Spacelog Apollo 8

Hawaii, this is Houston CAP COM. Over.

Houston CAP COM, Hawaii.

Hawaii, Houston CAP COM. I would like to have a voice check.

Roger. I read you loud and clear.

Okay. I'm reading you loud and clear. I understand you have contact with the spacecraft. Is that affirm?

I have uplink voice to the spacecraft; the downlink is too low in the mud.

Okay. Understand that you have good uplink, but your downlink is in the mud. You don't have any way of copying it either, is that correct —

Houston, Apollo 8. … again. How do you read?

That is affirmative.

Okay, Hawaii, we can hear Apollo 8, calling down. Would you answer and tell them that we did copy that?

Roger.

Apollo 8, Hawaii M&O. Houston reports they copied your last.

Okay. Thank you.

Apollo 8, Houston. Over.

Hawaii, Houston Network, GOSS Conference.

Hawaii, Houston Network, GOSS Conference. Your NET 2.

Houston Network, Hawaii.

Roger. Did you copy the CAP COM?

Affirm. We copied the CAP COM.

Is he keying the transmitters out there?

He did key it one time, Network.

Okay. I'm going to ask him to call the spacecraft again, and I would like for you to give me a report if he does not key the transmitters.

Roger, Network. Is our NET 1 now conferenced up —

Your NET 2 is conferenced to our GOSS Conference here.

Roger. How about our GOSS Conference loop?

Your GOSS Conference loop is dead.

Roger. We are GO for command. We were unable to transmit before.

Understand.

We transmitted to the spacecraft as per CAP COM and they acknowledged our transmission.

Apollo 8. Houston.

Go ahead, Houston. Apollo 8.

Okay. We got back together again. You're loud and clear. We've been reading you. We have a problem down here on the ground getting our signal from MCC out to remote site.

Roger. Understand.

Apollo 8. Houston. I've got a ball score for you. It was Oakland 41, Kansas City 6 is the final score. That's 41 to 6, Oakland. We're trying to get some news releases over here for you. I suspect we're going to find that the staged TV show was probably the biggest news of the day.

I'm sorry that the TV lens broke down.

Well, we're working on that some more. I'm not sure that the whole thing is lost yet. It appears that our problem is one where the light intensity which is sensed by our light meter in there is picking up an average field which is much larger than the earth, and so it's sensing a great deal of deep space environment which is dark, and we're suspicious that this is probably opening up the lens aperture as wide as it will go, and then when you point the camera at the earth while the earth is only filling about 3 degrees of cone angle, whereas lens takes in 9. So it looks like you're probably just saturating the tube. Now we're playing around now with some —

We just lost you again, Houston.

Say again.

I just lost your last transmission; you were clipped.

0kay. Did you get any of my comments about the TV tube?

Roger. Got them.

Okay. What I—what we've got in mind here is that we are looking at some of the lenses you have on board for cameras, and we are going to see if one of them can possibly be used to attenuate some of this light so that you will be able to take one of these pictures, and we are running some tests now, and we'll let you know about those. I also have a maneuver PAD that I need to read up to you whenever it's convenient.