Spacelog Apollo 8

Houston, Apollo 8. How do you read?

Read you loud and clear, Frank. How us?

Roger. Loud and clear. We are taking pictures of the S-IVB; the postseparation sequence is completed, and we seem to have a high gain.

Okay; fine.

Apollo 8, Houston.

Go ahead, Houston. Apollo 8.

Roger. Is Bill reedy for his VHF test? We can configure any time he is.

Apollo 8, Houston.

Go ahead, Houston. Apollo 8.

Roger. We would like to ask whether you did a VERB 66 ENTER to transfer the state vector from CSM to LM slot. We didn't copy that down here.

We did not.

Okay.

Do you want us to do that now?

At your convenience.

Roger.

We see the earth now, almost as a disk.

Good show. Get a picture of it.

We are.

Tell Conrad he lost his record.

We have a beautiful view of Florida now. We can see the Cape, just the point.

Roger.

And at the same time, we can see Africa. West Africa is beautiful. I can also see Gibraltar at the same time I'm looking at Florida.

Sounds good. Get a picture of it. What window are you looking out?

The center window.

Roger.

Are your windows clear so far?

Go ahead, Houston.

How about your VHF check? We would like to get that done before you get too much further away.

Okay.

We are listening on VHF alfa Simplex.

Apollo 8, Houston. Say again.

We are listening for VHF alfa Simplex.

Okay, good. Thank you. VHF alfa Simplex, and we will get configured for it; and in between times, give us a clue as to what it looks like from way up there.

Roger. Well, Mike, I can see the entire earth now out of the center window. I can see Florida, Cuba, Central America, the whole northern half of Central America, in fact, all the way down through Argentina and down through Chile.

They picked a good day for it.

Stand by. We are going through the separation maneuver checklist here.

Roger. Standing by.

Houston, this is Apollo 8. We've lost sight of the S-IVB here. The separation maneuver may be delayed slightly, or else we will go ahead and make it without having her in sight.

Houston, Apollo 8.

Apollo 8, Houston. Go ahead.

When does the S-IVB do their blowdown maneuver?

Stand by one.

Apollo 8, Houston.

Go on.

Your blowdown will be 1 hour from now, a little more that 1 hour from now.

Roger. We have the S-IVB in sight again now. We have done the separation maneuver.