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.

Thank you.

Would you say again the daylight time, please, sunrise, and first light.

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.

And Bill, … suggested if we have the water boiler going on the primary loop, that you—you might wait about 5 minutes or so before you initiate the secondary loop.

Wait 5 minutes from what? From the time the primary loop starts or from 1 hour?

From the time the primary loop starts; this will give you a check to see if it had a chance to dry out or not.

Oh, I am with you. Okay.

And for your information, we already have a VHF downlink. It's poor quality, but we do have contact.

Okay. We haven't turned anything over to VHF yet.

Okay.

We tried to call you on the VHF though, Ken.

Roger. I say, the quality is pretty poor; they may not be able to understand you.

Houston, Apollo 8. Over.

Go ahead, Apollo 8.

Apollo 8, Houston. Go ahead.

Ken, we got two things going here which make this suit heat exchanger flow a little different. One of them is we are not doing a coldsoak, and the other one is we are powering down the secondary loop prior to SEP. And I wonder if it is a good idea to have the suit heat exchanger only on a secondary loop in that case. And plus the fact that we haven't got any cabin heat exchanger.

I don't think that was the intent, Bill. What they had in mind, we have the suit heat exchanger on both loops; and if they got too cold, you could use the panel switching to shut down the primary loop through the heat exchanger. But in any event, you would always have something going to the suit heat exchanger. I recognize that we are going to be shutting down the secondary heat exchanger pre-SEP and then turning it back on prior to entry, but the idea was to have both primary and secondary loops on the suit heat exchanger simultaneously.

Yes, my checklist doesn't reflect that. I think that's a good idea because we are a little suspect of our cabin fans and don't plan to use them.

Houston, Apollo 8. Over.

Go ahead, 8.

Apollo 8, Apollo 8. Go ahead.

Apollo 8, Houston. We will be making a handover from, Carnarvon to Honeysuckle at 15.

Houston, Apollo 8. Over.

Apollo 8, go ahead.

I am still a little bit confused on that- on this activating the secondary loop. You indicated inactivating it at 1 hour or 5 minutes after the primary evaporator comes on the line. My checklist shows that the primary evaporator probably won't come on the line until we bypass the radiators. Have you got something else in mind I don't know about?

Okay, Bill. We passed up an update some time back on page E-9 step 38 right at the beginning, and you have got a final GET drift check. And between there and the step 39 where it says terminate CM RCS preheat, that was the place we wanted to activate the primary loop by putting the glycol evaporator water switch to AUTO and the glycol evaporator steam pressure to AUTO.

Roger. I don't expect it to boil, though. Do you?

Okay, Bill. We are hoping that it will there. It looks like we will have had a stable attitude for sometime, and we anticipate that it will be warm enough to make it boil. That is the reason it's suggested if it is boiling, that you wait. If it isn't, go ahead and turn on the secondary loop.

Okay. Well, that's where I was confused. I am waking up. Thank you.

Yes, sir.

Apollo 8, Houston.