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.
“Gemini 4”4 pages
60 RCS system,and I know what that smells l i ke i t . It did not sme l l that way . I got a burning sensation in my eyes , which was different . Now, I might have got a mor e con centrated one . I still had my helmet on , and zipped up , You had your helmet off . I be1ieve, t hat witr. the snorke l open , the compressor ~u1Jed the ambient air through the snorkel through the compressors and into the suit circuit . That i s why I got a concentrated rlose of whatever was on the outside, which causert my eyes to wa t er ann to burn . Whether it was the ablative material , the shing1 es , or the RCS f umes , I do not know. Borman The main chute was perf ect . Lovell Looked beaut iful . Borr.tan I coul d not see a rip or a t ear or any fraying or any thing ; i t wa.s just perfec t . The windows were fo(!gy in flight . I thought they fogged over and the visibi lity out of them during the hot part of the re entry , was very poor a l so . Love11 They started to burn a little bit . Started to peel off on the outside. I do no t know what i t was . Rorman When we eot on the water t hey were fog~ed over with hu midity and salt spray . I guess you have to expec t that , Leaks: There were none , that I know of . Conldn ' t se e
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.