Spacelog Apollo 8

On second thought, how's the evaporator outlet TEMP doing?

Forty-six degrees, Bill.

Cancel that outer space first.

Roger.

How's Magellan coming along?

I am getting a crossed eye looking at this thing. Hey, Mike, just as a matter of interest, I have been just looking at the earth the last hour and a half and there are two tremendous storms down there. I am not sure just where they are, but the vortices are huge.

Roger. Understand.

That's your first space weather report at the manned weather forecast from space, and he's not so sure where it's raining, but it is raining somewhere.

Roger —

I'd also like to point out that Magellan is not a good analogy. I would also like to point out that Magellan is not a good analogy. I don't think he made it around.

Very good.

How about Alford Chitister?

Roger. Alf.

I don't know how much detail you can see, Jim, but your subspacecraft point is out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean about halfway between Australia and South America.

Roger. The next time I take a look, I'll see what I—we are maneuver to the moon now. We'll see if we can see our shadow.

Seriously, has anyone been able to see the spacecraft from earth? Optically?

We don't think so, Bill. We haven't been able to confirm that they have.

Okay.

You are coming right down the center line of the airways. If you see the airliners going the other way, you better move over.

That's the first time old Lovell's been on track for a long time.

Roger.

Mike, an interesting viewpoint of the NAV sightings: maneuvering with the minimum impulse controller on the way home is a lot more difficult than going out because of all the fuel we don't have now. Every little pulse really moves the spacecraft around.

Roger. Understand. You have too much control for you.

Now, yes.

Apollo 8, Houston.

Go ahead.

Howdy, Jim. Dick Underwood is over here. They're getting their film processing all prepared for your film when you get back and tentatively, can you give us some idea of how much you exposed?

Let me — let me introduce you to the great film man. He will tell you all about it.

Thank you.

Tell him I hope he can account for haze through the windows. We—on our departure from the moon, we tried to burn up as much as—much of what we had left over, which was quite a bit, and tell him I hope he can develop the high-speed film taken at normal film settings.

Roger. Understand you used just about everything and a lot of the high speed; you used it to normal setting.

Roger. We got it in the wrong bucket there a couple of times.

Okay.

We never did have a chance to do any night earthshine stuff.

Say again about the earthshine, Bill.

We never did have a chance to do any earthshine photography.

Apollo 8, Houston.

Go ahead.

Apollo 8, Houston. How are you coming along with your P23 marks?

My eyeballs are getting square. That's what we have been doing most of the day, Ken. Are you receiving the data down below?

Roger. Looks like you are getting some pretty good marks. We have a pretty good hack on the vector and the matrix, and looks like if you wanted to terminate at this point, that we do have good data.

Sounds good. I'll terminate after this —

Roger.

— trying to do star 01 again.

Ken, did you have a nice Christmas?

Houston, Apollo 8.

Houston, Apollo 8. Over.

Go ahead, Apollo 8.

Who is this, Ken or Jerry?

Say again, please.

This Ken?

Here's Ken. Go ahead.

Okay, Ken. We are getting back to the PTC attitude. Would you like us to do this high-gain REACQ test now on the first roll?

Affirmative.

Okay. Look, how about if I just went to REACQ right now?

Matter of fact I'm in REACQ. If you want me to stay here, why we'll just press on.

Okay, Apollo 8. That is fine.

I guess this step about stopping in roll 150 really doesn't matter too much then.

That's right, Bill. That was just to let you acquire.

Man, we can acquire on the run here.

Hey, you are getting good at that.

That's all they'll let me do.

Okay. We will keep it here for two REV's, Ken. Frank and—Frank and Jim are asleep, and … so I'll just keep it going here for two rolls.

Houston, Apollo 8. Over.

Go ahead, 8.

Go ahead, 8.

Well, the REACQ didn't work as advertised. It looked like it went on by the scan limit and into the mechanical limit and followed MSFN around looking, out of the corner of its eye on WIDE BEAM. And when MSFN came back underneath the spacecraft, why it snapped back on it to NARROW BEAM. It apparently never broke lock; or if it did, it was only instantaneously.

Roger. It looked like we did break lock there for about 8 minutes.

Well, we might have broken two way lock, but I was still having about AGC right at the noise level, at the minimum reception level.

Roger.

When we get out here in the clear zone, when we're definitely out of the scan limit, why, I'll go ahead and go to the MANUAL and AUTO lock-on sequence and switch over to REACQ and see what it does next time around.

Roger.

Houston. Were you able to get high bit rate from the OMNI's now, by the way?

Apollo 8, Houston. The OMNI high bit rate capability is noisy, but usable.

Okay. I think what we'll do here is, if I see the high gain definitely going past the scan limit before it gets the mechanical limit, I'll go ahead and ask—you could ask if the REACQ feature hasn't taken over I'll just go ahead and shut it down so that it'll remain in stops.

How's that sound?

We are talking about it now, Bill.

Okay. It's my understanding that the scan warning limit of this thing is supposed to stop tracking; and break of lock, it'll travel on over to the thumb-wheel settings.

Roger. That's my understanding, Bill. We are talking about it right now. I'll let you know in just a second.

Probably, Ken, we are not ever losing the earth's present signal.

That's correct.

Hey, Bill, can you tell us what angles this went through? The curve that we have plotted is apparently the RF limit rather than the mechanical limit; and discussing the function of the AUTO REACQ mode, it looks like it is supposed to shift when it hits the RF limit, which is your—should be your ENTER set of numbers as opposed to the scan warning limit. And if it went inside of that number, could you tell us about what kind of numbers it did go to?

Roger. It went past the caution warning limit to the scan or RF limit, as I understand it. And let me give you a rundown on what it did here.

Okay. Say it slow so I can copy it.

Okay. The antenna went to about 330 to 270 yaw, plus 60 to 80 pitch. Copy?

Roger.

Okay. The AGC dropped off to what I call our noise level, that was the voltage level on the AGC measured at—integrated when the noise broke in. It was about 11 o'clock position on the gage, and it looked like it was switching beam widths there off and on. It would pulse up and down, and a couple of times dropped to full-scale low very briefly.

Okay. You got some marks on that AGC that should register in volts, I believe. Do you have an indication other than 11 o'clock?

Unfortunately, the numbers never got on here. If you will look on that chart that Fred Haise has, it shows one at 11 o'clock position which is the noise level. I don't remember what the voltage was. I might have it on my systems book, though.

Bill, —

When the antenna—when the antenna did snap back in, it went to yaw 60, pitch minus 5, with VERB 64 reading plus 67 for yaw and minus 10 for pitch.