Spacelog Apollo 8

Apollo 8, Houston.

Go ahead, Houston. Apollo 8.

Okay. I've got some weather and recovery force status and a couple of last minute items to run down any time it is convenient for you.

Alright. It's convenient right now, any time.

Okay. For the mid-Pacific, the general condition is good. You can expect cloud bases 2000 foot scattered, visibility 10 miles, wind 070 at 12, wave heights 4 feet, altimeter 2974. Sunrise will be 17:10 Zulu, and first light 16:49 Zulu. The recovery forces: ship will be Yorktown; the aircraft will be Airboss number 1 and 2, and Recoveries 1, 2, and 3. The estimated time to a target point: the ship is—Yorktown is on the target point, Airboss aircraft 15 minutes and will be on-scene commander. Recoveries 1, 2, and 3 are SH3 Alfas, and they go with the Yorktown, so they are at the target point. All of them have swimmers aboard. If the recovery aircraft do not hear from the spacecraft; they will go ahead and put swimmers in the water, and if you are in good shape and give them a call, then they will hold off on dropping swimmers until sunrise.

Roger. Say again the sunrise and first light time for me, would you, please?

I say again, 8.

Apollo 8, Houston. Notice the rather large middle gimbal angle. Over.

Okay. Sunrise is 17:10 Zulu, and first light is 16:49 Zulu.

Thank you.

Okay. Looking over the weather I gave you was—the 2000 foot scattered at the target point may have a 6000 foot broken layer above that. At the MAX lift point, you will have about the same thing, and altimeter is the same down the range. As you go further to the east, the weather should improve slightly; there is no problem with thunderstorms or rain showers in any of your recovery area.

Very good; thank you.

The items that we still need will be a PRD reading as late as you can do it conveniently prior to a final stowage. And we don't have any numbers on the last crew sleep period. I'd like to verify that the secondary RCS was activated on all four quads. And I have about five comments on the entry checklist procedures to verify.

It was activated on all four quads; that's correct. Our final stowage is completed. We'll read out the PRD's for you now.

Alright. Thank you.

The LMP's reads 0.64; I believe it's been that way throughout the flight. The CMP's reads 0.11, that's 1.11.

Roger.

Stand by a minute. Let me look at it closely. That's 0.11.

Roger. 0.11.

And the one I ended up with reads 3.10.

Okay. Thank you.

Okay. Go ahead, Ken. What else do you want to talk about?

Okay. To make everybody happy, we can use an estimate of the number of hours sleep the people got.

Just a minute, I'll give you that; I forgot. Bill Anders got about 5 hours, and Jim Lovell got about five, and I got about five and a half or six.

Sounds good. Okay. We went through an exercise with the mockup on the preentry preparations, and we noticed that in the LMP's checklist on page S-12, when you go to top off the repress bottles, I believe it is a misprint; it should read the PLSS fill valve rather than the REPRESS valve, and we should be going to the FILL position as opposed to going to ON.

Roger. That's what we do.

Okay. And on—go ahead.

Go ahead. We agree that's what we do.

Okay. On page E-7 of the entry checklist and under step 34, as long as you have panel 382 open, that's a convenient time to go ahead and have the evaporator water controls, both primary and secondary, to AUTO, and the suit heat exchanger for the secondary glycol to FLOW.

Those items are already accomplished.

Very good. On page E-9, when you are getting ready to transfer the RCS to the command module position, if you want to avoid having the engines fire as a result of attitude correction, you might want to take the manual attitude switches to ACCEL COMMAND or MINIMAL IMPULSE. And again on E-9 Alfa at step 41 Bravo, if you want to go back to attitude hold, bring your manual attitude switches back to RATE.

What was that last step?

Step 41 Bravo on page-E-9 Alfa. It's if you decide to use either MINIMAL IMPULSE or ACCEL COMMAND on page E-9, step 41 Bravo would be a good place to go back to RATE COMMAND.

Okay. We do a purge or —

Okay, fine. And —

I didn't put all those control configurations changes on the checklist, but that's exactly what we did, used MINIMUM IMPULSE.

Houston, Apollo 8.

Go ahead, 8.

Apollo 8, Apollo 8. Go ahead.

I'd like to confirm one item on the PAD message, please.

Roger.

Time to retro-drogues, reference you last time to drogues, please.

Okay. I'll check that one out.

And also, Ken, we are going to turn on our VHF now, about 4 hours before entry.

Real fine. Thank you. I'll let you know when we pick it up.

A Simplex.