Gemini 7 Technical Debriefing 1965

I Authority: NW 91526 \ GEMINI TECHNICAL VII DEBRIEFING December 23, 1965 NOTICE: This document may be exempt from public disclosure under the Freedom of lnfor• 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 Directive 1382.2. PREFACE This preliminary transcript was made from voice tape recordings of the Gemini 7 flight crew debriefing conducted December 19 through December 21 , 1965 at the Crew Quarters, Cape Kennedy, Florida. Although all the material contained in this transcript has been rough edited, the urgent need for the preliminary t ranscript by mission analysis personnel precluded a final edit prior to its publication. - - - - - - - - - -- - - -- - - -- TABLE OF CONTENTS Paragraph 1.0 Page Number COUNTDOWN 1.1 Crew Insertion . ...................... ............. . 1 1.2 Comm:un.ications . .......•.•.. .......•...........•..• . 1 l.3 Crew Participation in Countdown ....................l l.4 Comfort . .................. .......................• . 1 l.5 Environmental Control System...............•..•.... 2 l.6 Sounds . ..•...•••.••..•.••• •••..•••••••••••••••••••• 2 l.7 Vibrations ........................ ................. 2 1.8 Visual . .................... ........................ 2 l.9 Crew Station Controls and Displays ................. 3 2.0 POWERED FLIGHT 2.1 Lift-Off cues·••·••••••••••••••••• •••••••••••••••••3 2.2 Roll Program . .................. .................... 4 2.3 Pitch Program. . .........•............. .............. 4 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 Aerod.y"namics • ••••••••••••.•.• •••••••••••••• •••• •••• 5 Environmental Control System ....... .•...........••. 5 Maximum q . ........................... .............. 5 Windsheaz- ......•......•.....••......• •....•...••.•• 6 2.8 DCS Upd.ates • •••.•.••..•......••.. ••.•••.•••••••. • •• 6 2.9 :Engine 1 Operation . . . ........... ................... 6 2.10 :Engine 2 Status . ..................... ...... ..... ... 7 2.11 Acceleration g's••••••••••••••• ••••••••••••••••••••7 2.12POG0 .......•........•...•.. •.....•...••.•...•.•..•. 7 2.13 Guidance Initiation............. ... .. .............. 7 2 .14 BECO • •.•.•••..••...•..•...........•...••..•. •...••. 8 2 .15 Stagi.ng' . ..... . .......... . ,. ... o • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 8 2 . 16 E]ngin.e 2 Ignition . ................ ................. 9 e 2.17 RGS Initiate.•••••••••••••••••• ••••••••• •••••• •••• • 9 2.18 GO/NO GO e1 • •• • • •• •• • • •• • •••••••••••• • • ••••••••••••••9 2.19 Systems Status•••••••••••••••• •••••••••••••••••••••9 2.20 Acceleration o• •••••••••••••••••••••• ••••••••••••••lO 2.21 Fairing Jettison •••• • •• • ~••••·•••••••••••• ••• •• ·••10 INSERTION 3.1 Post-SEC0 ...............•.... ..................... 10 3.2 SECO plus 30 seconds ....•..•.. ••.................• 11 14.0 TRAINI NG 14.1 Gemini Missi on Simulator ...........•••••••185 14. 2 DCPS (Launch abort simulat or) ....•.••••••• 191 14. 3 MAC Engineering Simulator ........••.••.••• 191 Translation and Docking Tr ainer ...•.•••••• 192 14.4 14 . 5 Planet ari um. . ........................••••• •193 14. 6 Systems Brief inga ...............•.•••••••• 194 14 . 7 Flight Experiments .............••.•••••••• 198 14.8 Spacecra f t syst ems tests .......••.•••••••• 202 Egress t r aining....................••.•••• 204 14.9 14.10 Parachute Tr a ining..•.........•...•.•••••• 205 14.11 Launch simulationa .................••••••• 206 14.12 Reentry simulations ..........•........•••. 206 14.13 Simul ated net work simulations ...•..••••••• 206 14.14 Ne t work s imula tions .............•..••••••• 206 14.15 Fl ight Plan t r a i ning...............••.••.• 207 15.0 CONCLUDING COMMENTS ...•....••........•........... 208 LANDING AND RECOVERY 7.1 Impact . ........... ... . ...••.•. •. •.•••••• • • • • • • • • • 54 7.4 Systems Configuration.•••••··••••••••••••••••••••58 7.2 Checklists . ....... ....................... • • • • • • • • 55 7.3 Communicatione ..••......•••••••••.••.•.••••.•.••• 55 7.5 Spacecraft Status.••••••••••••••••••• ••••••••••••59 7.6 Postlanding Activity..............•.............. 62 7.7 Comi•ort . ...•............•..••••• •.•.••.••••...••• 63 7.e Recovery Force Personnel ..•.....•...•..•.......... 63 7.9 F.g"ress • .••.•. • •••••••••• ••••••••••••••••••••••••• 63 7.10 S1.lrVival Gear . ..•............•....... .........•.. 63 7.11 Crew Pick UP••••••••••••••••••• ••••••••••••••••••64 8.0 SYSTEMS OPERATION 8.1 Plat form ...... . •....... .......................... 64 8.2 O.AMS • .• ••••••••••••••••••••• ••••••••••••••••••••• 65 0.3 RCS . ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• • • ••• • • • • ••• • • 73 e.4 0.5 ECS . ..........•.••..•..... ..•................ • ... 75 0.0 Crew Station ...•.............•..•.. ..•..........101 Commun.ications . .............................. ....91 8.6 Electrical . ..................................... . 95 0.7 Onboard Computer..•.........•••••••.....•••...• .• 99 0.9 Biomedical ....•••••••...•.••.••.••.•• .••.•....•. 115 OPERATIONAL CHECKS 9.1 9.2 Apollo Landmark Investigation •••.•..•.•.....•... 122 Cabin Lighting Survey.••• •••• •••••••••••••••••••130 9.3 HF' Test .•• •••• ••.••.•••• •• •••·••••••••.•••••• •.. 130 1O.O VISUAL SIGHTINGS 10.1 10 .2 10.3 10.4 Cou.ntdo"Wll • •••• •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• • 131 Powered Flight••••• ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••l31 Orbital Flight.••• •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••132 Reentry . ...•••.•.•..•..• ••...•..•..•.......... . 138 - - Insertion Act ivities ............................15 Post Station Keeping...........•................17 ORBI TAL FLIGHT . ..............••.•................... . 18 5.0 RETROFIRE 5.1 TR-2: 00 Power Up and Alignment Checklists ....... 32 5. 2 TR-26 Events ............•.....•..••..•.......•.. 33 5.3 TR-5 GMT Stop Clock.........•................... 34 5.4 TR- 256 .................... • • • • •. • • •. • •. • .. •. • • • .34 5. 5 TR- 1 . •• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •• • .34 5. 6 TR-0. • • ••• • • •. • • •• •. • • •• • • • • •• •. • • •••• • • • • • •• • • • 35 5. 7 Retropack Jettison .............................. 40 5.8 Commwiicatione .................................. 41 5.9 Upda ting........................................ 41 5.10 Post Retro Jettison Checklist ................... 42 6.0 REENTRY 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 Reentry Parameters Update ....................... 42 6.8 Comm'W'l.icationa ••.•.•••••.••..••••••••••...•.•... 49 400 K . ••••••.•••.••••••••••• • • • • • • • • • • • •••••••• • 43 Acceleration Profile ...•..•...•.................47 Spacecraft Control .••.....•.....................47 100 K . ....••.•.•....•..•............•... ~ ....... 48 50 K . ...••..............••...•••................48 35 K Checklist .••.•..•..•..•.•..••..•.•......... 49 6.9 26 K Checklist •• •••••·••••••••••••••••••••••••••49 6.10 10.6 K Barostat .................•.....•......... 50 6.11 Main Check Deployment •...............•.......... 51 6.12 Post Main Checklist ............................. 51 6.13 Single Point Release •...•••.••.•..•...••••...... 51 6.14 2 K Checklist .•........•........................ 52 6 .15 LBlldiilg . ..........•...•......................... 52 6.16 Postlanding Checklist ..•..•....••....•....•..•.• 52 6.17 Blood Pressure Measurement ..•.•...•..•........••53 11.0 EXPERIMENTS 11.1 Celestial, Space, and Terrestrial Radiometry 11.2 11.3 11.4 11.5 (D-4/D-7)•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••140 Star Occulation Measurement (D-5) •...•.....•146 Simple Navigation (D-9) .....................148 Visual Acuity and Astronaut Visibility and Vision Test (M-9 ) .......................154 Synoptic terrain (S-5) and weather (s-6) photograph.y••••..••.••.•••....••••.•••••••••158 11.6 Proton Electron Spectrometer and Tri-Axis Flux-Gate Magnetometer (MSC-2 and MSC-3) ...•160 11.7 Optical communications (MSC-4 ) ..............161 11.8 Landmark Contrast ..•....•........•..........165 11.9 Cardiovascular reflex conditioning (M-1 ) ....166 11.10 In-flight exercises (M-3) ...................167 11.11 In-flight phonocardiogram (M-4) and In-flight sleep analysis (M-8) ..............167 11.12 Bioassay body fluids (M-5) and calcium balance study (M-7) .................168 11.13 Miscellaneous ......•.......................•172 12.0 PREMISSION PLANNING 12.l Mission Plan (trajectory) ...........•.......175 12.2 Flight Plan.••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••175 12.3 Spacecraft Changes •..•...................... 176 12.4 Mission Rules ............. .. ......•. .. ......177 12,5 Experiments ••.•..•••••.•...•......•...•....•177 13 .0 MISSION CONTROL 13.1 GO/NO GO' s ••••••••.••.••.•••••.•••....••...•179 13,2 13 . 3 13.4 13. 5 13.6 PLA and CLA updat es•••••••••••••••••••••••••l79 Consuma.bles .............•.•...•..........••.180 Flight Plan changes.••••••••••••••••••••••••181 Systems . ....................•.............. . 182 Experiments real-time updatea ...•......••.••184 .. f .... 1.0 COUNTDOWN 1.1 Crew Insertion I thought it went ve~y well. Borman I have no comment. Lovell Likewise, no comment on crew insertion. quite a. bit done. Borman I think we got It was very orderly. Timing was good and it was done properly. 1.2 Communications I had no troubl e at al l. Borman Communications were good. Lovell I had no trouble with communications in the cockpit or the spacecraft, but the communications in the va.n from the suiting area t o the other area a.re rather poor. Maybe we should try to get that improved sometime. 1.3 Crew Participation in Countdown Borman Again, I think they have been used on 4 or 5 l aunches, and I thought they were fine. Lovell Right. Countdown procedure and crew participation is just what you expect now. 1.4 Comfort Borma.n Comfort was fine. No problems? Lovell No problems for comfort , but I was surprised when I got in the cockP i t, because there was a lot more there than there was when I got in it for the stowage review. turned out for t he best. No problems. But, it a ll 2 1.5 ECS Borman ECS worked fine. We had no trouble with ECS at all during prelaunch or launch. Lovell That is true. The purge was a lot slower and it was just perfect for the final countdown. It was too fast for the SIM Flight, which we went through, a.nd I got an ee.:r block­ age. For the countdown, it was ju.st r ight. Very slow. 1.6 Sounds Borman We had been well briefed on a ll the soundsz the gimbaling, pre- valve, a.nd erector. As a matter of fact, when the erec­ tor started down there was no sound. We had been told that probably there might be a clanking or something. I hes.rd nothing. Lovell All I saw was the sky. 1.7 Vibrations I had no problems. Borm8ll Vibrations. No comment. Lovell Is this liftoff vibrations? Borman No, this is countdown. Vibrations of the spacecraft during coun tdown. Lovell No, nothing we had not heard before. 1 .8 Visual Lovell The windows were perfeot. Borman No fogging. We had no fogging. --- . Lovell 3 The windows were heated previousl y as a result of 51 s pro­ bl ems, and our windows, I t hought , were perfectly clean. Didn 1 t you? Borm8J'l Right. 1.9 Crew Stati on Control s a.nd Displays Lovel l No comment . Exactly how we had pl anned it for months. Borma.n Exactl y t he way that we had seen it, and no probl ems. 2 .0 POWERED FLIGHT 2.1 Liftoff Cues Borman Stoney came in loud e.nd c l ea.r, counting the countdown. Lovell Cs.me in loud and c l ear. :Borman We lmew exactly when i t was, and I for one had absolutely no question in my mind when we lifted off. It felt like I had been t ied back, a.nd someone cut the string a.nd there was a slow but definite acceleration at lift-off. Lovell I thought you could just about put 01P COMM, V1bration, and noise together, because the motion, vibrati on , and noise all contributed to a definite knowledge that you were going somepl ace. Borman In other words, what you are saying is that you had no pro­ blems determining lift-off. Lovell No, it went. Borma.n Okay vibration wa.s nominal during l ift-off. Again, perhaps 4 it is because we were so well briefed on the simulations we have run, but I had no problems. Lovell There was a little more noise than I expected, but a little less vibration. Borman Jim said there was a little more noise than he expected. Even so,, it was not oppressive, or a problem at all. Visual. I did not have any visual cues. ments. Lovell 1What about you, Jim. I was watching the instru­ Did you pick up any? I had the clouds, end there was a visual cue. Just normal cloud cues . Borman Cockpit displays were good. The fuel pressure and oxidizer pressure were nominal the whole flight. Just perfect. 2.2 Roll Program Borman The roll program, was so short it was almost like a spike• We hardly even noticed the roll program. Lovell I did not notice it at all. Did you Jim? I heard you call it out, but I did not notice it. Borman I called it out , but we only rolled,I think,about 2 or 3°. 2.3 Pitch Program Borman The pitch program started just as in the simulator, which is very accurate on this. It looked exactly the same on the ball, and there wae no problem. Lovell The pitch program for the RGS followed exactly what the IGS ' -~ ..... -- -... , . 5 was giving for the entire l aunch. matched perfectly--nulled. The needles were just I did not see any unusual attitudes that some of the other people commented on. 2.4 Aerodynamic Borman Age.in, we had had this described to us ma.ny times, and it seemed to follow right along. In the maximum q region we got some vibration and noise, but after we got through maximum q it was just like going supersonic in a fighter. You just slip through, and from then on it was just l ike riding on a train. Lovell I don't think it was bad either. 2.5 :ms Lovell Pressure went up to 5.5 in the initial stoppage, and it slowly leaked down to 5.1, and stayed there. Borman I was cool during lift-off. Lovell I was too. Borman Comfortable. table. Comfortable. I mean cool in the sense that it means comfor­ Of course we can not very well comment on the cabin atmosphere because we were sealed. 2. 6 Maximum q Borman We ha.ve already discussed this. There was some noise build up and some vibration, but nothing to worry at all about or even discuss . 6 2.7 Wind shear Borman Wind s hear. I did not notice any. Lovell I did not notice a:ny wind shear either. Borman You could not see any on you attitude gauges either, could you? Lovell No, that is what I mean. Borman The a tti tude gauges stayed pegged. Lovell They stayed nulled throughout the entire flight. Right? I was a.ma.zed a t the accuracy with which the RGS was following the IGS program. 2.8 DCS Updates Lovell Ca.me through on schedule . Borman No problem? Lovell No trouble. Borman Have any trouble punching the light ? Lovell After the second upda.te, about 2:23 ,the g 1 s are too ~igh to let you punch off the l ight. So , you have to wai t for staging, and t hen punch the l ight. 2.9 Engine 1 Operation Borman Engine 1 opera tion, I thought, was norma.l. But I did noti ce a s l ight hint of a POGO a.round a.bout, I would esti mate, two minutes. The slightest, faintest hint. even noticed it. I do not think J im 7 Lovell I did not notice any POGO. 2,10 Engine 2 Status Borman It seemed to me that from about 3 minutes and 30 seconds to a.round 4 minutes, the noise and the feel was a little bit different than it was a.fter that, as if it was vibrating & little bit more. type thing, But this was sort of, a.gain, a sensing The inatrwnents were all nominal, a.nd it may have just been me, I certainly ca.n not complain about the operation, 2.11 Acceleration g's Borman J.ny- problems, Jim? Lovell No problems. They were pretty nominal, weren I t they? I could not see the g meter. Borma.n They were right on the money. ha.ve are all And, of course, the g's we experienced in the centri.fuge , and so on. One thing, when the g's dropped a t staging and at SECO I had no sensation of tumbling and no sensation of disorientation. Nothing at all. 2.12 POGO Borman I 've mentioned that I detected a slight hint of one tha.t was so smal l we cannot even really discuss it. 2.13 Guidance Initiation Lovell We had a guidance initiation. It was in the form of booster 8 yaw deflecting downward, more so than booster pitch deflec­ ting. Booster pitch deflected sl i ght ly t o the right, indi­ cating, at guidance initiation, a booster-high trajectory. But, they both came right back to null just after guidance initiation, and that was it. Borman We did not have the feeling that we were lofted, and then a sudden pitch down. Lovell No , th9re was no change of booster performance at all. It was just t hat the needles deflected a t guidance initiation to say that we had gui dance initiation, and after that they nulled and stayed that W83' from there on. 2.14 BECO Borman At BECO, the whole spacecraft was engulfed in a red flame . I noticed that out of the corner of my eyes. Jim, you probably had a better view than I did. Lovell Yes . Flames came up thP. side there to the window . Borman There was a definite, very brief instant of it, probably in the order of milliseconds , but it did envelope the space­ craft and I, in my own mind, wonder if this is not the place where we are picking up some of the smudge on t he window. 2.15 Lovell Stagins- Well, I did not notice any smudge at the time of staging. Slayton You did not notice any? Lovell I did not notice any . fast. Of course, things were going pret ty I did notice it after we got into o=bit, but not at 9 that particul ar time. 2.16 Engine 2 Ignition Eorma.n Again, it is so well simulated that-­ Lovell It is very smooth. :Borman It is ve:ry smooth, a.nd away you go. 2.17 RGS Initiate :Borman We l l, we have talked about that. Lovell Yes, that is what I was talking about back p.!'eviously. 2.18 GO/NO GO :Borman GO/NO GO. Houston, on the ground, came through great. We got a GO/NO GO before the 30 seconds we were waiting £or spacecraft separate. So, we knew we were in good shape before we ever had the possibility we would have to burn. Of course, we also had the IVI's onboa.rd and they are very good also. 2.19 Systems Status Borman The systems were all great. flight. No problem, during powered We got two delt a Plights. Lovell Oh, yes, that is right. :Borman We are talking about spacecraft systems. We got delta P light on BECO in the first stage that went off at staging, then came back on during second stage flight, and then the 10 :::action 2 delta Plight did not go out a.nd it was ••• Lovell No, J:ection 1 went on and out again during the £light. It went out a t, I think it went out at SECO. Borman That is right. Lovell But 'Section 2 came on and we saw that one £or the next 14 days. 2.20 Acceleration Borman Acceleration during stage 2 was right on the money, right on the program. I I read of£, I half g a maximum. think i t was about six a.nd a We read this off after SECO. 2.21 Fairing Jettison Borman Fairing Jettison, I did not even hear it. I was concentra­ ting on the horizon , trying to get set for turning around. Jim j ettisoned the fairing and punched the Spacecraft SEP. I did not see a.nything or hear a.nything. Lovell I saw debris and heard it and had a definite knowledge that a squib had gone off. There had been an explosion. 3.0 INSERTION 3.1 Post SECO Borman Maneuver controller was easy to reach. there was no problem. I had it out, and It came out and was ready to go. Attitudes and rates, there were none. The thing was as solid a.a a rock as far as I could determine. I was watching 11 the horizon, and the attitude remained constant a.nd the rates were so minimal you could not even pick them up. I noticed no transients, we experienced no·•·•••••~•• as far as I know that was discernible. Lovell Did you try to damp out the .. Borman There was nothing to damp out. Lovell Okay. :Borman In fact, I did not use the thrusters at all for that. It just sat there. 3.2 SECO pl us 30 seconds Lovell I have the IVI readings on a. ca.rd. Do you have those- cards that we took off? :Borman Yes. Lovell I am sorry. We did not get forward-aft, left-right, u.p or down because they were so quick, and I was trying to get the camera. But it was 17 1n the fore and a.ft wmdow, 13 in the left-right, and up and down was 20. Borman What do you mean. you did not get them? They a.re there. Lovell No, I did not know a.ft or forwa.rd, or left or right, or up or down. :Borman Oh, I see. Lovell I just saw th&t they were so small tha.t I just wrote down the numbers as a ... 12 Borman 17, 30, and 20. There might have been a 13, 17, a.nd 20... Lovell About what the numbers ca.me up with. Borman Spacecraft separation. We separated with minimum delay be­ tween thrusting and Spacecraft SEP. craft separation. Jim actuated the space­ I did not hear the thrusters firing. I could not hear them; and I did not even helU' spacecraft separation, but -Lovell I heard Spacecraft SEP, but I o·o uld not hear the thrusters firing. But you told me you were firing the thrusters-Borman I ea.id th.rusting a.nd SEIP Spacecraft a.nd we did it and away we went. I thrusted for about 2 seconds. Almost immedi­ ately, as soon as we had £inished thrusting, I started a yaw right 180°, and the rates were right around, I think a.round --Of course, you should be able to pick this up off telemetry, but I would estimate they were 3° to 4° per second turning around. As soon as I ha.d the booster in sight, I thrueted be.ck 5 seconds. This is the way we tried in silllulations, The simulations in St. Louis were excell ent. Lovell Turned out that was the best technique to use, 2 seconds for the 2 seconds forward a.nd a 5 second return. Borman We turned around a.nd there it was, bigger than the devil! Lovell At that distance there was no problem staying in there. Borman Now, I did have some problem because the booster was bending 13 so rapidl y. It wa.s tremendous. It looked like one of the autogenous lines ha.d been cut. I guess it was cut with a pyro, a.nd it was really bending and this was causing it to translate as well as rotate. And in order to stay with it, I was having to use quite a bit of fuel; certainly a nominal task. trol modes switchings. although it was I also went through severa l con­ I sta:rted out in PULSE and I could not get around fast enough, so I went to DIRECT a.nd then slowed it up in RA.TE COMMAND. Slowed up the direct rate I was using with RATE COMMAND, a.nd left it in RATE COMMAND without using the h&nd controller for a while. went to l'LATFOBM. to Finally When I went to PLA.'f.E'OHM~ we had been off one side of the booster. ~ . L went to PLATFORM, · it yawed me back around, and I lost sight of the booster . .SO we went out of PLATFORM· and flew t he rest of it in PULSE Mo~e using the reticle on the horizon for stabilization and using the maneuver controller for thrust. onboard tape,incidentally. This is all on The air to ground communications, throughout the f light were superior. Lovell I was really a.mazed a.t the communications, especially the primary station. Borman The UHF was outstanding. We have already discussed GO/NO GO. They came through loud and clear before we ever SEP spacecraft. We had no need for 14 a velocity correction. Lovell As a matter of fact, right now would be a good time to men­ tion that address 72 read -- Borman Nominal was 25 804 and address 72 read 25 804. Lovell Can you imagine that? Right t o th~ · foot! 25 804. I could not believe it when I punched it up. Borman The orbit quantities were given to us, I think,by Bermuda.. 0£ course, at this time we really were not interested in them , although they were sort of nice in.formation. We had a GO/NO GO. Lovell It was 87-178 the initial forward quantity that was ca lled up to ue. Borman Tha l'!1JU readouts : Jim read 72 and when he saw it was 25, 804, we had a GO/NO GO from the ground. I do not believe you even rea4 the rest of them out, did you? Lovell No, I did not bother reading out the rest of the addresses 94, 97, 52, or 73, because I saw the 72 nominal. I saw the IVI's were right in there so we did not bother reading out anything else. Borman Debris • I did not notice a:ny debris. Lovell I noti-od debris. I was looking out at Spacecraft SEP and Jet Fairing, and noticed debris. I also noticed debris be­ t ween the spacecraft and booster when we first turned around. 15 Borman Could you identify any type of the debris? Lovell No, pieces.That is all I could tell. 3.3 Insertion activities Lovell We followed the regular procedure. Borman We did not have s;ny problem with safing our switches. No problem. I did not even stow my D-ring at insertion. I was too busy trying to stay on the booster, and I did not get it stowed for the first orbit,I guess,or half an orbit. Lovell What we planned on doing was getting pictures of the D-ring. I got the br&cket up at staging, and I actually had a minute after guidance initiate to reach back there and get the bracket and stick it up. It worked out very nicely before the g's started building up again on second stage. The bracket was up and in place s;nd no problem a t all. Then at SECO, I went around to pick up the camera, because we had the camera. stowed where the Agena control bq..x ie l ~oated., I managed to get the camera up, and it was already plugged into the electric&l wire. ill I had to do was turn the auxiliary switch on, put it on the bracket, and push the button, and it started taking pictures. Just about that time, Frank mentioned be was going to start thrusting pretty soon so I had to go back and punch off the spacecraft. I read up address 72. So , I hope the pictures come out. Then 16 :Borman We were looking right into the sun; I hope they do too. drogu.e pins were no problem. The Jim got them, but again, not until well into the first orbit. As a matter of fact, I pulled my own yesterd.a.y morning there. The problem is solved; I think they a.re easy to get to. Lovell Yes. They a.re easy to pull out. Borman I think that we have covered station keeping wi th stage II booater,partially. I will mention that the booster, being without attitude control, translating also with this im­ pul se it was picking up from the venting, is definitely an order of magnitude more difficult than station keeping with a stabl e vehicle like Spacecraft 6. First of a ll, you do not have. anyone control ling the thing; you do not exactly know where it is going to go, and it might translate because it is venting and ha.a a slight thrust. Borma.n I know a couple of times we got in a little too close and I backed out, because you just do not da.re get as close as you do the way this thing is spewing. picture, a good l ook at the nozzle. We got a real good I thought that it looked like the nozzle was bent in on two places on the booster engine. It l ooked like the nozzle, the ablative skirt had been bent in. But then, it may have been just a 17 shadow, because the next time I looked at it, it looked just like a new engine. mage. The booster itself had no apparent da­ The only thing we could see was this big spewing where the venting was coming from. ing from the roll nozzle at all. Lovell I did not see any vent~ Did you? No, the venting ca.me from some line right along the bottom edge, near the engine section of the booster. Borman That is right. Lovell It was a line of some sort that was open, and fuel was spewing out of it. Borman I hope they got the data they wanted on the D-4 and D-7 Experiments. It wa.s,again,a very uncomplicated maneuver, one that we practiced many times, and it worked just lik~ it does in simulation. Had no difficulty at all. Toe lights on the booster worked fine. 3.4 Post station-keeping Borman We did not do anything with stowage on the first orbit at al l . D-ring, pins I have already mentioned, we did not get those in at all. Lovell Arm restraints went down at 55 seconds. Belts- We did not even loosen them until after we had done D-4, D-7. vests The life we left right on the harness for the entire flight, but the ha.mess did not stay on us for the entire flight. 18 The sequence light test. This was done after the first orbit. We really had this insertion checklist in two phases, one at insertion and then one after D-4, D-7. 4.0 ORBITAL FLIGHT Borma.n We have already disou.ased the station-keeping. problem. That is no I think the situation that we used,going off with about 2 seconds--2 to 3 seconds--a.nd thrusting back with 5 seconds while you a.re still on your side getting back to the booster as quickly as "POssible ,solves the problem and takes a lot of the orbital mechanics out of the situation. hope the film comes out. I The one thing that did make it & little difficult on this one is when we looked back, we were looking back into the sun, and the booster was right in line with the sun. It was ju.at like flying formation when the leader makes a. turn, a.nd you are down,..sun. It is dif­ ficult to see, and I tried to move off to one side and swing around and look a little bit more to the north. think it was north. I I guess I was trying to look to the south where I could get the sun out of my line of sight. I also had a cut-off on the booster at station-keeping at 88% fuel, so that at 88% fuel we were already in darkness, al­ though we had not reached the time for the D-4, D-7 separa­ tion which we.a to ooour a.too, 25.I think it was about '00: 23 or 19 00,21. So when we reached this limit and we were in darkness, I ~~nt ahead and separated, thrustil:lg dawn. Lovell We actually separated earlier than 00: 25. We actv.ally separa­ ted at 00:-21. :Borman That is right. So we separated because we were in da.rlmess and because we had reached the limit on fuel. We had been in darlmess for awhile. One thing I di d notice was that the docking light was not particularly helpful on that stage of the business. I guess it is because we were not close enough to the booster. Lovell We tried but the docking light just did not work. :Borman I suppose because,a.gain,we were looking at a lighted horizon with the docking light , and it did not work as well as it did l ater on with Spacecraft b, The booster measurements went off. We got indications on the needle ,on the measure­ ment needle .. Lovell The recorder did not get on until 27 minutes. That is a guess. I am not too sure, but as I understand it, they had live transmissi ons up until th.at time, to Bermuda, 8Jld An­ t i gua., wherever it is, so we were okay there. Borman The booster measurements were normal. was perfect for that. Again, the simulator The lights. Jim McDivitt had made some comment about not being able to judge distance because 20 they only had two l ights on there. We had four lights on and I will be darned if I will try to judge distance by four lights or fifty lights. You have got to have illumination or you have to have a stable vehicle. Lovell You have to have something tha t illuminates the vehicle, not a light that flashes because you cannot tell from a flashing light. Borman Especially on vehicles rotating. possible to control them. I do not think that i t is You have to have a controlled vehicle before you can judge distance from it, as far as I am concerned. problem. The GO/NO GO, 17-1 TR were no We ran through the platform-off post station­ keeping checklist just the way it is listed. Lovell Yes, that is where we caught most of the things. Borman That is where we caught most of the things like putting the D-ring away and the drogue pins and so on. Only one time in flight did we require attitude control fuel to change attitude for critical delay time playback. was no problem. There Communications, as always, were superior. The D-4/D-7 Void Measurement was again no problem; just lined up on the black and ran for t wo minutes. Purging of the fuel cells. This is the first of a long-- 21 Lovell Yes , but we did not do it then,did we? Did not we wait until we powered down and then waited two hours? :Borman Tha t is right . This is one of the things t h&t they had in the f light plan that we asked them to change because Lovell Yes, we did not purge the f'uel cells then. :Borman Originally, this came right after power down e.nd all of the f'uel cell people recommended that you purge before power down , or wait until two hours after power down . So we did not do it at this t i me in the flight. D-4, D-7 star measurements. This was changed. was no probl em. There The eta.rs were well selected, and we were right on them. Right Jim? Jim copied down, on the procedures book, a check where we got the maximum return on the needle. Lovell D-4 , D- 7 was a well organized experiment as far as :Brentnall keeping us hopping about what to do . have to admit th.at . I will 22 :Sor:ma.n Re did a very good job. We knew just what to do. had W& all the equip,nent with us and everything went very smoothly. MS0--2 ana,..3 turned out to be not :much of a problem because at about the seventh dq we turned it on and left it on for the rest of the flight. The Berigee Adjust :tv1.a neuver ma.de the ~erigee Aijust Manuever. out a platform. up. Jim 0 We did it on stars with­ I was timing for Jim and I think I fouled We planned to use a perigee to 102 miles, and I think we wotmd up with about 15 feet per second too much. seemed like about 117 miles. causing this was It One of the reasons that was we had come back into the vicinity of the booster, and just about midwny through the burn the booster venting that was still occurring suddenly lit up, became lit up. It looked like we were flying through a lot of foreign objects or debris. to hit so.m ething. I was afraid that we were going At the same time this trailing wire came forward and slapped the spacecraft. Lovell That is where I stopped. :Sor.man Yes. After we had stopped and it nit us, I looked down and got confused and s aid, "No, we haven't burned enough",. ·&> we burned for about five seconds :more. We had a trail­ ing primer cord that would flop around and we didn 't know what it was at the time, but it came forward when Jim stopped burning and flopped on the spacecraft. It ,nade a 23 noise and I thought we had hit some of the stuff t~t was spewing out of the booster. I wasn't sure that it was just fuel. Lovell I think the ground people thought that this wire came for­ ward because it had gotten in the way of the thruster fire. It definitely came forward after I stopped burning,because I stopped burning and this wire came slapping forward. still had the momentum, you know. front of the window. It It slapped right in I think the people got the impression that the thing had hit a. thruster. It hit in front of us, then we stopped bu.ming. But we stopped' mm -taen-·ths:t thing hit a.nd we added some more because we were still at ~ ogee. Borman The first a:f many powerdowns was no problem1o We went right by the check list. Some of these switch functions in the space craft, particularly toward the latter pa.rt of the flight, toward the 12th or 13th da.y--we were getting, I won't say la.r in making the.m ,but it see.med more of a chore to make these things right to the minute. Things like the ~!OJ.VIED recorder and so on--we lost interest in having them turned off on the second. on and off for. We knew what they needed to be turned We didn't do as good a job from about the 10th day on as we did the first pa.rt as far as making those right to the minute. 24 Lovell As a .matter of fact, why don't we get out the flight plan. I think we might have a lot of comments on it. Borman Let's start from the beginning. Lovell The recorder was on at 27 .m inutes. D-4/D-7 measure.m ents. The GET of .measurement that the COLD IR was outside the two degree field of view of the booster was at 30 ,13. Borman At 40s58 we had 84 %fuel left. We were right on the flight pla.n there. Lovell There was another GET of measure.ment where the spacecraft was lined outside the field of view or the booster at 38:00. Borman We saw the booster for 2 or 3 revolutions after tl:at. lights were still working. The We called it out and t~ ground got readings on this. Lovell The moon and booster were in view at 43:00. The booster and .moon were in view and we might get an erroneous read:tn.g because we were almost on the .moon. Borman Here we have a note that at 2z32 the fuel cell Delta P l i ght blinked off at 2 ftours and 30 minutes and then came back on. Lovell Okay , That is t he section 2 dalta Plight . then as far as stowage goes, the · M-1 cuff was t urned on at 3z03, :Borman We put the bypass hoses on at this time also-- the ECS bypass hoses, Incidentally, they turned out to be not too .m.uch of a problem, They were very handy for the type or 25 work we did without suits on. Lovell Right. We took the s/c out of the horizon at 2:08 to get some measurements,as requested fro.m DOD,after we measured the stars. This is after we powered down the equipment. We connected the bypass hoses at 2:32. This was 2 hours plus 32 minutes. Lovell Crew status reports. We bad 3 or 4 a day. Borman 5:20,we started unpacking the meals. This is one thing that we had trouble with• lbth left and right food boxes were jam packed. Fortunately ,we changed the lanyards. v,e changed this during our stowage review , &l though it was difficult we got them out. Several of the meals had lost vacuum. Lovell Which .made them more difficult to get out. Borman Really you can't co.mplain about this. The people did the best they could. We had an awful lot of food to store and we were able to get them out. Lovell We had several blinkinge of the Delta Plight during this period. It went out at 6 hours, a littleleas t han 6 hours, then came back on again at 6:27. Borman One thing that I wanted to find out a.bout,and I still don't understand,is why we turned on the crossfeed valve right after l&:w\oh. The FC o pressure was just on the minit11.Um 2 26 or 150 pai at launch. I called up Houston and said I would like to leave the gauge in the FC02 position rather than the ECS o2 positlon. Chris said, "No, unless we really felt strongly about it, they would rather have it in the ECS o position". So we left it there and after we 2 were inserted and we were still with the booster, they came in with a recommendation that we open the cross feed. When we did, this immediately raised the pressure to 250 psi. The thing that was bad was that we had over 100% o:xygen and we were down to about 100 lbs. on the FC0 2 • We agreed that we would fly at least 50 lbs. above the do.me, So, I really didn't see the need for opening that valve although it didn't cause a:n:y problems. Lovell They wanted to pump up and make sure. Borman It worked fine and we got right back up to 250 lbs. Lovell That is one syste.m that did work fine. Borman The first 7 hours was pretty no.m inal. All throughout the flight plan we have notes that the Delta Plight went out and came back on and so on. Bor:man At 16,40 we sighted a satellite .much lower and on a slightly higher inclination path than we were. passed underneath us. It It was so fe:r awa::, it looked like a sighting from the earth. It was just a refiection. were very religious about the exercise periods. We We s-ot 27 thos e t hree times a day wi th the excepti on of the last day and one other day when we got only two. very good idea . I think this is a I t is difficult and requir es discipline because the last thing in your mind i s the desire to exer­ cise. You get lazy very easily. We di d a very extens i ve operation with t he bungee and also i sometrics three times a day. Borman They were programmed 10 minutes. I think a more realistic one would be about five .m inutes , three times a day. I did 60 pulls on t he bungee cord with both hands, 20 wi t h each leg, and then ended up with 10 with each ar.m on the bungee cord in addition to the few f or the crew status reports. Lovell I did 60 pulls on the arms and 60 on each leg and it didn't .make any differ ence. I could have done 20 on each leg and would have proba bly been better off. Borman At 45 hours J im started taking off his suit. During that first 45 hours our noses were clogged end stuffy, our eyes were i rritated, t he cabin was hot ; it was miserable. As s oon as Jim started taking off his suit, the cabin even though he was out of the suit and I was in, got better than it was with both of us in our suits. Lovell I didn't real i ze it was that long. We were almost up there two full days befor e I started taking the suit off. 28 Borman At 49t53 we got a picture of Houston with the 250 .mm l ens. I hope it comes out. Okay at 69t40 we did a Perigee Adjust Maneuver, Delta V 12.4, 16.5 seconds, and came right on the money, using the stars, no platform. I don't think that there is any problem at all with the proper stars in .m aking a gross adjustment. Lovell I think it was an excellent idea to do it without a platform, it takes two people. One person times and the other person burns on the star fro.m attitude. Both people check the attitudes by looking at the star charts and getting the updates. Then ma.king sure that the s/c is alined right and the reticle is up to get the accuracy pretty good. After that, once you get it s et in your mind what you are aiming at, one guy is in the cockpit with the watch or event timer and clocks it. The other guy bas to look out the window because you can't go back and forth. If you look in the cockpit at the watch, you can't adjust to look out f or the stars. So it takes two people for that. I think you can do a good job without a platform. Bor:ma.n I do too . Bor:ma.n There is one thing that was a pain in the neck, and I hope they get some good out of them, were UHF and the RF tests. That was an hour and a half transmitting every five minutes 29 and having the HF/DF on. I'.m not sure what kind of data they got but I hope they got so.m ething. The first one we had to do on the lKJRIZ.AN SC.AN; it took so.me fuel and I wonder really if it was worth it. Borman At about 166,40 we noted our drift rate picking up and we finally determined this was from the water boiler venting. It resulted in a left yaw rate and this continued periodi­ cally throughout the mission. It certainly would not be objectiona.l if we had fuel to counteract it. During a night period, in which we didn't do any attitude control at all, I timed the rates during the 13th day, and when we woke up they were about 7 degrees per second. I timed them around the horizon and came up with 7 degrees per second. About the only thing you can say about it is that it requires fuel to stop it. It occurs primarily in left yaw and left roll. Lovell There are two things in the s/c that causes the yaw left for so.me reason. Gus first noticed it and I think it is characteristic of the s/c. One is the water boiler and the other is,every tie you turn off the power it fires two thrusters that give it a left yaw. The same two all the time. Borman We tried to beat that ever way we could. Every time we 30 shut down 1 we put it in a different control mode and it still fired t he same t wo t hrusters. Every time you turn off ACME bias power it would go"boop, " 11 boop~ just like that. Every time we were without attitude control for extended periods we ended up with a left yaw and a left roll. Finally a.t 191>48 we got both crewmen suitless. the best decision in the whole flight. That was The perfor:m.e.nce of the Cryo bottles was fantastic. Lovell That was one thing we were worried about. The eyd.rogen bottle I thought was never going to last. Forty per cent of the eyd.rogen bottle was still left at the end of 14 days. One thing I wanted to try was to blow the squib. Remember they said t1Did you blow the squi b?" I forgot about it. Just prior to retro, I wanted to go over there and blow that squib that opened up into a vacuum. :Borman It would have taken several hours for it to do a:n:y good. Lovell Yes, I know, I just thought :maybe we could hear it or so.mething. :Borman One thing that cropped up more and more as the mission progressed, it seemed to get worse as it went along was the fa.ct that things were cm celled because of weather. We picked up large areas of clouds over the U. S •·and over s . 31 Ameri ca. About the only area that stayed clear was North­ west Africa. A lot of the experiments a.nd a lot of the Apollo landmarks were shot because of clouds. Borman On the 6 l auncht the second ti.met we were abl e t o track it. We were not able to pick up lift-off because of c l ouds again, but whe.n i t got t o the con l evel t above the cl ouds, we were able to pick i t up a.nd we tracked it using IR until we coul dn't see anymore. Even above the con l evel I think we were tracking the exhaust from the stage two en­ gines using PULSE mode. I hope we got some good data on that. Borman At 2661 16 we really got col d; the sui t i nl et t emperature dropped below 40 degrees a.nd we started squirting.water out of t he sui t inlet hoses. We informed Houston about thi s a.nd they determined that the water boi l er had frozen up a.nd they recommended a procedure t o cl ear it. We did thi s with Gemi ni 6 watching; esse.n tially i t involved putting the radi ator t o BYPASS and changing some switches. Lovell Evaporator heat on. Borman Put the evaporator heat on and setti ng up t o 10 degree per second r ol l rate. Lovel l That's the picture you saw i n the movies. Borman It actual l y threw a lot of fue l out a.nd a lot of water out. It l eft a g lob of ice on the side of the S/ C, about 10 32 inches in diameter at the exit from the water boiler vent. Lovell There were only two problems that we really had. were the Fuel Cella and the two thrusters. There We a lso had a cold Spacecraft. Borman Yes, that is when we had that water boiler problem. Lovell Before that; the first time we woke up, it was 20 degrees oolder inside. Borma.n Oh yes, I'm sure what had happened du.ri ng the night was that we vented the water boiler, used the water boiler. This is the day when we woke up and had such high rates o.n the S/C. survey. Lovell We have all that in the cabin temperature The wall temperature was 20 degrees lower. It was just freezing in there. 5.0 REIBOFIRE 5.1 Borman TR-2:00 Power Up and Alignment Checklist We had a slightl y different procedure as far as retrofire goes. Powering up for i t took two hours. The power up and alignment checklist was called up from the ground since we had open circuited two stacks. We turned our ma.in batteries on and the squib batteries back on at TR minus two hours. Lovell During the flight they had powered us down on the squib batteries and put in the bus ties about the l ast week of the 33 fl i ght. Borman We were flying with bus ties and tu.el cells and no squib batteries. Lovell To conserve the squib batteries for the r etrofire period. Borman Right. Lovell Because of that configuration, and because of the f act that we lost two stacks, we had to modify our power up procedure. Borman Right . Incidentally because of the f a.ct that we bad two degraded thrusters, 3 and 4, we didn't use t h e ~ mode at all for this alisnment. We aliened it all manually. The thrusters were degraded, but there was still enough in them to allow you to get i'ine maneuvers, fine control. used less control by turning off the circuit breaker for thruster No . 12 and used 11, giving back t hrust and this would give you right yaw• .5.2 TR-26 events Borman At T- 26 the event timer was set, we didn't read anybody because of our orbit , and we weren't able to start our event timer counting down until T-20. Lovell T-20 Bor.ma.n Read ou.t fro.m Carna.rvon. I . 34 5.3 TR-5 GMT Stop Cl ock :Borman At TR-5 Jim got the bug on the ei ght minutes , no probl em. Lovell Yes , I got tha t okay. 5 ,4 TR-256 ;;, :Borman TR-256 Sequence light came on exa.ctl y on schedul e. Lovell The digital clock never lost a second during the entire fl i ght. :Sorms..n We didn't touch it. Lovel l We di dn't touch that digital cl ock one time during the enti re f l ight. That i s the best instrument i n the whol e s/c, especial ly f or this type of f l i ght when you have a lot of updates a.nd everything. :Borm&n Electri ca l was no problem. perfectly. 5.5 :Sorman Control system, the RCS worked It just worked beautifull y. .Tii::1. Retro a ttitude minus 20 degrees pi tch. The ball had been a l igned for two revolutions and it was perfect. I f we had not had the bal l , I would have been happier if we had retro fired in the dayl i ght. SEP OAMS , as advertised. You hear i t. Lovell Yes! :Sorman You feel it sli ghtl y. Lovell That is right, a.nd you even f eel SEP ELECT. 35 Borman Yes, and you really fee l SEP ADAP'l '. It felt like I had put in f orward thrust at t hat time. Lovell Yes . Borman It was really a good thud when we separated the adapter. Retrorocket squibs were armed a t TR-30 . Arm AUTO-RS1I1RO was actually done at about TR- 10 . Lovell We did that a littl e bit early. Borman The event timer was perfect. MDU, Jim got all the readouts and they were exactly what ha d been called up. Lovell Yes . There was one or two that the last digit was one nu..n­ ber off, but that is nominal. We didn't bother that. 5.6 TR-0 Borman From the time we got the countdown at Carnarvon we really didn 1 t talk to a..~ybody a t all until we heard Houston at TR- 10 seconds come in with a count through Canton. Lovell We didn' t think tha t they were going to come in, as a. matter of fac t . Borman No, we were wondering... Lovell That is a very poor place to retrofire. Canton had p oor communications co~pared with the rest of it. Borman But they ca.me through t hat time. LoYell Yes, they ca.me through. Borman We really didn 1 t need them because we had every indication that our timing was good on-board. They did come through but not until TR-10 seconds. At TR equals zero the s/c attitude was 20 degrees down. s/c rates were easy to con­ trol, but I thought that the thrust fro.m those retro-rockets was high. I really had a sensation of being accelerated. Didn't you Jim? Lovell Well, it was different from what I had expected because we were so used to zero g fl i ght. Borman The only thing I could do was fly instruments, the needles and the ball. Trying to hold it right on the ball. I was vecy glad that I was in RATE COMMAND. I had to con­ trol it in RATE COMMAND a. little bit,particularly on the fourth retro rocket. The first three went bing, bing, bing. Then there was a pause of about ½ a second and the fourth one went. The fourth one seemed like it was a little mis­ aligned, I think it was left yaw. I had to bring it back. I would like to emphasize this. I thought those retros were really powerful, and that you were holding on to something that if you really didn't have good control it could get away from you pretty easily. Lovell But, I was sure happy to hear them go. 37 Borman Control mode was RRte Command , ano the I VI readouts• there­ did you write those down? • Lovell I have them here. BormA.n Fe cal led them off and we h?ve them . Lovell This is whr,t I've been usins-. Borman And '.i 1e f t . Lovell Yes , an:i ) l eft. 'B orman 1 Lovel 1 This is usua.llJ about .... Borman They called up the nominP l s . Sheparn. ':'he~' were 113 and 296 . Lovell Yes . ·.'hat were the nomil:.a.J s'? nominals were. It was 29P , and. 112 . Let ' s .iust r.iake a not e of what the ~At was 2 off from nominal , I recPll that .... 298 actual , and 112 actuA.l , 298 aft and 112 down as the a.ctua1 s·. l3omP.n And 3 right. Lovell An<i 3 right . 'Boman So we got in 01 ose t o the nominril , A.nd when you figure this out on our onboard che.rt s you come up with a bank angl e of 50 decrees . Lovell That ' s why I cou 1. dn ' t unrlers tand the ~ 5--we11 , maybe I ' m wrong but let 's take a look at this thing again. go through it. Donnan All right . Le t ' s Lovell That ' s a minus 1 error here, r ight? And a pJus 2 error there, right? Bonnan Right. Lovell Okay , so I went in here and got to a plus 2 error here, right ? Bom"'n fl ight . J,ove) 1 Wp..nt up here to a minus , here ' s the zero mark right her e, to a minus one error ; where this thing crossed this thing right np to here , plus 2, and by eosh, it came right out to 50 degrees or s3 degrees . Borman They gave ue 55 degrees roll l eft, which is what the nomi­ nal l evel was . .. Lovell I ' ve got i t right here . what they gave us . Fi fty degrees and 60 deGrees is Bank l eft 50 degrees and bank right 60 deerees. "'B orman Yes . T,ove ll ~n~ so I looked up the ch~rt and it said 50 QeP,rees as t~e b~ck uu angl es--everything was working just l ike a charm anrt then I went back here to the ban k contonr line to get out our down range defl ection , and it was 1 or 2 miles , I · think it was , no , 5 mil es overshoot ; which w~s just ahout as cl ose as you can hack it . t■ And I t hought oh boy, this realJy , talk about nominRl reentry , this is the one that's eoinc to be it , and then the? came up wi th 35 degrees , 45 deerees, and I rni sinter~reted it ; I was a rgui ng with Prank e.fter r e t ro fire ann he says no , that ' s 30 degrees-- 50 deerees. :3orr.ian 50 degrees . Love ll 53 decrees is what he ' s sayin[j . down to a l ittle finer line . !-re ,ius t wan t s to ge t it J\nd then Prank called bnck again An•i SR.id , "!'To , it wr-ts -i5 de£7ee s , " so I non ' t know what t he s t or;y w?. s there. Borman 'P.;e :-'D I as .fA.r as the r e trofire r,-oes , i t was r.o rrohlem . . It worked out t:'ine , ano I jus t l ike to have 1. ' ' I t h:ink . If you ren. 1 ly were forced into it you cot>ld <io i t on rate neerll.es , but you ' d have to have a lo t of confiiience in your ability to hold i t . T wou ldn ' t. want t o do it with­ out r:ate Command; and again , I did it in ;:ate r.omrnRnd . T' m not e ven sure how nuch the t hr usters we r e flrjnc -ivrinc­ ret rofire . DU you riotice? I was watchinc the b,·l l , f'.r rl I dUn ' t noti ce . Di d it light up the horizon pretty hadl~r? Lovell H WfW real ly r.ot too b~d . But ac t ua lly ; yeo , it ,iir1 , it lit i t up ouite a bi t . ;i'CSD !leo Okay . Lovell There was a point in the flight plan that they wanted the 40 Pilot to evaluate the horizon for a night, no pl atform, retro. And the thing is this: you can turn out all the lights , you can get lined up for BEF retrofire, without a plat£orm if you get the stars and everything. But once you start firing, you &re going to have to use the ra.te needles, if' they are working, to hold position, because you can't see the horizon 8J1Y longer, because the thrusters do blank out 8J1Y sight outside. And also, if you've got the lights turned up in the cockpit, so that you can see thingeJ that means that you can't see outside. So, you have to go either outside to get cues, or you have to turn the lights out in the cockpit. And if you're going to use stu£f inside, then you have the lights on. I would be hesitant to make a night retrofire without platform too. I think I would probably wait £or a. da.y one. 5.7 Retro Pack Jettison ::Bonnan The retro pack jettison - Jim fired ••• the one thing here on manual f ire , Jim fired the manual retros the wa;y we alwqs have. We fired in the wa;y we a.lwa;ys h&ve, one second a..fter TR equals zero, but we go t an auto retrofire . Lovell Yeah, because the first one fired before I pushed the button. 41 Borman That was right on the money. The retro pack jettison was accomplished 45 seconds after, when the amber light came on, and you could feel and hear this one going; of course, it was pitch black so we couldn't see a thing. This was one of the things that we didn 't see, the REI'RO ADAPrER , the ADAPI'ER , or the RETROPACK . Lovell No , I didn't see any of that stuff go at all. Bor:ma.n Total darkness. Lovell Besides that, the thrusters blank out anything you could possibly see. 5.a Communications and 5.9 updat ing Bor:ma.n Com.unmications were rather sketchy there. I was very glad though, that we were able to get through to Houston. I think it was over Guaym.as when they came up and told us to change in retro angle, and bank angle; I don 't know who did that but that was good work on the ground following up that computing, and getting us real time updates, I guess they must have done it after tracking. Lovell Yes, That 's probably what it was. Borman That's probably how they did it. Lovell Yes. Borman Because the 35 degrees, I was flying right between 35 de­ And that was darn good. grees and O degrees most of the time , and if we'd have followed the 50 degrees, we'd have ended up way short. 42 So that was very good work on the gro-.md ' s part. Lovell It looks like the initial computation of retrofire time was off, and they already had a good o~bit on us. Borman I don't kno~ what it was, but they corrected it when we came in. Borman 5.10 Post Retro Jettison Checklist The post retro jettison checklist was accomplished with no problem. Oh, I'm thinking; we did have some discussion about as far as the retro goes. With the--we ' ll cover this more fully under su.i.ts. The question was whether to leave those hoods on or off for retrofire. We found th,'3-t the noise and the--I don't know why ~e didn't notice this at launch, but we did during reentry , the noise from the air blowing in the G5C suits was an impediment to crew discussion. Lovell It would go on the mikes and make a lot of noise on th; mikes. Borman. The mikes picked up a lot of whistle. Plus the fact that the vision out of that thing certainly needs to be imporved. So, we didn't kno,1 what to do--·,.;e finally decided to leave them on for retro.fire. 6.0 6.1 Borman REENTRY Reen-gz Parameters '[:edate Reentry. 400,000 feet, we had that time updated; and at 400,000 feet I rolled left 55 degrees, because this ... or fif ty degrees, the value of the backup angles at tha t time . 43 6.2 400K Borma.n Spacecraft attitude a.t 400,000 feet wa.s difficult to deter­ mine. We di dn't h.a.ve & horizon until we were below 350,000 feet, a.nd I was having & lot of trouble trying to find it. Jim, you got the horizon first on your side. Lovell Yes, the horizon ca.me up first on my side. Well, we did not have it right at 350 ,000 feet, but we coul d look out be­ tween RCS firings and see the air glow, if you'd stuck your face right up there and l ook out. But when you're doing the reentry on the instruments you have the lights up so, one guy ca.n't do it, you have to have two guys; one to look out and find out where the horizon is and- Borman That was a heck of a thing. I'd like to be a.ble to cross check between the balls and the horizon once in a while t o make sure that I knew exactly where we were. As it tu.med out this was a completely instrument reentry. We fina.lly found the horizon &nd Jim would tell me yes, it's about in t he right pl&ce. But I just watched the ball. And I think that it would be vecy difficult t o back up a reentry by watching out the window. guidance for you, and tell One person could provide backup 44 you where you a.re and what the ba.nk angle looks like with the horizon. But, I don't think tha.t a person that i s fly­ ing the reentry ca.n. cross check between the ball a.nd the horizon. it. I think you have to ma.ke your choice and l ive with Okay, roll commands were just like the s imula.torJ t ime correlation was good. The guidance initiate came right on the money, and the needles jumped indicating an undershoot, a slight undershoot. From then on we just flew it the way we 'd flown them a hundred times in St. Louie and in the sim­ ulator. I think we were ve-ry well prepared for t his . I tried to fly it so that we took i t down.range, and we got a slight overshoot indication on downrange of about 1 needle width, 1 dot. Then as we got down to a.round 2 g's or 2½- g's, I tri ed to start zeroing it out , so then when 3 g's oameJ the downra.nge was pegged right on the money. indicating zero on the cross range. And we were And at 3 g's I switched to flying the roll bug, and. just zeroing the roll bug; and a.s we came on down further and further the do'Nnrange stayed zero, but the cross range started going off full scale. Well, this really doesn' t mean anything because all the cross ra.nge is indicating is 45 your per cent or miss verses per cent of capa.bili ty. And down on that range what it was really doing was, we were coming in a little bit sho~t, and it was sacrificing the cross range in order to get the down range cleared up, be­ cause the cross ra.nge wu vecy sm.e.11 ~ • Lovell There -was a bias in the dow ra.nge needles between his ball and m:y ball, a.nd I think, th.&t fortunately,~ ball -wa.s the one that was out. Because when he was right on. :Borman You said we were overshooting &11 the time. Lovell Yes. Re was right on - I said you were overshooting, it wa.s about a needle and a half width bias. :Borman Okay. The initial indication of g's, I remember Jim called over and sa.id, "how ma.ny g's a.re we on now." I said l ess than one" and you said "get serious." I think you coul dn't believe it. The first onset you feel like you ha.ve about a ton on you, but then as it builds up it never seems to get mu.oh worse. It's almost u if it were a. step function. As soon as you get the g you rea.lly notice it, and then you don't notice it much more. And the ma.rlmum g's th.at we pulled during the reentry were 3.9. Lovell Yes, that a.ma.zed me. I actu&lly thought we did pull more g's. :Borman 3.9 g's. So, it was a long extended time. Lovell Yes. Borman During the later part of it I started out in PULSE Mode and :rolled over the 55 degrees in PULSE Mode, and. then when we eot Guidance Initiate I went to DIRECT. I was finding that in order to keep the cros11 range zeroed, and we had been told that Wally had trouble with his cross range, I was banking back and forth quite frequently maneuvering the spacecraft around the full lift point, from one side to the other and I was overshooting a little bit in DIRECT. I was also starting to pick up some pitch and yaw oscillations, so then I went to single ring RATE COMMAND. And boy, this was really a great control mode, it "'8.S steady as a :rock. You could put it right where you wanted and it st~ed there. But pretty soon we eot dow a:round, I guess it was when the g's were coming off, after 3.9 g•s. I started losing it in single ring RATE COMMAND so I threw two rings on and it held it like a rock. :But they were sure firing. Lovell Oh, yes. Borman Boh, those thrusters were really firing. getting abla.tion off the heat shield. And we started It was coming back in­ and hitting the nose of the spacecraft, and that was pretty 47 sensational. Jim was giving vivid descriptions on what was happening, a.nd I was watching the ba.11. Lovell That's one thing that no one had ever told us before. a.ma.zed. I was Maybe it was peculiar to the spacec.raft. Borman No, Tom and Wally h.a.d mentioned it. Lovell Oh, is that r i ght? That ablative material went back and hit the forward end near the recovery section, rather the RCS secti on; and I thought well, I never heard of this before, and I was a little worri ed that maybe we were too fa:r off, a.nd the stuff was going to start getting into recovery sections. Borman But it tiirned out to be okay. Another thing was that the windows really got scrounged up on that ree.ntry; that's something else. out of my window. I could hardly see Stu.ff was coming over from the heat shield and hitting it. It was really gunky. 6. 3 Aceelera.tio!!,_Pro.file Borman Okay. The acceleration profile was very smallo It was a very high 11.ft reentry, and of course, this results in a low g and long duration build up. No problem at all. 604 Spacecr&ft Control Borman Spacecra.ft control was excellent until we g'Ot down to 100,000 .feet or even below 100,000 .feet. We turned on 48 the LANDING SQUI:B a.t 100,000 feet and sat th.ere and watched. it. 6.5 lOOK Feet Borman I started losing it; I think we may have run out of RCS fuel between 100,000 feet a.nd 50,000 feetJ at lea.st I thought we had. 6.6 50K Feet Lovel l Wel l, didn't you turn off the RCS? Borm8Jl I didn't turn th&t off until a.fter we got on the drogue. We were starting to build up the yaw and pitch rates. Then at 50,000 feet, I was anxiously a.wa.i t :l ng the drogue, because these rates were building up a little. bad yet, though. They weren't very I pushed t he drogue expecting it to de­ crease, and all it did wa..s a.m.plify th.em. And we got a. .real ride on the drogue for a. whil e, sounded like the one Jim and Ed discussed. It was r e&ll y going pretty bad. About 70 degrees. Lovel l Our angles were what? We pitched up? Borman Oh no, I estima.te we were oscillating back and forth maybe 20 degrees. Lo<rell From the drogue here pitching up we were rolling back a.:nd forth more than 20 de.grees on that initial pa.rt. 49 Borman We'll have to see. We don't have readings on that . Lovell Okay, because I'm sure we did more than 20 degrees. :Borman Then I t hrew the motor valves back open age.in on the thrus­ ters, and that seemed to stop it. So I left them open a while and finally turned them on again and it stopped, and As it settled out, and it was pretty smooth on the drogue. a matter of fact, when we got dow to ma.in chute, it we.a steady as a rock on the drogue. Lovell Yes. 6.7 35K Checklist Borman I turned off the RCS motor valves a.nd blipped t he thrusters to clear the lines between 30,000 feet to 26,000 feet. And Jim then opened--The 40K ba.rostat worked fine. 6.8 Communicatiol_!!! Borman And we gave the reentry status report. I 'm not sure th&t Houston heard it, but we told them the drogue was all risht and okay. 6.9 26K Checklist Borman Jim, at 26,000 feet you opened the vent air snorkel 50 and we got a cabin full of I don't know what it was. Lovel 1 You had your hood off. Why? Borman I took my hood off to try to find the horizon , so I made the reentry with the hood off . Lovell Okay, I had my hood on, and I think when we opened up the snorkl e; the way that works, the snorkl e draws air through t he suit compressor, and then into the suit circuit• I had my hood on ; and the flow comes out of an opening back here in the hood, and flows down . I got an eye ful l of something that was an acid. Borman Acid, eh? Lovell Yes. Really burned my eyes. My eyes were watering when I finP,lly got the hood off. Borman We 11 , we accomplished all t he checklists, and we had no problems; as a matter of f act, i t went pretty smooth in the time between the drogue deploy and the 10.6 barostat. 6.10 10 . 6 K Barostat Borman It was just like the s i mul a t or. One th i ng I did notice, initially, when we were on the drogue, t he altimeter was completely inaccurate. You couldn't even read it. We were oscillating so bad l y that it was jumping in thousands of f eet per second· , oh maybe not thousands, but the needles were going a l l over the place; and I remember thinking boy , 51 if this oscillation doesn' t s top, I' ll have to punch the main chute on the amber l ight, rather than the altime ter . But the oscil l~tions did stop. 6. 11 Boman Hain Chute Deployment I punched the main chute at 10 , 600 f eet as indicated on the altimeter , and just a millisecond. aft er that, the yellow l i ght came on the 10.6 baros tat l ight . The thing deployed immedia t e ly into a reefed condit ion , and we examined it in the reefed condition and it l ooked very good_ LoveJl Frank thought it was in the reef ed con<lition for 3 months . Borman It seemed like it s tayed reefed for a long time , then it unreefe<l , and I couldn ' t find one gore or one pane l that was ripped or frayed or anything . Love ll It was a good chl1te . Borman Perf e ct chute. 6. 12 Post Main Checklist Rorman We accompl ished the post main checklist, anrl then we braced oursel ves very well and wen t to the single point. of a ttitun e . 6.13 Bormim Single Point Re l ease When we went to the s ingle point attitude it was exac tly the same as we had had it at St . Louie--where they ' d rigged--they had a test after John and Gus ' s fl ight . They put a test capsul e suspens ion at St . Louis, and this was 52 e:x:actly the same. You get a. good whack and then you sit there and vibra.te ba.ck a.nd forth for a little bit. 6.14 2X Checklist Borman 2,000 foot checklist we accomplished with no problem. About this time, at 2,000 feet, I heard Air Boss calling and we started communicating with Air Boss. I saw him flying around while we were still on the chute. Houston came throU8h a.bout this time and wanted to lmow if we had a. main chute. I'd ca.lled a.11 these things off, but I guess th.at the com­ xmmica.tions-maybe the Auto Cats weren't working or some­ thing. Lovell Air Boss should have called back a.nd said••• Borman But I called back and confirmed main chute. 6.15 Landing Borman We hit the water with a. pretty good thud, and your window went under water, didn't it? Jim's window went under watero We hit in a drift. We were drifting to the right rear, and there was a 14 knot wind, and when we hit the sp&eecra.ft rolled to the right, and your window went under the W&ter, and mine eticy-ed up. Lo-vell Nothing serious tho'U8h,. Nothi.n g serious. 6.16 Postlanding Checklist Borman We extended the .RF antenna. to get e. test for them &nd went on HF-DF; I hope that somebody heard it. But they had 53 swimmers there in a.bout 4 minutes, and so I put the HF antenna back down to keep it from getting da.maged. conducted the electrical check. And we I musts~ that I'm gl ad that the electrical check was simple, because it was hot in there, and we were tired. I was worried about this before and I would never have been able to sit there Blld go t hrough this complicated, long check. Lovell We had both pl8l'llled, that what we were going to do was take off our suits in the spacecraft, and wear our orbital flight suits. And I think that we probably would never have gotten out of the suits, because we were just too hot and too beat . :Borman It was even hot in the spacecraft, so Jim came through with the idea of opening the :repress valve, and this wa.s great. We bad a.11 that oxygen and you weren't going to use it. It blew all that cool oxygen out and we had o2 HI RATE and the snorkel on. So we stqed pretty cool when you get right down to it. So it was a. good idea. I don't know if you got the blood pressure measurements or not, did you? 6.17 Blood pressure measurement Lovell I took them, I don't know whether they came out or not. I put the reprogre.mmer on in the water and started ta.king blood 54 pressure measurements a.nd--but that ' s harrl to do. ought to comment on that. I Because to take a blood pressure measurement you had to pump up the thing and leave your handsstill, and leave your arms still until it bleerts down ; we ll it takes a little while for it to bleed down. Meanwhile , Frank ' s got the checklist out and the guys out there are putting on the collar, and we're trying t o throw switches and take this and t hat; I ,just. thought I might as well start doing it with my other ~a.r.n. Ilorman Same way with the blood pressure they requested over Guayrnas during reentry, I make a comp1ete testimonial here ; I think once the reentry starts that everything e lse cets l eft aside, and you <lon ' t nP-ss around with blood pressures, or experiments or anything else. From then on it ' s sort of a case of surviving the darri thing . I didn't wan t rim messing a.round looking for a bl ood pressure ; so we diiln 1 t do it. About thA.t time we cou ldn ' t find the horizon any­ way. Lovell We got called up from the MCC Borman But , anyway, we didn ' t do it. Lovel] That ' s the first I 'd heard of it when they cal l So it didn ' t bother us . up. 7.0 .LANDING AN]) RECOVERY 7.1 Borman Impact We were drifting backwards, blunt end forwar d , rather, as 55 we hit the water, Although it was a good jolt, I wouldn't say it WR.S anything outstanding. We hit , and Jim, your window went under water, right? Lovell The snacecraft rolled to the right, I believe . Borman Yes. We hit, rolled to the right, and you went uncier water and bobbed right up. Lovell Right Borman I released the parachute and it fl oated in front of us for several minutes. Lovell I saw part of it on the left hand side there, or rather on the right hand s ide as i t fl oated by my window, BoI'J'llan It stayed there for several minutes . It ' s just the way it 's been described before. Love11 There was an awful lot of fog on the window, though. noticed tha t see out. I the humidity was such that you could hardly Very foggy . Borman I'm not sure that was humidity or that was f rom reentry . Lovell Might have been from reentry, I don ' t know. Borman I did see the S2F on the chute. We saw it whi le we were sti Jl on the chute coming down, 7 .2 Love ll Checklists The onl y thing I had about the checklists; during the recovery phase, I had a hard t ime doing the checkl ist, in fact, I had to give it to you, because I couldn't move my 56 ann doing the blood pressure work. And that compl icates the recovery phase of it quite a bit . Bonnan Yes . Lovel l I think it also compromised the blood pressures that way too. Borman We didn't feel like running foot races when we finally hit the water. We had planned to get out of our pressure suits into that orbital flight suit, but the effort was just too great . So,we jus t opened t he repress valve to get some more cooling in there and sat . Love l 1 That ' s right . We opened up t he repress valve; di d we have the cabin fan on? Borman No, we didn ' t have t he cabin f an on . He had the snorkle val ve with the suit fans and t he o HI HATE and the re­ 2 press valve open. Borman The checklists were all right then as far as you 're concerned? Lovell Yes. I thought the recovery phase was very good. I missed one or t wo. I t hink I know I didn ' t turn all the s tack switches off, but the power and control switches were off during the reentry phase; so, there was no problem there . 7 , 3 Communications Boman UHF . We had communicat ions with Air Boss whi l e we were still on the chute, and we had very good communications 57 with them in the wa ter. via UHF were poor. The communications with Houston Once we were on the drogue they kept calling us asking us to confirm main chute. I' m not sure they ever hea r d us conf irm main chute. Lovell I've often wondered about t ha t . Watching the other apace­ craft come in, why they don't call; and I found ou t that they do call but they ca..~•t get through. Must be the rel ay pl anet troubl e or something. Borman Communi cations wi t h recovery forces on UHF was excel lent. HF: we ext en<ied t he HT<' ant enna, put out HF- DF t one for awhil e. Again I am not sure if anyone picked it up or not . We retracted it af ter i t had been up only 8 minutes , be­ cause of the f act that we did not want to get the HF antenna broken of f during the recovery operation. Lovell There was no need for HF communications since we vere so close to the recovery group. Bonnan The chopper was over us about 5 or 6 minutes after landi ng . We had much better UHF communications, so, we di d not use HF. On point of impact, onboard data. Within t he l i mits of the readability of that scal e, it was excellent . range and cross range needles were fine. Down We actua lly ended up about 8 or 9 miles from the carrier. You just can't get much finer infomation out of the down range and 58 cross range . Lovell Did you have any kind of a mal function in the acceler­ ometer? Boman No, but Spacecraft 6 did . I don 't remember that being a condition of the be t. J.ovel l I didn ' t either. Boman Ground Information . The ground gave us excellent inforl!la­ tion, as f ar as everything we needed to know, inc l uding recomputing the guidance angles after retro . did an exce llent job. receiving that . The ground Tracking data, I don ' t remember When Spacecra ft 6 was ent ering, they kept tell ing them that they were fine, a.nrl they wer e goi.ng right down the s l ot anti everything. J do not remember ever hP.aring from the ground on anything Jike that on ours, do you? Perhaps we did and we were s o engrossed in flyi ng it, t hRt we did not notice it. Love Jl We ll , we had good communications pri or to b l ackout over GuayrnRs . After we started guiding, going into th e atmos­ phere, communications went t o pot. Boman Status of recovery. I <lo not think recovery cou1d have been any better . Lovell Very smooth . 7. 4 Systems Configuration Borman The ECS, as we said before, we had o2 HI RATF. with both 59 suit fans, snorkel valve open, and the vent valve open . We a]so opened the repress valve. Electrical: We per­ formed a simple electrical check. We turned off 3 and 4J l eft 1 anrl 2 on, and watched for the variation in voltage on the main buses. The bus that is fed by land 2 bat­ teries varied with wave action. But 3 and 4 dirl not move from zero. Lovell That is right. Borman And then you turned off squib batteries land 2 also didn't you? Lovell I left squib battery 3 on. Borman Squib battery 3 was the only one that was on. Lovell Control: We turned off the platform, the computer, the circuit hreakers to the thrusters, and the RCS thrusters. Borman He l eft the comput er in PRELAUNCH for 48 seconds or more, before we turned it off. Aeromedical, no comment. Except blood pressure being a nuisance, anrl perhaps even a hindrance when we were trying to go around the cockpit with the switches and you had to ho 1d one arm stil 1. 7.5 Spacecraft Status Boman RCS fumes: When you open the snorkel at around 26,000 feet you get a good load of them. Lovell I am not sure what kind of fumes they were. familiar to me. They were not I have smelled the results of fuel in the 60 RCS system,and I know what that smells l i ke i t . It did not sme l l that way . I got a burning sensation in my eyes , which was diff erent . centrated one . Now, I might have got a mor e con­ I still had my helmet on , and zipped up , You had your helmet off . I be1ieve, t hat witr. the snorke l open , the compressor ~u1Jed the ambient air through the snorkel through the compressors and into the suit circuit . That i s why I got a concentrated rlose of whatever was on the outside, which causert my eyes to wa t er ann to burn . Whether it was the ablative material , the shing1 es , or the RCS f umes , I do not know. Borman The main chute was perf e ct . Lovell Looked beaut iful . Borr.tan I coul d not see a rip or a t ear or any fraying or any­ thing ; i t wa.s just perfec t . flight . The windows were fo(!gy in I thought they fogged over and the visibi lity out of them during the hot part of the re entry , was very poor a l so . Love11 They started to burn a little bit . on the outs ide. Rorman Started to peel off I do no t know what i t was . When we eot on the wa ter t hey were fog~ed over with hu­ midity and salt spray . Leaks: I guess you have to expec t that , There were none , that I know of . Conldn ' t se e 61 any or hear any. Lovell I did not see a:ny leaks. Borman Electrical Power: We mentioned we had 1 and 2 main batteries on, and when we evacuated the spacecraft, we turned all four of them on per the checkl ist. everything but the rescue beacon. ampl e, very good. Turned off F.lectrical power was We were running both suit fans. Lovell Oxygen: Went to repress valve open. Borman We went through that swiftly, as a matter of fact , to keep cool. Love ll 'vie noticed before we got out that both the bottle pressures were down to zero. Borman Hatches: After one of the swimmers said we were clear to open the hatches, I unlocked mine. It operated very freely and easily. I could budge it about 2 i nches, but I could not lift it. I probab ly could have if I had exerted a l ot of effort, and gotten my Jegs up under me. However, the swimmer was right outside, and I asked him to he l p. wel l . Lovell Ile helped and it came right open, worked very We had the suit on and left them on. We were warm, undoubtedly. Getting out of the spacecraft as quickly as we did helped us. Borman That was the smart thing to do. 62 Lovel l I wouldn 't want to sit in there with our suits on. 13onnan Plus , I thought the visibility of that suit during re­ entry left a l ot to be desired. That is why I had to pu1 1 my hood back to find out where we were end what position we were in. I think the suit is an exceJ.lent one , but i t is going t o have to be improved. We be tter grab it and start working, modifying it ; to make it acceptab l e for Apoll o. The sea condition was very goon ; 2 to ,1. foot waves . We bobbed around, although I got a 1itt l e queasy, I did not get nauseated, Jim didn't either. Lovell The sea condition was outstanding for landing. 7. 6 Postlanding Activity Borman Postlanding act ivity was well organized. We were a li t t l e busy. We did not get t hru until about 10 o'clock that night. Is that right ? Lovell Yes, that is right . Borman He harl a little misunderstanding about riding a bicycl e. We understood we were not supposed to rirle until 18 hours after impact. They wanted us to ride it thA.t night after we had been through a full day of medical exams, and finally had a good supper. So , we told them they would have to hold off until 18 hours after impact. FCSD Rep You are still in the spacecraft for this part. On :postland.1nc we just sat there . Borman Okay. Lovell We l l, we went through the check-off list. the time . That took al1 I saw the swimmers, checked the electrical system, that they wanted us to do for postl anding. that time the swimmer had the collar up. By I couJrl see the collar going up, and then he got the jacket on . Borman We ha.d good commun i cation with t he swir:uner through thA.t jack . Lovell Excellent communicati ons with the swimmer. 7 . 7 Com f ort Borman It gets pretty wa rm in that sp~cecraft. I would hate tn spend any great deal of time in there without any F.C:i . Lovell I can speak as an authority on that. 7.8 Recovery Poree Personnel Borman We covered communications, it was exce llent . Flotation co1Ja.r was fine, wor ked good. 7 ,9 Borman F.gress Egress was normal, just as we practiced in Galveston Day several times. These helicopters did a fine ~oh. I think someone said it was about 23 minutes after we landed that we were on our way back. 7.10 Bom an Survival Gear Even the underarm life pr eservers inflated this time . Wonder of wonders. No prob1em . 64 7.11 Crew Pick Up Boman The crew pick up was nominal. Lovell Nothing else. 8.0 8 .1 Borman Everything was fine . SYSTEMS OPERATION Ple.tfom We aligned the platform 3 t imes. just as advertised. prob] em. Lovell W:ach time it worked Daytime alignrnent,of course,was no We got very ample yaw reference out the window. Caging, for fast heat dropout took approximately 23 minutes. Boman Night time, the initial alignment is a litt1e difficult i f you do not have a full moon. With a fu 1 1 moon it is al­ most as easy at night as it is in the daytime. It rea 1.ly lit the terrain up. Lovell To get your initial spacecraft attitude, the full moon is very nice . Borman Right, without a full moon, I think it woul d take you a little whi le to align to get your Spacecraft BEF, so that you would not have to torque the platfom too far for alignment. Lovell You get to know the stars. "!3orman Yes, you have to use the stars . It would be difficult to pick up the ground and track it. Platform Morl es: CAGE. Jim ~aid that took 23 minutes for a fast heat drop out. 65 SF.F worked perfectly. BEF worked perfectly. ORB RATE s eemed to be fine , We used it preparing for the rendezvous with Spacecraft 6. After running OP.BRATS fo r approximately an hour , and then going back to align S P.P , we did not notice a great amount of misalignment. only time it was on F'RF:E was during reentry, ?he I cuess the FREF. worked fine . Lovell No probl em about displays , were there ? Boman lfo , not at all , Lovell Been using- them for a couple of years now. 'B orman No prob l em about contro l s . well , ~'h~ PLATFORM mode worked During our last alienment, we had degraried opera... ion in thrusters~ and 4; so we aliened it manually f or 2 orbits . It was very easy to no , ann it worked fine . We had eJ l the confidP-nce in the worl ri as far A. S atti tude reference is concerned, 8 . 2 OAJIS 'Rorinan OAMS operational che ck, Pad: I tr.ink we went arnunn the horn about~ times before they were satisfieri. Lovel 1 It took three circuits to s et them , Borman Ri gr t , Inflight O~J~S : The on ly ooerati0nal er.eek we harl is when we lost the complete authority in yaw richt, thrusters 3 and 4, We noticed this first 1n PULSE mode; • 66 we switched to DIRECT and in DIRECT we did not e;et. a.ny ignition at all as far as I could tell . In t he OAHS PULSE yaw righ c, we were getting slight little pops . It seemed we had about { control authority that we had before we experience~ the probl em. effect a. We went to DIRECT, to see what DIREC11 ha<l on it and we got some thrust, but i t was '1•hishing. thrusters. We weren't getting any sound of the It was a whishing sound . T think we were only getting an impulse either from the oxi<lizer or the fuel escaping. Lovell We couJd hear a cJicking of the solenoids or the operation of the va l ves, whatever they were back there . They were worki ng all r ight, but we were not eetting any resuJtant thrust. Borman Right. Systems Monitoring : Source pressure was fine . Went right down t he predicted sche<lule . Lovell As a mRtter of fact, the s ource pressure dropped, just a r pre<licted , when we ran out of initial 0.Al18 fuel before we went to the re serve tank. Tt came back in at;air. when we actuated the squib. Ilorman ?To , that wasn't the source pressure, that was the regul ated pressure. Lovel l I mean the regulated pressure, I'm sorry. Borman The source temper ature worked fine throughout the flight. 67 The regul a t ed pressure stayed at 300 , r ight on the money, throughout the ent ire flight until the auxiliary tank was actuated . We ot:>erated the auxiliary tank when the nressure dr opped about 30 psi . Love l l Yes . IlonnAn Right . It went down to about 260 or 270 . It crune right ba ck up , and the system worked just exactly as advertised. worked fine. The prope1.1ant ouantity gauge Por most of the flight it was right in ae-reement with the ground comt:>utations. Love] J 1 Borman About 2 percent to 3 percent . Lovell And we s ti ll had 300 psi r egulated pressure . Borman Source pressure remained about 1,000 psi . :/hat wa.s the final pro"9e lJ ant quantity reading? OAMS propellant remaining: Monitoring of On board in fomat ion I thought . The OAMS propellant quantity gauge, wor ked fine . was good. Lovell At least it was on the s i de favoring us . :Sorman Yes. The ground in.formation was excellent. At the end of every da,y they gave us ground r undown of how much O.AMS fue l we had remaining. O.&MS fuel. It worked out fine. Any time we di dn't have a s~ecific assi gnment, we were in drif t ing f l ight. tioned. We were short on That's one thing we want men­ Every time we powered down we' d turn off the ACME bias power and the ACME inverter, and invariably t h i s would 68 • two pulses of end up in yaw left and roll left. ti ti tha t would tend to bump, II "bump, And the natural tendency of the spacecraft to yaw left due to water boiler venting, I guess, and perhaps ECS venting, was aggravated by this added impulse of two blips when we shut down the ACME. How about the selector controls and switches i n the cockpit? Lovell No comments t here. Borman I don't have any either. The attitude controller, I thought, was fine. Maneuver controllers were fine. Lovell No problems. The right hand maneuver controller was a very nice operating controller and it was very handy. Borman Very easy to operate. As far as inflight malfunctions or irregularities, we lost aut hority on thrusters 3 and 4. We got some of our yaw righ t capability back by turning off the circuit breaker for Thruster 12 and then thrusting backwards with the maneuver controller in order to give us yaw right. This wor~ed very well and enabled us to check yaw right drift rates and enabled us to make yaw right maneuvers. The only thing-­ you couldn't get very small control inputs with this mode. Lovell And you used a lot of gas. Borman And you used a lot of gas. I was very happy when we finally ··-◄ - ..-... .;J,, ... , : · - - L. :-... .. •-t 'ii 69 ._ ~ aligned the platform for reentry that we were able to get enough control out of 3 and 4 to align the platform. 'When we did this, of course, in order to get yaw control we went I don't have to roll jets - pitch, and that worked fine. anything to add to that malfunction. working. We heard the solenoids When we went to DIRECT we could feel we did get an impulse, but we did not seem to get ignition. more like a swishing noise. It sounded The ground ana.lyzed it and seemed to think it we.s a problem with the valve seats. I 'm not certain what it wa.s. I do know that we also tri ed s econ­ dary drivers and that didn't help. I coul d tell that wasn't the problem when we f i rst heard it. Lovell We tried different modes--PULSE, DIRECT, a.nd RATE COMMAND , but tb.a.t didn't help. Borman I think it was mechanica l problem. RATE COMMAND is a very tight control mode. I'm very glad i t was there. I think it is very important to have that for retrofire. We also used it for reentry. very good mode. I think it is a Of course, it is expensive in .f'uel . We used it also for all our thrusting when we were making orbi t adjust maneuvers. Lovell Let me ask a question. When did you go to RATE COMMAND during the reentry? Borman I went to RATE COMMAND during reentry Lfte:r guidance initi- 70 ate and after I started f lying the needles. Lovell Because you were overshooting with DIRECT? :Borman Right. I was not able to get the fine control I wanted. It would not stay in there. It seemed like the spacecraf't was picking up a torque in roll also, and I was having to watch it too close. Lovell A