Preliminary Gemini 4 Crew Debriefing Part2 1965

• Authority: 65 NW 91526 To l ur tfFj~f r{ft~E - - -- - -- -- - - " - = = -- - - - ~ By authority of-E---'-:---'--'-=--::....-~-=-__,___.c.....:::=---1 Cha nged bY--..£:::%:.:~~!l"~~==-- PRELIMINARY GT-4 FLIGHT CREW DEBRIEFING TRANSCRIPT PART II Prepared By Spacecraft Operations Branch Flight Crew Support Division June 18 , 1965 This material contains information affecting the national defense of the United States within the meaning of the Espionage Laws , Title 18. U. S. c. Section 793 and 794 , the transmission or revela­ tion of which in any manner to an unauthorized person is prohibited by law. I Group 4: Downgrade at 3 year intervals Declassified after 12 years NOTICE: This document may be exempt from public disclosure under the Freedom of Infor­ mation Act (5 U.S.C. 552). Requests for its re­ lease to persons outside the U.S. Government should be handled under the provisions of NASA Policy Direct:ve 1382.2. • • I PREFACE This preliminary transcript was made from voice tape -recording3 of the GT-4 flight crew debriefing conducted aboard the recovery ship, the USS Wasp, on June~' 1965, and concluded at the Manned Spacecraft Center on June 12, 1965. Although all the material contained in this transcript has been edited , the urgent need for the preliminary transcript by mission analysis personnel precluded a thorough editorial review prior to its publication. Errors in this transcript will be corrected as soon as possible and an official transcript will be published at a later date. Thia document contains a transcript of the second part of the total debriefing. A preliminary transcript of the first part was published on June 16 , 1965 , and it contains the crew ' s description of the mission from an operational standpoint. itit 4Fl8E!I ◄ • I Jlt'&' TABLE OF CONTENTS Paragraph Page number 8 . 0 SYSTEMS OPERATION 8. 1 Pla tfo:r,n ................................................ . 1 8. 2 8. 3 O..AMS ....... ............ .........• ...... ...............• . 5 RCS ................................................ , ... 17 8 .4 8.5 8. 6 CoDlDlunications ........................................ . 68 8.7 8.8 8.9 9.0 Environmental Control System •••·················••••···22 Electrical System ...................................... 82 Computer ............................................... 87 Crew Station .......................................... . 93 Bio-Medicat ........................................... 134 OPERATIONAL CHEDKS 9 . 1 Apollo Landmark Identification (D- 6) .................. 144 9 . 2 Apollo Yaw Orientation •••·•··•·•••·•··••·•••···•·•·•••168 9 . 3 One Attitude Thruster Fai l ure Check ... ......... ....... 171 9.4 Horizon Scanner Track Check •·•••·•• ••·• · •• · •••• ·•·•••• 172 9. 5 Horizon Scanner Check ....................... ...... ~ ... 173 9 . 6 HF Transmission Reception Check ....................... 181 9·. 7 Orbit Navigation Check ................................ 182 9.8 Rela tive Humidity Test ................................ 185 9.9 Zodiacal Light Check .................................. 186 10.0 VISUAL SIGHTINGS 10.1 Cotllltdo\.lll .................•.•........................ . 188 10. 2 10 . 3 10 .4 Powered Flight . ................... ..... ..... ... ... . .. . 188 Orbital Flight . ............................... ........ 191 Reentry .................... . ......................... . 213 11 . 0 EXPERIMENTS 11 . 1 Two-Color Earth-Limb Photography (MSC-10) ............. 217 11 . 2 Synoptic Terrain and Weather Photography (S- 5 and S- 6) . 219 11. 3 Simple Navigation with t he Sextant .... ......... ....... 219 11.4 Electrostatic Charge (MSC- 1) .. .. ......... .....·........ 229 11.5 Proton- Electron Spectrometer and Tri-Axis Flus-Ga.te Magnetometer (MSC- 2 and MSC-3) ........................ 229 11 . 6 Radiation ( D-8) ........... ... ......................... 230 11 . 7 Inflight Exerciser (M-3) . ........ .. . . .. ... ... ......... 230 11 .8 Inflight Phonocardiogram (M-4) . . ...................... 232 11 . 9 Extravehicular Activity . ... ... ...... .. .......... ...... 232 11 . 10 Miscellaneous ................. . ....................... 232 12 . 0 PRE-MISSION PLANNING 12.1 Mi ssion Plan ( Trajectory) ....... .......... ...... .. .... 234 Flight Plan ..................... ... .. .. ............... 234 12 . 2 12 . 3 Spac ecraft Changes ............. ... . . .................. 239 Mission Rule s ........... ..... ... . ....... . . . .... . ...... 240 12 . 4 12. 5 Experiments ........................................... 241 Training Activities ................. .... . . ............ 24 5 12 . 6 13. 0 MISSION CONTROL 13.1 GO/NO GO ' s ............. .. .............. .... ........... 249 PLA and CLA Updates ...................... . ............ 249 13 . 2 13. 3 Consumable s ............... ... ............... .. ........ 249 Flight Plan Changes ....................... .. .......... 250 13.4 13. 5 Systems ............................................... 254 14 .0 TRAINING 14 .1 Gemini Mission Simulator ..... . . .. ................ .. .. . 255 14. 2 14.3 14 .4 14. 5 14. 6 14. 7 14 . 8 14 . 9 14. 10 14 . 11 14 .1 2 14. 13 14. 14 LTV Simulation .................. . ...... . ........ .... .. 260 Centrifuge ...................... .. .......... . ... ...... 261 Translation and Docking Trainer ...... .. ............ ... 262 Planetarium ..................................... .. . ... 26 3 Systems Briefings ................................ .. ... 266 Flight Expe rimen ts ............ ... .............. ... .... 267 Spacec raft Sys t ems Te s t .. . ...... ... ... . . .. .... ... .. ... 273 Egress Training ........................ .. ..... : .... . .. 274 Parachute Training ................... . . ... ............ 275 Launch Simulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .............. . 276 Network Simulation . .... . ............ . . .. . . . . . . . . . ..... 277 Zero "G" Flight ........ . .......... ... . .. . .. . ... . ...... 278 Flight Plan Traini ng .................... . ............. 279 8.0 SYSTEMS OPERATION 8. 1 Platform McDivitt Actually , the first portion of any alinement is to cage the thing. The case of caging the thing is much more important than the alinement itself. In the daytime I felt that I could cage the plat­ form to a reference with an error plus or minus about 3 or 4 degrees in all axes . Did you think we could do that wel l? White Only in the daytime. McDivitt The yaw was a little problem. It took longer to get it, but if you kept after it for awhil e , I felt that you could get down to just a few degrees. White Within a couple of degrees . McDivitt The big thing is that you have to stop your yaw rates, and then sit there and look outside for awhile and see which way you're going, straight ahead or sideways . If you are going sideways you rotate around for awhil e and stop the rate and then look out a gain. Ri ght? get the thing ca ged quite well. I felt you could We. didn ' t do it BEF at all, did we? We never did cage in BEF. --, 2 White I ' m not sure. McDivitt The caging of the thing with small- end-forward in the daytime was r elative ly easy . At night I don't think it would be quite tha t simple . I think what you would have to do at night time is to point the spacecraft down at the ground pretty much so you can see the track ac ross the ground, I could see which way the land was moving under me . I felt--although I never did this --that if I could do that and then roll around to where I had no bank angl e , and fac e in my yaw directi on, either small-end or blunt-end- forward , stop t he ro l l t her e and pitch up to the horizon I could cage there withi n plus or minus 10 degrees for sure . It was much less accurate at night, I fe lt, than in the daytime . White You aren' t kidding! We both felt that on those dark nights when you really couldn ' t see anything on the ground, pure star reference for yaw was pretty rough . McDivitt Pure s tar reference for yaw was almost impossible to use. That was the only place where that thing we decided not to take with us--the view of the stars through the window--might have been of some 3 use to us. We knew the stars along our track but you couldn't see enough of them. The quickest way to get the yaw reference was to look down at the ground. Once we got the platform caged, aline­ ment was quite simple . All you had to do was just hold the needles at zero and the platform alined itself. on , Of course you had to have the scanners The modes--the SEF and the EEF wer e identically the same except the spacecraft is pointing in different directions . You tended to null the needles by using pulses and just hold the needles very close to null and the platform alined itself through the horizon scanners . Orbit Rate was a satisfactory mode, I thought. As a matter of fact, it was very good. White I liked that Orbit Rate, McDivitt Yes, because we finally had a reference where we didn't have to look out and s ee the ground . It 's like having the old altitude indicator back in an airplane . The only thing was, we had the wrong orbit rate in the spacecraft because it was s e t for an orbit rate t hat was to take care of, I think, a 60 nautical mile circular orbit. This was to take care of the short period of time between ~~ SQ -lii4Q"itsll-lM.- . 4 going to Orbit Rate at T- 5 and firing the retros at TR. We wanted to have exactly the right rate in there so when we did our closed-loop reentry we wouldn ' t have an error. As I said , I had the most accurate platform in the world with nothing to do with it . I think the displays were adequate and the controls were adequate . After t he first couple of revs I really didn ' t have any confidence at all in the platform. I had done nothing to establish any confidence in it . I really didn't get the chance to get the thing alined, and I real ly didn ' t have the view out the window to check it with. We were hurrying and scurring through there . We finally shut the thing down before I really got a chance to use it very much . When we powered it up there on the third day and we saw that thing coming around there• -and cage properly, we compared the out- the- window attitudes and that old a ttitude reference was right there. That's when I got some confidence in the platform. White This is where we lost a couple of bets . McDivitt That ' s right . platform . We lost a couple of beers on that At retrofire I had a lot of confidence in the platform , but the first two and a half to 5 three days I really didn't have anything with which to establish any confidence. It was just an unknown. White Jim did the majority of the work in this area and I think his comments reflect my opinion also . 8.2 OAMS McDivitt On the pad we did the thruster check that we wanted to. We went around one whole cycle and got nothing. We went around another whole cycle and got nothing until we got to the l ast one. We were going yaw left pitch-down, yaw right pitch-up, yaw left pitch- down, yaw right pitch­ up . When we got to that second pitch-up, I heard the thrusters fire for the first time . · White You can hear them. McDivitt That's right. It was very distinct. And then we went around and yawed left and they fired again. We -waited 20 seconds and fired a yaw left again, and they fired again . These were the bottom manifold jets. We said, "Okay, we're ready to go.", and that was the end of it. So, it -was a pretty straightforward check. The inflight checks--I got my operational checks on the OAMS systems while chasing the booster around. I had Direct, Pulse, and Rate Command in Le !~FllffiPMxMii t a J 6 there as I chased it around, and those were the only modes I intended to use right then . Later on, I checked out the Reentry Rate Command and I checked the Rate Command before we thrusted . did seem to be operating fine . It Why don ' t you go through the next part , Eli? White All right . We 're going to get into the source temperature and pressure , the regulated pressure , and the prope llant quantity . temperature first . Let ' s take the The temperature of our OAMS was 75 degrees all the way down the line . The i nit ial indications on the pressures were approxi­ mately 2800 psi for the source and 320 psi for the regulated pressure . McDivitt The quantity gage operated all right except that, as I mentioned earlier , the thing seemed to wander up and down somewhere between 2 and 4 percent , depending upon where you were in the mission . You ' d read it one time and it would be 60, and you'd read it a little while later and it would be 62, and you 'd r ead it a little while l ater and it 'd be back about 60 . The greatest variation in that thing that ever occurred was when I went to sleep one time with it reading 60 and woke up and 7 it was reading 56. Another hour or two after that it had climbed slowly back up to 60 again. I had a long time to look at it in the same position. When we ended the cha.sing-around at the end of the first hour, we were down to 70 percent indicated and we never got below 50 percent in four days. White I'll tell you, the position it seemed to stay for days and days was 59 to 60 percent. We fired in Pulse Mode for a long time with the gage at that position, and all of a sudden that one time it dropped down to about 55 percent . McDivitt But then it came back up to 60. White I guess it did , didn ' t it? The temperatures all stayed fairly constant. If I recall .right, they dropped down to around 70 degrees. It seemed to me they continually decreased throughout the flight. I noticed this particularly in the RCS, but I guess we'll get to that later. The propellart quantity though , I think we mentioned earlier , ended up on our gaging at about 3 percent at the end . We got a little bit of ground information on the 0AMS propellant. I felt a little suspicious of the gage when it kept staying there at 59 to 60 8 percent for so long. McDivitt We were pretty miserly with that OAMS fuel . We set out to save the fuel and we sure did it . White I think that in future missions , if they permit the crew to use the Puls e Mode in a saving-manner they could do a lot more with the mission--if you could use Pulse Mode instead of just free-drifting around. In other words , line yourself up so you can make some decent observations. McDivitt Shoot! We were in Horizon Scan Mode when we got the last data, and I don ' t think we used any more fue l than we were when we were in free drift. White That ' s right. We certainly got more out of the orbit than we did when we were just drifting free. McDivitt I 'll tell you one record that we ought to hold . We've looked at the earth from more different angles than anybody else in the world . maybe not . Well, I guess the Russians did , but we sure got a lot of different views of that earth as we rotated around. White I thi nk the ground information that they called up on the status of our OAMS wasn't as much as they could have called up to us, but I 'm really satis­ fied that our OAMS was staying pretty constant . 9 McDivitt So did I. The way I felt was that I knew that we had to be as miserly with the fuel as we possibly could, so we got as much out of as little fuel as possible . There wasn ' t going to be anything to change that velocity. We just went along and I really didn't care how they were plotting that fuel on the ground. I knew that we were starting to get ahead of the schedule, because I was plotting it roughly onboard the spacecraft . I could see we were ~p above the line that we needed to remain above to handle our OAMS retrofir~. White Actually , we followed the profile rather closely, We leveled off there at first, and then when we started using it , we we~c right down the profile, McDivitt We were a little below the line and we just held the same fuel level until we walked out across it and got up on top of i+ Then, we went on down above it. White I think the controls and the switches were all satisfactory. McDivitt I think so too. The attitude controller worked fine and dandy. We didn't have any trouble with it. The stick forces weren't too high. We didn't get a chance to use it in any other mode besides 10 Pulse . It seemed to wor k all right in Pulse. I don't really have any comments to make on the atti ­ tude controller . White As a matter of fact, I didn't ~se any Rate Command . McDivitt Didn't you really? White We didn't use the Rate Command . I got to use Direct a couple of times . I used Pulse a lot . Everytime you 'd go to sleep, I ' d rea lly have a bal] McDivitt I could tell that by the wiggling. White No . That was real ly great--flying that spacecraft . McDivitt That ' s right, and I think Pulse is the mode . ca.n do a lot with it . You With a little bit of planning you could get to the attitude--if you start out 5 or 6 minutes ahead of time. doing. That's what we were At 10 minutes before I was supposed to be at a certain atti tude I ' d start, and one or two little pulses and you'd--boop, boop, boop, boop-th€ bad thing was if you were in an attitude where you couldn ' t see the horizon and didn ' t know where you were. You would give it a couple of pulses and nothing would happen, and you ' d have to give it a couple of more pulses. It ' d t ake a long time sometimes before you would get to where you could see . As a matter of fact, if at 5 minutes be fore @i~FfDENTI>4ct 11 we were supposed to be at a certain attitude we weren't approaching it, I 'd start pulsing a little harder. White You'd hear a series of about five quick pulses. NcDivitt It was a very economical control mode. The ma.ne·,..;ver controller worked the way it was supposed to. White What about the deadband? Did you think the dead­ bands and breakouts were all satisfactory? McDivitt Yes, just like the one we used in the simulator. You've got a lot of slop in it when you're making gross maneuvers because you're not fixing your elbow and manipulating around tmt point. You're fixing your shoulder and your whole arm, and it's just like shoveling coal--you've got about that much finesse to it . much you can say about it. I don't think there's The controls weren't too gross and they weren't too minor. thing was adequate. The whole We did have an inflight mal­ function, or irregularity. We were in Horizon Scanner Mode one time and Fd wanted to yaw around. He started to yaw and the thing rolled. The Horizon Scanner Mode fired the roll thrusters to level it back off-- 12 White I couldn ' t get the yaw . We had a circui t breaker off. McDivitt Finally , after you did that a couple of times I looked up and saw we had knocked a circuit breaker off. That was one thing that we didn't cover in EVA that I should have mentioned . Ed was a real hazar d to the switch positions in that he was all over with his feet, arms , and hands - - . White I don't think I threw any though . on now. McDivi tt Did I? Come You ' re not guilty until you ' re convic ted . I don ' t know . You kept putting your foot on the HF Reentry Antenna Switch and stepping on it . Ha . Ha . Ha . McDivitt As for the a tt i tude control modes --I mentioned the Rate Command in OAMS seemed to be tighter than the Rate Command i n RCS , a l though t hey use the same electroni cs, the same gyros , and the i,,rhole thing . It might ha.ve just been my imagination, but I felt that the Rate Command system in RCS was a lot looser than it was in OAMS . The Reentry Rate Command operated just the way it should . It had a 4 degree dea dband , and handled the spacecra ft very well during reentry . Direct had a lot more a uthor ity than I thought it would, but it was ~IDE►~llM. pretty straightforward. 13 I think Pulse was the best mode on the spacecraft for the orbit phase . We were able to save all kinds of fuel, it worked fine, and it was just about what the doctor ordered . We didn't use the Horizon Scan Mode during about the first three days of flight, except for the second orbit when I think I \\18.S in Horizon Sca.n so that I could have the freedom to help Ed prepare for his EVA. The last day we used the Horizon Sca.n Mode, and I found it to be an excellent mode . There was only one case when it broke lock and didn ' t recover. Wasn't that it, F.d.? White You've got it in the book . McDiYitt We've got in the book and we'll check on that . The Ho~izon Scan Mode worked essentially for 24 hours without any problem ~and I think it' s an excellent control mode, economical on fuel . It seemed to be very We were doing a lot of yawing around and right at sunrise a.nd sunset it seemed to get a l ittle nervous , especially if we had the horizon scanner pointed within about plus or minus 45 degrees of the sun. seem to affect it at all. The moon didn ' t I noticed that, occa­ sionally, we would ~et some thruster blips with the sun n&Q·tslfiO EtslltAIA · :i Ob JFIDE1'4 Tf,t(ilf r 14 pointed toward the hori zon scanner although we never got an unlock light . We wouldn ' t get an unlock light , but we 'd ~et a bunch of maybe four or five thruster blips right there. White Particularly at sunrise . McDivitt It would hold . Whi te It was definitely getting some spurious signals I thought the Ho rizon Scan-- through but not enough to break it out all the way . McDivitt I thought the Horizon Scan Mode was an excel l ent attitude-hold mode. White Did you notice the water boiler venting, Jim? McDivitt Yes, I did. We kept yawing around to the left . I believe it was left. I did notice the fact that we were yawing , but not very much . We were yawing a t rates that we r e extremely low and it just took a pulse every once in a while to handle the thing. As a matter of fact, when we were chasing the booster around a lot a t the beginning, I never even noticed. It was when we were i n the Pulse Con­ trol Mode for a period of time,when we didn ' t do much thrusting in yaw, that I noticed off in yaw . we did start drifting So I did notice the water boiler venting. 15 • White I didn't think you noticed it earlier when we were working. McDivitt Well, I did notice it a little bit in that first orbit, but it wasn't distracting at all. It would just drift off a little bit and I'd whop it it would be back . and At SEX:;0 + 30, I used the trans­ lation thrusters to damp the booster-spacecraft rates . One of them was a little higher than the other, although they were both down in the order of a half of a degree/second. I did fire one thruster one time or possibly two times to damp the rate. I don't know if it was pitch or yaw . You know, you are working in spacecraft pitch and booster yaw and spacecraft yaw and booster pitch. I was getting my coordinate system transformed around in my mind, going from booster coordinate system to the spacecraft . I don't remember whether it was yaw or pitch, but I did thrust once or twice. By the way , I could hear those thrusters fire. At SEC0 + 30 I said, "Thrusting, " and I started thrusting. "Separate" , and Fd punched the SPACE.CRAFT SEPARATE. We were in Direct and I thrusted straight ahead for about 5 seconds. Then I went back into Rate Command. Separati on was 16 just smooth--we didn ' t come off with a rotational rate . White I think one of the things you mi ght commant on , Jim , is that you fired most of those thrusters during that initial time . McDivitt I ' m sure I fired the upward-firing thrust ers a number of times . That isn ' t any more difficult to control than t he other one . Actually you can fire these thrusters whether you are in Rate Command, Direct or even in Puls e . When you fire them, you get a rate and you just damp t he rate out with the a ttitude controller . When you are firing the translation thrusters , th0 things t hat you r ea lly hear are not the trans lation thrusters, but the attitude thrusters . Those translation thrusters are really tough to hear , but the a tti­ tude thrusters a re very easy to hear . understand why. I doh ' t They must be mounted differently because their location isn't that much different. I think I fired the aft-firing thrust ers a couple of times and they didn ' t make any more noise than the f orward-firing thrusters, that I could tell . The up and down and left and right ones were just as easy to fire as t he other ones . Our OAMS retro • 17 was 127 feet/second which, incidently, happened to come out exactly 2 minutes and 40 seconds. I suspect that we selected OAMS retrofire on the basis of time, rather than on the basis of t::,.V. White Very convenient , wasn't it? McDivitt Very convenient. It -was obvious there is no more difficulty in timing 2 minutes 40 seconds during our OAMS retrofire than it is during any other thing. We had no trouble with it . I was convinced that when we got through with it, that was really the proper conversion factor between t::,.V and t::,. T. We had exactly 127 feet/second, and we sure had the time nailed down. 8.3 RCS McDivitt The operational checks that we did on the RCS occurred at about TR minus an hour. When I checked the system out it seemed like I had a lot less authority and a lot sloppier Rate Command than I had in OAMS . The operational check consisted of pitching up and down , yawing left and right, rolling lef+ and right on each ring in Rate Command and Direct. Direct worked as I expected it to. In Rate Coremand, however, as I pitched up and down I noticed that my top left yaw thrus ter was doing 18 a lot of firing , too. I started out checking the Rate Command , so I thought I might possibly have one bad pitch thruster that was causing a rolling moment that was bei ng counteracted by the yaw-roll jets. When I did it in Direct, however , it wasn' t doing that . It wasn't rolling either , so I felt that it must just be a very tight deadband that was trying to hold us in there . checks were all right . So , the operational The only thing we had to monitor on the system was the temperature and the pressure of the propellant . It seemed to hold pretty well . White I have some comments on that. I kept a running log of them as we went along . The tempera ture started out at 75 degrees and 3000 pounds . It held that way pretty well until about the 65th hour , when the temperature gradually went down. The temperature decreased to a point where we started getting the RCS heater lights that we noted earlier. We got about eight series of RCS heater lights . It took about 5 minutes to extinguish the light . It was t he A-ring,then the B- ring, and then the A-ring. I t s eemed to alternate each time back and forth and it came on for about 15 to 20 minute periods of 19 time . It started right after a night cycle . It seemed rather natural to me that there wasn't really something wrong, but that we actually had a cold RCS thing out there and it did need some heat . After heat was applied it did appear to go away. I decided to go ahead and set up a slow roll rate in the daytime, and I kept that roll rate in for several orbits. Whether this actually helped to get the light off or not, I don 't know. We didn't get anymore lights after this time . I think there ought to be one other comment on the RCS , and that is the temperatures and the pressures stayed up pretty well except when we actuated the system. The pressures then went down further than we had expected them to go . 2400 to 2500 p~i. They went down to This was a little lower than I expected to see. McDivitt I think the pressures in the RCS A and B dropped by about 100 pounds throughout the four-day period. They were slightly over 3000 pounds and they got down to slightly under 3000. White The lowest temperatures I noted were in the neigh­ borhood of about 63 to 64 degrees. out at 75 degrees. They started 20 McDivitt Let me ask you a question? White Yes. McDivitt When you turned on the RCS heaters , did you turn on the heater s on both r ings , or did you turn on the RCS Heater Swi tch and then turn off the cir cui t breaker on the ot her ring? White I turned the heaters on and then I checked to see which ring it was that was ac tually heat ing up by using the circuit breakers . The first time I went ahead and left them on and then the other ring came on . I fel t that one of them was about as cold as the other, so I left the heaters on both rings throughout the heating cycles . McDivitt Good. White They were in perfect sequence--A and B, A and B, and about 15 minutes apart . surprising. The regulari ty was The temperatures at the time when these lights came on were indicating about 63 or 64 degrees and it seemed like it would come up a little bit, and then come right back down and pop back on again. I felt it was not an actual temperature problem . McDiv.itt I used Rate Command, Reentry Rate Command and Pulse c ontrol modes. I didn ' t use Direct . They a ll '-OtslF-tD-E~.l lA:L:;;. 21 operated as I thought they should. I've already mentioned I thought Rate Command was a little sloppier in RCS than it was in OAMS . It certainly did a fine job of holding the retro attitude during retrofire. Retrofire attitude control was excellent. We didn ' t deviate more than about a degree from the attitude we were supposed to hold, and I had plenty of authority there . From my standpoint it couldn ' t have been any better. happy about it. I was really I used the Reentry Rate Command with roll rate gyro off, so that I had essentially Direct in roll and Reentry Rate Command in pitch and yaw axes. It had the typical 4 degree deadband that it was supposed to have. as it was supposed to. it should. It did do rate damping It performed just the way Fd, you want to cover that heater-lights thing again? I think you've already got that thing pretty much in detail. White I have the precise times at which the lights came on. It started at about the 64th or 65th elapsed time hour . came on . At 06:47, the first light, in the A-ring, At 08:23 the A- ring light came on again . That was the last time . During that period of time the A and the B-rings cycled on and off inter- MWfiO,ftSl;QAJ• 22 mittently . McDivi t t During descent , we turned the power off to see if t he drogue chute was unstable . It wasn ' t . We turned the power back on and the propellant valves of f and burned up a l l of t he fuel i n the manif olds . We had no fumes after impact . 8.4 Environment a l Control ~ystem McDivi tt I thought the suit mobility was as good in the s pacecraft as it is anywhere else . sui ts a re pretty good suits . I think these I didn' t f i nd any trouble with them whatsoever i~ the spacecraft that I wasn ' t a lready awar e of . up good . The pressure held I did a pressure check on the suit . It bled down about 0. 2 or 0 . 3 psi in about 30 s econds , which real l y wasn ' t too bad . a lways good. The temperature was It ran between about 50 and 55 degr e es diring the entire flight except when we I don ' t think it ever got up really worked hard . over 60 . Do you , Ed? White No. McDivitt We had reasonably good temperature contro l . Whit e The ca bin temperature got up pretty high one time and then it came back down . McDivitt Yes , on about the first orbit . _ _ w , f _ . . , ..... I ' 23 White That's r ght . It got up to about 90. McDivitt 100, it was. We turned the cabin heat exchanger on for just a short time and it went right back on down to 80 degrees. White It stayed in the area of 82 to 83 degrees the whole flight. McDivitt The humidity in the suit must have been pretty dry because rrry foot dried out. I didn't take any wet­ bulb readings inside the suit. zero all the time. The CO stayed at 2 It never did go up except when we'd go to o High Rate, when it would bound off 2 the top peg and fall back down again. The comfort The o 2 demand regulator seemed to work all right . My and suit controls were pretty reasonable. umbilicals were short. lousy. My fingertip lights were Before _launch I only had one that worked. On rrry right-hand glove one of the bulbs obviously didn't work. One of them did work. On rrry left­ hand glove the switch on the batteries would only turn the lights on if it was in one exact position, vh.ich wasn't full throw in either direction. So I found out I had only one fingertip light that worked. However, during the flight I didn't use my' fingertip lights except one time when I used · 24 them for a flashlight. I had my gl oves off and I reached over and got my gloves and turned the fingertip lights on and shined the gloves on some­ thing . I didn't use them a lot . I do want to comment on one thing , though , since we ' re talking about the suits here . I launched without the plug that goes in the blood pressure port in the suit . I don ' t feel we should launch these things with no plug to plug up the blood pressure port in the suit , especially when we ' re going EVA . that was a mistake . I think The only pressure points I had in the suit were in the helmet . Those were just above my ears where I tended to move my head back and forth within the helmet. I finally rubbed up a ll the hair so that it was going in the wrong direction . When you press against hair for a long time in the wrong direction it becomes very uncom­ forta ble. At about the end of 2 3/4 days I took my helmet off for a couple of hours, and it felt a lot better. The only problem is that when you have your helmet off there is no place to stow it. We had the foot wells full of gear , so when I had the he lmet off I just let it float around on my lap , and over in Ed' s l ap . There wasn ' t any place to 25 put it. The micro-meteroid blanket that I had strapped under my right leg wasn't a detriment. As a matter of fact since we had no place to stow it , I just left it strapped to my leg until reentry. Then, I felt that if we had to get out in the water I didn't want to have any straps hanging off me that I didn't need. So, I took it off and threw it on the floor a long with Ed's sleeves . I don't have anymore comments on my suit . White I wore the ENA suit . I think the mobility of the suit was about what I had expected. Actually, I think the mobility in some respects was a little better, and in some respects it was a little less than I had expected. I wasn't able to get into the right-hand aft food box as well as I had thought I was going to be able to in zero g. In fact, the position that I had figured out to use, which was leaning forward and reaching in backwards with my left arm , didn ' t work out well at all. I had to actually turn around 90 degrees in the seat and reach in with my right arm. This worked out all right. I was able to get hold of things in the box. The surprise that I got though , was that I could get into the right- hand aft refuse box much 26 easier than I had thought I ' d ever be able to . It turned out t ra t I was able to get into that box ea sier while in orbit, by far, t han-McDivitt It ' s a rubber covered box. White It's a rubber covered box on the right hand side . I think that box does have the capability of s tow­ ing refuse in it and stowi ng some things prior to l aunch in it , too . White Did you try that box during flight , Jim? McDivitt Yes , I did. I didn ' t find it easy to get into . I thought the things we had stowed in it wer e real good things--items that we didn ' t need at all in flight and possibly might not need-White I used all four defecation bags side . that I h~d on my I used them up during flight . In fact , you used one of them . McDivitt That ' s right , we did have a bag of those defe ca­ tion bags out . It just happened to be over on my side where you could get to it. White You were asleep. I had to get them or wake you up . I pres sure- checked rey suit . I checked it at 8 . 5 and it bled down several tenths of a psi . I was satisfied with the pr es sure-holding of rey suit . 27 There was one thing though with the suit that I wasn't too happy with. in the suit. I was hot all the time It got so that after a while I got used to the normal temperature as being warm. I could incr ease the temperature , which seemed rather strange to both Jim and me, by putting out zey gloves and closing zey faceplate . to sleep. I could go At that time zey temperature would go up considerably inside the suit . It seemed like I coul d stay in there only an hour or an hour and 15 minutes and rest before I had to either open up the faceplate or do something else. So, the temperature got uncomfortably warm in about an hour or an hour and fifteen minutes with the face­ plate closed, the sleeves on and the gloves on . The humidity in the suit, I thought , was quite dry. I had quite a tendency for zey lips to crack and nzy- nose to get very dry . In fact, I noticed zey nose was itching considerably. This was an indicator to me every time I would go to sleep. I would wake up with zey nose itching and feeling quite hot and uncomfortable. }zy- lips got to the point where I thought they were going to crack, 28 and I was trying to be very careful and keep them from cracking and getting anymore uncomfortabl e than they were . Jim mentioned the CO sensors 2 stayed on zero, which I was happy to see . I think one thing that I was fairly happy about was that the suit , as bulky as it was , wasn ' t depres­ singly uncomfortable. I felt that I did have a pretty heavy suit on most of the time , and I was a little bit constrained in my mobility. The i dea to have the detachable sleeves that I could take off after the EVA work was , I felt, a very good decision. I felt much more comfortable , and I had a much higher degree of mobility around with my arms in the spacecraft. It was not as tiring to move around as it had been when I was inside the heavy sleeves . to take them off. So , I was quite happy We took them off, I believe, shortly after my first sleep. I slept with t hem on the first time, and then we took them off . think they were quite easy to take off. I As a matter of fact, I think if you went EVA at a later time you could take those sleeves onboard , and if they were made just a little aasier to slip on and off over the wrist, you could take @e 14 rte Et<4,t,\ t 29 them on and off in flight if you wanted to. McDivitt I don ' t know. I'd hesitate to recommend putting them on in flight . It might get pretty tricky. I think if you put them on in flight , you'd want to put them over all the harness, rather than i.mder the harness. White That ' s exactly what I was going to sey. I think if you took the life preservers off , you could actually make the sleeves big enough so that you could slip them on and velcro them across the back over the harness. This might be for the type of operation of throwing equipment in and out . I think in the future , though , a suit as heavy as this might not be required. The controls and the switches in the suit , I felt , were satis­ factory. There wasn ' t anything that I couldn ' t get at in the spacecraft . It was easier under weightless conditions for me to operate certain controls. In fact, I think I was able to get down and unscrew the bellows in the gun hose as well and maybe a little easier than you could, Jim . there . At least initially, I was able to get down Of course you weren ' t really particularly trying to do it at that time. @8 ~ •••i-EM-liaJ.;; 30 McDivitt I suspect I probably could have gotten down there as easy or easier than you if I had really gotten around to trying. White I don ' t remember , but , anyhow, I was surprised with the ease which I had in getting down . McDivitt We were trying to dump the pressure in the bellow before we went EVA with it . White Right . The demand regulator was satisfactory. Ivzy­ umbilical,I thought,was very easy to use and disconnect . I was quite happy to have the micro­ dot in there. One comment on the micro-dot--the first time we exercised the micro- dots on our suit , they were pretty hard to operate . Mine got progressively easier to use each time I used it . The fingertip lights that I had were better than Jim ' s . I ha:l lights with Lexan tops on them . All my lights worked, and r felt that their operation was quite satisfactory. We had decided to put my lights between the first and second joints for several reasons . We thought the EVA gloves would be easier to don and there'd be less tendency to break them. I think, though, the position of the lights was still a little too far forward if it was intended to put them back between 31 the first and second joints, because the lights were resting right on top of my first joint . I think if I had worn my gloves anymore, I would have gotten a very sore first knuckle . If you are going to move them back, I think they should definitely be moved back behind the first knuckle. McDivitt Where were they getting you, .fili? White Right on the top of the knuckle . McDivitt You think they ought to be back? White If they are going to be anywhere, they ought to be back here, and I'm not too sure that is necessary. In fact, I think the best place is behind the fingertip and in front of the first joint . McDivitt But, with the pl astic covers over the gloves. White With the plastic cover on the glove , and I think we've got the right position for the lights . I don't think they should be back behind the first knuckle . I think they should be in front of that first knuckle and behind the fingertip, good place for them . them in the past. That's a That's where we've been using I think thf' Le::mn cover on the light bulb is a darn good idea , McDivitt Yes, I think so.,. too . Shoot! I checked my lights before launch and found out that I already had one 32 of them out on my right hand. I wasn ' t too happy about it . White I was a li ttle disappointed. I think the only discrepancy I found in my suit was that I had no blood pressure plug either. A point that I was pretty happy with was that I had no pressure points from my suit at all on my body . I had one set of pressure points from my helmet pressing down on the front forward part of my head. was . I lmew why this I 'd had Joe Schmitt adjust my cables so that I could pull my helmet down to a maximum amount for the EVA work. I felt that I just bought this discomfort by having my cables adjusted in this manner. It was pretty uncomfortable though . I checked out the use of the emergency bottles on the EVA equipment and they worked as they were supposed to . I was able to regulate the flow. Incidently , before I went out the reading on the EVA bottles was full-scale, 3400 pounds . I was happy to see that . with the suit . Al l in all, I was quite happy I think it was a very well designed suit and it met the requirements that were levied upon it . It was a heavy suit and a big suit to wear for four days, but I felt the auit wasn ' t as € ~~f-~ L 33 bad as I had expected it was going to be. I have one more comment. the inner liner. I'd like to comment on We decided to go with the inner liner. in and I felt this was a good decision . The inside of the suit was comfortable , and I didn ' t get any pressure points . I think one reason why neither Jim nor I got any particular pressure points from the suit was that we had worn these suits a heck of a lot of time . hours on my flight suit. hours Jim had on his. I had over 50 I don't know how many 34 McDivitt Actually Ed had just finished talking about his inner liner . I 1 d like to comment about the inner liner too . I thought about it when he was talking about his . I think that was one of the reall y wi se decisions •- to go with that inner l iner . I felt that it offered a lot more comfort than wearing that rubber suit up against my body, or up against my underwear . I sort of felt that I was really quite comfortable in this suit . I didn ' t find my mobility limited by my inner l iner at all , and I had made sure that it fit . I think that has a l ot to do with it. White I worked the suit once for about a four-'hour period with just the rubber ins i de . I did no- tice it sticking to me, and I didn ' t feel as com­ fortable . After I got inside the suit with pres­ sure on my body , the suit felt pretty darn good. I had the knees cut out of my suits . are still too short . The knees Having been in it for four days , I know the dimensions are wrong . The di­ mension from my knee down to my foot is not long enough . I t ' s not just the inner line~ but the f¥18~4AL 1 ·~ 35 link net in itself just isn't long enough. McDivitt You wouldn ' t say you had a pressure point though? White No, it was just a constant pull on there all the time. McDivitt Did it bother you very much during the flight? White Yes, it bothered me a little bit . McDivit-'- So you really did have sort of a pressure point then? Yes, to some extent in that area . I had had that one so much before. It had been so extreme in some cases that it really didn't bother me too much . White Both of us should mention something about the visors . McDivitt I thought you ought to mention something about your visor problem, your EVA visor or the other one. White Well, I have briefed the visor on the EVA pretty well. The one that I will mention now is the visor that I had on my regular helmet . I thought that the vision through it was quite good . I noticed no distortion at all through it, but I did immediately put a couple big scratches on it in the beginning when I was unstowing equipment . I continued to scratch it throughout the mission. When I finished , the visor was considerably scratched up as you would pr obably notice if you looked at my suit . I don ' t know what there is to do about this other than to accept a scratchy visor . McDivitt If you ' ve got the visors down in front of your face, you don ' t tend to scratch it up as much . I think it was really worn out because you started opening up your visor and leaving it up over your head a lot earlier than I did. At about the two and a half or three day mark , I looked at your visor and it was really a mess . I took the helmet off and cleaned the visor because it was dirty on the inside and the outside . I looked at my visor and had very few marks on it . I had a few l ittle scratches , but very minor . Then I started putting my vi sor up more and mor e because t hey wanted us to stay open . Because I ' m a lot taller than you are, I really started beat­ i ng mine up . In the last day, I think I caught up with you and maybe even surpassed you in the 37 amount of marks on it . I'll say another thing . I'm sure glad we didn ' t go in for those Lexan visors that they wanted us to fly with, cause the distortion woul d have driven me batty in about the first six hours . White I think you must insist on perfect l y optically clear visors . McDivitt That ' s right . You 've got to have good optics . White I took my helmet off about three times , and I didn ' t leave it off very long. McDivitt I took mine off about two times . I took it off one time for an hour because my hair right above my ears was really bothering me . I didn ' t bother getting a light- weight headset out , and when any­ body called me , I had the thing sitting in my l ap and I could hear it . I took one of the • ~ . ~ and pulled it back and I hollered into the mike, Ha , ha. ! 1 till I could hear it . my hel met off . I s~id , "I ' ve got Unless you 've got something im­ portant to tell me , don't bother me ." .Ha , ~a! And he said, "Okay . " It was one of those passes , you know , where you only talk to one guy for about an hour . Then I took it off one other time for about a half hour to rub my ears . s€0►~ ~t8l!lttfif1Aif:r: I was quite J comfortable with my helmet on for two days. White Do you want to know something that ' s kind of strange? I was more comfortable with my helmet on than off. I n fact, I kind of got used to those pressure points on the top of my head with the helmet on . When I took the helmet off and moved my head around , I felt a little dizzy from not having these restraints. I didn ' t feel as comfort able as I did with my helmet on. The times I had my helmet off were when I was running D-9. I ran the D-9 Experiment several times with my helmet off so I'd have better use of my sextant . I took it off one other time near the end when they indicated they would like to have everything off . I didn ' t feel particularly comforta­ ble with my helmet off any more. I got so us ed to having that thing on that I put it on so I could talk better with the stations . They were calling me from time to time , and I thought it would be a little better. Before I forget, I think the portable headset is really a lousy design . McDivitt I concur. I think it ought to be thrown out . - 39 White I've seen the ones they've got in the MCC and they're good plain old headsets. I don't see any reason why we can't get one that stays on your head and stays in your ear . You put this thing on and it pops off about two minutes later . It's not built to stay on my size head and I noticed it didn't stay on Jim's very well eit~er . I think the portable headset idea is a good idea, but we ought to have a good headset for it . Okay. As we mentioned earlier the cabi n pressure relieved at about 5. 5 and held that way during launch . It went back down to 4.9 or 4.8 and this is where it stayed for the re­ mainder of the mission. I think that they prob­ ably overshot their zeal to correct the cabin pressure that John and Gus had had on GT-3 and put ours down so that it was actually relieving lower and sealing lower than it would have been desirable. I was expecting it to seal up around 5.5 or 5.7 like it was advertised. McDivitt I checked my suit gage against the cabin pres­ sure g-age and my suit €8,ge read higher than: the cabin pressure gage by about .3 of a pound. 40 White Yes, mine was right on it though . McDivitt I know . You checked your suit gage against the cabin pressure and yours read just about on it, didn ' t it? Was it a tenth of a pound higher or was it right on it? White Right on . McDivitt Okay . So mine was reading a little higher, indicating to me that possibly the cabin pres­ sure was higher . But since Ed's read with it, I don ' t know where we were . White Well, the pr essure at which it relieved at went right into the problem of the temperature- pres ­ sure relief in the cryogenic oxygen system so t hat those two problems kind of lashed together . The venting in the o system was set at around 2 970 . McDivitt 967, I think the poop sheet said. White Well , it was about 967 or 970 . We had the pos­ sibility of losing oxygen in a steady manner out of the spacecraft if we let the pressure rise up above- -well , the ground felt 960 , and I concurred with that figure . So throughout the flight we had to keep venting our o system 2 41 down so the pressure woul d remai n down below 960 . They initially told us to vent it to keep it at 930 to 960 . Then they told us to vent it on down to about 890. From then on, we vented it down in the neighborhood of between 890 and 93, depending upon who was asleep and who wasn't asleep . It sure seemed to be an unsatisfactory solution to two problems--one of the cabin hold­ ing at a higher pressure than they wanted it to on GT- 3 and also the problem of the o system 2 venting outside of the pressure gage . In the oxygen system I think the solution to putting the venting down at 967 was a poor solution to the problem of having a poorly designed ga ge . I think the gage was agai n poorly designed and it should be designed to read about 1200 pounds. Rel ief should be up in that area . McDivitt I f they really went ahead and jacked down the relief pressure, to get it on the gage, I think that is one heck of an approach to an engineer­ ing problem. White I think that ' s a gross thing to do and if they did that deliberatel y, I thi nk they deserve a 42 very black star for that one. McDivitt They need their heads examined t White I guess we beat that one around pretty well, didn 't we? McDivitt Yes~ The way that we were venting the cabin was by going to o High Rate and venting the 2 oxygen out through the cabin vent or going to cabin repress and using up the oxygen through the cabin and through the cabin vent valve that way. White I was quite satisfied with the cabin temperature . It started out and got pretty hot at one time early in the flight and went up to 100 as you noted,and then it went back down into the 80 's. I think it actually dropped into the 70's a time or two. McDivitt That ' s right. It was in the 70's most of the time . White Right. McDivitt Let's get the data book , The dry bulb tempera­ ture was 80; 80, the first time we tood it. Then it was 79, 79, 79. Then it was 75, 75, 75, and then they stayed between 75 and 77,I OQ\il I i ~ L think, .the rest of the flight . down as low as 72 . No, here it is So it got down to around 72 late in the flight, and here we are with a whole bunch of 70's to 73's and a couple of 76 1 s. So I guess that 75 was the average temperature throughout the whole flight. White I think our cabin temperature gage was reflect­ ing a little higher temperature than these. McDivitt No, let's see . White It went down to 74 at one time, I remember. McDivitt Yes, I think 75 was a good average cabin temp­ It was down around 75. erature for the whole flight. White I thought this was a pretty satisfactory cabin temperature. down. The suit temperatures were also They stayed down from about 52 to 54 most of the· flight. I thought that was a pretty satisfactory temperature there. I believe that there was a difference in suit temperatures be­ tween Jim and me because I was continually hollering about being hot. I think that temp­ erature-wise Jim was relatively comfortable . McDivitt I was vecy comfortable, and as a matter of fact, when I went to sleep, I tended to get just a 44 little bit cool , especially if I had urinated all over myself. White I don ' t remember one time during the flight during which I was cool in the suit . I think I was hot most of the time in the suit . used to i t after a while. I got The only time that it was not satisfactory, as far as I was con­ cerned, was when I was trying to sleep. The humidity data that we got doesn't go along with what everybody was expecting. McDivitt No, not by a l ong shot . White No, not at all . Our l i tt le gage seemed like it was working properly. We didn ' t have any visible moisture at any time at any pl ace in the spacecraft . It seemed to be indicating down around 62 to 63 percent relative humidity which was a big surprise to myself. With this type of data , I began going open faceplate and open gloves fairly early in the flight, about a day or a day and a half, and continued in this manner just about throughout the flight . We used the wrist dams quite a bit of the time . But I had my faceplate open with my wrist dams ' CiO t ◄ F10E._ffd +b on a great deal of time also. I think you had your faceplate closed a little more than I did . There at the end we were both going to an open-faceplate and open- gloves all the way . ' McDivitt Yes, we were especially going open-faceplate at the end just to see if we could jack up the humidity. I actually preferred to have my faceplate closed, as opposed to having it open. I went ahead and left it open trying to get the humidity up . We never really did get it up over 60 perc ent. That seemed to be where it was going to stay. White We were happy to see that the CO sensor 2 gage stayed down low the whole flight . It would pop up any time we turned the o High · 2 Rate on and go up to a pretty high reading, and then settle back down to zero. I didn't notice any particular discomfort versus day versus night . McDivitt No, as a matter of fact, I didn't either. We took some temperature readings on the cabin window frame and they varied by about 6 or 8 , 10 degrees at the very most . White Yes, I don ' t think there was any discomfort associated with the day-night cycle. We didn't use the cabin fan as we planned during the flight. We did neglect to turn it on initially during the preparation for retro. We noticed that we weren ' t cooling off in the cabin as much as we would have liked to . So, we turned the fan on and immediately the temperature dropped down about 10 degrees,if I remember right . McDivitt Yes , that cabin heat exchanger and that cabin fan really do the job. White It really cooled it off. McDivitt Early in the flight when we got the tempera­ ture up to 100, we turned the fan on and the temperature went down to below 80 in about 20 minutes, or so. White It really did the trick . The cabin pressure relief valve was venting just a hair abouve 5.4. very many times. We checked this out Every time we filled the cabin up with o High Rate, it vented,or if 2 we used the repress l•ever the cabin would vent . ., '3@>rNfff) EttlIM:· McDivitt 47 Here we had an environmental control system that was supposed to protect us . We found out that the darn thing was overpressurizing. f The first couple of times, to keep the ECS o 2 bottle from venting, we vented the cabin it­ self . I found myself sitting in there vent­ ing this thing with my gloves off and my face plate open. It began to dawn on me that the pressure went down inside the cabin at a tre­ mendous rate. If this thing ever stuck open and I had my gloves off and my faceplate open, I would be a dead man . So we made it a proce­ dure to suit up when we were going to dump this thing . This meant that every four hours we had to put our gloves on and put our face­ plates down and lock them and get all suited up just in case this vent valve didn ' t reseat. Frankly, as much of an inconvenience as it turned out to be, I think that was a wise maneuver. I would never suggest that anyone vent that cabin again without being fully suit­ ed. I thi nk there is such a risk involved that you would be fool- hearty to do it . For GO~ ifli itl..l,tct 0 48 that reason I think that we ought to make an effort to get the ECS o tank vent and the 2 ECS o tank pressure gage compatible and at 2 a l ot higher pressure than they are. This suiting up and unsuiting every four hours is for the birds. White I thoroughly agree with you, Jim. There are two things I want to know. I want to know if they deliberately lowered the venting pressure for the o system down to 967 to solve the 2 problem on GT-3. I would also like to know if they deliberately lowered the cabin venting down to 5.4 . I'd like to know the answer to those two questions. I think the combination of those two situations make what I feel is an unsatisfactory situation in our flight. It occupied far more time-McDivitt That's right, we were screwing around with that ECS o . 2 touched. That's something we never had It was a eage that we should have monitored, instead of a thing that we manipu­ lated all the time. White Right, Okay, the cabin pressure regulator. ' 49 I didn't have any comment on that. McDivitt Neither did I. It seemed to be doing a good job . White I felt the cabin vent valve was set lower than I had thought it was going to be . I thought it was supposed to be set up around 5.7. I'd like to know if it was cha.l'lged in­ tentionally. McDivitt The manual vent valve worked fine. When we wanted to vent the cabin, it vented. White The cabin repressurization valve worked fine . I was very happy to see how well it worked also with my chest pack. McDivitt No, I don ' t think so . Any comment on that? I don't think the cabin repressurized or overpressurized when we were trying to vent it. Since you were repres­ surizing it and venting it at the same time, I think the vent valve actually overcame the repressurization,which is a good thing if you're trying to vent it, and it is not a good thing if you're trying to keep it from venting. Going back a little farther to my other state­ ment, in case that vent valve sticks open 50 and you are not suited,I don't think you're goi ng to have time to get suited . I t takes me too long to put those gloves on. White Okay, the cabin air inlet valve worked fine . We vented the cabin with it when we went EVA. It apparently worked all right when we used it down on the water. I rave no further com­ ment on that. McDivitt Neither do I. It seemed to work fine . White The cabin air recirculation valve worked as it was supposed to . McDivitt As advertised . White Okay , that primary o system gets another 2 black star. I think this is the area that I want to know the answer to , for sure . I want to know whether that was deliberately set down into the range of the gage complaint on Gemini 3. to solve the I think that if this was the case, this is a prime example of poor engineering. As far as monitoring the system though, as long as their reading was down be­ low 960 the system worked pretty well. I felt fairly confident that the pressure wae- 51 McDivitt That ' s right . The way that the thing was set up , we could sure monitor it because we knew it was going to vent without being on the gage . I think they compromised the whole system so we could monitor it . White As a matter of fact, we monitored it very thoroughly and spent about 100 times as much time on t his SJs t em as we should have . John Young ' s been complaining about this point, and I think that it ' s a very poor thing . They ought to dig up the money and put a gage in there that will do the job . point . Very strong The quantity measuring system,I thought, was all right. McDivitt I thought it was pretty good . I thought it was excellent as a matter of fact . very readable gage ,. It was a It had tremendous scal e on it, but, shoot, you could read the thing to a percent . I don't know why it was a:ny more readable than the other ones, but I thought it was pretty good. White The flow rates--I don't have a:ny particular comment on that . I thought the flow rate on N4sl-f.1Dfl~T1Aw 52 .. that repress valve into my suit was satisfactory to keep me in a pressurized state and keep me venti lated enough under normal operations . Under tough operations though, the flow rate's too low and you really heat up. McDivitt Yes, I think since it was an open loop system, you had to keep from dumping all the oxygen overboard, and had to go high enough to keep it from dying from the heat. I think it was a compromise system. White I thought it was well set up, plaints there . I have no com­ Primary o temperature--I didn't 2 have any comment on that. McDivitt No, neither did I. White The manual heater--I think that you used the manual heater twice during EVA . McDivitt Twice during EVA for about five to six minutes each time . It responded all right , but it didn't go overboard, It got the temperature right back up there, and I shut the thing off again. I\!0 ~~FIDE~iilA L 53 • White We were able to turn the automatic part of it off quite early in the flight , particularly since this was the problem we were having . We were getting-- McDivitt That was something I wondered about . You know , the t hing is marked , and we were always instructed that when the thing got down below 38 percent more . we didn ' t need the heaters any We shut the heaters off at 42 percent . White Right . McDivitt 0bviously,the guy that told us to shut the heaters off at 40 percent knew what he was talking about because we never needed them again . White I think, again , I am very suspicious of McDonnell on the fix on that gage, and on setting that pressure on 970 , and I'm going to get to the bottom of it . McDivitt Yes , but I think, though,that the pressure would have still built up even if we had the relief set at 1050 or so. It would have still built up . White It might have built up and stabili zed, • 54 because it ' s a cryogenic system and it could have stabilized out around 1000 or 1050. McDivitt But on the other hand it could have continued to build right on up . White Su.re it could . McDivitt But I sort of suspect that the--well, I don't know. It's different from this other problem where we were told that the thing didn't require heaters below 38 percent , and we found out that it really didn ' t require 'them below 42 percent . White We turned them off at 42 percent . McDivitt Right . White The secondary o system--I thought those performed 2 admirably. In_fact, they had more oxygen in them than I thought they could hold. Jim ' s was up to around 5500 pounds shortly after launch . It re­ mained up there and drizzled out about 100 pounds throughout the flight . 1'1cDivitt Actually they increased by 100 psi each right after launch . White Right at the first mode of flight . Then they drizzled back down and stayed at 5400, I think, right on down through the flight . The lowest 55 mine got was about 5250 maybe . McDivitt Did you notice by chance what they were at land­ ing? White No, I didn ' t check them . McDivitt Neither did I. White That was the last thing I had on my mind , to tell the truth. fine . I thought the quantity measuring was It was a little questionable, that we might have overpressurized on your system, but I guess they had plenty of margin in that respect . The secondary o flow rates were satisf actory as far 2 as I was concerned. I was amazed that secondary o flow 2 was such that I really didn ' t get too hot in i t . McDivitt I think so . White Yes, I was not as uncomfortable as I had been at other times. McDivitt You know, after awhile· you hit yourself in the head so long that it finally stops hurting. White It ' s like that big heavy suit, after awhile you begin to feel good . I know the average guy on the street probably wouldn't like the flow rate, but it didn't seem to be too bad. objectionable . It wasn ' t too 56 White I think we jumped into something else . We were in secondary o system and we weren ' t on flow 2 rate. The only time we had the flow rate on that was during reentry. isfactory . The flow rate there was sat­ The pressure obviously was satisfac­ tory, but we didn't check it at the end . The control--r.de put an extra detent on that control. I think the control was a positive one and we were able to keep it in the detents where we wanted it . McDivitt I had no p~oblem there. Right, I think that the way it's rigged up now is excellent. We designed it . It had better be, ha., ha! White Right . Okay, the CO 2 partial pressure. The gage has been discussed prior to this time.It stayed down satisfactorily. McDivitt Yes, it never got off zero. White Okay, the coolant- the radiator operation configuration--I don't have the times in front of me right now that we went onto the radiator, but I think it was about 40 minutes. McDivitt 40 minutes. White We went on the radiator about 40 minutes and we never had to come off it again . We didn ' t get any abnormal operation of the radiator at any time . One time they called up to me and mentioned some­ thing about the radiator and the coolant loop and I didn ' t get any clarification . I lost contact at that time , and I thought just maybe that I had a failure of some type in my primary cooling system . So just for caution sake I turned on the secondary coolant pump and waited till I got con­ tact with them again. They asked me why I had the secondary pump on , and I said , "I thought maybe I had a problem in the primary system ." They asked me why I thought that and I said , "I thought they were telling me something about it when I lost contact with them . I did it just to be sure ." But that was the only time that I thought we even might have had a problem in it , and I turned it off . We used double coolant loop early in the mission,and after we turned the secondary system off we did not use it a.gain until the teentry . Prior to the reentry , we turned it on . McDivitt That's right . White Okay , here is one at which we'll get at them-- That coolant system real ly worked. 58 the water management system. I think you have a few thousand words you'd like to say about launch. I think you actually already hit on most of them, anyhow . McDivitt Man, I sure do. Flush Mode . The l'brmal mode , Drink Mode, and We got the water management thing kind of goofed up. thing first. Let's just take the drinking The drinking nozzle was attached to the management panel by a hose and the hose looked like it was made out of rotten rubber . The first time I tried to drink out of it , I stuck the thing into my mouth-White The first bad moment of the f l ight . McDivitt --I pushed the button in and no water came out , ~d I almost had a heart attack. I said to Ed , "Ed, this is going to be the shortest four day flight in history. " Ha, ha! White Jim said, "Guess what? · The water doesn ' t work." McDivitt Ha, j{.a ! But you ' d already had a drink out of it , though , hadn ' t you? White No , I hadn ' t . McDivitt Oh , hadn ' t you? White You handed it to me. eeJmrDEMffM McDivitt 59 Oh, so I handed it over to him and then he took a drink out of it and didn ' t have any problem at all . What happened was the hose was wound in the helix . It came out to the gun in a straight line . When I drank out of it on my side this thing always crimped like it was an old rotten piece of rubber that had been bent over in that position many times before. It looked like something that came out of a 1890 steamboat or something, instead of a-White It looks like your old oxygen mask hose. McDivitt That's right. mask hose . It looks like my old rotten oxygen So I think that we ought to get at least a decent piece of hose in there. The next thing is the water gun that you drink from. You push the button in and a little spigot would come out and the wat er would start running out of it . This worked great. You could always get the wa­ ter to come out when you didn 't have your hose bent. It got worse and worse and worse and worse and worse . As far as returning it towards the end of the flight , I almost drowned a couple of times because I ' d get that thing out and I couldn't @ONFl0Et'4Tl=At 60 get it back in. I finally ended up actually using two hands to operate the water gun so that I could get the button back out. White The button definitely did get more friction in it as the flight progressed. McDivitt It seemed like it was all scored up and it kept getting worse and worse and worse as the flight went on. too. This could have been a major disaster If we had that gun squirting water inside the spacecraft , you'd have had water all over the place. I'll be the first to say that we made a real effort to keep the water out of the space­ craft. We wanted to get four days out of the flight. I felt one of the major probierns would be the humidity in the spacecraft . out, it wasn't a problem. As it turned We didn't know it right off the bat and we were really concerned about the water. The last thing I wanted to do was to have an open water nozzle running into the spacecraft . So I think that takes care of that . I think the whole water management panel ought to be clarified before we fly GT-5. We were arguing about what position the waste .Mmagement Switch was going to be in during the countdown to launch. w@f'f Fto•Ef'IT trA L I think this i d 61 certainly not the time to be deciding what the heck the position these switches were going to be in. We were always briefed that this thing would be in OFF. We were going through the switch positions and they'd ask me to check in the count at. about T-45 minutes or so. White And I couldn ' t see that one . McDivitt You couldn ' t see that one and you asked me to look down at it . I saw the thing was in EVAPORATOR, so I question the STC. He checked around and they had a big flap about what position it was supposed to be in. Pretty soon we got a call back and he said if I could get unstrapped and reach the thing, I ought to turn it over to OVERBOARD. • We thought it should have been in OFF. They had it in EVAPOR­ ATOR so we finally decided we ought to go to OVER­ BOARD to keep the thing venting. strapped in the spacecraft . I was already I undid my shoulder harness and reached around in the spacecraft and flipped a little valve over to OVERBOARD where it should be and then got strapped. White You sure they didn ' t have you put it OFF? McDivitt No, we went to OVERBOARD . 62 White I remember they argued. I thought they had it on EVAPORATOR firs t. McDivitt It went from EVAPORATOR-- White That seems like the least likely of any position to put it in . McDivitt That ' s right. OVERBOARD. We went from EVAPORATOR over to So I think a comment that I ' d like to make right now about the whole water management panel is that it's a simple thing. It's got three !mobs and each !mob ' s only got three or four positions . We had the ECS engineers at McDonnell give us a briefing on this simple water management panel. We had about seven guys there with seven different versions of how it was de­ signed, how it operated, and what the different positions we were supposed to be in. They got us so screwed up that when we left ther e we didn ' t have any idea in the world whatit was supposed to do. White I think those designers didn ' t either. McDivitt They didn ' t either and it was pretty obvious that they didn ' t . We went through a lot of discussion with that water management panel. Finally I think that the four of us got it pretty well squared away. Then just before launch we found out down at the Cape that because they had gotten those switches in the wrong position we pumped 32 pounds of water out of the adapter , used up all the pressurant for the water system, and pumped all the water into the lithium hydroxide canj.,3ter. If it hadn't been for one last minute check in the data, we would have lost the lithium hydrox­ ide canister full of water and nothing to drink with. So we would have had about an hour flight, if we had gone that long. I think that before we fly another flight we ought to have all the people at McDonnell and NASA, who are · respons-ible for this thing get it squared away and figure out just where the heck they want these switch posi­ tions.and get them there. If there are a lot of switch positions on that panel that aren't useful anymore, we should just go ahead and block them off. We decided between the four of us that there were--I don't even know what they call those switches-White Condensate Valve and Water Valve. .. McDivitt --and the Water Valve should be put in NORMAL NORMAL.and left there. That was ~xa.ctly what we did and we knew how to work the waste management valve. We didn't screw it up, but I ' m not sure that if with a little trying, we couldn't have . We never had to use the Evaporator Fill Mode . The Flush Mode,or the waste ·management portion of the thing,had a couple of different positions . In the normal OVERBOARD position and in using the Preheat and Flush switch over on the side , we managed to dump a large number of urine dumps through this. We dumped both our launch- day urine bags which were full. I probably urinated eight or ten times and you probably about five or six t i mes. White About five times . McDivitt About five times . through this thing. ing . So we had a lot of dumps At 92 hours it stopped work­ Ed had filled up the bellows pretty well just before this. I was the man in charge of dumping urines, it seemed like . White The Urine Dumper!!! McDivitt I was the only one who could reach the knobs and swit ches . It ~ nerally went down in spurts. ~8-M f'IDt=P,.ff IrA L 65 About haliwny through the dump , it started slowing down . Then it just went in very slowly the last two or three inches . Then I urinated in the thing and had a bellows full of a mixture of air and urine . It started dumping . It looked like it went down about halfway and then it stopped . I wouldn't be a bit surprised if it wasn't the air going out of it. It w.ent very slowly for ju.st a short time and then it stopped completely . Nothing else would go out of it . S~ I turned off the Flush Switch and I went from OVERBOARD to EVAPORATOR,and it flushed through the evaporator . We had one more urine dump through the evaporator and this worked all right . Well, I ' m sure glad that we had those two ways of work­ ing it . All the way through the flight after I ' d dumped the urine through this thing, I kept say­ 1 ing :w-ell , McDonnell finally designed this thing so it works after about 30 or 40 attempts and redesigns :' But I guess I was over-optimistic be­ cause it did drop out just before the flight . It finally got to work for 88 hours . use the E~aporator Film Mode . We didn't Okay, Ed, why don't 66 you take over. White I extended my wrath . I just had a feeling you wanted to say something about that, Jim. McDivitt ~, ha! After having messed around with that thing for 96 hours trying to make it work . White I think you expressed my feeling too . McDivitt Did I leave anything out? Whit e No , no . I had the same feelings . I thought you might have had them a little stronger since you were the one who discovered the water gun was not working. McDivitt I ' m really serious about that simple panel being able to screw up the whole flight. If we don ' t get that thing figured out we ought to stop fly­ ing space missions . Whi te One of the worst moments of the prelaunch down there was when I found out they had that two gallons of water in the system somewhere and didn ' t know where it was. McDivitt That's right . White The humidity sensor--I thought if the readings are right, it worked very well and pr oved the point that the humidity in the spacecraft is 67 relatively low•, and that the water problem is not quite the problem we had it cracked up to be . I ' ll make a comment on the sponge material on the s ide of the spacecraft at this point ,since we ' re talking about humidity . I didn ' t think the sponge material was a very good idea to begin with but once it was in there and we flew with it, I think it was-McDivitt It was a real bad mistake! Ha, h9. ! White No, I thought it was all right in there . The only thing wrong with it was what they had it treated with for fire - proofing. it was unpardonable . I thought that part of There is no excuse whatso­ ever for having those ammonia vapors and the hy­ drogen sulfate ~or whatever those other things were that we had permeating around the spacecraft. McDivitt We smelled bad enough, but it was no contest when it came to comparing ourselves with the spacecraft . It smelled worse . White If there was any moisture it grabbed it all. I don't really think there was any moisture for it to grab . McDivitt I don 1 t think so either, Ed. I kept feeling that r1ecr, 68 thing and it was dry as could be . White There was no moisture that I could notice . 'lhe sponge stuff on the side wasn ' t objectionable to me but the odor that obviously came from it was very , very objectionable . The readings we obtained I thought, were easy to take. age of the unit was not a problem. The stow­ It was easily stowed in the spacecraft while we were using it . 8 , 5 Communicati ons White Okay, I have a few comments on the communications which we ought to go on to . We ' ll take them in sequence . McDivitt Okay, why don ' t you go along I'll express my com­ ments . White I think the interphones worked pretty wel l . I noticed one thing, though, as we progressed along. lf'he volume requirement on both my side and on Jim ' s side needed to be increased all the time to get - McDivitt No , Ed . White Is that right? I launched with all my volumes full up . Anyhow in my interphone , I pro­ gressively raised it as the f l ight went on . McDivitt Yes , I started off with mine almost all the way up . On the UHF it was absolutel y all the way up , C04 4~t!li 1t6 L 69 and I flew with it almost the whole flight . White I don't think it was all the way up. The one thing though --I think the interphone operation and quality were quite good . McDivitt Yes, I thought so too . White We were ready to communicate back and forth. It was just the way I would liked to have done it . I thought it was very good. The UH performance at the countdown was satisfactory and just after we got into orbit we felt that we had a bit of a communication loss. We switched to UHF No. 2. Later during the flight we used both UHF sets and didn't have any difference in performance from either one . During the recovery you were using the UHF primarily. I think you had as much com­ munication as you could expect. McDivitt That ' s right. I think so too. I do think, though , that we had a very bad UHF situation in the first eight or nine orbits. It was really lousy. As a matter of fact, I was getting concerned that maybe we were going to have to land because we were going to run out of communications . White You were actually working more on this problem b 70 than I was. You were communicating during the FNA work and also after I went to sleep. I heard you working on the Communications Check and that's when you went to the reentry antenna. McDivitt That's right, when we ran through these checks, it finally became apparent to everyone that the reentry antenna was doing a better job than the adapter .a ntenna. And then later on, I switched back to the a dapter antenna for some reason which I can't remember right now. We ran a couple of more checks and it seemed to be-White I know what we did. We ran an HF check , Jim, and we switched back to the a~apter so we could use the HF antenna back there . We got just as good U1IF transmissions at this time as we did on the r.eentry a.ntenna . McDivitt When they checked them out again, they said they still thought the stub antenna was better. So, we went back to :reentry antenna . White We used r .eentry just about 95 percent of the flight. McDivitt That's right. In the last 55 orbits it was great. In the first eight it was lousy. I was really 71 concerned about having to come down because we didn't have any radios . White One thing that I'd like to say is, I would give a good gold star to the controllers down there. I thought their voice procedures were excellent and their methods for giving us information were all good . I had no comment , whatsoever, other than I thought it was all very good . McJ)ivitt That's right. White I had no objection . I thought there was no time in the flight in which we got a cluttered voice from anybody . Yes, I think that is pretty good when you have that many people working the loop. McDivitt I think so too . White Okay, the voice tape recorder- -let me vent my wrath on this one. McDivitt Get ' em Ed, get 'em! White Right . This is another thing that should be fixed before the next flight. I think we're going to end up being very, very sorry. We're going to end up losing valuable data from time to time . This will be due to no reason other than a voice tape recorder which is poO'r on all accounts. EiOt •rt"Ef ◄ lt/.L: 72 McDivitt We ' ve already lost some very va l uable data from this flight. We could have taped t he entire EVA and brought those communications back down. As it was, we couldn ' t tape them becaus e we had to put the thing in UHF so that we c oul d transmit to the ground . We los t all of t he bless ed stuff going to the ground anyway . White There are certain systems in here that I think are very poorly designed . I think t his is about the poorest of them all . It ' s l ocated in such a position that you can not see the opeation light when it is on. The light is in an area where you normally would put things . on top of it so Things get put that if you look down there, you can't see the light . The light is such a small insignificant thing when it comes on. Unless you conscious l y bend your head down and l ook down below your right elbow, you can not see whet her the light is on or not. The switch is set so t hat you have to go in either RECORD , Ul!F , HF, or INTERCOM and you can not be in RECORD while you're on UHF or INTERCOM. This is a very unsatisfa c t ory method of having a tape recorder. The tape r e corder 73 should be set up so that it can record conversa­ tions on normal UHF , HF , and INTERCOM type opera­ tions . As Jim pointed out , in our flight alone I think we l ost sets of valuab l e information. During launch we weren ' t able to tape anything onboard . EVA . We weren't able to tape the work during We could have taped some of the work duri ng t he rendezvous part of the flight , lieve we taped i t though . I don ' t be­ The w~y it's set up you wouldn't l eave i t on i n t hat manner . We both had requirements to communicate over UHF . was our normal mode of operation . This If we have a tape recorder , it shoul d have a separate switch . If t here is an hour limitation on the tape, there should be a light that oomes on and is easily visi­ ble on the front somewhere. MoDivitt That's right . It ought to go right on the VCC . White That's right . That ' s really where the light be­ longs . I think that it woul d be desirable and important to have a voice t ape of what ' s going on throughout the flight . I wouldn't have any ob­ jection to having a tape recorder with the capa­ bility of recording more than the one hour at a CO t 4fl"Et tTI.Q:t 74 time that we have now. I'd like to see us record­ ing a great deal of the flight . It'd be nice to have a switch to turn it off from time to time if you did want to discuss something that you didn ' t want to go on tape . McDivitt I don't think we ought to put the whole flight on tape . If we flew a week-long flight, it would take a week to go through the tape. You wouldn't want long periods of nothing on there . I think the way we wanted to operate it this time would have been all right, if we could have just opera­ ted it that way. There were certain periods where we put a tape on and ra.n it all the way through. Well, that was the tape that covered a certain experiment or something. White On our D-9 Experiment, we used it. McDivitt Yes , that's where we used a whole tape on it . Then there were periods that were questionable when you were s l eeping and I wasn I t doing anything, or I was sleeping and you weren't doing anything . White If you carried adequate tapes, and you had adequate warning when the thi ng went on and off, you would not have the same situation we had on the D-9 75 Experiment . You could have the tape stop in the middle of the experiment and be lying on your back looking out with the sextant. You haven't got any idea in the world the tape's run out on you . McDivitt Right. White I think that it's a ve-ry, vezy unsatisfactory sys­ tem . It ranks right up along with the top ones, and we ' ve already hit on some of them already. The digital command system I · thought worked very well. I thought the light in there gave U$ a good indication of several things. It gave us an indication of when the station was about to come on and communicate with us. We used this as a clue to turn on our UHF to warm our transmitter up so we would be ready when the transmission came up. I think updates from the ground came up in a ve-ry orderly fashion. I don't have any objec­ tion about that or any further comments . Do you? McDivitt Ed, I thought it was very good. White Handled in a very good manner. McDivitt I think so. White The only update that I have an objection to is <i8MftDl! 76 t hat they updated our t ime reference system and had it inaccurately updated by a second . McDivitt Yes, I think there is a big fla p about that . White I 'd like to find out about that , too . The r eal time-transmitter , delayed- time transmitter, stand­ by transmitter-- they seemed like they all worked pretty well . We had no use for the standby transmit t er and we used the rea l - time and delayed­ time transmitter throughout t he flight . You don ' t have any comments on this, do you? McDivitt I 've got one comment . When we came over Guaymas after our computer went out , and we ' d already fouled the thing up , I know , they said they wanted us to come right- side-up for a critical tape dump . So I did , and I got a message from the ground say­ i ng , "Put your Tape Playback to CONTINUOUS ." So I put the Tape Playback Switch to CONTINUOUS . Pretty soon they called up and said , "Do you have your TM switch to REAL-TI ME and DELAYED-TIME?" I said, "No, I don't have. to put it down there." You 're going to have They didn ' t bother telling me that t hey didn ' t have any command capability whatsoever . I went ahead and put the Tape Play­ back to CONTINUOUS , which means that you 're dumping 77 all that tape. If you don ' t have the ~eal- time­ delayed-time transmitters on, you're just dumping it into noth!e!lg. You're erasing. So we got some pretty inadequate communications there. should have said, capability. They "We don 't have any command Will you please place your tape recorder and your TM switches so we can receive it?" We knew how to work the thing. It ' s just that the instructions we got conflicted with the normal procedures. Consequently we dumped all this tape that really was critical. I'm not sure how much of it they got on the ground. I'm not even sure if they ever got any of it on the ground • . because we got some not only inadequate but really erroneous instructions. White Okay, communications---we covered them in coordin­ ation with the ground a little earlier. I think that the flight controllers handled our flight in a very good manner. I think that when they had something to say, they said it , and when they knew that we wanted to talk to them, they'd talk to us. When they didn't have something to say, it was kept in a good manner. I thought it was a very profes- 78 McDivitt Yes, I thought that they were to be commended . As a matter of fact, when we have our world-wide network debriefing or whatever the heck we ' re going to have I really intend to applaud them loud and long . White I thought the teamwork between the spacecraft and the communicators on the ground was outstand­ ing. McDivitt It was really good . White No adverse comment on anytime during the f l ight . McDivitt Shoot, if you wanted to talk to them they were more than happy to talk to you . A lot of times they ' d come on and say, "This is Gu.aymas . have your TM solid . you . We We don't h