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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. I guess we should start off with a little dialogue about sleep. How much did you have?
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Well, let's see; whenever it was I told you I went to bed last night till now. Just a second and let me check the flight plan.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Yes. Why don't you let me know. I have kind of lost track of time it was when I went to bed. But it was about—I went to sleep about 15 minutes after that and woke up about 10 minutes ago. Good sleep.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Just trying to find out how soundly you really slept. I guess you are not that sleepy.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Apollo 8, Houston. Have you got somebody under the left couch, or could you get down to the water control panel?
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Well, what we were thinking about doing was boiling a little out of the secondary evaporator to check it out, just as a component check, something we need to do; but if there's somebody down there in the way, why, we can do that some other time.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Well, if it boils, we are going to know it before—it won't take long to find out it won't boil. There's not a heck of a lot we can do about it, so why don't we wait until someone else wakes up here, Frank wakes up again. How will that be?
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Yes. That would be fine. There is something you can do; you can reservice it. And it is kind of a tedious process, and that's the reason why we just want to kind of keep our eyes on it so we will have some idea prior to entry if we can count on having two loops or one. Which kind of leads us into another question we are trying to pin down, two questions, in fact. Number one, we would like to verify that you do plan to use both primary and secondary boilers during the actual entry, and we are also looking for a way of checking the primary boiler to make sure it isn't dried out prior to entry. And that is turning into a little more of a challenge than you might suspect. If you have any thoughts on that subject, we can go over that.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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The answer to the question is yes, we do plan to use both. Before we get into the water boiler pump though, CDR would like to take a Seconal also; make sure he can get off to sleep here.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Okay. On the water boiler: it's interesting that I get my own—I was going to say anytime you have our mike keyed, I can hear myself talk with about a 2-second time delay. With respect to the primary and secondary boiler checks, I think that is a good idea to make sure we got them both prior to entry and have the reservicing procedures handy.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Roger, Bill. You know the secondary—well, in fact, both reservicing procedures are available in a malfunction book, and sort of the problem with checking out the primary boiler is finding a way to make it boil on the way in.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Roger. It looks like the only way we'll be able to do it would be to shut off the radiators.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Roger. That way would be agreeable to me too, a little more docile way, but they shouldn't freeze up if we did it quickly.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Roger. We are talking over several things, you know, like putting the ten-pin valve to MANUAL or partially closing it or some of these different ideas, and something you can think about while you are laying there with nothing else to do.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Yes. We noticed that it had gotten warmer in the cockpit coming back than it was going out. And I remember going out when we manually positioned the ten-pin valve, but we had pretty good control over the glycol evap outlet temperature. So possibly that would be the thing to attack first rather than the radiators.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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I guess if we do pick a time, though, we ought to pick a time that if something did go haywire, we could afford to boil . . . the rest of the way in, but still leave us enough time to fix—rig up the evap service if it didn't work.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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That's affirm, and we're factoring in things like trajectory considerations and all that sort of thing, too.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Right. I think that the second derivative of the water boiler versus time plot will give us the optimum time to do it.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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There's also speculation you have a chart on board that gives that information.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Well, if I don't, I'm sure those guys can ship one up. They've shipped up some other pretty good ones.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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It's also been suggested that if you don't have the chart it's on the tape recorder.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Okay. I think, unless you guys got some more comments along these lines, maybe we ought to give these guys a chance to get to sleep, and I'll recline here for a while. If you've got something to brief me on, well, go ahead; but I'd like to keep my answers to yes's and no's and whatever else you think you really need.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. Fine, Bill, and I'll check with you like every 30 minutes, just to make sure we still have voice contact.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Okay. I've got some log writing to do and whatnot. So keep an eye on the systems and the gimbal angles, and we'll be all right.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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And, Ken, if your EECOM man wants to play the OMNI-switch game, we're on Dog—Bravo at this time, actually on Bravo but also configured for D's—correction, we are on D and also configured for Bravo. If you want to switch, we'll go ahead.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay, we'll give that a try, and we are cranking up some Background music for you.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Okay. The last time they did that, it sounded like they were running at the wrong speed on the tape, but we're a little closer now. Maybe it'll be a little better.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Looks like we can use your humming for backup ranging in case everything else fails.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Apollo 8, Houston. You don't need to answer this transmission, but doctors observe that it looks like your—some of your sensors may be working loose, so you might just kind of push on them and see if they are in place.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Apollo 8. We can't handle the OMNI switching for about thirty more minutes, till we get back to an 85-foot dish, so you will have to watch the antenna store for a few more minutes.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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No, I didn't. It sounded like you were getting an echo, and I checked, and I hadn't held the key down at the time either.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Okay. I don't see any loose sensors, but the upper sternal is beginning to irritate a little bit, but not badly; and possibly there is something going on there.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Apollo 8, Houston in the blind now. We're not receiving down-voice. We have data, and it appears it's probably a ground problem.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. I got you that time. I take it you were able to copy us with the music? Is that affirm?
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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I was able to copy you all the time, Ken, but I could only hear the music when you were trying to transmit. And I wondered if you noticed cycling on my suit power switch when you—when you called me. I am hearing an echo now.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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I was cycling the suit power which turns off the BIOMED periodically. I figured that would wake the doctors up.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Roger. Be advised that about 50—I am hearing these echos quite a bit of the time, and if you are trying to play music, I am not hearing it.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Apollo 8, Houston. Going to be handling over sites at 25. I will make a voice check with you when we come up on the new site, and the ground says thank you for your kind words.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay, Bill, and our BIOMED data still looks a little bit squirrelly. How about checking the blue signal conditioner on your BIOMED harness. You have one connector, should be the center package, has a blue connector on it. You kind of check that, and I don't know if you have changed the BIOMED harness leads recently; if you have, this might have caused our problem.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Roger. I was just cracking open some acorns here for breakfast. Let me put them down, and I will check my BIOMED leads.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay, Bill. We're ready to try this music on a different kind of lash-up this time. What I'd like to do in order to make sure that we maintain voice COMM is when you get it if you would, give us a call and tell us you have the music and any comment about its relative volume or anything like that. And if I get your call, then I'll call you back and tell you. And what will happen is when I go to talk to you we'll drop the music link. And we can go ahead and take over the switching of the antennas if you like.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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okay. I'm in Bravo Dog switch configuration, and go ahead with the music. Be advised last time the fidelity was low, and the volume was too high.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. And if you'll give us the same kind of comment, hopefully not the same comment but the same type of evaluation when you pick it up this time.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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That's real good for background level type, Ken. Maybe you can do some logging in here so that's real nice at that level; maybe for anything else it could be a little bit louder, but that's good for now.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. That's about the MAX volume we can take down here; so if you want to talk to us, you may have to call us once or twice. You're just barely equaling it.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Okay. Try it again, and I'll give you a little louder call; I've been trying to keep it quiet.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Oh, yes, that's all right. Don't—I was aware you were calling; I just didn't make out what you said. And from now on, any time you call, we'll drop the music, and I'll talk to you.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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And, Bill, we're going to have to wait until we get around to Bravo before we start switching. Our margin is still a little bit low.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Ken, do you want me to use the high gain when we come around, or is the OMNI sufficient? It doesn't matter to me.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. The OMNI is doing fine. I was just watching your middle gimbal angle there; it was getting a little far out.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Oh, okay. I thought you—I was, too. I thought you said check the DSKY, and I thought you were talking about the high gain antenna.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Yes, this thing really slops around in deadband, but it's really nice flying otherwise.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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You just woke the doctor up. You said pulse, and he came alive. And he'd like to know if you did in fact, check out the BIOMED harness.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Yes, I tightened down all the plugs and checked all the leads, and everything looked in order. And when the other fellows wake up, if you remind me, why, I'll give it a more thorough going over.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay, Bill. It's been suggested that they would like to see you try switching the two leads, you know, a yellow and a blue one, and just go ahead and switch them, and they'll sacrifice their pneumogram because they'd rather have the EKG.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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One thing you might be interested in: we listened to that low speed information that you taped on the first couple of REV's that we thought was going to be unusable. And it must have been a ground problem because it's coming in loud and clear now.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Hey, that's great. I was just writing a long dissertation on why we have problems and can't use that DSE in low bit rate. So that's real good.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Okay. If they could hold off here for a couple of hours, if they have anything at all, just tell them I'm alive, why, I'll give my real good going over here when I get done. I might even make a statement to the world that I haven't noticed that their little amplifiers had gotten hot.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Well, we're on low bit rate right now, so it'll be a few minutes before we get a chance to take another look at it. We'll let you know if you get sick.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Hello, Apollo 8. We interrupt this program of music to bring you the late evening status report.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. We are getting ready to have a shift turnover, and I wanted to go over a few items before I do. On the midcourse correction number 6: right now, that looks like it is at most 0.3 a foot per second, so there will be no burn for midcourse number 6. Midcourse number 7 is a little larger, and we'll make a decision on that later. Your weather in landing site still reported as being good and the forecast to be about 2000 scattered and 12 000 broken, about the same numbers they gave Frank earlier. Visibility will be about 10 miles, wave height about 4 feet. And I guess there is some scattered thundershowers, like less than 5 percent, that you should worry about. And they're 10 to 30 percent maybe at 2000, broken as opposed to scattered; so it looks pretty fair. We have got a —
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Roger. Got a couple of flight plan things to consider. Now number 1 at 119:30: we have got a P52 IMU realignment which we need to slip in ahead of the P23 sightings, and that will be an option 3 REFSMMAT.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. Some of the folks in sitting back and looking at the TV business have some ideas about things they would like to see tried with the filters. And I would like to read you what they have here and let you think about it; and in the next 10 hours, you can decide whether or not you think it is worth the effort. Basically, they would like to try using a whole different series of filters —
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. Before you copy, let me read it all through to you here so you will get the feel for what it is we are talking about. The title of this little epistle is “TV and Film Photography Correlation Experiment,” and what they want to do is mount the TV camera with the telephoto lens on a bracket. in the rendezvous window and take a TV picture of the earth through the red and blue filters, 1 minute per filter; that means red and blue filters individually. Then they would like to take a TV picture of the earth through through the red, in this case, the 25 Alfa filter combined with the polarizing filter. Rotate the polarizing filter through 360-degree increments, again 1 minute per position. Then they'd like to take a TV picture of the moon with the polarizing filter at 360-degree moon-rotation increments and again, 1 minute per position. And to go with this, we would like to have Hasselblad pictures.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Are those—when you were talking about pictures through the polarizing filter, is that the TV pictures through the polarizing filter?
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Okay. Now the only thing—the only problem here is it's darn near impossible to aim that television camera; the field of view is so narrow that it took three men and a boy up here to get the thing pointed in the right direction. And we tried using chewing gum for a sight and everything else, and let me tell you that the odds of getting that thing in the earth is pretty small.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. I think we weren't too clever in our ground callup as to how to point the spacecraft. For one thing I think we can do that a lot better next time now that we have stumbled through it once. I agree with you —
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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It's not the spacecraft; it's not the spacecraft that's hard to point, it's the camera. The bracket has sufficient slump in it that it can take the camera out of field of view when configured through the window. And it took a lot of microadjustments with a lot of coaching from the ground to get the thing in, and it was a real tough job. So I think you ought to take all this in mind; if you could possibly use the wide angle, you might be better off.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. I understand what you are saying now. I'll run that back by the TV guys and see what they have to say about that. In conjunction with the above, they wanted to take some Hasselblad pictures of the earth through the rendezvous window with the red and blue filter and black and white film, and then again through the polarizing filter, and this is all going to be used in order to try and correlate the TV and the regular film photography. So if you think it is a worthwhile thing, and you would like to give it a try, I'll run this by Jack and the TV cats and see if they would like to get something out of it with the wide angle, and we can talk about it a little later.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Okay. Another thing to keep in mind is that we haven't seen the moon—we didn't see all the way out, and we rarely see it going back. We have seen it once since we left, but we have maneuvered the wrong way from a sighting attitude to the shortest way to PTC and to go from an earth view to a lunar view will take quite a bit of time and some RCS. So you might keep that in mind, too.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. I just wanted you to be aware of this and think about it and what its implications to the flight plan might be, and I'll run this wide angle and comment about the moon back by and see which sections they think would be most appropriate. Okay. On the EMS scroll, Frank wanted us to verify the order that he could expect to see the entry profile, and the first profile that comes up is labelled “Nonexit Number 2” and that is the short-range high-speed entry. The second thing that will come up is entitled “The 3500 Mile” which is also high-speed entry, but it is the one you would use in event we go to the longer entry ranges. Then the third profile will be “Nonexit Entry Number 1,” and it will be followed by a forth 3500 mile. So you have four entry profiles. Numbers 1 and 3, as you come to them, are the short ranges, and numbers 2 and 4 are the long-range scrolls. On coldsoak, I think we talked about what we're going to do there, but somewhere inside of about an hour, we'll want to get into the coldsoak business. We certainly don't want to do it at 12. Talking to the trajectory people—what they thought about water boiling—something to keep in mind is the fact that they do see your water dumps and water boiling on your trajectory plot. It seems to be that it's a function of their computational scheme rather than a function of the fact that the trajectory is being perturbed that much. So it looks like one time that we're going to consider, if we're going to do some of this water boiling, we may do it just prior to the midcourse after all the tracking is settled down and they know what the midcourse correction will be. Then in that period just prior to the midcourse we can do it, and they'll pick up their tracking again following the midcourse correction. So if someone proposes that the — It is probably nice to know that we are not throwing away our data at the most important time, that it is a function of the computer program rather than so much a function of your trajectory being changed.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Let me ask you one thing then. Do you want a coldsoak sometime prior to the midcourse correction for 1 hour. Is that what you're trying to tell me?
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Not really. I think we are looking at that prior to the midcourse correction as being the time when we would like to check out the water boilers. The coldsoak does involve some water boiler, too, but that's going to be done right before entry when these things are not going to be very sensitive, and if we don't do it in 12 hours, it is not real clear where the coldsoak takes place or where you turn on the secondary water boiler. In looking through the entry checklist tonight, we didn't find a place for that.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Okay. Is it really clear that you need the cold soak? We kind of figured on sometime prior to SEP bringing up the secondary EVAP, and also having the primary at that point sometime prior to that date on your suggestion.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. We're talking about doing that like an hour prior to SEP; but in the pre-SEP check, one of the things we power down was the secondary loop. And they won't need to turn it back.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Right. We're doing that to keep our power profile where we want it. And then we're going to be turning it back on sometime prior to entry. And the time to turn it on in entry, of course, isn't specified because as you turn it on, the voltages show that they can hack it.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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That sounds like a real good place. Okay. I'm sure we're going to discuss that one a little bit more, Bill. But right now those are the kind of things we're talking about doing. And on the high gain, there is still a lot of discussion about as to what—exactly what we saw and what it means. And I think it is a little too early to tell you anything about that one.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. I think we all agree that we don't want to try experimenting with it if we really don't know what it is we're looking at.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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I don't think it's any great big deal, because the antenna switching is not hard at all and the … is required to work; if it doesn't work as advertised, at least it works in a reasonable manner.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Roger. Just to make sure the urge to get red and blue filter shots of the moon haven't crept into this TV test. We have got red and blue filter shots of the moon, so you need not worry about that.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. I don't think that would throw it away. I think we're trying to come up with something definitive so that postflight will have some real good data to compare with what we do on the ground for future work. I would like to have you go over and take a look at the battery Charlie, please.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Also with respect to the TV test, I would think that we could probably get a pretty good handle on the operation just by taking red and blue and polarizing shots of the earth independent of the TV, but within the same time frame or at about the same range we had the TV last time.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. That's what—the second portion of this really is asking that we do this with the Hasselblad, and again we won't be using the red and blue filters so we have our baseline.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Taking a picture of the earth with the Hasselblad is no big deal because it does swing by the earth now and then. But trying to get the TV and the Hasselblad all pointed to the earth at the same time would really be tough.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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We're going to hold up on the LiOH change for about a half an hour. The PCO2 reading is low, and we don't want to wake up the CDR. It's right by his feet.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay, Bill. We are coming up on the P52 and then the P23 sightings, and there is some concern that if we just go directly to P23 attitude that we are liable to overheat quad Charlie. So we would like to have you maneuver to place the minus X-axis towards the sun now. And I have some gimbal angles here for you. And if we take it over there and point the minus X at the sun between now and the time we have to start into the alignment, then the P23 business—we will tend to coldsoak Charlie, and then we will be able to go through the P23 operations without worrying about the temperatures.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Houston, you wanted to go to this coldsoak attitude prior to the P52, did you not?
Spoken on Dec. 26, 1968, 8:32 a.m. UTC (55 years, 10 months ago). Link to this transcript range is: Tweet
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