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.
23 noise and I thought we had hit some of the stuff t~t was spewing out of the booster. I wasn't sure that it was just fuel. Lovell I think the ground people thought that this wire came for ward because it had gotten in the way of the thruster fire. It definitely came forward after I stopped burning,because I stopped burning and this wire came slapping forward. It still had the momentum, you know. It slapped right in front of the window. I think the people got the impression that the thing had hit a. thruster. It hit in front of us, then we stopped bu.ming. But we stopped' mm -taen-·ths:t thing hit a.nd we added some more because we were still at ~ ogee. Borman The first a:f many powerdowns was no problem1o We went right by the check list. Some of these switch functions in the space craft, particularly toward the latter pa.rt of the flight, toward the 12th or 13th da.y--we were getting, I won't say la.r in making the.m,but it see.med more of a chore to make these things right to the minute. Things like the ~!OJ.VIED recorder and so on--we lost interest in having them turned off on the second. We knew what they needed to be turned on and off for. We didn't do as good a job from about the 10th day on as we did the first pa.rt as far as making those right to the minute.
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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.