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.

Open the PDF at page 50 Original source ↗

“Nevers”44 pages

  • p. 40 …The eyd.rogen bottle I thought was never going to last. Forty per cent of the…
  • p. 44 …y on schedul e. ;;, The digital clock never lost a second during the entire fl i…
  • p. 55 …but then as it builds up it never seems to get mu.oh worse. It's…
  • p. 57 …secti on; and I thought well, I never heard of this before, and I was a…
  • p. 63 …I was worried about this before and I would never have been able to sit there…
  • p. 80 …REENTRY RATE COMMAND we never used. DIREC'l! we used once for tracking the Reentry Minuteman…
  • p. 85 …We never saw the light, and we did not have to worry about it . The temperatures…
  • p. 88 …During zero g we were floating up and we never touched the back pa.rt of…
  • p. 89 …The body was never really in the flow but a very comfortable circulation pattern was set…
  • p. 94 …Right, never hea.rd it. It never actuated. The cabin pressure regulator was ae
  • p. 95 …We never used tha.t until we got down to the checkl ist during the reentry…
  • p. 97 …We never used the manual heater on the E'.JS o bottle. 2 Lovell As a…
  • p. 100 …Borman Never on except during periods when the platform we.a running. Lovell Right. Borman Now…
  • p. 101 …Never touched the--- Never touch the condensator. The drink gun worked as advertised. One thing I…
  • p. 105 …We might mention in Sleep Configu ration--we never used the Sleep switches bees.use we…
  • p. 108 …We had been told before the flight never to purge if you had a Delta P…
  • p. 112 …I would suggest never going this way again. I think we ought to change the meters…
  • p. 113 …I think that is the way they ought to be ~ecause you never touch them unless…
  • p. 114 104 Bo·-m.a.n Yes, that is a switch that is never moved unless there…
  • p. 115 …We used it continually, it never varied one second in 339 hours. We never had to…
  • p. 116 …We never used it in simulations. The red lighting turned out ve-ry nicely when we…
  • p. 118 …We never saw them actually hit the window. I am not sure that some of it…
  • p. 119 …We never did use the thunderstorm light that we stuck in place of the red light…
  • p. 124 …Lovell We never had any l arge amounts of dandruff or anything floating around. Borman The…
  • p. 136 …I never got the feeling
  • p. 144 …We were never close enough to see any satellites and to pick them out as far…
  • p. 146 …In the daytime I never noticed much of a difference between the horizon. We've drawn…
  • p. 155 …Lovell Of course we never saw Ascension s o I di d not ... :Borman Yeah, we…
  • p. 157 147 never worked and we fooled around with it for hours trying to ma.lee it…
  • p. 159 …I found out that I never used the reticle during the full M.oo.n or…
  • p. 165 …I never did really see the smoke pots, but we did see the dashes that they…
  • p. 167 …We were at such a low fuel state then that it was either then or never…
  • p. 169 159 pictures over Brazil that have never been gotten before. They were not called up. We…
  • p. 170 160 Indian Ocean but we never did see it. Lovell We had an S- 6 weather…
  • p. 171 …I have never been bet ter locked in on White Sands in my l ife than
  • p. 172 …Ascension never got up, we never got ground equipment at Ascension. We never got really good…
  • p. 173 …Lovell We never had a good check of t his thi.ng t hought at night…
  • p. 180 …The finger hole I never used that at all. One of the big assets, we might…
  • p. 184 …Borman Looked at a l l the angles, and we were never once abl e to…
  • p. 191 …The fuel cell consumables were never a problem. Lovell Main battery voltage was never reall y…
  • p. 193 …The request that was put in as part of the flight plan, and never was in…
  • p. 201 …It never worked closed loop as well as i t was supposed to. We did not…
  • p. 206 196 never contacted anyone else. We didn't go direct to anybody. Borman We might mention…
  • p. 210 …The ground equipment a t Ascensi on never did come up , and I think that if…
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.

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About this file

Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 222 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.