle before you can judge distance from it, as far as I am concerned. The GO/NO GO, 17-1 TR were no problem. We ran through the platform-off post station keeping checklist just the way it is listed. Lovell Yes, that is where we caught most of the things. Borman That is where we caught most of the things like putting the D-ring away and the drogue pins and so on. Only one time in flight did we require attitude control fuel to change attitude for critical delay time playback. There was no problem. Communications, as always, were superior. The D-4/D-7 Void Measurement was again no problem; just lined up on the black and ran for t wo minutes. Purging of the fuel cells. This is the first of a long--
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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.