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?

Apollo 8, Houston.

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.

Apollo 8, Houston.

Go ahead, Houston.

we would like to take control of the DSE for a while, Bill.

Go ahead.

Thank you.

Apollo 8, Houston. We would like to get an approximate GET of your SEP maneuver to use for our ephemeris tracking data.

Roger. It was 3 hours 40 minutes zero seconds.

Good, 03:40 and a foot and a half—feet per second. Right?

Roger. About that —

Okay.

— We have the—Mike, we have the exact callout here for you and a burn status report.

Alright.

Alright, DELTA-V_X minus 00011, DELTA-V_Y plus 0002, DELTA-V_Z minus 0002, roll 0, pitch 180, yaw 0. Over.

Roger, Apollo 8.

Apollo 8, Houston.

Go ahead, Houston. Apollo 8.

Roger. At your convenience, would you please go P00 and ACCEPT? We're going to update to your W matrix. And also when you get a chance, we would like to know about the SLA panels. Did they all depart? And do you have any comments about the SLA?

They all departed, and they worked fine.

Okay. Thank you.

We are in P00 and ACCEPT.

Thank you.

Houston, Apollo 8. Will you give us the information when you want us to stop the venting and so on?

Apollo 8. Houston.

Go ahead, Houston.

Roger. What is the venting information are you inquiring about: the O₂ flow high out through the waste tank or waste compartment, or are you talking about your evaporator?

Evaporator. We are configuring now to stop boiling.

Okay.

We concur in that.

Apollo 8, Houston. You can go back to BLOCK. We have gotten in the load to the W matrix update.

Roger.

Houston, Apollo 8. The back pressure valve is closed, and the water flow is OFF.

Back pressure valve closed, and water flow OFF. Thank you.

Houston, Apollo 8 here.

Apollo 8, Houston. Go ahead.

Roger. It looks like I might have to do a couple more small maneuvers to stay away from the front of this S-IVB, the way we are ending up now. Do you want me to do these with our P47 if we have to do them?

Standby one, Frank.

That's affirmative, Frank, on this P47.

Okay. And give me the time again when it starts to dump, please.

Roger. We're working on an exact GET of that, Frank.

Roger.

Apollo 8, Houston.

Go ahead.

I'd like to give you some idea about your trajectory. It looks like a midcourse correction number 1, projected out to TLI plus 6 hours, would be only 7 feet per second. So, of course, any further maneuvers you do would add to that, which is probably good.

I just want to stay from away from in front of this thing.

Roger. We concur. Looks like it is chasing you, huh?

Yes.

OMNI D.

Boy, it's starting to vent now, blowing down.