Spacelog Apollo 8

Apollo 8, Houston. Confirm that battery B is a little bit lower, and this is attributed to the parasitic loads that are on there.

Okay. I just didn't see the same kind of drop for A. So if you think it's okay, it's fine.

That's affirm. You don't have the same parasitic loads on that; B is actually drawing some.

Okay. I guess that's the radiators, huh?

Apollo 8, Houston. We've seen enough of the secondary evaporator. We would like for you to wait about 2 minutes between the time you go to RESET and the time you turn the pump off.

I agree; good idea. And we plan to leave the water control in AUTO.

Apollo 8, Houston.

Go ahead, Houston. Apollo 8.

Okay. Looking over the—our redundant component check, it appears we have not yet checked the integrity of the secondary loop radiators; and if you haven't done that, sometime we would like to open up the secondary radiators but not flow through them and just measure the accumulator pressure.

Stand by.

Houston, we don't show that in our pre-LOI check, but we're willing to go ahead and do it if you want to.

Roger. We just noticed that it isn't there, and, yes, we would like to. You understand that we are not proposing that you flow, but merely we check for any pressure decay.

Roger. Wait till I get my trusty assistant here to help me.

Okay, Houston. We're going to blow the secondary, I mean, open the secondary RAD for 30 seconds now.

Roger.

Looks pretty good.

Sure does.

Okay. They're closed now.

Okay. Thank you. Looks good.

Apollo 8, Houston. You take your tape recorder to stop, and we'll reset it then and give it back to you.

Roger. It's stopped.

Apollo 8, Houston.

Go ahead.

Okay. We still need to talk about the REV 2 attitudes we're going to use here to work around the fact that you have a fogged center window. Whenever that's convenient, we'd like to go over what your thoughts are on the subject so we can make sure we can get our flight plan squared away.

My thoughts are to make—to do with the best with what we have. We are not interested in changing a lot of things right now.

Okay. The one proposal that sounds like it has some advantage to it: if we let Jim do his evaluation through the telescope, you do everything exactly the same except you turn and roll over 180 degrees so that your head's up, and let Jim do his tracking through the telescope and you'll still be a yaw right when you go to pick up your TV and that type of thing. It looks like that probably will cover everything. We can do that or we can just go as is and just have to let some of that tracking evaluation go by. Another alternate would be to have Jim look out the right-hand rendezvous window, and you may have to change your attitude in order to get the same picture there also.

I think we'll try to do that, but I don't—this is one of the things that we'll work out when we get there.

Okay. The reason we were looking into it in the flight plan is, if you do want to try rolling over and flying heads up or something of that nature, we can help Bill get a little more out of his photography by giving him some new film settings and that type of thing. We'll have something like that available; in case you do fly heads up, why, we'll have some numbers, we can call up for film settings.

Thank you.

Houston, Apollo 8.

Go ahead.

Roger. We are going to have to dump more urine here shortly. Will this bother your tracking?

Apollo 8, we're checking on that with the tracking people now.

Houston, just give us the time when we can start on it, and we'll hold off until you say so.

Okay, and you can anticipate a handover between stations here on the hour, and you might get a slight glitch as we go through. I'll give you a call when we get back.

Thank you, Ken. What station are we going to be going to, Ken?

Okay. We'll be going to Honeysuckle.

Thank you.

Apollo 8, Houston. You're cleared for a dump at this time, and I understand this is the last gas station for a long time.

You mean you don't want us to dump after this for a while?

Apollo 8, Houston through Honeysuckle.

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

Okay. Good morning.

Good morning.

Thought you went to sleep.

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.

Roger. We got all that.

Okay. We're still going through the tracking, and as you know, we're going to hold down on the water dumps and so forth during the last couple of hours in and out, sort of aid the tracking procedures. Everything is running along the line normally now. Do you have any other specific questions? We are looking for an angle on the moon. I guess that about summarizes the system. Everything looks GO right now.

Okay, Ken. Thank you. We just completed day 3 meal C, and now are going to break up and each take a rest period before LOI.

Okay, real fine. Everybody wanted to ask if you wouldn't try and get some sack time here before we go in. It's going to be a big day.

Apollo 8, Houston.

Go ahead.

Finally found out where the moon is, and your present PTC attitude—if you happen to look out the right window as you go by—roll attitude of 320, it should be there.

Houston, Apollo 8.

Go ahead.

Roger. Bill would like to ask the doctor for permission to take a Seconal.

Okay. Standby.

Houston, this is Apollo 8. Did you call? We lost track for a minute.

Okay, Apollo 8. You're cleared to go ahead with that pill. Take—Surgeon recommends a small one.

Small one. Roger.

Apollo 8, Houston. If you can, we'd like to have you stir up the oxygen cryo.

Okay, I'll do that right now. Just a moment, just the oxygen?

Okay. We want to get both the oxygen and hydrogen.

Just the oxygen, then?

No, sir; both the oxygen and the hydrogen.

Okay. Houston, Apollo 8. We've cycled through all of the cryo fans.