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Frank Borman (CDR)
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Roger. With the delay in burn, do you mind if we have a urine dump the—before the burn? Will that foul your tracking up?
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Apollo 8, Houston. We don't have any objections to going ahead with the urine dump now. And for your information, the waste water dump—our schedule, we plan to put it off until about 11:30, and this will get you up to approximately 90 percent in your waste tank. It's a little higher than normal, but we wanted to put this off until after the burn was completed; and some of the other things that we've got coming up, about 9 hours you have oxygen fuel cell purge; and we've already mentioned the deletion of the star landmark sightings. From 10 to 11 we have put aside for the burn preparations. And a final score is 31 to 20.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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Houston, how do the circuit margins on the S-band look as compared to your preflight calculations?
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay, Apollo 8. It's a little bit early to give you any real numbers on your COMM performance. Looks like it's working as good as predicted, and everything else seems to be doing better, so this may be doing better, too, after we have done our next COMM checks some of these other things will have a better hack on; I can give you a quantitative answer to your question.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Roger. Sure got a nice view of the earth from here. We can see Baja California and about where San Diego ought to be.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. We dropped off of high gain on the OMNI there for a bit and went to a low bit rate, and we're getting ready to command you back to a high bit rate. Do you want us to keep you posted every time we change tape speeds?
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Roger. Understand; but when we go to high bit rate, do you want to be kept informed every time we transfer? We hadn't planned on it.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Apollo 8, tracking still in progress and a little too soon to give you a firm answer on the results, but everything looks nominal so far.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. Sometime when it's convenient for you now, I would like to see an oxygen fuel cell purge. And do you have any estimate on when you might be getting around to this COMM test?
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Right now we're right in the middle of trying to get something to eat, Ken. We can—I guess we can do the fuel cell purge.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Apollo 8, there's no rush. Just didn't know what you were doing at the time and—Give us a call when you have a free moment; we'll pick up.
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Jim Lovell (CMP)
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While I'm waiting for my turn at the water gun, I might give some comments on the optics. There seems to be quite a band of light that goes all way across the scanning telescope anywhere in the vicinity of the sun. Just a little while ago we were in the position where I could pick up the moon in the scanning telescope. And then I looked at it in the sextant and the sky—the space around the moon was a very light blue, just about as light blue as we have it back on earth. And it's not black—that sun angle with the moon.
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Jim Lovell (CMP)
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That's affirmative. I maneuvered the optics so I could pick up the moon in the sextant, and the—the space around the moon is light blue.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Roger. Can you make any kind of estimate about the proportion of the radius, how far out that seems to extend?
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Jim Lovell (CMP)
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Well, it extends the full length of the sextant. Actually, I could see us coming as we moved across, because the band of light in the scanning telescope cut across where the moon was, and it moved in this area. I believe it's caused by the refractional light inside the optics themselves.
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Jim Lovell (CMP)
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Also, I've been occasionally looking out to see if I could see stars at various sun angles, and at this particular altitude, it's very difficult. In the scanning telescope the sun is very bright and the earth is very bright, And if I looked at the earth and try to look for stars, I lose my dark adaptation very quickly.
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Jim Lovell (CMP)
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No problem seeing the moon. When I looked for the star landmark line of sight, I—It's a very thin crescent, but it was very visible.
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Jim Lovell (CMP)
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Not at this altitude, and that's strange. I thought I could see that. At this altitude, the refraction of the light in the optics themselves, due to the reflection of the sunlight I suspect, or earth's light, completely blanked out the dark side of the moon to this altitude.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Well, what we had planned was to use the 10- to 11-hour period as your preburn preparation just as we would have done normally, and —
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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— and if you can work in this COMM check before that, it would be desirable, but that's not a constraint.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. What we've got here is a couple of DTO COMM checks. We'll be switching around to five different modes, and only one of them will interrupt your activities. In that case, we'll be switching to the uplink backup voice, and that's the one time that you might lose temporary uplink voice COMM. You'll have downlink voice COMM throughout the entire procedure, and it ought to take you, I guess, 10 to 15 minutes MAX, the only requirement being that we should stay on a high-gain antenna.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. That sounds pretty good.
Expand selection down Contract selection up -
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay, Apollo 8. Another couple of minutes and we'll be ready to go into our—our COMM check. And, for your information, looks like the signal strength is 3 to 4 dB better than expected on the wide range, on the WIDE BEAM mode, and approximately that gives you 1.4 increase in your range.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Something else you might take a look at: as you go through the PTC, we have some who would like to know if you can see any detectable effect on the windows in the form of their fogging. Particularly, does the sun seem to vary fog intensity or does it increase it or decrease it or make it go in patches or anything like that that you might be able to notice?
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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The sun doesn't seem to change it much; however, the different incidences of the sun's rays magnify the—the fogging, or at least change it.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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The sun doesn't stem to have any effect on the windows themselves, but the different inci—angles of incidence of the sun rays change the relative amount of obscuration caused by the fogging.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay, Apollo 8. We're ready to go into the COMM check now, and it's your option. We can call out switches and let you position them, or we can command it from the ground. In either event, there will be a couple of switches that you'll have to throw for us.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. And I'll keep you posted on what we're doing. The first test is an uplink voice and ranging with full downlink which is essentially what you're doing right now, is to be used for a baseline.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. We're starting on test number 1, and if you would verify that S-band NORMAL mode switch is in VOICE.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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Maybe we'd better hold the COMM check till after the midcourse, because we'd better get fired here at 10 if we want to burn at 9.
Spoken on Dec. 21, 1968, 9:39 p.m. UTC (55 years, 10 months ago). Link to this transcript range is: Tweet
