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.
69 ··-◄ - ..-... 'ii .;J,, ... ,:·- - L. :-... .. •-t ._~ aligned the platform for reentry that we were able to get enough control out of 3 and 4 to align the platform. 'When we did this, of course, in order to get yaw control we went to roll jets - pitch, and that worked fine. I don't have anything to add to that malfunction. We heard the solenoids working. When we went to DIRECT we could feel we did get an impulse, but we did not seem to get ignition. It sounded more like a swishing noise. The ground ana.lyzed it and seemed to think it we.s a problem with the valve seats. I ' m not certain what it wa.s. I do know that we also tri ed s econ dary drivers and that didn't help. I coul d tell that wasn't the problem when we f i rst heard it. Lovell We tried different modes--PULSE, DIRECT, a.nd RATE COMMAND , but tb.a.t didn't help. I think it was mechanica l problem. Borman RATE COMMAND is a very tight control mode. I'm very glad i t was there. I think it is very important to have that for retrofire. We also used it for reentry. I think it is a very good mode. Of course, it is expensive in .f'uel . We used it also for all our thrusting when we were making orbi t adjust maneuvers. Lovell Let me ask a question. When did you go to RATE COMMAND during the reentry? Borman I went to RATE COMMAND during reentry Lfte:r guidance initi-
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.