Spacelog Apollo 8

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.

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.

I'll put in a roll right now.