Preliminary Gemini 4 Crew Debriefing, Part I, 1965

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298
White
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
White
That ' s right by several orders of magnitude.
When we put t he drogue chute out, we were
concerned about the thing destabilizing rather
than stabilizing.
So I intended to put the
drogue out and leave the control at Reentry Rate
Command . This I did,
and we oscillated all over
the sky.
We estimat ed pl us or minus 40 degrees ,
and I t hink we were at least every bit of that .
We were, and when the drogue chute came out , I
was right in the sun so I couldn ' t see i t , and
I didn't know whether we had one or not,
You
called it out , and about t he t ime you cal led
it out , I coul d see it up there gyrating
wildly around .
I never could tell whether the thing dereefed or
not.
I had a lot of goop on my window and the sun
was out , and all I could see was the shape of the
dr ogue up there , and it really was fluttering
around .
We wer e plus or minus 40 degrees to it
without any doubt , and I wouldn' t be a bit sur­
prised if we wer en' t plus or minus 60 degrees to
it . We wer e r eal ly getting tossed around.
It was just jer king al l around .
It was fast , but I don ' t think it was that big a
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