NASA-UAP-D020, Gemini 5 Technical Debriefing, Part II, 1965

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j Technical Debriefing NOTICE: This document may be exempt from public disclosure under the Freedom of Infor­ lease to persons outside the U. S. Government should be handled under the provisions of NASA Policy Directive 1382.2. W ITHI N THE MEANING OF TH£ ESPIONAGE LAWS .. MISS ION OR REVELATION OF WHICH IN "NY M"NNIEl'I TO AN UN ....UTHORIZ£D P'EASON IS PIIOHIBITED BY LAW. DOWNGRADED AT J YEAR IN TFRVALS

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GT-5 FLIGHT CREW DEBRIEFING TRANSCRIPT PART II Prepared By Spacecraft Operations Branch Flight Crew Support Division This material contains information affecting the national defense of the United States within the meaning of the Espionage Laws, Title 18. U.S. C. Section 793 and 794, the transmission or revela­ tion of which in any manner to an unauthorized person is prohibited by law. Group 4: Downgrade at 3 year intervals Declassified after 12 years

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This preliminary transcript was made from voice tape recordings of the GT-5 flight crew debriefing conducted August 30, 1965 thru September 2, 1965 at the Crew Quarters, Cape Kennedy, Florida . Although all the material contained in this transcript has been edited, the urgent need for the preliminary transcript by mission analysis personnel precluded a thorough editorial review prior to its publication. Errors in this transcript will be corrected as soon as possible and an official transcript will be published at a later date. This document contai ns a transcript of the second part of the total debriefing. A prel iminary transcript of the first part was published on September 1, 1965, and it contains the crew's description of the mission from an operati onal standpoint.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Paragraph Page number 8.0 SYSTEMS OPERATION 9,0 OPERATIONAL CHECKS 10.0 VISUAL SIGHTINGS 11.1 Visual Definition of Celestial Objects (D-1), Nearby Object Photography (D-2) , and Terrest rial 11.4 Visual Acuity and Astronaut Visibility (S-8/D-13)

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8.O SYSTEMS OPERATIONS Cooper By day we used standard procedure of finding a zero yaw, which is a little easier to do down at about retro position. The nose is a little bit in the way for determining zero yaw unless you pitch down just a little past nose low in zero­ zero-zero position. When pitched down just a tiny bit, zero yaw was very readily apparent to within a fairly reasonable degree of accuracy, and then ease it right on up. We had lines for the zero­ zero position to give us our pitch and roll on the horizon. This was the regular day alinement. Night was pretty much the same except we 1d get zero yaw by a star, get roll and pitch by the zero lines on the window (or knowing where they were approximately) line this with the top of the air­ glow or the horizon. At that point you'd go into Cage, hold it there at that position until it caged) then uncage the platform to BEF or SEF whichever the case might be, and then to to Plat­ form and Attitude on the FDM and FDI's. Then aline the platform fine aline SEF or BEF by keeping

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the needles zeroed. It would slowly gyro torque itself and correct out the small errors for fine alinement. Anything to add, Pete? Conrad Well, I didn ' t hear all of that, but I think the alinement is straightforward. One thlng I had not read in either the GT-3 or GT-4 debriefings on this subject on out the window alinement was that we have a window gage that you can us1i t hat will put you right on in roll and pitch ancl, of course, for yaw you still have to use the same out the window reference. Cooper One thing that I think that should very definitely training wise be readily available anc. we looked and looked and looked and couldn't fir..d any was an actual scale picture of the left hand wi ndow and the right hand window with what the hcri zon should look like at zero-zero-zero and at retro attitude and at minus 90 degrees left and 90 degrees r ight and at 60 degrees left and 60 degrees right and this type thing. I've never seen an a~tual drawing showing the horizon line on a window a·'ld what i t should look l ike.

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Conrad Yes Cooper I think this would be a tremendous benefit and shouldn't be difficult to come up with. Conrad If you place your eye so that it goes through the lower left corner of the right window or the lower right corner of the left window and run that eye position right through the front RCS yaw thruster, the lower yaw thruster in the front ring, I guess that's ring A, anyway, you take a line between your eye, the corner of the window and the front RCS yaw thruster, right through the middle of it, and put that line on the top of the airglow or the horizon. Then the spacecraft, and this looks like an excessively nose up attitude, but it's not, you're zero degrees in pitch then the window frame is just about vertical to the horizon and it forms a perpendicular angle. Cooper The inside edge of the frame . Conrad The inside up and down edge of the window corner makes a perpendicular angle to the horizon and you can use that as a roll gage. If you set it up

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that way that platform isn 't off 4 or 5 degrees i n roll or pitch. Cooper So, i t really looks like, when you fir3t start lining it up, it appear s to you that f::-om the left seat that you ' re actually rolled l eft, Conrad Yes, that's right. Cooper And f r om your seat it would look l i ke j t was actuall y r olled right. Cooper It doesn' t look horizontal at al l, but that ' s due to the fact t hat you 're sitting off by thi s offset.