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Frank Borman (CDR)
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Well, Ken, that just leaves you or I—how about you and I—did anything exciting happen today?
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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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.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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Hey, Ken, has anybody got any good idea why that quad A tank is running hot, hotter than the rest by so much?
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. I didn't have an answer when I came on; just a second and we'll check again.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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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.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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I don't think the EMS is much of a problem; it just jumps when you go into AUTO. I don't believe it will bother us for entry. I—I'm doing the same thing; I am looking over my entry checklist. One of the first things I see here is a coldsoak, and I don't think we want to evaporate between the last midcourse and entry, do we?
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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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.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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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.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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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.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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That's affirmative. You just put it MINIMUM IMPULSE, and then we'll watch it.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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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.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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The midcourse correction number 6 right now looks like zero, and midcourse correction number 7 is approximately 2 feet per second.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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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.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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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.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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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.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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It takes me three actuations to get about—just about a degree and a half, or a tenth of a de—0.15 degrees per second.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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Ken, be sure and call me if you see the gimbal angles start to get near gimbal lock or anything. I'm a little drowsy still. I don't want to end up with another null attitude, like one is enough.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. Would you reinitialize the PTC attitude, and let's try that one more time.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Roger. It's getting pretty good now. I figure it's getting sleepy up there, though.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. Well would you believe that the North beat the South 3 to nothing, and they did that all with a first-quarter field goal.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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And, Frank, we are going over the checklist right now, and I'll get back with you on the entry checklist in a few minutes.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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Okay, Ken. I think it is a pretty good one; that's one thing we have practiced a lot. But we might as well let everybody know what we're doing.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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Ken, while we are just killing time here, there are a couple of anomalies we've noticed. The booties, you know, for the inflight coveralls; mine have frayed very badly, and I had to take them off. Also, we had one Y adapter with an open in it, and the lightweight headsets were kind of useless.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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I take that back. I really didn't mean to say that. The lightweight headset—what I really meant to say was—the lightweight headsets are useless.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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Ken, one thing we are going to do on these suits, we're going to Stow them one under each seat, the way North American suggested.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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Yes, I think we'll put the helmets in the food stowage; and any stuff we have to take out of there, we'll just stick in a suit.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. Frank, we've got a weather picture here. The forecast shows 2000 scattered and 4000 broken with a high overcast. You might see that as you come down through it, and wave heights 4 feet, wind about 070 at 12 with 10 miles visibility and perhaps some scattered showers in the area, and this is forecast for the twenty-seventh at 16:00 Zulu.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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I don't think those waves are too high. We're going to have to sit in this heap for about 45 minutes.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. Why don't you drive it back over to the PTC attitude and put it back in ATTITUDE HOLD for the roll, and we're going back in and review the DTO requirement. You have about the same results, it looks like, on a cursory analysis all three times. So we're going to take another look and see if there is any reason to do it again. If so, we'll call you. You can go ahead and put it back in ATTITUDE HOLD now.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Roger. It is taking us a little longer to go through and rehash all of the entry checklist than I though, and we are just about to wrap it up now.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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No problem. Just watch my gimbal angles for me, and give me a call if they get too close.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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We would like to look at a couple more DELTA-V tests on the EMS, and the general consensus is that we don't think there is any particular problem. We'd like to go ahead and take a look at what you get by running four or five more DELTA-V tests. And prior to that, we'd like to run one of these null bias tests; and since we don't have any way of monitoring any of this stuff on the downlink, I'd like to have you tell us each step when you turn the switch and different orders and things like that.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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You stand by, and I'll do a null bias for 100 seconds. Do you want me to put DELTA-V in AUTOMATIC and let it alone for 100 seconds?
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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One-tenth, now it's a minus one-tenth and back to zero; no, it's not zero yet; wait a minute.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. We got caught in a station handover there. I didn't copy anything after you said you were putting it to DELTA-V test.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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I ran—I ran three tests during that handover. Two over minus 19.6—two of them are minus 19.8; and one of them, minus 19.6.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. The other thing that—sometime prior to entry—and we're going to be looking at it—is the normal entry test pattern, and it's called out presently in the checklist as something we do around an hour. And we'd like to check if you can read the number on the scroll that is up now so we can see where we are in the test test pattern sequence. We're considering taking a look at one of these test patterns before we get into an hour so we can have more time to think about it in the event that there should be something anomalous in it.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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Roger. It takes an awful long time to run them over there anyway. It won't hurt to do one.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. If you'll stand by just a second; we're checking to see where we stand in the sequence of events for on pattern 8.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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Another little thing about this EMS: you know, we had it set up when we separated from the booster —
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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— and the shock of the separation—the shock of the pyro's blowing in separation knocked it up to 100 and something.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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While you are checking the scroll, find out which entry pattern I should be using this bird in.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. While we are verifying that scroll position—they are talking it over in the back room about that now—I would like to go ahead and run down the checklist with you for entry.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. Looking on entry 1: the second item there is the 12-hour Kelvin cold soak, and in discussions I here and preflight, I think it is agreed that we don't want to do the cold soak there. So we are going to delete that step 2. And what it amounts to is, I think we do want to do a cold soak, and we certainly want to exercise the water boilers prior to entry in order to insure that we don't have one that is dried out, in the same manner that we had one dried out prior to LOI. And we are working on some procedures for that, and we'll have to come back to you with those a little bit later, and we will try to do it sometime when Bill's on the line so that everybody can get in on the loop at the same time. We would like to add a step between 8 and 9, or as part of step 8. This is all on page E-1, where we turn the VHF to Simplex A at minus 4 hours and 35 minutes. Now this will be beyond two-way VHF range, but it will make sure that we do have it on at the time when we pick it up. We were able to get out to 20 000 miles with a downlink, and we are checking on the uplink signal. So if we put it on at this point, we know we have it on well in advance of any time we might be able to get into the VHF.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. I guess maybe I have that backwards. They copy—you folks copied the VHF out to 20 KM. We're checking on the—on the downlink into that now. But in any event, this 4 hours and 35 minutes will get it well in advance of that.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay, 8. We just got an answer back on the test patterns. We thought it was—We had 25 test patterns which are allocated to ground test, and these are the ones we've been looking at. Then there are five more that are allocated to flight, and the only difference in these patterns is that the flight patterns have instructions actually written on them; so if we are looking at test pattern 8, that means that we're still working on the ones that were allocated to the ground test, so there was no problem there. And I'll get you a number for which pattern we should be using for entry; working on that one right now. So we would like to go ahead and run through these.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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I don't mean the test pattern. I say, I don't mean the test pattern. We asked them to put the supercircular on the number, the first place on the scroll; I'm sure they did. I'm sure it's the first pattern, but I just wanted to make sure that's right.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Yes, sir. If you would, please. And if you'd tell us each step as you go through it.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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Okay. Going through step 1; EMS test 1: wait 5 seconds. There's 5 seconds. Going AUTO. Okay- Indicator lights are all OFF; the range is zero, zero. Now I'm gonna slew the hairline over the notch. Okay. And now we go in EMS test 2.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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Go on test 3: far side lower light on 10 seconds; going to set the range counter to 58. Okay. Set at 58; going to test 4.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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Beautiful. It's perfect. It's right in the corridor. It comes down and stops at zero, zero.
Spoken on Dec. 26, 1968, 5:04 a.m. UTC (55 years, 10 months ago). Link to this transcript range is: Tweet
