Spacelog Apollo 8

Go ahead.

Okay. It's not real clear that it did, in fact, get to the mechanical stop, and if it does, the back room people say we can stay up against that stop for a maximum of 15 minutes without doing any damage. And we would kind of like to track it through one more time as is. We do have the high bit rate capability on OMNI's. So we would like to follow through that same configuration for one more REV.

Stand by.

Well, since we are not sure that it did get up against the mechanical stop last time for 10 minutes or so, I don't think it would be too smart to do it this time because we may end up having to switch field to high gain position.

I am sorry, Bill. You didn't come through. Say again, please.

Since we are not—it is not clear to me that we weren't up against mechanical stops for a while on the last time around. That might account for 10 minutes of that 15 minutes, and there is no sense pushing our luck. I think we ought to—if it starts dropping off again, we just ought to go and put it back into MANUAL and take it back where it belongs. We are still a long way from home, and if that antenna switch fails, it's going to fail the high-gain position, and that's all we got.

Roger, Bill. And we will be making a handoff on stations at 5:5.

Okay.

Ken, we are going to switch COMM carriers here a second.

Okay, thank you.

Belay that. We'll hold this configuration for a while.

Apollo 8, Houston through Honeysuckle.

Roger. Read you five-by.

Houston, Apollo 8. Over.

Loud and clear, Apollo 8.

It did the same thing that time, Ken. This time the voltage AGC did drop to full-scale low for several seconds, but the antenna does seem to have the capabilities to look right through the spacecraft, and I guarantee, the earth went where the antenna was not supposed to be able to go.

Okay. I would just like to confirm with you that it never did go back to the present numbers.

No, it apparently never lost earth presence signal. It sounds like it was trying to pick up one-way lock all the time, and we usually hovered around 2-volts AGC except for brief periods.

Okay. Thank you very much.

It looks like if they had—should have not had the … switch into WIDE BEAM until after it had gone to those preset limits.

We are back in AUTO on the OMNI.

Houston, CDR is up and manning the helms. We are going to switch COMM carriers. We'll be off the air for a little bit.

Hey, Ken. This is Frank.

Good morning, sir.

Houston, Apollo 8.

Go ahead, Apollo 8. Loud and clear.

How far are we from home, Ken?

Oh, about 152, looks like. That's pretty gross; I get you a real number in just a minute.

152?

148 550; that's a good number.

Very good.

And your velocity is about 4650.

Increasing, huh?

Houston, Apollo 8.

Go ahead, Apollo 8.

We are trying to get back on our normal sleep cycle, and I just woke up here a little while ago, so I'm going to try to hit the hay again. It'd probably be a good idea to try another Seconal to try to get with it. What do you guys think down there?

Okay. Sounds like a good idea, and if we can get Frank to tell us how much sack time he got, why that'll go in the log, too.

I was in bed for 7 hours, Ken, and I probably slept for about 4-1/2 to 5 hours of it, anyway.

You're getting better. Good.

If you—if you're interested in further reports, we've all had three meals today, and we have drunk a lot of water, and Jim's asleep now. He worked pretty hard this afternoon, but I think we are all in pretty good shape now.

Real fine. Thank you.

Used the exerciser.

Well, Ken, that just leaves you or I—how about you and I—did anything exciting happen today?

I think you know about all the things that are exciting up on your end, and it's real quiet down here. Everybody is smiling; Santa was good to most of the folks in the world, and everything is pretty calm, like it should be on Christmas.

very good.

Milt says we're in a period of relaxed vigilance.

Very good.

We'll relax; you be vigilant.

Hey, Ken, has anybody got any good idea why that quad A tank is running hot, hotter than the rest by so much?

Apollo 8, Houston.

Go ahead, Houston.

Okay, Apollo 8. Let me tell you what the subjects are that we're going over down here: number one, we're making a review of all the entry procedures and this type of information, and we're going to actually go through and review the entry checklist. We have people that are still working on verification of your erasable memory, and we are looking at the EMS problem, and we're discussing the quad temperature, so I'll feed up some of these pieces of information as they come along, and right now we are just sort of having a status review.

Apollo 8, Houston.

Apollo 8, Houston.

Go ahead, Houston. Apollo 8.

Roger. Looking at the flight plan, you have a P52 coming up at a 115 hours, and we'll have to do another one at 119:45 in preparation for the P23. And it's acceptable with the ground procedures if you would like to delay about 115-hour alignment, and do it just once at 119:45, or you can do it there in flight plan location. If you want to skip the 115-hour alignment we could go ahead and start in on the pitch and yaw free PTC mode at this time.

What does that mean, Ken?

Okay. We have a DTO that requires that we do a PTC and go ahead and do it in minimum impulse mode so that we're not putting any attitude hold corrections in. And we're going to be tracking the attitude excursion, and they want this some—think like 6 hours—or until we reach a limit.

Okay.

Cabin's running a little bit warmer today than normal.

I'm sorry; say it again.

I say the cabin is running a little bit hotter today than it has been. It looks like this particular PTC alignment gets more sun in the cabin than the PTC before.

Roger. What kind of temperature are you recording now?

About 78.

I just put the window shades up. That'll cool it down.

Okay.

Do you want me to take the pitch yaw out of RATE COMMAND, right?

That's affirmative. You just put it MINIMUM IMPULSE, and then we'll watch it.

There you are.

Okay. Thank you.

Have fun.

Roger. And on that quad temperature—the upper limit of that thing is 105 degrees on the bottle. You are well below that. We have been watching it, and it is tracking, although it is tracking very slowly. As you roll the spacecraft, the temperature excursions seem to be a little sluggish, but it isn't a frozen sensor. And talking a little bit more about that one right now, you might tell Jim the next time he goes to work with the optics, when he works with the trunnion, if he'll go ahead and recycle the ZERO OPTICS switch, he can avoid the problem we had prior to midcourse correction 4.

We've done that. And the midcourse correction 4.

Roger.

The midcourse correction number 6 right now looks like zero, and midcourse correction number 7 is approximately 2 feet per second.

Okay, Jim. Now we've got on the checklist to initiate cabin coldsoak. This involves evaporating, and I don't think we want to do that.

Okay. Now we talked that over with FIDO, and at 12 hours out, everyone seems to think that we don't need to do it there. But in close, it doesn't seem to have any effect on the trajectory, and what's been suggested if you'd like—we can do over the entry checklist and just kind of walk through it on the air with all the people on the console. Right now, you have the team that will be performing the entry session with you so we can go over the checklist and run down any questions that you might have. That's up to you.

That's fine. Let's do that. I've got one right here. I'm lonesome anyway.

Apollo 8, Houston.

Go ahead.

Okay. We've drifted off now about 25 degrees in pitch. I'd like to have you take it back and set up the PTC plane again at pitch of 10 and yaw 45 and set up the PTC under control, and turn your pitch back to minimum impulse. And give us a mark when you have done that, and we'll time the drift rates down here.

Okay, Ken. I've got them all damped out about as low as I can get them.

Okay. Fine.