Preliminary Gemini 4 Crew Debriefing, Part I, 1965

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4. 1 Station-Keeping
McDivitt
~-IE>ENTIAL­
start in the orbital flight with the station­
keeping on the booster.
I think that we should
just pluck that thing out and follow it through in
its entirety, and then come back and pick up these
things like the thrusters , Control :fode Checks ,
Com Checks , and those things.
The station-keeping with the booster--Well, as I
said earlier on the insertion phase , I started
turning around as soon as I completed the forward
thrusting.
I jettisoned the nose fairings after
about 30 or 40 degrees of yaw.
I rolled right­
side-up and then I started yawing around to the
left.
We saw all kinds of debris floating around
and we finally saw the booster back behind us. It
was already in a peculiar attitude.
As Ed men­
tioned , when we separated from the booster, it
didn·• t really feel like we came off straight ahead.
It seemed like we got knocked off to the side of
the thing.
The spacecraft-booster combination
sort of bent in half at the separation plane.
We
yawed on around and saw the booster, and I thought
it was around 400 feet back.
Eli thought it was
a little closer.
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