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.
“Frank Borman”10 pages
40 Pilot to evaluate the horizon for a night, no pl atform, retro. And the thing is this: you can turn out all the lights , you can get lined up for BEF retrofire, without a plat£orm if you get the stars and everything. But once you start firing, you &re going to have to use the ra.te needles, if' they are working, to hold position, because you can't see the horizon 8J1Y longer, because the thrusters do blank out 8J1Y sight outside. And also, if you've got the lights turned up in the cockpit, so that you can see thingeJ that means that you can't see outside. So, you have to go either outside to get cues, or you have to turn the lights out in the cockpit. And if you're going to use stu£f inside, then you have the lights on. I would be hesitant to make a night retrofire without platform too. I think I would probably wait £or a. da.y one. 5.7 Retro Pack Jettison ::Bonnan The retro pack jettison - Jim fired ••• the one thing here on manual f ire , Jim fired the manual retros the wa;y we alwqs have. We fired in the wa;y we a.lwa;ys h&ve, one second a..fter TR equals zero, but we go t an auto retrofire . Lovell Yeah, because the first one fired before I pushed the button.
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.