Spacelog Apollo 8

Okay. I guess we should start off with a little dialogue about sleep. How much did you have?

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.

Have you got it logged in when it was I asked for that last Seconal?

Okay. I guess we can figure that out for ourselves, can't we?

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.

Okay. So I see it is now 142 hours.

What do you think I am, Rip van Winkle?

Just trying to find out how soundly you really slept. I guess you are not that sleepy.

. . . but not that.

Okay. It's really about 4 hours, Bill.

Okay. Good.

Apollo 8, Houston. Have you got somebody under the left couch, or could you get down to the water control panel?

I can get down there. Frank hasn't quite gone to sleep yet.

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.

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?

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.

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.

Okay. That's a GO.

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.

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.

Yes. Just a second, I got another little chore going here.

Roger. It looks like the only way we'll be able to do it would be to shut off the radiators.

We were looking for a little more docile way to do that.

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.

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.

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.

Okay. We've got the back room boys looking at it.

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.

That's affirm, and we're factoring in things like trajectory considerations and all that sort of thing, too.

Right. I think that the second derivative of the water boiler versus time plot will give us the optimum time to do it.

EECOM's copying that.

There's also speculation you have a chart on board that gives that information.

Well, if I don't, I'm sure those guys can ship one up. They've shipped up some other pretty good ones.

It's also been suggested that if you don't have the chart it's on the tape recorder.

Well, if I don't have a chart, I'll put it on the tape recorder.

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.

Okay. Fine, Bill, and I'll check with you like every 30 minutes, just to make sure we still have voice contact.

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.

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.

Okay, we'll give that a try, and we are cranking up some Background music for you.

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.

Would you also believe Doppler shift?

Might be another way to range.

Probably it was Doppler shift; we're heading back out again,

Looks like we can use your humming for backup ranging in case everything else fails.

Roger.

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.

Okay. I don't see any loose sensor—the upper, upper …

Are you trying to call, Houston?

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.

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.

Okay. And did you copy about the antenna?

(Start music)

Apollo 8, Houston. I'd like to make a voice check with you.

Apollo 8, Houston. Radio check.

Apollo 8, Houston. Radio check.

Apollo 8, Houston. Radio check.

Apollo 8, Houston. Radio check.

(End music)

Apollo 8, Houston. Radio check.

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.

Apollo 8, Houston.

Roger, Houston. Read you loud and clear.

Okay. I got you that time. I take it you were able to copy us with the music? Is that affirm?

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.

Roger. I copy your echo. And what switch were you cycling?

I was cycling the suit power which turns off the BIOMED periodically. I figured that would wake the doctors up.

It appears that we have more than one communications problem.

Calm it. (Laughter)

You are cutting out, Houston.

Oh, that was an inadvertent cut-in.

You need the high gain, Houston, or will the OMNI's be okay?

8, Houston. That's negative. The OMNI is okay.

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.

Roger. We understand, and we are not trying to play music right now.

Okay. Who is this, COMM TECH?

Ken is only human. This is his substitute; this is Flight Director.

Oh, I didn't recognize your voice there.

I don't get to talk often.

Who is substituting for you now, Flight?

DFD.

Okay. Things are looking pretty good from here. How about down there?

It couldn't be better.

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.

Okay. We will be standing by.

Apollo 8, Houston through Honeysuckle.

Roger, Houston. Loud and clear.

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.

Roger. I was just cracking open some acorns here for breakfast. Let me put them down, and I will check my BIOMED leads.

There is no rush on it.

Apollo 8, Houston.