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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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Okay, Ken. I've got them all damped out about as low as I can get them.
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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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Okay.
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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.
Spoken on Dec. 26, 1968, 5:16 a.m. UTC (55 years, 10 months ago). Link to this transcript range is: Tweet
