Preliminary Gemini 4 Crew Debriefing, Part II, 1965

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4
White
McDivitt
going to Orbit Rate at T- 5 and firing the retros
at TR.
We wanted to have exactly the right rate
in there so when we did our closed-loop reentry
we wouldn' t have an error.
As I said , I had the
most accurate platform in the world with nothing
to do with it .
I think the displays were adequate
and the controls were adequate.
After the first
couple of revs I really didn ' t have any confidence
at all in the platform.
I had done nothing to
establish any confidence in it.
I really didn't
get the chance to get the thing alined, and I
real ly didn ' t have the view out the window to check
it with.
We were hurrying and scurring through
there.
We finally shut the thing down before I
really got a chance to use it very much.
When we
powered it up there on the third day and we saw
that thing coming around there• -and cage properly,
we compared the out- the-window attitudes and that
old attitude reference was right there. That's
when I got some confidence in the platform.
This is where we lost a couple of bets.
That ' s right.
We lost a couple of beers on that
platform.
At retrofire I had a lot of confidence
in the platform, but the first two and a half to