Documents / Official release

Gemini 7 Technical Debriefing, 1965

National Aeronautics and Space Administration · 1965 · 222 pages · text from the file's own layer

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.

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“Borman”60+ pages

  • p. 11 .... 1.0 COUNTDOWN 1.1 Crew Insertion Borman I have no comment. I thought it went…
  • p. 12 2 1.5 ECS Borman ECS worked fine. We had no trouble with ECS at all…
  • p. 13 …2 .0 POWERED FLIGHT 2.1 Liftoff Cues Borman Stoney came in loud e.nd c…
  • p. 14 …2.2 Roll Program Borman The roll program, was so short it was almost like a…
  • p. 15 …2.4 Aerodynamic Borman Age.in, we had had this described to us ma.ny times…
  • p. 16 6 2.7 Wind shear Borman Wind s hear. I did not notice any. Lovell I…
  • p. 17 7 Lovell Borman Borman Lovell Borma.n Borman Lovell I did not notice any POGO. 2…
  • p. 18 …2.14 BECO Borman At BECO, the whole spacecraft was engulfed in a red flame . I…
  • p. 19 9 Eorma.n Lovell :Borman :Borman Lovell :Borman Borman Lovell :Borman that particul ar time. 2…
  • p. 20 …2.20 Acceleration Borman Acceleration during stage 2 was right on the money, right on the…
  • p. 21 …Lovell Okay. :Borman In fact, I did not use the thrusters at all for that. I…
  • p. 22 12 Borman 17, 30, and 20. There might have been a 13, 17, a.nd 20…
  • p. 23 …the primary station. The UHF was outstanding. Borman We have already discussed GO/NO GO. They…
  • p. 24 …to men tion that address 72 read -- Borman Nominal was 25 804 and address 72 read…
  • p. 25 15 Borman Could you identify any type of the debris? Lovell No, pieces.That is all…
  • p. 26 16 :Borman We were looking right into the sun; I hope they do too. The drogu…
  • p. 27 …3.4 Post station-keeping Borman We did not do anything with stowage on the first…
  • p. 29 …We actv.ally separa ted at 00:-21. :Borman That is right. So we separated because…
  • p. 30 …you cannot tell from a flashing light. Borman Especially on vehicles rotating. I do not think…
  • p. 31 …powered down and then waited two hours? :Borman Tha t is right . This is one of…
  • p. 33 …more because we were still at ~ ogee. Borman The first a:f many powerdowns was no…
  • p. 34 …have a lot of comments on it. Borman Let's start from the beginning. Lovell The…
  • p. 35 …We bad 3 or 4 a day. Borman 5:20,we started unpacking the meals. This…
  • p. 36 …wanted to pump up and make sure. Borman It worked fine and we got right back…
  • p. 37 …also i sometrics three times a day. Borman They were programmed 10 minutes. I think a…
  • p. 38 28 Borman At 49t53 we got a picture of Houston with the 250 .mm l ens…
  • p. 39 …wonder really if it was worth it. Borman At about 166,40 we noted our drift…
  • p. 40 …Lovell Yes, I know, I just thought :maybe we could hear it or so.mething. :Borman…
  • p. 41 …Apollo landmarks were shot because of clouds. Borman On the 6 l auncht the second ti…
  • p. 42 …5.0 REIBOFIRE 5.1 TR-2:00 Power Up and Alignment Checklist Borman We had…
  • p. 43 33 fl i ght. Borman We were flying with bus ties and tu.el cells and…
  • p. 44 . 34 :Borman Lovell :Borman Lovell :Sorms..n Lovel l :Borm&n :Sorman Lovell :Sorman Lovell 5…
  • p. 45 35 Borman Yes, and you really fee l SEP ADAP'l'. It felt like I had…
  • p. 46 …used to zero g fl i ght. Borman The only thing I could do was fly…
  • p. 47 37 Borman • Lovell BormA.n Lovell Borman Lovell 'Borman Lovel 1 Borman Sheparn. Lovell l3omP.n…
  • p. 48 Lovell Bonnan Lovell Bom"'n J,ove) 1 Borman Lovell "'Borman T,ovell That ' s a…
  • p. 49 …s t or;y w?. s there. Borman 'P.;e :-'DI as .fA.r as the…
  • p. 51 41 Borman That was right on the money. The retro pack jettison was accomplished 45 seconds…
  • p. 52 …5.10 Post Retro Jettison Checklist Borman The post retro jettison checklist was accomplished with no…
  • p. 53 …find out where the horizon is and- - Borman That was a heck of a thing. I…
  • p. 55 …Because when he was right on. :Borman You said we were overshooting &11 the time. Lovell…
  • p. 56 Lovell Yes. Borman During the later part of it I started out in PULSE Mode and…
  • p. 57 …3 Aceelera.tio!!,_Pro.file Borman Okay. The acceleration profile was very smallo It was a…
  • p. 58 …6.5 lOOK Feet Borman I started losing it; I think we may have run out…
  • p. 59 49 Borman We'll have to see. We don't have readings on that . Lovell Okay…
  • p. 60 …Why? Borman I took my hood off to try to find the horizon , so I made…
  • p. 61 …reef ed con<lition for 3 months . Borman It seemed like it s tayed reefed for…
  • p. 62 …6.14 2X Checklist Borman 2,000 foot checklist we accomplished with no problem. About this…
  • p. 63 …were just too hot and too beat . :Borman It was even hot in the spacecraft, so…
  • p. 64 …Lovell We got called up from the MCC Borman But , anyway, we didn ' t do it…
  • p. 65 55 Lovell Borman Lovell Borman Lovell BoI'J'llan Love11 Borman Lovell Borman Lovell we hit…
  • p. 66 …We opened up t he repress valve; di d we have the cabin fan on? Borman…
  • p. 67 …ay pl anet troubl e or something. Borman Communi cations wi t h recovery forces on…
  • p. 68 58 Lovell Boman J.ovel l Boman LoveJl Boman Lovell Borman cross range . Did you have…
  • p. 69 …and 4 dirl not move from zero. Borman And then you turned off squib batteries land…
  • p. 70 …RCS f umes , I do not know. Borman The main chute was perf ect . Lovell Looked…
  • p. 71 …I did not see a:ny leaks. Borman Electrical Power: We mentioned we had 1 and…
  • p. 72 …6 Postlanding Activity Borman Postlanding act ivity was well organized. We were a li t t…
  • p. 73 …7 Com f ort Borman It gets pretty wa rm in that sp~cecraft. I would…
  • p. 74 …1 Ple.tfom Borman We aligned the platform 3 t imes. W:ach time it worked…
that our timing was good on-board. They did come through
but not until TR-10 seconds. At TR equals zero the s/c
attitude was 20 degrees down. s/c rates were easy to con
trol, but I thought that the thrust fro.m those retro-rockets
was high. I really had a sensation of being accelerated.
Didn't you Jim?
Lovell Well, it was different from what I had expected because we
were so used to zero g fl i ght.
Borman The only thing I could do was fly instruments, the needles
and the ball. Trying to hold it right on the ball.
I was vecy glad that I was in RATE COMMAND. I had to con
trol it in RATE COMMAND a. little bit,particularly on the
fourth retro rocket. The first three went bing, bing, bing.
Then there was a pause of about ½ a second and the fourth
one went. The fourth one seemed like it was a little mis
aligned, I think it was left yaw. I had to bring it back.
I would like to emphasize this. I thought those retros were
really powerful, and that you were holding on to something
that if you really didn't have good control it could get
away from you pretty easily.
Lovell But, I was sure happy to hear them go.

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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.