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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Apollo 8, Houston. We are about to have a handover to Goldstone, and our downlink isn't improved then. I don't know if you'll notice any difference in the uplink or not.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. We have switched sites over to Goldstone now. I don't know if you can tell any difference in our uplink.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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I have some RCS quantity data for you. We are all set up to receive the TV whenever you get high gain looking at us.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Roger. I will repeat. Alfa 225, 74 percent; Bravo 240 pounds, 79 percent; Charlie 236, 78 percent; Delta 238, 19 percent. I would like to remind you on the TV that we need narrow beam width when you get up in high gain. Over.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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Okay. We're rolling around to a good view of the earth, and as soon as we get to the good view of the earth, we'll stop and let you look out the window at the scene that we see. Jim Lovell's down in lower equipment bay preparing lunch, and Bill is holding a camera here for us both.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. We're getting a pretty good picture, but if you'd move it a little slower—every time you move it around, it breaks up the scan.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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Okay. Now we are coming up on the view that we really want you to see. That's the view of the earth, and if you will break for just a minute, Bill is going to put on the large lens. So we will be right back with you.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Apollo 8, how about standing by on that for just a minute. Let's check our ground link.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Still no joy. There is a picture. We have a picture. Okay. It is a little difficult to see what we have.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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That is the earth, but it is not the telephoto lens, unfortunately. It is just a regular inside lens.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. It is coming in as a real bright blob on the screen. It is hard to tell what we are looking at.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. We got the earth in about the center of the screen and a little bit low, and it looked like there were some objects that moved across it—the screen at the same time. Do you have any comment on those?
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Still the same thing; it is—the target is extremely bright, and it is very difficult to make out what we are looking at.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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It is unfortunate that we do not have—we can't make the other lens work here. I don't know what the problem is.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. That's a—that's a real good picture. That is the best one that we have had. And how about going ahead and just leaving your pictures inside until we can think some more of what we can do to adjust for that light?
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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Roger. Jim, what are you doing here? Jim is fixing dessert. He is making up a bag of chocolate pudding. You can see it come floating by. Bill is coming up from the lower equipment bay. It is unfortunate that this telephoto lens. doesn't work. Show them the lens that's the culprit here, Jim. This lens doesn't seem to be working; I can't understand why we're not—perhaps it's a problem of light transmission through it.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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This transmission is coming to you approximately halfway between the moon and the earth. We have been 31 hours and about 20 minutes into flight. We have about less than 40 hours to go to the moon. You can see that Bill has his toothbrush here. He has been brushing regularly. To demonstrate how things float around in zero g. It looks like he plays for the Astros, the way he tries to catch those things. I certainly wish that we could show you the earth. It is a beautiful, beautiful view, with predominately blue background and just huge covers of white clouds, particularly one very strong vortex up near the terminator. Very, very beautiful. Perhaps we will get some assistance from the people on the ground and be able to deter—to determine why this other lens is not transmitting properly.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Apollo 8, we were getting what you were showing us on your normal lens, and I don't think we got anything on the telephoto. We are working on this now. One of the problems seems to be that it is a low light level lens; we're afraid that you might burn it out pointing it at something too bright.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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Well, the earth is very, very bright. There is nothing in the lens you can burn out. The camera still seems to be working. We can give you a lumens reading of the earth right now if you like.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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Well, we are all in very good shape. Jim is busy working preparing lunch. Bill is playing cameraman right now, and I am about to take a light reading on the earth. We all feel fine. It was a very exciting ride on that big Saturn, but it worked perfectly, and we are looking forward now, of course, for the day after tomorrow when we will be just 60 miles any from the moon.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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Okay. I just got a reading on the earth, Houston. It is 320. The earth is showing 320 lumens now. If you get a closeup of Jim Lovell, Bill, you can let everyone see he has already outdistanced us in the beard race. Jim has got quite a beard going already.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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Okay. Jim is going to take a shot of us from the lower equipment bay, and then we have to get back to our passive thermal control in the bar-b-que mode so that we don't get one side of the spacecraft too hot for too long at a time. So we will be signing off here, and we will be looking forward to seeing you all again shortly.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Roger. We are going to work on that one. The one that is sensitive to light is the lens that you were just using. You want to be careful about pointing that at some bright object.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay, I've got a few items for you I'd like to clear up and then we'll let you alone for a while. The first thing is we would like for you to confirm that your spot meter had an ASA setting of 100.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay, we thank you. That's one of the first questions that came to mind. We are ready for a cryo fan cycle at any time and use your normal procedures.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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All right. You can anticipate a fuel cell purge at 35 hours, and we ought to be through with battery A charging somewhere after 34 hours; and looks like you'll have just about a full battery there. And we will give you a call on the exact time to cut it off. We would like to get some confirmation from you on the chlorine procedures. Did you get some in last night or not? Just a quick summary of how much sleep you got on Lovell and Anders?
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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Okay. We got the chlorine in and the water has been chlorinated and just a minute I will check with them on their sleep.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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I was asking you to say, to say what you said. Jim had about 4 hours sleep, and Bill had about 3 hours sleep.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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We feel pretty good today. We would like to see, in looking over the flight plan—perhaps we ought to put the rest periods a little bit shorter and more frequent. It seems it might work out better. We got all out of kilter on it yesterday. We are sort of trying to get back in a normal cycle.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Thank you. Looks like the only other thing we have left over is a COMM check and if we can work that in without interrupting your present schedule we would like to.
Expand selection down Contract selection up -
Frank Borman (CDR)
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Okay. Right now we are stopping for a break, but we will go ahead and do that. What does it involve?
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. We will need the high-gain antenna, and there should be no COMM loss during this mode.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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Okay, Ken. I think we are going to lose the high gain here shortly. Why don't we pick it up next time it comes around?
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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Remember, the most important part of the trip occurs in two days when we start back. So you all get better rested too.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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Houston, you just wanted 2 minutes cycling on those fans don't you? Two minutes each?
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. Apollo 8. Looks like we're going to have to put this COMM test off because of some tracking requirements. We can do it in about an hour if this will not interfere with your present operations too much. It'll take maybe 15 to 20 minutes, and it will involve some conversation on the part of the people onboard the spacecraft. So if that's going to interfere with your sleeping and all, why go ahead and we'll defer to that and we'll pick these requirements up at another time. And, we've got a score here, looks like Baltimore 21 to nothing.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Roger. Be advised the CMP just hit the hay for awhile, and the LMP will go down in a little while.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. And our guys down here are watching high-gain antenna pointing program, so anytime you're not using the DSKY for anything else, they'd like to watch it for a couple of cycles, so if you would leave that NOUN 51 on the display it will help a lot down here.
Spoken on Dec. 22, 1968, 8:04 p.m. UTC (55 years, 10 months ago). Link to this transcript range is: Tweet
