Spacelog Apollo 8

Roger. It depends on which way your nose is pointing.

Touché.

You might note for the people at MIT that the next series of stars will be shot by the master navigator with a space helmet on and long eye relief eyepieces.

Roger. That ought to cut his speed down a little bit.

Right.

Frank, while you are talking about the entry checklist, this cold soak—have you decided exactly where you want to do it there prior to entry

Well, I understood that EECOM talked that over with Bill, and we do it 1 hour prior to entry. We'll do it wherever you say is the best.

Okay. One hour is fine. It's just a matter of finding time in the time line to do it.

I think we can initiate it 1 hour before SEP.

Okay. Fine. Sounds like a winner.

Really got all zeroes with that helmet on.

Roger. We just noticed that.

Jim's going to leave the helmet off now for the rest of them, I think; it gets a little anoxic in there. These helmets don't have face plates, and we have a difficult time breathing with that on.

Okay. Jerry, that completes the P23. Did you have something else you want us to do now? You wanted to check on something from the last set.

Roger, Frank. We need to get some numbers that we weren't able to copy down here. Stand by just one. Frank, on your first P23, we missed three marks on star number 2. We missed mark number 3 trunnion.

Okay. Three trunnion is 05650.

Okay, 05650. Then star number 1, mark 2. We need the trunnion on that one, too.

04216.

And on star number 1, mark 3, the DELTA-R and DELTA-V.

DELTA-R is 00006, DELTA-V 00001.

Roger. Four balls 6 and four balls 1. Okay. Frank, your PTC attitude is pitch 180, yaw 315, and roll rate 0.3 degrees per second. The reason for wanting to point it north is not because we are concerned at all about any changes due to venting, there's been, as we can tell, no effects on your trajectory by venting. We just want to try out that direction on it.

That's fine. We are going to stay in for about two more seconds while Jim takes the pictures through the sextant for the optics people.

Okay, Frank. And then, also, we are looking for a fuel cell O₂ purge when you get a chance.

That's right. At—I got the word now; it's supposed to be at 124:30.

Right.

Apollo 8, Houston.

Go ahead.

Roger. For your P37 that's coming up that you are going to run, use a midcourse 7 time of 144:46. Also just a little note here, the trajectory is looking so good, it looks like you can make the corridor without even making a midcourse 7.

Roger. 144:46 for the P37.

Affirmative.

Thank you.

Jerry, this is Jim.

Go ahead, Jim.

We are going to set this up for the normal PTC mode for a few minutes until Frank gets through with the—another step of the call.

Roger, Jim. When the time is auspicious, would you shift the BIOMED switch over to left side?

I think we ought to shift it over right now.

Okay. No, they say hold it up for a little while.

… so you can see, the same data that Dr. Berry got on me in Gemini VII is also good for Frank on Apollo 8.

Houston, Apollo 8. —

Apollo 8, Houston.

Do you see that PROGRAM ALARM we got when we went through P37, 1302?

Affirmative.

I'll run through it again and see what happens here.

Roger. We're monitoring.

Apollo 8, Houston.

Go ahead.

Roger.

I guess the best way to terminate this is by going back to P00, is that right?

Houston, Apollo 8. It looks like a plus 2.8 foot per second correction at midcourse 7.

Houston, Apollo 8.

Apollo 8, Houston. Go.

Started the fuel cell purge, and I'm going to 183:15, and I'll start that three-tenths of a degree per second roll stabilization test for you.

Roger, Frank. Thanks.

Okay. There we are, and we are going to start rolling now.

Roger.

Frank, on this free pitch and yaw, if either one of them gets outside of 15 degrees from the nominal values, we'll call it off.

Apollo 8, Houston. I would like to have the BIOMED switch left now, if you can.

The fuel cell purged to complete, O₂.

Say again, Apollo 8.

O₂ fuel cell purge complete.

Apollo 8, Houston.

Go ahead, Houston. Apollo 8.

Looks like you've exceeded your 15 degrees offset PTC attitude, so you can go to attitude HOLD in pitch and yaw.

Okay. I'll go back to the attitude. We didn't even get around once, did we?

Doesn't look like it. So much for spin stabilization.

Well, we tried that last night several times 0.5 to 0.2 degree per second.

I think there is the phenomena known as inertial coupling that has something to do with that, huh?

Roger. That could be.

Put a bigger rudder on it.

Need some feathers, Frank.

(Laughter)

Apollo 8, Houston. On the P37 comparison; using the MSFN vectors, we get a minus 1.4 on that midcourse compared to your 2.8. We ran your solutions through our computer and we also get a 2.8, so your P37 looks good. We are busy still fiddling with the vectors and comparing them and we'll keep an eye on the difference.

Roger. It looks like we came up with a plus 2.8 though, and you say you came out with a minus 2.something.

Affirmative.

Jim, that 4 feet per second difference is worth 0.28 degrees on the flight path angle.

Apollo 8, Houston.

Go ahead, Houston.

Roger, Frank. How is your cabin temperature looking now?

It's getting cooler, thank you. We put those shades up, and that really helps.

Okay. The primary loop down here still looks real good, so it looks like you are in fine shape. Your battery B charge ought to be done by about 127 hours, and we think you shouldn't even try to charge battery A, since it looks like, at entry interface, it is going to have 38 amp-hours on it.

I'll tell Bill that.

Okay

How is the weather down there, Jerry?

That's loud and clear.

Cold?

No, it's pretty balmy around here today.

Yes, the temperature is about in the 70's here. It's a real nice day.

Fine.

Say, Jerry, last night, Jim was saying something about turning on VHF Simplex A about 20 00 miles out. I wrote it down, but I can't seem—I can't remember where I put it. …