Bill Anders (LMP)

Okay. It went to about—hovering around 2.4 to 3 volts.

Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)

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.

Bill Anders (LMP)

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.

Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)

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

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Bill Anders (LMP)

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.

Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)

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

Bill Anders (LMP)

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

Bill Anders (LMP)

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

Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)

Apollo 8, Houston through Honeysuckle.

Bill Anders (LMP)

Roger. Read you five-by.

Bill Anders (LMP)

Houston, Apollo 8. Over.

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Spoken on Dec. 26, 1968, 3:42 a.m. UTC (55 years, 10 months ago). Link to this transcript range is: Tweet

Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)

Loud and clear, Apollo 8.

Bill Anders (LMP)

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.

Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)

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

Bill Anders (LMP)

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.

Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)

Okay. Thank you very much.

Bill Anders (LMP)

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

Bill Anders (LMP)

We are back in AUTO on the OMNI.

Bill Anders (LMP)

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.

Frank Borman (CDR)

Hey, Ken. This is Frank.

Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)

Go ahead, Apollo 8. Loud and clear.

Frank Borman (CDR)

How far are we from home, Ken?

Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)

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

Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)

148 550; that's a good number.

Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)

And your velocity is about 4650.

Bill Anders (LMP)

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?

Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)

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.

Frank Borman (CDR)

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

Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)

You're getting better. Good.

Frank Borman (CDR)

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.