Spacelog Apollo 8

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.

Okay.

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.

Roger.

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.

I don't mean the —

Say again, Frank.

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.

Okay. Real good. That looks like we —

It looks like we had a lot of noise on the circuit for a while there, Ken.

Yes, we did, too; all those electronic glitches I guess.

Okay. One hundred seconds, it's plus—minus four-tenths.

Okay. Real fine. That looks like that's about all of the functions that we can check, and looks like everything is just down the line.

Roger.

Okay. We still owe you confirmation that you can expect your high speed scroll to be the first pattern you come to, and I'll let you know as soon as they come in with an answer on it.

Okay.

I'd like to go ahead and finish going through the entry book if you're ready.

Roger.

Okay. We've reviewed most of the book up here, and we will have to come back and suggest a way that we can check out the water boiler prior to getting reentry area. We've reviewed all of the last minutes changes that were put in—pen and ink type things—and they're all looking good. On page E-7, like to add a couple of items.

What's that?

Okay. On step 34 under final stowage, which is a sort of catch-all area, there's a step that says secondary glycol to radiator, and it says bypass, verify. While we are down in this area, we would like to go to panel 382, the water control panel, and set up the evaporator water control valve both primary and secondary to AUTO. Now this is something we would have done had we done the cold soak at minus 12 hours, but since we weren't doing it there, we would like to go ahead and make sure we have these in AUTO, and this will enable automatic controls from the panel.

Can we just make this part of the procedure when we test out the water boilers beforehand?

Yes, sir. If we get that checked out earlier, we can just leave them in AUTO.

I'd rather do that.

Okay. I'm just going to make a note here, and we can do it the other way, too. The other item that was pen-and-inked in —

…

You may already have this down as step 35. It says UP TELEMETRY to BLOCK, VERIFY, and there's a step right after that that says RCS command module heaters to circuit breakers CLOSED.

Roger.

Okay.

I have that.

Okay. I guess that one was sent up to you this afternoon. And when you turn the page over to E-8, it shows the EMS entry check being run at minus an hour, and you know that it's a short test. There is really no reason to wait for an hour; we might as well go ahead and do that as soon as you get through with step 35 on page E-7 because we're coming up on a pretty busy period.

I say that's fine; we'll do that.

Houston, are you still there?

Roger. We got a discussion going; be right back.

Okay, Apollo 8. On page E-9 —

Okay.

— at the top of the page, you have step 38, and right underneath that, prior to step 39, we want to have a primary glycol loop activation. What we are doing is to get the glycol evaporator water switch to AUTO and the glycol evaporator steam pressure switched to AUTO. This will get your primary water boiler on the line prior to entry, or at least it'll enable it.

Okay. Tell me what to write in, Ken.

Okay. It's glycol evaporator water to AUTO.

Apollo 8, Houston. Are you there?

Glycol evaporator water switch to AUTO.

Okay. And the second switch is the glycol evaporator steam pressure to AUTO.

Okay.

Okay. That takes care of getting the primary water boiler enabled, and it's my understanding that we were going to make the actual entry with both the primary and the secondary water boilers on the line.

I'm not reading you now, Houston.

Roger. How now?

Loud and clear.

Okay. There's some question from reading the checklist. It is my understanding that both the primary and the secondary water boilers will be ON for the actual entry, and don't find a place in the checklist where it's actually turned on. So we'd like to get confirmation on that, and we'll make sure that we have all the proper switching to put in the checklist.

Okay.

Alright. Still on page E-9 and under step 39 at the bottom of the pyro circuit check, there's a step that says panel 8, all circuit breakers CLOSED except and then it lists five that are printed, one that was pen-and-inked before launch. It says EDS power circuit breakers 3 OPEN, and to be complete, we ought to add the RCS heater circuit breakers. There's two of those, and they should also be OPEN.

Okay.

Alright. The rest of these pages look good; I'm coming over through the graphs. And on page E-11 —

Roger. I'm with you.