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.

  • p. 38 …Then ma.king sure that the s/c is alined right and the reticle is up…
  • p. 63 …I put the reprogre.mmer on in the water and started ta.king blood
  • p. 217 …a hand they can have in ma.king the flight plan and how early they should…
55
Lovell
Borman
Lovell
Borman
Lovell
BoI'J'llan
Love11
Borman
Lovell
Borman
Lovell
we hit the water, Although it was a good jolt, I wouldn't
say it WR.S anything outstanding. We hit , and Jim, your
window went under water, right?
The snacecraft rolled to the right, I believe .
Yes. We hit, rolled to the right, and you went uncier water
and bobbed right up.
Right
I released the parachute and it fl oated in front of us for
several minutes.
I saw part of it on the left hand side there, or rather on
the right hand s ide as i t fl oated by my window,
It stayed there for several minutes . It ' s just the way
it 's been described before.
There was an awful lot of fog on the window, though. I
noticed tha t the humidity was such that you could hardly
see out. Very foggy .
I'm not sure that was humidity or that was f rom reentry.
Might have been from reentry, I don ' t know.
I did see the S2F on the chute. We saw it while we were
stiJl on the chute coming down,
7 .2 Checklists
The onl y thing I had about the checklists; during the
recovery phase, I had a hard t ime doing the checkl ist, in
fact, I had to give it to you, because I couldn't move my

About this file

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.