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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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It is moving up toward 1 o'clock and in toward the center; keep it going in that direction.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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It's looking better. You're holding it about 1 or 2 o'clock. Looking better. Give us a little more in that same direction. You're down at 3 o'clock now. We see about half of what you see. Too much. It is disappearing at our 5 o'clock. Now it is coming back. It is half off—screen at our 2 o'clock.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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And it's disappeared off at our 3 o'clock. There, It is coming back in now. It is headed toward the center of our screen.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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It is right in the center of our screen. Just hold her—hold her steady. It is really looking good. Okay. We have —
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Jim Lovell (CMP)
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What you're seeing, Mike, is a—Houston, what you are seeing is the Western Hemisphere. Looking—at the top is the North Pole; in the center—just lower to the center is South America—all the way down to Cape Horn. I can see Baja California and the southwestern part of the United States. There is a big long cloud bank going northeast, covers a lot of the Gulf of Mexico, going up to the eastern part of the United States, and it appears now that the east coast is cloudy, I can see clouds over parts of Mexico; the parts of Central America are clear. And we can also see the white, bright spots of the subsolar point on the light side of the earth.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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Roger. Could you give me some ideas about the colors, and also, could you try a slight maneuver? It is disappearing. We're seeing about half of it. It is going off to our 12 o'clock. Now it is going off to our 3 o'clock. That is the wrong direction. Yes, that is a good direction.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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We need another small correction to bring it to our center screen. If you could maneuver toward the terminator, that is the part of it we are missing. We are getting the lighted portion. There you go; that's fine. Stop it right there.
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Jim Lovell (CMP)
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Okay. For colors, waters are all sort of a royal blue; clouds, of course, are bright white; the reflection off the earth is—appears much greater than the moon. The land areas are generally a brownish—sort of dark brownish to light brown in texture. Many of the vortices of clouds can be seen of the various weather cells. A long band of—it appears cirrus clouds that extend from the entrance to the Gulf of Mexico going straight out across the Atlantic. The terminator, of course, cuts through the Atlantic Ocean right now, going from north to south. Southern Hemisphere is almost completely clouded over, and up near the North Pole there is quite a few clouds. Southwestern Texas and southwestern United States is clear. I'd say there are some clouds up in the northwest and over in the northeast portion.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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A little bit more. Stop her right there and hold it. It keeps slipping up a little bit; could you maneuver slightly more toward the terminator?
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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We are getting about half of the earth, Frank. The top half—our top half which includes the dark portion it—is obscured.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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Yes, we are seeing it. We are missing the portion of the earth that is over toward the terminator. The dark portion of the earth is what we are not picking up. We are getting about three-quarters or four-fifths of the rest of it.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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Stop right there. That is worse, Bill. Go back where you were. You made it disappear to our 3 o'clock. Now it's coming back. Okay. Stop right there. Now you are back where you were, and we need a motion that is about 90 degrees to that last one you gave us.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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Stop right there. Okay. Now we have lost a different half of it. I need a motion 90 degrees to that last one.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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Apollo 8, Houston. If you can stick your polarizing filter in front of the camera without disturbing anything else, it might improve the quality slightly.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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Still looking good. That didn't make much of a change one way or another, but in general, considering how far away you are, it's looking excellent.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Well, I hope that everyone enjoys the picture that we are taking of themselves. How far away from earth now, Jim, about?
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Jim Lovell (CMP)
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Frank, what I keep imagining is if I am some lonely traveler from another planet what I would think about the earth at this altitude, whether I think it would be inhabited or not.
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Jim Lovell (CMP)
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I was just kind of curious if I would land on the blue or the brown part of the earth.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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Roger. This picture is drifting off center again. If you could make another correction to bring it back. I couldn't tell you which direction, but you're going the right way, you're going the right way. A little bit more; a little bit more. Whoa, stop right there. That's the best centering we have had, Apollo 8. If you could just hold that, that's perfect,
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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To give you some idea, Mike, of what we can see: I can pick out the southwest coastline of the Gulf and where Houston should be, and also the mouth of the Mississippi; I can see Baja California and that particular area. I am using a monocular that we have aboard.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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Right. Well, we are seeing the entire earth now including the terminator. Course we can't see anything past the terminator at all. Are you able with your binoculars to see the dark horizon? Anything past the terminator?
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Jim Lovell (CMP)
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Negative, Mike. We can't see anything past the terminator with the binoculars or without them. This earth is just too bright, and it cuts down the night adaptation to see anything on the dark side.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Since this is winter—since this is winter time in the northern hemisphere, we can see all of the South Pole and the southern ice cap, and not too much of the North Pole.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Negative?
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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Okay.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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Try putting it back in front of the camera one more time.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Okay.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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And once again, we need a small attitude correction. Our earth is disappearing up and to the right. Our earth and your earth. The wrong way, wrong way. A little bit more. Okay. That is fine if you can hold it right there. Oops! Now it's slipping back off again. Okay. Keep coming a little bit more, a little bit more. Okay. Ninety degrees to that direction; that is the wrong 90, the other way. There we go. A little bit more. Nope, wrong way, wrong way; I am sorry. Keep coming in that direction. No, it is gone up at our 12 o'clock. There we go, it is coming back down. There we go, it's coming back down, it's coming back down. Bring it down a little bit more. Okay. Stop. Now we need 90 degrees to that direction again.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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Well, that has disappeared, just practically. We were wondering if there was any chance of your looking out one of the other windows and seeing the moon? Hey, it is coming back in, Bill. Okay. Hold it right there. That is just fine for the earth right where you are. That is extremely good on the earth if you can just hold that.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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Roger. Thank you, and it is centered very well. We get a very slight improvement with this, but in general, it is very good considering the distance. How about the moon, Frank? Is it visible through one of your other windows? Could you get it visible with a small maneuver?
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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Roger. I understand. You are still very well centered with your picture. We noticed a couple of jumps in the apparent intensity. Did you make some filter changes?
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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Roger. We tried to put that other red filter in front of it, but it didn't seem to fit.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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We would—On a final test when you get down to the end of your allotted time here, we would like you to remove all filters and let us see how it looks with all filters removed, and then we would like to get several spotmeter readings at the very end after the test.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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Roger. We have it, and if you could maneuver it toward the terminator slightly, you would again center our picture.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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That is the right direction. Keep coming. Now that is the wrong direction, Frank. Did you —
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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Well, negative. I need another maneuver toward the terminator. It is drifting off the screen to our 11 o'clock. We appear to need a maneuver toward the terminator, Frank.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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No, that is apparently the wrong way, Frank. We are starting to lose the picture. There you go. That is the correct way.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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That is just fine, Frank. That's great. We would like to, at the conclusion here, take three spotmeter readings. You can do that at any time at your convenience. We would just like to get some after-the-fact readings on the earth intensity.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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We have Haney down here following your trajectory, so all is well. He says you're 10 minutes from the moon's sphere of influence.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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You can tell Jim he is getting pretty ham-handed with that P21; he got a perilune altitude three-tenths of a mile off what we are predicting down here.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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Are we going to leave it at that, or are we going to correct it to make it lower?
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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How does everything look, Mike, all our systems and everything? See any switches out of place?
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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Negative. I'll take a check around here, but it is looking good. Just a second.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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We are all over the cabin, Mike, like monkeys, and I wanted to make sure we didn't hit anything.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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Apollo 8, Houston. Everything is looking good down here. All switches and systems are GO.
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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We are having a playback of your TV shows and are all enjoying it down here. It was better than yesterday because it didn't preempt the football game.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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Thank you. Don't tell me they cut off a football game; didn't they learn from Heidi?
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Mike Collins (CAPCOM)
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Well, you and Heidi are running neck and neck in the telephone call department.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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Hey, Jerry, how much water does this—the water dispenser in the lower equipment bay, the one that puts out hot and cold water—how much comes out of that with each shot?
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Stand by. I'll take a check on that. And, by the way, welcome to the moon's sphere.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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My handy LMP had his schematics out at the drop of a hat and informs me that it's 1 ounce per cycle.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Apollo 8, looks like the flying EECOM the ground EECOM came to a dead heat on that one.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay, 8. We want to run a little exercise on the ground here to make are that we're able to dump the tape and bring the voice portion back to Houston in a timely manner. So we plan to dump your tape, and we're going to exercise the procedure on the ground to get it back here and take a listen to it. We believe that we have something on the tape already unless you have recorded over it after the last dump. Just to make sure, we'd like to have you just say a few words, give us a short count or something on the tape and anything else that you might want to put on there. And we're going to do this in the next 5 minutes before we get away from Madrid. That's the site we want to exercise, so we'll go ahead and do that, and we'll tell you before we make the dump.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Okay. Ken, we put a few comments on the last of the tape after we heard from you, and it's being rewound now, and you can have it as soon as we get it back to the beginning.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. We'll have to wait. It looks like you are going out of the attitude to use high gain. We'll catch it next time around and then dump it.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Okay. I know this would be better in high bit rate, so it will probably take quite awhile.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Alright.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. We'll take a look at it then. If there wasn't anything that was previously recorded in low bit, then we'll come back and maybe take a look at that, too.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Okay. We might get … if maybe we can get in a little closer to the moon to put as big a strain on it as we can.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. We've completed the dump, and the tape recorder's back to you. You can use it any way you want. We may want to dump that thing again, and if we do we'll go ahead and use the same information unless you have something else that you specifically wanted to put on there later. Listening to the voice quality—it sounds real good. We're coming up on a midcourse 4 and right now it's—talking about doing it on time, and you can anticipate the burn in the neighborhood of 3 foot per second. We're considering and would like for you to think about the possibility of doing this burn using the onboard vector and just have us update the vector in the LM slot, so that you will have the MSFN vector on board. But it looks like it won't have any big effect on the burn results, and it might prove interesting. So if you think about that one for a bit and let us know if you have any suggestions or thoughts on the subject.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Roger. You say it uses the onboard vectors and leaves the MSFN vectors on the LM slot.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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That's affirmed, if that's what you would like to do, right. We considered it, and it looks like that would be a reasonable thing.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Roger. Frank and Jim are asleep now, and I'll bring this up to them when they wake up.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay, Bill. I guess I want to belay my last about using the onboard state vector for MCC 4. After looking at it some more on the ground, they've got to get going on making the PAD's and doing all their computations, and rather than put it off or do it twice, we're going to go ahead and go with the procedures we've been using all along. On the lunar orbit stuff, we've been looking it over and we got several guys—Jack Schmitt and company in the back room—looking at what effect your windows have. And, basically, it looks like there's two options that will make an impact on that REV 2. One of the options, of course, will be just to have you and Jim change seats and let Jim look out and get his SAM that way, and another option will be to roll the bird over and let Jim point the optics as far forward as he can get them and take his SAM through the telescope. And I guess we'd like to have any thoughts that you folks have on what you think you can do with the windows; if you have anything, we'd like to factor it into our thinking and go ahead and firm up our plans as early as we can. We'd like not to put it off so that we have none of these things to do after midcourse. You folks can probably tell us more about what you can do with those windows. So if you have any thoughts, go ahead and sing out with them, and we'll see what we can do about factoring that in.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Okay. With reference to the midcourse, I think that's generally agreed upon, that we do it like we've always been doing it. Now, with respect to the windows, center windows, essentially, are unusable. The two side windows are—may be all right for observation, and the problem with the rendezvous windows is that they're pretty small. And I just thought we'd have to play the window game by ear almost. Not really sure what capability we're going to have. And we'll give you some more thoughts on this later.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. How about exercising the idea of rolling over and having Jim do his polarization through the telescope because if we have to change attitudes we'd like to go ahead and start thinking about what effects that'll have on such things as antenna orientation and all that.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. Apollo 8, we'd like to update your CMC clock. This is not to correct errors which we have now but just to make up for some effects that we're going to have in lunar orbit. And what we'd like to have you do is go to P00 and ACCEPT and let us update the clock time.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. We'd like to update CMC. The order that we'll update will be the LM state vector, the CSM state vector, and then the external DELTA-V and the REFSMMAT. So any time you're free with it, we can have P00 in ACCEPT; we'll go ahead with it.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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I understand you're going to update LM state vector, CSM state vector, and external DELTA-V and the REFSMMAT.
Spoken on Dec. 23, 1968, 8:02 p.m. UTC (55 years, 9 months ago). Link to this transcript range is: Tweet
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