John Company

Preliminary Gemini 4 Crew Debriefing, Part I, 1965

NASA-UAP-D016 · page 70 of 340

Page 70 of 340 of NASA-UAP-D016

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62
to get close to it and not even maneuver--not to
pick specific positions .
All I wanted to do was
just get close enough so I wouldn ' t lose it. When
I could see these two lights, I had a pretty good
impression of whether I was closing or opening;
for a long part of the early part of the mission
in the night time it looked like we were holding
our own, and then we finally started closing with
it .
I finally worked it down where we were at
the same level ,
All this time I had been above
the booster.
I worked dovm until I was at the same
altitude with it; at least it was on the horizon.
I felt that by then I had gotten the thing under
control and we stood a pretty good chance of still
coming out on the daylight side with the booster.
I can't tell you what the range was. It looked
to me like I had worked the range back dovm (it
had been opening up as· we went into darkness)-­
to 2000 or 3000 feet again--probably around 2000
feet . It might even have been as low as 1000 feet .
It could have been lower than that .
At one time I
got the impression that we were quite close to it .
White
Yes.
You were wondering whether you should retro­
grade away from it .
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