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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.
Spoken on Dec. 22, 1968, 8:09 p.m. UTC (55 years, 10 months ago). Link to this transcript range is: Tweet
