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. 72 …The sea condition was very goon ; 2 to ,1. foot waves . We bobbed around, although I…
  • p. 132 …Borman The Red Sea area was one of the clear areas all the t i me…
  • p. 135 …The Suez Canal , the Red Sea, and the coast of Arabia were loud and clear the…
  • p. 136 …Lovell The Red Sea and the Gul f of Eden as it goes into the Arabian…
  • p. 140 …We evaluated them looking at the Cairo area and the Dead Sea, and I see no…
  • p. 146 …About the only area that was consistently clear was the Sahara and the Red Sea a…
  • p. 166 …You could pick out the area of the Salton Sea there even from where we were…
Borman Okay. On :postland.1nc we just sat there .
Lovell We l l, we went through the check-off list. That took al1
the time . I saw the swimmers, checked the electrical
system, that they wanted us to do for postl anding. By
that time the swimmer had the collar up. I couJrl see the
collar going up, and then he got the jacket on .
Borman We ha.d good commun i cation with t he swir:uner through thA.t
jack .
Lovell Excellent communicati ons with the swimmer.
7 . 7 Com f ort
Borman It gets pretty wa rm in that sp~cecraft. I would hate tn
spend any great deal of time in there without any F.C:i .
Lovell I can speak as an authority on that.
7.8 Recovery Poree Personnel
Borman We covered communications, it was excellent . Flotation
co1Ja.r was fine, wor ked good.
7 ,9 F.gress
Borman Egress was normal, just as we practiced in Galveston Day
several times. These helicopters did a fine ~oh. I
think someone said it was about 23 minutes after we landed
that we were on our way back.
7.10 Survival Gear
Bom an Even the underarm life pr eservers inflated this time .
Wonder of wonders. No prob1em .

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.