Spacelog Apollo 8

Okay, Apollo 8. I'd like to run one more null bias and looks like we will have exercised everything we can get to.

Okay. DELTA-V AUTO, all zeros.

Minus 2.

Roger. Understand minus 2. Alright. Is that minus 2 or minus two-tenths?

Two-tenths, three-tenths now.

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 —

Right.

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.

Okay.

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.

That's it; that's in it.

Okay. Okay. The next comment is on page E-13.

Okay. I'm there.

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.

Okay. Neither do we. That's right.

Okay.

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.

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.

That is correct, and we will talk to you some more about that next time we catch both you and Bill up.

Ken, this is Frank. I am going to be off the headset for about 5 minutes here.

Okay. Fine. When you come back, I will have a systems rundown for you.

Houston, Apollo 8.

Okay. Loud and clear.

Back with you.

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.

Very good.

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.

Roger.

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?

…

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?

Roger. That's affirm. As a matter of fact, we didn't even put—didn't even put them on.

Okay. Do you plan to put them on for an entry?

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.

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?

We dumped it.

Okay. Who was the lucky guy?

The same guy that tried to launch us this afternoon again.

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.

Uh-oh.

Those are nominal values.

Roger. 137 000 miles out, huh?

Houston, Apollo 8. Over.

Loud and clear.

Good morning, or good afternoon, or whatever it is. The JOD is back at the CON; CDR went back to bed.

Okay.

Looks like all the junior guys have the midwatch.

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.

Apollo 8, Houston.

Apollo 8, Houston.

Go ahead, Houston.