Spacelog Apollo 8

The Browns took Dallas apart yesterday 31 to 20. We're sort of curious, who do you like today, Baltimore or Minnesota? Over.

Baltimore.

How many points are you giving?

(Laughter) He's not making many points at home with that comment.

Roger. Understand. Oh, I've got another score for you when you are ready to copy. Are you ready to copy?

Stand by. Go ahead.

Roger. Navy 14, Army 21. Would you like for me to repeat that? Over.

You are very garbled; Houston; I'm unable to read. Will call you back in another year.

Okay. We also notice the University of Houston lost their first home basketball game in 3-1/2 years last night. Illinois edged them out 97 to 84. And some really big news: the State Department announced only a few minutes ago that the Pueblo crew will be released at 9 p.m. tonight.

Sounds good. Outboard calculations indicate that Apollo 8 at 25 hours is 104 000 miles from home.

Yes. Our plot board shows a similar number.

Mighty nice view from here.

We're showing about 104 800 miles, and we're guessing another 8 to 10 hours on your battery charge.

Okay.

Frank, say again about the view. You were blocked, I think.

This is a mighty nice view we have down there today. A little bit more than a half earth. Looks like Africa and the Red Sea is visible; we're not quite sure as there is quite a bit of cloud cover; but even through the hazy windows, it's mighty nice.

How are your windows? Do you have a couple left that are real clear?

The rendezvous windows are good. The others are all about the same as they were when we last reported. One and five have a slight haze and a little fog on the inside.

Apollo 8, Houston. Over.

…

Roger. Just as a matter of curiosity for Bill, we can say a few words about the heaters for the cryo tanks, and also for the fans. We've noticed that the heaters are doing their thing normally, cycling on and off; and as time goes by, this cycle rate increases, indicating a little bit of stratification in the tanks. And then when we've been turning the fans on every 4 hours for a couple of minutes, this stirs things up and the heaters then cycling on and off again more slowly for awhile, until again a little bit of stratification occurs, and the cycling becomes slightly more rapid. This is, of course, normal; we just point it out as a curiosity to you. Over.

Roger. I haven't really been following it that close. One thing I have noticed is when you turn the fans on you get a glitch in the quantity, which might correspond to a glitch in AC. Maybe the next time we'll look at the AC volts and see what happens.

Our experts say that's not the reason for the glitch. They say the stratification fakes out the capacitance sensor there for a second.

Okay, Bill. This will be on page 2 dash 22 of your flight plan. For the command module pilot—I've already mentioned it to him—but at the top of the page, at about 27:45, actually, we would like him to do a P52, an IMU alignment, and then the P23 should be done as scheduled. Those four stars, Procyon, Regulus, Alphard, and Spica: we realize Alphard may not be too good a star, Regulus is about 3 degrees above the horizon, and Spica is at a 48-degree trunnion angle; so I guess what we are saying is if Jim has difficulty doing one set on each of those four stars, we suggest that he omit whichever one he is having difficulty with and pick it up by doing two sets on some other star that he likes. Over.

Roger. Understand.

All right. In the lower right hand corner of page 2-22, the passive thermal control attitude should read “pitch 224 degrees, yaw 020.”

Roger. Copy.

And on the next page, at about 29 hours, you can resume the normal flight plan. We would like to make one addition; at 29:30, add a waste water dump. Even though one is not really required at that time, we would like to get the dump out of the way so we can track you uninterruptedly without any dumping, you know, as we are coming up on midcourse correction number 3. Over.

Roger.

That's about all, Bill. You got any questions on this?

No, it looks pretty good. We've been saving up some water of our own to dump here, so that will work out all right.

Very good. And don't ruin Jim's optics.

Right.

Apollo 8, Houston.

Go.

Roger. We would like P00 in ACCEPT, please. We would like to send you up a P27. It's a LM state vector, going into the LM slot only, and we do not want you to transfer it over to the CSM.

Apollo 8. Houston. Did you copy?

Roger. You got it.

Okay. We got it. We're sending you a LM state vector, and we would like you not to transfer that vector over to the CSM slot.

Roger.

Apollo 8, Houston.

Apollo 8. Roger. Are you still planning an MCC 2 at 28 hours? Over.

Stand by one, Bill. Bill, negative. Now that midcourse correction number 2 has been cancelled. Its magnitude was less than 1 foot per second, so we decided not to do it. Over.

Okay. Thank you.

And you've got the computer again, if you go to BLOCK.

Houston, Apollo 8.

Apollo 8, Houston. Go ahead.

Are you still computing the pericynthian time of 6910.

Stand by. We will get an update for you.

Okay.

Apollo 8, Houston.

Roger. This is Apollo 8.

Okay, Bill. We just got your readout on your voice tape, and we will be back with you on it shortly. Over.

Okay.

Houston, I'm going to be doing my alignment at this time. I'm in a good position for viewing the stars.

Apollo 8, this is Houston with voice check. Over.

Houston, Apollo 8. Read you loud and clear now. How us?

Oh, good. Reading you loud and clear. One, two, three, four, five, five, four, three, two, one. Am I cutting in and out still? Over.

Nope. All the numbers are coming up nicely.

Okay. Thank you, Jim.

Apollo 8, Houston. We are going to switch antennas at 28:20. Stand by for our blitz.

Roger, Houston. And we will start passing thermal control, and we are maneuvering to P23.

Houston. Apollo 8.

Apollo 8, Houston. Go.

Roger. You copy high bit rate now for this P23?

Negative, Bill. We are getting low bit rate now.