Spacelog Apollo 8

Went to one-tenth and back to zero.

Understand; plus one-tenth and back to zero.

One-tenth, now it's a minus one-tenth and back to zero; no, it's not zero yet; wait a minute.

Now it's up some, minus 4; 0.4, that is.

Roger.

Minus 25.

Roger.

Minus 26.

Minus 0.7, and there is 100 seconds; minus 0.7 at 100 seconds.

Roger.

Now what do you want?

Okay. If we go back to mode, switch to stand by and FUNCTION switch OFF.

Roger.

Okay. Now we'd like to do a couple of DELTA-V self-tests.

Okay. 71586.8.

Roger.

Say you're going AUTOMATIC?

Roger.

Going to a DELTA-V test now. Counting down.

Apollo 8, Houston.

Apollo 8, Houston.

You back, Ken?

Apollo 8, this is Houston.

Roger. Read you.

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.

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.

Okay. That sounds real fine.

Roger.

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.

Why don't we do it right now? We're on number 8.

Okay. Understand; that's number 8, right?

Roger. It takes an awful long time to run them over there anyway. It won't hurt to do one.

Hey, Ken.

Yes, sir.

Another little thing about this EMS: you know, we had it set up when we separated from the booster —

Roger.

— and the shock of the separation—the shock of the pyro's blowing in separation knocked it up to 100 and something.

Understand. Knocked it up to 100.

Roger.

Was the pyro separation enough that the—you felt a sensable g in the bird?

Roger. Let's just say there wasn't any question we were separating.

Roger. Understand.

While you are checking the scroll, find out which entry pattern I should be using this bird in.

Apollo 8, Houston.

Go ahead.

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.

Go ahead.

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.