Apollo 8 transcript starting at 04 18 28 55 on Spacelog

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04 18 28 55
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): 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.
04 18 29 06
Frank Borman (CDR): 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.
04 18 29 17
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Okay. That sounds real fine.
04 18 29 22
Frank Borman (CDR): Roger.
04 18 29 24
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): 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.
04 18 30 02
Frank Borman (CDR): Why don't we do it right now? We're on number 8.
04 18 30 06
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Okay. Understand; that's number 8, right?
04 18 30 12
Frank Borman (CDR): Roger. It takes an awful long time to run them over there anyway. It won't hurt to do one.
04 18 30 18
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): 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.
04 18 32 58
Frank Borman (CDR): Hey, Ken.
04 18 32 59
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Yes, sir.
04 18 33 03
Frank Borman (CDR): Another little thing about this EMS: you know, we had it set up when we separated from the booster —
04 18 33 05
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Roger.
04 18 33 10
Frank Borman (CDR): — and the shock of the separation—the shock of the pyro's blowing in separation knocked it up to 100 and something.
04 18 33 21
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Understand. Knocked it up to 100.
04 18 33 26
Frank Borman (CDR): Roger.
04 18 33 27
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Was the pyro separation enough that the—you felt a sensable g in the bird?
04 18 33 35
Frank Borman (CDR): Roger. Let's just say there wasn't any question we were separating.
04 18 33 43
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Roger. Understand.
04 18 34 00
Frank Borman (CDR): While you are checking the scroll, find out which entry pattern I should be using this bird in.
04 18 34 06
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Okay. Will do.
04 18 39 39
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Apollo 8, Houston.
04 18 39 44
Frank Borman (CDR): Go ahead.
04 18 39 46
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): 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.
04 18 40 00
Frank Borman (CDR): Go ahead.
04 18 40 02
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): 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.
04 18 41 36
Frank Borman (CDR): Okay.
04 18 41 43
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): 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.
04 18 42 03
Frank Borman (CDR): Roger.
04 18 42 40
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): 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.
04 18 43 21
Frank Borman (CDR): I don't mean the —
04 18 43 23
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Say again, Frank.
04 18 43 25
Frank Borman (CDR): 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.
04 18 43 38
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Roger. That's why we are trying to verify. So —
04 18 43 43
Frank Borman (CDR): You want me to run through a test pattern?
Expand selection up Contract selection down Close
04 18 43 45
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Yes, sir. If you would, please. And if you'd tell us each step as you go through it.
04 18 44 42
Frank Borman (CDR): 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.
04 18 44 45
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Roger.
04 18 44 52
Frank Borman (CDR): Got the 0.05g light; all others are out.
04 18 44 55
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Roger.
04 18 44 58
Frank Borman (CDR): 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.
04 18 45 34
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Roger.
04 18 45 50
Frank Borman (CDR): Beautiful. It's perfect. It's right in the corridor. It comes down and stops at zero, zero.
04 18 45 55
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Very good.
04 18 46 04
Frank Borman (CDR): Go in test 5: perfect again. Okay. Now I go to range set.
04 18 46 34
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Okay.
04 18 46 39
Frank Borman (CDR): In STANDBY.
04 18 46 43
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Okay.
04 18 46 45
Frank Borman (CDR): Okay. That was perfect.
04 18 46 47
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Real fine.
04 18 47 02
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Okay, Apollo 8. I'd like to run one more null bias and looks like we will have exercised everything we can get to.
04 18 47 13
Frank Borman (CDR): Okay. DELTA-V AUTO, all zeros.
04 18 48 21
Frank Borman (CDR): Minus 2.
04 18 48 24
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Roger. Understand minus 2. Alright. Is that minus 2 or minus two-tenths?
04 18 48 39
Frank Borman (CDR): Two-tenths, three-tenths now.
04 18 48 42
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Okay. Real good. That looks like we —
04 18 48 44
Frank Borman (CDR): It looks like we had a lot of noise on the circuit for a while there, Ken.
04 18 48 50
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Yes, we did, too; all those electronic glitches I guess.
04 18 48 59
Frank Borman (CDR): Okay. One hundred seconds, it's plus—minus four-tenths.
04 18 49 02
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): 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.
04 18 49 15
Frank Borman (CDR): Roger.
04 18 49 19
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): 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.
04 18 49 32
Frank Borman (CDR): Okay.
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): I'd like to go ahead and finish going through the entry book if you're ready.
04 18 49 37
Frank Borman (CDR): Roger.
04 18 49 43
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): 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.
04 18 50 15
Frank Borman (CDR): What's that?
04 18 50 16
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): 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.
04 18 51 02
Frank Borman (CDR): Can we just make this part of the procedure when we test out the water boilers beforehand?
04 18 51 08
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Yes, sir. If we get that checked out earlier, we can just leave them in AUTO.
04 18 51 13
Frank Borman (CDR): I'd rather do that.
04 18 51 15
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): 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 —
04 18 51 23
Frank Borman (CDR): …
04 18 51 27
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): 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.
04 18 51 43
Frank Borman (CDR): Roger.
04 18 51 48
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Okay.
04 18 51 49
Frank Borman (CDR): I have that.
04 18 51 50
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): 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.
04 18 52 19
Frank Borman (CDR): I say that's fine; we'll do that.
04 18 52 37
Frank Borman (CDR): Houston, are you still there?
04 18 52 39
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Roger. We got a discussion going; be right back.
04 18 53 50
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Okay, Apollo 8. On page E-9 —
04 18 53 57
Frank Borman (CDR): Okay.
04 18 53 58
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): — 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.
04 18 54 35
Frank Borman (CDR): Okay. Tell me what to write in, Ken.
04 18 54 37
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Okay. It's glycol evaporator water to AUTO.
04 18 55 43
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Apollo 8, Houston. Are you there?
04 18 55 55
Frank Borman (CDR): Glycol evaporator water switch to AUTO.
04 18 55 59
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Okay. And the second switch is the glycol evaporator steam pressure to AUTO.
04 18 56 18
Frank Borman (CDR): Okay.
04 18 56 25
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): 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.
04 18 56 40
Frank Borman (CDR): I'm not reading you now, Houston.
04 18 56 44
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Roger. How now?
04 18 56 48
Frank Borman (CDR): Loud and clear.
04 18 56 49
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): 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.
04 18 57 16
Frank Borman (CDR): Okay.
04 18 57 23
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): 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.
04 18 58 06
Frank Borman (CDR): Okay.
04 18 58 11
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Alright. The rest of these pages look good; I'm coming over through the graphs. And on page E-11 —
04 18 58 48
Frank Borman (CDR): Roger. I'm with you.
04 18 58 50
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Okay. On step 5 on E-11, there's—the first subtitle there is Helmets and Gloves, and the items that follow beneath that are affected by whether you wear suits or come in shirt sleeves, but they do have to be accomplished. And the suit return air valves would actually be OPEN for a shirt-sleeve entry. And you should have a line penciled in of optics power to OFF between an emergency cabin pressure valve and the time when the CMP moves to the couch.
04 18 59 26
Frank Borman (CDR): Right.
04 18 59 28
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Okay. And the step shows the tape recorder to REWIND at minus 30. Now that's an onboard step rather than a ground step, just to verify that.
04 18 59 48
Frank Borman (CDR): Okay.
04 18 59 50
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Okay. Under step 6, almost at the bottom—in fact, it's three lines from the bottom of step 6—there's a section that says secondary coolant loop evaporator to RESET, and should be a note that that's 58 seconds if you hold it in RESET prior to moving the pump OFF.
04 19 00 12
Frank Borman (CDR): That's it; that's in it.
04 19 00 15
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Okay. Okay. The next comment is on page E-13.
04 19 00 34
Frank Borman (CDR): Okay. I'm there.
04 19 00 36
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Alright. This is a general comment that refers to any time you're working around P62 or when you're going between P62 and P63, and you should be careful not to call an extended VERB during this time. This is here in the program notes, and it is just a reminder. What will happen if we get into an extended VERB such as an 83 or an 82? We may get hung-up in P62 and have to recycle through it in order to get the 63, and neither of these displays are normally used, and it's just a good practice. And we're just trying to remind you that we don't want to call an extended VERB while we're in P62.
04 19 01 22
Frank Borman (CDR): Okay. Neither do we. That's right.
04 19 01 24
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Okay.
04 19 01 41
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Okay. In going through the rest of it, we didn't find any other things to make comments on. You have all the latest corrections in your checklist.
04 19 01 51
Frank Borman (CDR): Roger. The main thing, that is to come up with a way to determine that the boiler—water boiler is not dry and make sure that Bill gets it activated at TMS 7.
04 19 02 03
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): That is correct, and we will talk to you some more about that next time we catch both you and Bill up.
04 19 02 10
Frank Borman (CDR): Righto.
04 19 06 41
Frank Borman (CDR): Ken, this is Frank. I am going to be off the headset for about 5 minutes here.
04 19 06 44
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Okay. Fine. When you come back, I will have a systems rundown for you.
04 19 06 50
Frank Borman (CDR): Fine.
04 19 17 12
Frank Borman (CDR): Houston, Apollo 8.
Expand selection down Contract selection up
04 19 17 16
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Okay. Loud and clear.
04 19 17 20
Frank Borman (CDR): Back with you.
04 19 17 22
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Okay. I've got a few good words for you. The erasable memory has been taken completely apart and looked at, and it looks like it's all okay. Your P01 didn't have any effect. The one thing that might be questionable is if you used a VERB 67 when you get to the NOUN 99 display, you may find that one to be unreliable, and what you're going to get there is the—that's an error display for the W-matrix. And it's something you probably won't be using again anyhow; and if the occasion arises, we can update that one, but it's not a normally used display and everything else, all the operational functions, are good.
04 19 18 17
Frank Borman (CDR): Very good.
04 19 18 19
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Okay. As of 114 hours, your batteries—you had battery A with 39.32 amp-hours, battery B had 35.21, and battery C 38.46. Your cryo quantities remaining at SEP were the same we gave you the last time, 180 pounds of oxygen per tank and 11 pounds of hydrogen per tank. At present, the service module RCS, using the computer values for the quantities, you have quad A with 45 percent, Bravo with 50, Charlie with 58, and Delta at 48. What we plan to do with the secondary tanks is to go ahead and turn them on at 37 percent actual, and in the event of lost COMM or something like that, recommend that you use 50 percent onboard gaging as being the time to turn the secondary propellants on. However, as long as we can use our own calculations, why, we might as well leave them tied up. We probably won't get into the secondary propellants prior to entry anyhow.
04 19 19 41
Frank Borman (CDR): Roger.
04 19 19 42
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Okay. A couple of items I want to check up on: I'd like to confirm that the hatch Dog will be taken off while you're on the chutes if you can. If not, you're going to do that in the water. Is that affirm?
04 19 20 00
Frank Borman (CDR): …
04 19 20 13
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Okay. Now we've got a little better signal. Like to confirm that the hatch clamps on the side hatch will be taken off either on the chutes or in the water, whichever you can get to. Is that affirm?
04 19 20 37
Frank Borman (CDR): Roger. That's affirm. As a matter of fact, we didn't even put—didn't even put them on.
04 19 20 45
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Okay. Do you plan to put them on for an entry?
04 19 20 50
Frank Borman (CDR): I don't think so. It's held pretty well so far. I don't think—everybody tells me it wouldn't help much anyway.
04 19 20 58
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Okay. And we realize we never did find out what happened to the Mae West. Did you leave it blown up, or did you dump it?
04 19 21 09
Frank Borman (CDR): We dumped it.
04 19 21 12
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Okay. Who was the lucky guy?
04 19 21 17
Frank Borman (CDR): The same guy that tried to launch us this afternoon again.
04 19 21 23
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Okay. And just as a gee whiz item: you're now a 137 915 out, and you've only accelerated the 4883. You might check to make sure you don't have a speed brake hanging.
04 19 21 41
Frank Borman (CDR): Uh-oh.
04 19 21 44
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Those are nominal values.
04 19 21 50
Frank Borman (CDR): Roger. 137 000 miles out, huh?
04 19 21 55
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): That's affirm.
04 19 33 18
Bill Anders (LMP): Houston, Apollo 8. Over.
04 19 33 20
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Loud and clear.
04 19 33 27
Bill Anders (LMP): Good morning, or good afternoon, or whatever it is. The JOD is back at the CON; CDR went back to bed.
04 19 33 32
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Okay.
04 19 33 44
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Looks like all the junior guys have the midwatch.
04 19 33 49
Bill Anders (LMP): I know what you mean. I had a little sleep earlier, so I am pretty well rested and want to make sure Frank gets a good snooze here prior to entry. This might be a good time to try out your background music, and see if you have any better luck.
04 19 34 16
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Okay. We'll try that a little later.
04 19 37 48
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Apollo 8, Houston.
04 19 38 43
Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM): Apollo 8, Houston.
04 19 38 49
Bill Anders (LMP): Go ahead, Houston.

Spacelog Apollo 8