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.
41 Borman That was right on the money. The retro pack jettison was accomplished 45 seconds after, when the amber light came on, and you could feel and hear this one going; of course, it was pitch black so we couldn't see a thing. This was one of the things that we didn 't see, the REI'RO ADAPrER , the ADAPI'ER , or the RETROPACK . Lovell No , I didn't see any of that stuff go at all. Bor:ma.n Total darkness. Lovell Besides that, the thrusters blank out anything you could possibly see. 5.a Communications and 5.9 updat ing Bor:ma.n Com.unmications were rather sketchy there. I was very glad though, that we were able to get through to Houston. I think it was over Guaym.as when they came up and told us to change in retro angle, and bank angle; I don 't know who did that but that was good work on the ground following up that computing, and getting us real time updates, I guess they must have done it after tracking. Lovell Yes, That 's probably what it was. Borman That's probably how they did it. And that was darn good. Lovell Yes. Borman Because the 35 degrees, I was flying right between 35 de grees and O degrees most of the time , and if we'd have followed the 50 degrees, we'd have ended up way short.
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.