Spacelog Apollo 8

Roger. Houston through Honeysuckle. We read you loud and clear.

Okay. Good morning.

Good morning.

Thought you went to sleep.

You got over to Australia pretty fast.

Roger. Did that gas station call wake you up?

Man, I've been all eyeballs and elbows here for the last several hours.

I'll bet. If you've got nothing else to do, I do have two charts in your LOI table that I need to give you some update numbers on.

Standby.

We'll get our LOI tables man on the line here, Houston. Stand by.

Roger.

Okay, Houston, CMP here. I understand you have some updates for me.

Yes, sir; I've got a couple of charts in your chart book under LOI, and I have some numbers to fill in, one of them being the chart of LOI DELTA-V magnitude versus abort DELTA-V.

Okay. Stand by, and I'll get it out.

Roger.

Okay, I have the chart out. Go ahead.

Alright. Mode 1, 5 hours, roll 1.38, pitch 7.89, yaw 357.37. Mode 1, 15 minutes, roll 180.73, pitch 29.46, yaw 1.65. Over.

Roger. The new attitudes for the Mode 1, 5 hour Mode 15 minute are as follows: roll—for the Mode 1, 5 hour, roll 1.38, pitch 7.89, yaw 357.37; Mode 1, 15 minute, roll 180.73, pitch 29.46, yaw 1.65.

Okay. That is correct. Now I also have to give you a couple of points to plot on that curve. The present curve you have drawn is based on a 60-mile perigee or perilune, and you right now have a 62-mile pericynthian; and the reason that your target is for 62 miles is to pass over the landing site, so I have five sets of coordinates for you to copy.

Is this to go on the same chart to redraw the curve?

That is affirmative.

Okay. Go ahead.

Okay. We'll go in on the LOI DELTA-V magnitude 1600, abort DELTA-V 2450, two-four-five-zero.

Okay. LOI DELTA-V magnitude 1600, abort DELTA-V 2450. Stand by just one. I have it; continue.

Okay. The next one is the LOI DELTA-V 2000, abort DELTA-V 3130.

Roger. I've got that plotted.

2400 LOI DELTA-V, abort DELTA-V 3880, three-eight-eight-zero.

I've got it plotted.

2800 LOI, abort DELTA-V 4700. Over.

Roger. I have that one plotted, too.

Alright. The last one is LOI DELTA-V 2990, abort DELTA-V 5114. That is almost directly into the end of the present curve, 5114.

Say again the LOI DELTA-V magnitude, please.

Okay. LOI DELTA-V 2990.

Roger. 2990. Okay. I have it plotted.

Alright. And on the next one, you should have a chart (number 10), and we have three numbers to go in there for a Mode 3 gimbal angle.

Roger. Go ahead with the Mode 3 gimbal angles.

Roll 180.87, pitch 42.31, yaw 1.65.

Mode 3 gimbal angles are as follows: roll 180.87, pitch 42.31, yaw 1.65.

Roger. That is correct.

Could you please send up a French curve for me?

Roger.

Send up a couple.

The only one I have is about 6 foot.

Houston, could you give us some gimbal angles to point at the moon? I never have seen it the whole trip, and I'm wondering which way it is from us now.

Houston, Apollo 8. Radio check.

Roger. Loud and clear.

Roger.

We are getting ready to give you a rundown on your systems. We're going over all the final steps, and we will tell you what we see in the way of trajectory and systems information. And once again, Dr. Joe Kerwin has brought over all the latest news, and we can read that up to you a little bit at a time if you aren't going to sleep.

What's he going to do, read out of the AMA Journal?

Roger.

Go ahead. We are all ears.

Okay. Here is one: the previously scheduled 72-hour cease fire by the Viet Cong went into effect today, 17 hours before the 24 hour allied truce was to begin.

You lost us on the numbers there. What was that again?

The gist of it was that the VC went into a cease fire earlier than the truce that we had planned on, as a Christmas holiday type.

Houston, how do you read? Apollo 8.

Loud and clear. Sorry to have stopped on you there. We are going over the summary of the systems data.

Apollo 8, Houston.

Go ahead, Houston. Apollo 8.

Okay. I have a rundown on your systems here, GNC status. Everything looks real —

Just a minute.

Go ahead.

I want to wait until the LMP gets on the head set, Houston.

Roger.

Okay, Houston, go ahead. Flying EECOM's on the line.

Okay. We'll just start with EECOM business then, I'll give you a summary of your batteries; battery A, we calculate 38.3 amp-hours, battery B —

Stand by a second, Ken.

Let me get my chart out.

Roger.

Go ahead now.

Okay. Battery A 38.3, battery B 36.9, battery C, 38.5. That's looking pretty good. It looks like we got all the things back in that we took out, and we're running right along prediction. We would like to get a battery C voltage from you if you can just reach over there and switch it.

Roger. Thirty-seven volts, on battery C.

Roger. Thirty-seven volts, Okay. The predicted cryo quantities at SEP: on oxygen tank 1, 170; oxygen tank 2, 170; hydrogen 1, 9.5; and hydrogen 2, 10.0. You essentially have single cryo tank capabilities all the way at full power now.

Fine.

The secondary coolant loop really looked good. Looks like you had a nice tight radiator and everything else on there was working right along the performance curves. Your main oxygen regulators both filled at 104 psi during our check. Looking at the lunar orbit, expect to be doing a water boil of about 1 pound per hour, and this is just an approximation; there's quite a variety of estimates as to what the water boiling requirements may be, might go anywhere from boiling lots to not boiling at all. The next water dump will be coming up after TEI, so you don't have to worry about any of that until you get through. Communications predictions are looking good, possibly a little bit better than what we had hoped for, and looks like we're going to get high bit rate on OMNI's with our 210-foot dish at Goldstone. This will be working for us on the first couple of rev's, and then we'll be switching sites, so we'll go back to using OMNI's for high bit. The voice quality on DSE is good. Your fuel cells have been running above nominal for the entire flight, and they really look nice and stable. There's been some destratification -

… on normal voice, doesn't it?

Okay. Looks like may not be able to hack the normal voice. On the cryo tanks, we've had quite a bit of destratification, particularly in the oxygen, and you notice this during the fan cycles and DELTA-V's, so we're going to be sure and we'll remind you again to stir up the oxygen prior to LOI. CMC is running along like clockwork. G&C tells us that the RCS quantities are looking good. You're using the same amount as predicted for your PTC and for your alignment. What we have in the way of a redline: we're going to tell you that you can use 30 percent per quad in lunar orbit. Now this is quite a bit of fuel to play with, and you can take 30 percent and subtract that from what you have to completion of LOI, and that will be a good number.

On the SPS, the oxidizer and fuel feed line temperatures are 75 and holding steady. The service module RCS quad package temps are cycling and holding between 120 and 140, and looks like we're getting good normal heater operations. We plan to have you in a 60-mile circular orbit after LOI 2. And we should have some PAD's for you on the LOI burn at about 67 hours.