DISCLOSURE / FILE
A NASA preliminary transcript records the Gemini 5 crew's technical debriefing at Cape Kennedy after the 1965 mission, with Part I focused on operational events from countdown through landing and recovery.
NASA-UAP-D019, Gemini 5 Technical Debriefing, Part I, 1965
A NASA preliminary transcript records the Gemini 5 crew's technical debriefing at Cape Kennedy after the 1965 mission, with Part I focused on operational events from countdown through landing and recovery.
NASA's Spacecraft Operations Branch prepared this Part I transcript from voice recordings of the Gemini 5 flight crew debriefing conducted at Crew Quarters, Cape Kennedy, from August 30 through September 1, 1965. The transcript states that urgent mission-analysis needs prevented a full editorial review before publication. In the pages provided, Gordon Cooper and Pete Conrad describe launch countdown, cockpit visibility problems, powered-flight cues, POGO vibration, fairing jettison debris, a temporary radio loss, and otherwise stable ascent performance.
This preliminary transcript was made from voice tape recordings of the GT-5 flight crew debriefing conducted August 30, 1965 thru September 1, 1965 at the Crew Quarters, Cape Kennedy , Florida.p.3
Errors in this transcript will be corrected as soon as possible and an official transcript will be published at a later date .p.3
Communications , I thought were good and no probl em at all on communications, and everything went real well.p.6
Each window was filthy.p.8
Motion is an excellent clue .p.11
At 2 mi nutes and 5 seconds we started picking up POGO and I got a fairly gcod amount of POGO on through , stopping just at abcut 5 to 7 seconds before staging.p.15
Fairing jettison. We jettisoned fairings at 3:25 and man do they ever go .p.20
SECO was exactly on time, just exactly on time and IVI's read 002 AFT.p.27
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.. - ,. 19 Y authtrity of E. c 1 1 G hanged by C4?1 •'o <<= / GEMINI V TECHNICAL DEBRIEFING (U) Part 1 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. THIS MAT E RIAL CONTAINS INF'ORM.ATION AFl"IECTING THE NATIONAL OEFENSE OF THE UN I TEO STATES WITHIN THE MEANING OF' TH£ £8P'IONAGIE LAW 5 ,. TITLE 11. U . S.C, SECTION 793 ANO 794 . T HE TRANS M I SSION OR REVELAT I O N Of' WH IC H IN AN Y MANNER TO AN UNA UTHORIZED PERSON IS PR OHIB ITE D av L AW. GROUP 4 OOWNCiftAOEO AT ) V EA R I NTFRVALS, OECL ASSI F'IEO AFTER 12 VE ARS t " 6 () t JF18Er4 T I;\ b
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PRELIMINARY GT- 5 FLIGHT CREW DEBRIEFING TRANSCRIPT PART I Prepared By Spacecraft Operations Branch Flight Crew Support Division September 1 , 1965 This material contains informati on 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. Gr oup 4 : Downgrade at 3 year intervals Declassified after 12 years
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.. - ,. 19 Y authtrity of E. c 1 1 G hanged by C4?1 •'o <<= / GEMINI V TECHNICAL DEBRIEFING (U) Part 1 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. THIS MAT E RIAL CONTAINS INF'ORM.ATION AFl"IECTING THE NATIONAL OEFENSE OF THE UN I TEO STATES WITHIN THE MEANING OF' TH£ £8P'IONAGIE LAW 5 ,. TITLE 11. U . S.C, SECTION 793 ANO 794 . T HE TRANS M I SSION OR REVELAT I O N Of' WH IC H IN AN Y MANNER TO AN UNA UTHORIZED PERSON IS PR OHIB ITE D av L AW. GROUP 4 OOWNCiftAOEO AT ) V EA R I NTFRVALS, OECL ASSI F'IEO AFTER 12 VE ARS t " 6 () t JF18Er4 T I;\ b
PRELIMINARY GT- 5 FLIGHT CREW DEBRIEFING TRANSCRIPT PART I Prepared By Spacecraft Operations Branch Flight Crew Support Division September 1 , 1965 This material contains informati on 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. Gr oup 4 : Downgrade at 3 year intervals Declassified after 12 years
PREFACE This preliminary transcript was made from voice tape recordings of the GT-5 flight crew debriefing conducted August 30, 1965 thru September 1, 1965 at the Crew Quarters, Cape Kennedy , Florida. 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 . This document contains a transcript of the first part of the debriefing, during which the crew described the mission generally from an operational viewpoint . A preliminary transcript of the re mainder of the debriefing will be published by September 3, 1965. It will cover systems operations , operational checks, visual sightings, experiments , pre-mission planning, mission control , and training. a i eJ~FIDff:!TIAL
9'0Ni;10ENTll(t ~ TABLE OF CONTENTS Paragraph Page Number 1.0 COUNTDOWN 1.1 Crew Insertion . . . . . . . . . . ,1 1.2 Communications . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1. 3 Crew Participation and Countdown . . 1 1.4 Comfort . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1.5 Environmental Control System . 2 1.6 Sounds . . . . . . 2 1.7 Vibrations . . . . . . . . . . . 2 1.8 Visual . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1. 9 Crew Station Controls and Displays 4 2. 0 POWER.ED FLIGHT 2.1 Lift- Off Cues . . . . . 6 2. 2 Roll Pr ogram 7 2.3 Pitch Program . 8 2. 4 Aerodyna.mci.cs . . . . . 8 2. 5 Environmental Control System . . 9 2. 6 Maximum q . . . . . . . . . . 9 2. 7 Windshear . . . . 9 2. 8 DCS Update . . . . . . . . . 9 2. 9 Engine 1 Operati on . . 9 2. 10 POGO . . . . . 10 2. 11 Engine 2 Status . . . 12 2. 12 Acceleration g ' s . . . . 12 2,13 BEXJO . . . . . . 12 2 . 14 Staging . . . . . . . 13 2. 15 Engine 2 Ignition 13 2. 16 RGS Initia t~ . . ~4 2. 17 Fairing Jettison . 15 2,18 GO/ NO GO . . 20 2, 19 Systems Sta tus 21 2. 20 SECO . 21 2. 21 Steeri11g , . 22 I' ...... 3.0 INSERTION 3. 1 Post- SEXJO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 3. 2 SEXJO + 20 Seconds . . . 26 3.3 Inser tion Activities . . . . 30 4 . 0 ORBITAL FLIGHT 38 Wf.lE>ENTl~E
5 . 0 RETROFIRE 5. 1 5. 2 5 . 3 5,4 5.5 5 . 6 !R- 36 Events.. ~R- 256 Events . ~ - 1 Events . .. . 1R- O Events . .. . Retropack Jettison . Communications . 6 .0 REENTRY 6 . 1 6 . 2 6.3 6 . 4 6.5 6 . 6 6 . 7 6. 8 6 , 9 6. 10 6 . 11 6. 12 400 K . . . . . . . Acceleration profile . Spacecr aft control . 100 000 Feet . . 50 000 Feet .... 35 000 checklist items . Commtmi cati ons . . . 10 . 6K barostat . . . . Main chute deployment Single point release . Blood pressure measurements Postmain checklist items . 7. 0 LANDING AND RECOVERY 7 . 1 Impact. . . . 7 , 2 Checklists . . 7.3 Communications . 7.4 Systems Configuration . 7 , 5 Spacecraft Status . . 7. 6 Post- Landing Activities 7, 7 Comfort . . . . . .. 7. 8 Recovery Force Personnel . 7 . 9 Egress . . 7 . 10 Survival Gear 7. 11 Crew Pickup Page Number .168 . 172 . 173 . . 174 . 182 . 183 . 194 . 196 .197 . 197 . 198 . 202 . 202 . 202 . 203 . 204 .. 204 . 205 .206 . . 210 . 211 . 211 . 212 . 213 . 214 . 214 . 214 . 215 . 215
1 1 .0 COUNTDOWN 1.1 Crew Insertion Cooper The crew insertion , I thought, went very well . Conrad Yes , we had the suiting thing down on my cuffs and everything so that we got right ou t t here and, boy, th& Gunter was ready for us and i n we w ent . Cooper They were all set . There were no delays and every thing went exceedingly well on t he gantry. 1 . 2 Communications Cooper Communications , I thought were good and no probl em at all on communications, and everything went real well. Conrad Yes , Stoney handled that whole thing real well . Cooper All right, volume was still down on the little comm sets in the transfer van there . That ' s Stoney' s little improvement . 1 . 3 Crew Participation in Countdown Cooper Crew participation in the countdown was good . I didn ' t see anything at all wrong. Conrad Yes , we weren ' t rushed . We felt t hat we had enough time to get the switches in the right position and just ever ything went real good. 1.4 Comfort Cooper Comfort was real fine . We went on to two suit fans
2 Cooper 1.6 Sounds Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad 1. 7 Vibration Cooper right away. I thought we felt plenty cool the whole time. ECS was good. Never any problem with it . Sounds , I thought the only sounds tha·; we had that were abnormal we'd been warned about. When the prevalves opened, they were fairly loud and when the engines gimballed they were quite loud , and both of those we were aware of the fact that they would cause a lot of noise and vibrat:.on . There is something that really dings t he booster too when they start .. . . I don ' t--whet her they drop a platform away. It ' s before they start moving the gant ry. Just before they start lowering that erector. Boy, something really, like it really bangs tha t booster , I thought. I still don't know what it is , but , of course, we ' d been up there with the erector down twice before that so we were sort of e~tting used to those kind of sounds. Okay , vibrations we already covered tr.at . Sounds , vibrations.
3 1.8 Visual ,. Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad FCSD REP Conrad Cooper / Visual . Nothing.... Oh , yes , wait a minute, I started getting this win dow fogging . Well, let ' s cover that under the right area . Well, it was actually in the countdown when the erector went down before liftoff . Well , okay , allright . I mean we still had it later . Well, you want to cover that now then in systems . Well, is that what this means , is visual, or does that just mean something else? Yes, that ' s before liftoff. Powered flight is next . Yes , well t lri,s-tra-,:5pened 6e:f'1 Allright , even before liftoff , hat this really is completely unforgiveable. Each window was filthy. Just fogged completely over, and it was on the inside of the outer pane of glass . It was within the sealed unit of glass , and it was so foggy when they lowered the erector that it it was frozen over solid, d neither could Well, it had fogged over before they lowered the Conrad (j()tqflDENTIA[ ,. I I
4 erector and then the guys heated it w:.th hot air to make it go away and that just made th:.ngs wor se when they lowered the erector . Cooper It didn't m ake it go away all the way. Conrad That I s right it made'"it- ~ actually. Cooper / L my side in my window ~etweer. the inside pane and the two outside panes of\\8-~s , I had a small bee , and I had a fly, and I had\several flecks of things that I had written u~ before and never got corrected, and they were the whole flight, and I ' m sure they will show up on all the films and everything. Now between the outer sealed panes of glass there were numerous little specks and of stuff and throughout the flight as . .. well , we ' ll cover that later, but that was even 7rore the flight started . The windows were not pla/n a nd were not in good shape to go forthe--f~. 1 . 9 Crew Station Contr ols and Displa_ys Conrad I think the Gemini cockpit is a pretty good cockpit . Cooper I think in general that crew stations eontrols and displays were pretty adequate . Conrad I 've got a couple comments on switches and things, but these are . . . . ~FIDENTIAL -
5 FCSD REP Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad ,. Okay , how about the time you spent in there on prelaunch . Do you think that this is about right? Yes , yes , I think that this is just about right . I think that if you cut it down too much more than that you are going to be....you could cut it down some more , there's no doubt . .. . It ' s that cabin purge cycles when you ' re not doing anything really , and that ' s excellent time . ... that you can cut it down, but that ' s the thing that takes the time for both the ground crews ... and that ' s lost time. I don ' t know . ... I don ' t think you want to rush the crew and now our count that second day went by the clock, boy. We got in there at the right time . We counted down and lifted off on, and I didn ' t feel that I was rushed , and I didn ' t feel that I sat in there for an excessive amount of time . No , I didn ' t either. I thought that it went just about right , time wise . Long as there ' s no holds in the count everything' s great .
6 2.1 Lif t Off Cues Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper FtE>ENTI L 2. 0 POWERED FLIGHT Okay , lift- off cues , CAP COM . CAP CO~ didn ' t come into the act until later . Stoney counted us down thru ignition and lift-off and then CAP COM picked us up at l ift- off . Motion is an excellent clue . There ' s doubt in your mind when you ljft- off . You know, the second you lift- off that yot .' ve lifted . Vibration was very low. It had dropped out almost completely a.t lift- off, felt that shaking was very l i ght. There was very little vibrati on at all . Okay, vibration , very l ow. Noise I thought, was quite low . I was particularl y aware of the noises of goi ng through the max Q regionar y thing. Oh , t his is lift-off again . I thought the noises were very well at l iftoff . You know the engines were running from the outside before , you know, and man they really make a racket , but from where you are it's pretty quite . You know there running. You can here them , there's no doubt about that , but .. . O kay , on visual I don ' t . . . . We had a very cl ear day. There weren't even any clouds in sight on ~ IDE NTI~
Conrad 2 . 2 Roll Program Conrad Cooper 7 C.(&)Hft0ENTI:,\~~ au, !to our sight as we were lifting off, and I couldn't tell any visual cues to lift- off, could you? You had the feeling that you were moving visually. After you get your roll program you see it visually and you can see the pitch program starting visually, but just at first l ift-off you don't really have any visual cues . Cockpit displays are just l ike advertised . The two stage - one lights go out, and . .. just l ike the simulator. Yes , I watched roll program on the gyro, I was watching for it to come i n on time and in glancing up when the roll program started I was still looking at nothing but blue sky, but I was aware visually as you say that the booster was rolling. Yes , you can have a airplane when you are looking at nothing but blue sky and start a motion and you may not know exactly what the motion is, but you know t hat you are moving. Now on this cockpit display, something that I got two different answers to from different people on how the gyro and the actual case was going to be set and it suddenly dawned on me that they actually set the gyro so that you are launching down the 90 degrees. You're
8 Conrad Cooper FCSD REP Cooper 2. 3 Pitch Program Cooper 2. 4 Aerodynamic Cooper progressi ng down to 90 degrees line , e. la the simulator, although the booster sets on 85 degrees and when you turn to 72 degrees launch azimuth you are rolling clockwise so far as tr.e crew is concerned . You roll to zero . But you are rolling to is real ly to O on the gyro as precessed around so that you are net really setting on the actual launch azimuth, you are actually setting so that when you stai§'e on over i n yaw then pitch over then in your yaw your on the in plane line. You ' re coming down the zero line . Y01.:. 1 re yawing down the zero l i ne . That 's right , and I kept getting diffe.rent answers on this and this is in fact the case. Roll program was exactly right on time and ended e>:actly on time. Pitch program started exactly on time. Aerodynamic was nothing new or differE:nt about it . It was just standard. We build up to the noises at max Q; the noise built up to gradual level and the vibration and quantity built up to ma>:~ and then dropped off very rapidly J.1'd:i!Ji tely thereafter. FlDENTIAL
2. 5 ECS Conrad Cooper Conr ad Cooper Conrad Cooper 2 . 7 Wind Shear Cooper 2 . 8 DCS Updates Cooper FCSD REP Conrad 9 CONFICtleNTIA~ • Right on the button. ECS was right on the money, no problem at all . Max Q we ' ve already stated . The cabin s ealed a little bit high like they said it would . I forget the number. It was about 5.8. About 5.8 or 9 and just gradually dwindled back down . And just after we got in there by the time I looked at it again after insertion everything it bled down on our gage to 4.9, our gage read a little low . I think the actual reading , you will pr obably find the cabin actually was 5.1 1 but the whole rest of t he flight the gage never budged off the 4.9. The gage stayed right there like it was glued . The wind shear , we had none and , certainly nothing that we could tell , but as I understand we ' ve been told that for that day anyway we had almost negible wind shear. DCS updates were right on time . You had two updates? 1 plus 45 , 2 plus 25 . 2 , 9 Engine 1 O perat i on Cooper The engine 1 operation couldn ' t have been better, ----~~K)ENTIAL
------- 10 .. 2, 10 POGO Cooper Conrad ( Cooper It was beautiful. Just now in between engine 1 operation and engine 2 here we have t wo items we will insert in here . One was POGO.. At 2 mi nutes and 5 seconds we started picking up POGO and I got a fairly gcod amount of POGO on through , stopping just at abcut 5 to 7 seconds before staging. POGO dropped. cl ean out exactly the same time there that we programmed POGO on the early days. Yes, that one surprised me . We ' d he1:.rd and read tbat both John 8{!.d Gus ' s and Jim and Ed ' s f l i ght that they were hardly even aware of IDGO and boy when it came in on us it was loud anc. clear and , well Gordon , neither one of us could talk hardly; we were really vibrating with it and I was hard pressed to read the displays. By golly , if I had to re __:-t ;--e num;-er on _ · ~- ~r-ays I- think I woul d ad -;-:h - - --:b- _ __ , e a: -i s p ___ .,,. have been hard pressed to do it, because we really had it pretty good. Yes , the rate ... the amplitude of them were such . . . 11 cps frequency and the ampl itude of them was such that you were on -- you were on the marginal11 i t Conrad RCSD REP Cooper FCSD REP Cooper FCSD REP Cooper edge of reading of any large gage and any fine reading that you had to read, you would never be able to read any numbers. It was exactly like the POGO we did all along on the program up at Ames and as the exact amplitude , I don ' t lmow, but was , . . . . . I think we don ' t want that ~ POGO. It was no par icu ar y upsetting to me , because I really was fai rly familiar with POGO having been through all that POGO program, but this thing kind of t i ckled me that we got it to see that we had still hadn ' t solved it , but I don ' t think . . . its something you don ' t want because if you had ot~er things going wrong during that period of t i me it would m ake it vecy difficult to say what you had wrong or what It didn ' t upset me , but it surprised me , you lmow, because I just wasn't expecting POGO. Wbat g- level would you estimate it to be? Well , we were sneaking right up there . I mean the POGO . Oh, it was right at about 5 g ' s . · \ 1 • Well , I mean plus or minus amplitude . Well I , my estimate on it was that it was something
-- 12 on the order of maybe three quarters of a g . W ell, I don I t !mow whether it was that high c,r not . Conrad I thought it was at least a half , if not better . Apparently it wasn't that high . I ws.s really surprised. Like I say, we were really getting the ramrod out of it. Cooper s beyond what we selected as we th~ht should be the cutoff. It was more tr.an wh~ we l had selected at Ames as being max acc7. in this.I passed up ver b • there one of the first things that happened immediately about the time that we got the pitch program was the IGS Stage 2 fuel needle failed in thE full -max deflection position. And it came back on and was reading after staging briefly and thEn failed again during staging. It was intermittent . 2. 11 Engine 2 Status Cooper Engine 2 status stayed ... was perfect . There was not anything wrong at all. 2.12 Acceleration G' s Cooper Acceleration g ' s were right on the piofile , were certainly very pleasant. Nothing wrong at all with them. 2. 13 BECO
13 Cooper BECO was right on the money . .. 2 . 14 Staging Conrad Boy, that staging was smooth too . Cooper They told us that BECO was going to occur early , but it was Conrad We did loft a little bit apparently like they said we woul d because, right after staging .... 2. 15 Engine 2 I gnition Conrad Well , Engine 2 ignition, I wasn't even hardly aware of that other than we jus t started to get a little , yc,11 know, we just sort of went off the peg at 6 g's and Gordo said s t aging OK and Engine 2 is good and I wasn ' t even aware that Engine 2 had lit . You can ' t hear it, to speak of, but you can feel the acceleration slowly building up . FCSD REP Did you see anything visually? Conrad No , I didn't see anything. I heard the other guys talking about s ee the flash at the brig. Never saw a thing and I wasn't aware of any flash out there either . I\ Cooper J didn ' t see anything at all at BEDO. The best clue that I have on my side , is that I see the Fuel and Oxidizer needles start coming down as the engine
14 2.16 RGS Initiate Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad FCSD REP Conrad Cooper Conrad • starts burning. And then they coming c.own fairly rapidly at first, I mean you get a very definite motion on them right at first there and. they kind of settled out. Engine 2 ignition we've already covered. RGS initiate right on the money. I was going to mention that we had l of t ed and that we were expected to pitch down a.nd we did when it picked up RGS. It smoothed in very smooth, and the fading was just right. The IGS needle really deflected and I ~as , you know, I don't think it pitched, it didn't peg- out , but it did make a large dip and then when the booster came down just pitched down very smoottly down to about 75 or 80 degrees, I guess it pitched down almost 10 degrees. What rate did it pitch over? Very slow, but steady, at just It took about 20 seconds I guess to fade it in there . The needle came in and made a big deflection and right after that the booster started pitching and the needle started back and boy the needl e was •
15 CQ~ElDEhJIJA back and thing was right on the money at about 80 degrees. It was a very smooth transition and then do you remember they were telling, us to look for this one cps oscillation? Well, I didn't have rate needl e s like Gordo did, but I wasn't aware of any oscil lations at any time. That booster was in pitch and yaw as far as that went Cooper Those rate needles were like they were glued . There was never through boost or second stage was there ever any rate except that one tiny little rate , one teensy little rate just at when we were in POGO we got one tiny little longitudinal rate, ' just one tiny little fleck on a rate, and was the only one . Otherwise it was just smooth as silk, the whole time, rate wi se . 2.17 Fairing Jettison Cooper Fairing jettison. We jettisoned fairings at 3:25 and man do they ever go . Conrad I counted Gordo down to them. Okay, yes, that ' s a good point . Cooper Beside the scanner fairing and the nose fairing go and when the nose fairing went it went with all kinds of debris . There were pieces flying all
16 over. Conrad Yes , and I don't think it went right . I don't believe it went right , because the Rand R can was ripped up in the front , and I can show you on my side the nose went like that and there was some tape or fiber glass that goes around t he . . .. It was fiberglass cloth and it was all broken loose in jagged flaps sticking up t hat, you lmow, had broken loose from a long in here when i.hat cover went I had decided impression that the cover went off askew, that it didn't jettison t he: way i t should have. And this could be a good point of putting it back to after insertion. Cooper W ell, it ' s supposed to go off askew. Conrad Yes , well, it just di dn ' t go off clean . That 's why this was ripped up, see . Cooper W ell , it something somebody might look into , but you don ' t want to recommend that they put back to after insertion , because your taking a weight penalty to carry that all the way up. Conrad Yes, I realize that , but . . . . Cooper It was designed to go off ... . Conrad That was the reason in the first place that they WIDE
17 moved it up there anyhow, because they weren't .... Cooper No , the reason they moved it up there was because they didn ' t have strong enough propulsion on those squibs and spring combinations or whatever they use . We never did get a reading on that, but whatever the total propulsive expulsion system wasn't kick ing, the scanner fairing wide enough but what they would come back into the booster. But didn't you have the distinct impression that the nose fairing broke into j illions of pieces when it blast . Conrad I certainly, I certainly , yes . That ' s why wh~n I say askew , I mean something didn't look right. I can't put my finger on it, but - - Cooper It came off in many pieces anyway. There were many, many pieces and the whole area was just filled with debris . Conrad Yes, and then , I 'm not sure that that's when we got all that gl op on our windshiel d, the spots ... Cooper Well, I noted exactly at that time immediately after the fairing went, I noted about 5 or 6 , I saw them hit , 5 or 6 gray splots, just small ones , very small little gray- type splots and I was distinctly looking for that and watching for it and
18 Conr ad Cooper Conrad FCSD REP they were not there before they were t'nere and I ; saw them when they hit. They h it duri:'.l.g all this debris flying around period . I think that you can sti11 f i nd them o:' .l. the windshields . They didn ' t burn off during reentry. But they ' re not bad and there are just a few little scattered ones and I think it might be interesting t o compare how many you get there vers us and how many you get when you jettison them in orbit . It may wel l be that jettisoni ng in orbit would be pre ferab l e , but I didn ' t f i nd anything objectionable t o jettisoning where they went , they wenm fine. It did add a lot of debris and I agree with Pete there was a big torn something or other out there which may just be a fiberglass thing that is kind of . .. ,. Yes , I want to get down and look at the R and R and and I can tell you what it was , describe it a lot better. We ' ll probably have some pictures of it too in the camera somewhere. I know it ' ll show up in some film . How l ong was this visible? You say there was a big bunch of stuff out there . ON FIDEN TIAL
19 Cooper There ' s a whole fly . Oh, you mean the debris . It was gone . Conrad It was gone like that, but it just looked like the whole darn thing exploded. Cooper It looked like it just flew into a jillion pieces. It was all around you for maybe a period of a second or two . Conrad I didn't think it was that much, i t was just gone . Cooper But it was a defininite period of time when you were aware of all this debris all over and then clear . Okay, enough for fairing jettison.
20 2. l8 GO/NO GO Cooper FCSD REP Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper GO/NO GO: We never got a GO/NO GO beeause we lost our number 1 radio in about 4 minutes s ometime just prior . . . let see we got a . 8 . . . . Wti got a V over VR of . 8 . We got a GO/NO GO of ,.. You did get a , 8? We got a .8 . Yes , that comes much later - that com(!S after the GO/NO GO. Yes, that ' s right , okay, well I don ' t remember ever getting a ... yea , we did, we go·~ MCC GO. Right we got a GO/NO GO , okay, but then immediately after . 8 we never got any·':hing at all from there on until aft er we were ins i~rted and gone to UHF No . 2. I think it must be in the antenna problem, I really do . Well , there 's some problem there because the same thing happened on one of the previous flights and we definitely and completely lost radio and I swi tched over just before we inserted, I switched over to number 2 and then when I call1 ~d but the IVI's we were back with them then .
21 2. 19 Systems Status Cooper System Status everything .. . . Conrad We did have ... Let m e describe the delta P \ lights . Shortly after liftoff I got the number 1 fuel cell delta Plight and I reported i t and just about t he time I reported it , then the number 2 fuel cell delta Plight came on . They s tayed on all the way through boost and they were on aft er insertion for ten , fifteen seconds and after that they went right back out again and that) i s it . It didn't effect anything on the fue y e11 operation, the voltages , /thing stayed fine • bein n----tliere was no other way of telling the~ was out of tolerance so I don ' t think it is a problem. We expected it. Cooper I ' m glad that we had them changed to orange rather than red . Conrad Yeah, yeah . Cooper System s status in addition to that I don ' t think we had any systems that were exactly right , except the radio and the acceleration as we had expected it . We were right on the profile. SECO was ... 2. 20 SECO tn currents , other than !Oa!IIAL
22 Conrad Cooper 2. 21 Steering Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper FCSD REP Conrad Cooper I think we burned out at, Gordo, 7 anc. 1/4 g's. Right. SECO was exactly on time, just exactly on time and IVI's read 002 AFT. Almost ierfect. Steering was ... there was no steerine· accelerations or velocities that we could tell. Steering was just smooth as silk , apparently they :t.ad us going right down the slot . And when we came off, apparently we were lined up well because there weren ' t any rates because when we came off and wajted our 20 seconds there were no rates whatsoever and it was just setting there just . . . . as smootr.. as As stable as a rock . As smooth as silk so that and when we started thrusting and separating we came off :ust right straight forward . No deviation , no skidding around or anything. Just right straight off, I thought the IVI's were plus 2 . That ' s what I haVle written down here. Plus 28 right , 3 t.p. I guess that's what it was. This velocity you read? I was going to cover that in your ... , Your right, plus 2, it was -- that's :r·ight . Plus
Conrad Cooper Conrad 3 ,1 Post SECO Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper 23 ~IE>l!NTtAE 002 . I have al l the computer readouts . 008 right and how many up? 3 up . MANEUVER CONTROLLER worked fine . We went right through .... W el l, l et ' s go through t hat. The way we had practice SECO, Gordo, got SECO and Gordo unstowed the CONTROLLER and I armed the BUS ARM Swit ch so that we get the MSC- 1 doors OFF. Brought the propulsion power ON. Brought the ATTITUDE CONTROL Elect ric Power ON. W ent from RATE COMMAND to DIRECT. Armed the switch and hit the computer. Armed t he sep spacecraft thing and Gordo and I counted the seconds down . I n the meantime , I punched off address 72 so that it was reading and then in 20 seconds we had SEP s/c . ... In 20 seconds I start ed and I called it out and started thrusting and Pete would hit the sep spacecraft ... . Conrad The reason we did that was so that we would have
the inertial velocity readout on the ga.ge and that was ·beautiful 25,808 and nominal was S-.lpposed to be 25,807. You can't ask for a better calculation from a computer than that, and a lot of people don ' t have much faith in that thing but, I think that I'll bet that the computed MCC figure isn't more than a foot or two off. I t couldn ' t be because everything was nominal for hours and hours in the past, Day's it went that way where we stayed on the flight plan to the minute, to the second so I know that it was a good computation, and I have the five address readouts that we read , We read out address 72 as 25,808; address 94 which was R dot for gamma was plus 20 feet which is pretty darn small so we must have almos t a zero gamma address 97 which is the forward IVI was plus 2 feet; address 52 was perfect , it was zero. So there was no adjustment needed and if there had been an adjustment needed that would ha:ve come at 3 , 042 seconds on the computer if tbere had been an address . 52 correction and nominal 3,008 seconds so the computer computed the nomi nal thing off only by less than a minute, about a half a
25 minute of what the actual nominal value / een , s o I think thats pretty darn good ascent routine in that comput er, and I think hat ( now that we have Math flow 6 in there t his i why I think the guy shouldn't get so darn worried in MCC underspeeds and giving them burn co/rections t his Mickey Movse. I' ve been Cooper Conrad Cooper Cooper Conrad t rying to make tbis pein-t-ewe· since we got associat ed with . . . . I think we had better immediate data avail abl e on board than people have been giving it credit for . Tha t ' s right , and it really pleased me to see it come out on the computer this way. And had we never gotten our communications back we would have known tha t we were i n good shape because of the data we had on board, we didn ' t have to worry about the ground readouts and what to do ; we would have known what to do whether we had been under or over or anything else . Attitudes and rates , t here weren ' t any rat es . The thing was steered right down the s lot . We came off smooth . Spacecraft separation NflD~NTlAk
26 CONF:10ENT-IA Cooper We separated as smooth as silk just r i , 5 ht straight .;; ahead Conrad Well, we counted down and Gordo said h? was ready and I SEP spacecraft and he thru3ted and I went back to RATE COMMAND for them and we came straight off . I didn't even feel it . The first t hing we felt was thrust . Cooper And rolled upright and went to 000 00 - 15 which happened to be right on the horizon. As it t urned out that 15 figure was good . It read out the IVI•s . FCSD REP That's, you know on 4 . . . they thought they came off the booster. Conrad Yes, that's why I mentioned that because Cooper That's what we were looking for, too, 3.2 SEGO Plus 20 Seconds Cooper We've already mentioned the IVI displays . Space craft separation occurred very smoothly. Thrusting was smooth , nothing wrong at all . Attitude rates were good. Conrad Yes, I don't understand this! I don't understand this guy saying that they can't hear them or they can ' t sense them. Boy, I was easily aware . . . .
.. Cooper Conrad Cooper FCSD REP Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper FCSD REP F H ID~Nf lAL 27 1/ You can feel t hem alm ost mo,-e than you can hear them. You can feel them vibrate r eally, more than you can hear them . I mean , you can hear them too , but the vibrat ion you can hear them too, but t he vi bration you can f eel the thrust . Have you ever heard a high speed hose or high speed water jet. Shhh ... That 's the impression that I had. Yes, that ' s right. Even from the aft firing thruster? Ever y thruster we had on t here. We heard every thruster on the whol e f l ight It never occurred in my mind when the thrus t ers were fired. You can feel them and I can hear them. I couldn't hear them in the sense of an expl osive sound or a roar . It sounded like wat er swishing. Yes , very definitely, more a Shhh . And I was aware of it again when we made the burns l ater on, you know , we made the reverse coelliptic stuff and all that. How did these noises , the thruster noises , sound compared with the way the last crew set the mission simulator? '
28 Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Hey, that's another i nteresting point. They're not very close on pulse. Pulse is a ... • Pulse is more of a thump . That 's the one sound that does sound like you ' d expect a rocket engine to sound . Here ' s a sound just about like this : (knock) Yes , it very definitely sounds like a knock . There is no "shhh" or roar, just a little thud. You can hear it just like somebody knccking at the back of the spacecraft . You can hear it go "tap tap, tap , tap, tap, tap," Really, the simulator doesn I t sound tl:.e right way. It ' s a general enough nature and it tl::.e same type m anner Yes, it is close enough to give you a good cue. The platform mode for instance , you krow, when i t goes shh, shh, shh, shh ... did the same thing i n the spacecraft except it was all in one thump and swooshes when it was constantly firing the thrusters it sounded like the swish. The air-to- ground communications I thought was excellent the whol e time. I didn't find anythi ng ,
29 Conrad .. Cooper Conrad Cooper FCSD REP Cooper Conrad Cooper ONEl0EtslJl~E wrong. We really had good comm the whole flight. There was never a time -- the only time the only fault we find was one or two times through the remote site when the MCC was trying to remote to these sites they would get some fading. I must say the HF worked excellent. When they were ~r~usic, broadcasting music to us, my\ gosh they had us practically the world round on '-----~The music quality was quite _ g0od in most cases. I got times on that we can bring out later so that they can correlate how far GO/NO GO , there wasn't any problem on that. They gave us the GO right away. How long did it take them to give this? Oh , heck, immediately. Almost immediately. .> vveaf There was no swivel because there was no velocity ~ correction. There was no velocity correction needed. Orbit quantitites were good, they had those for us. It took them quite a while to read us our experiments but they just said you have a nominal orbit and then mayb_ e . . . . . eQNFIE>ENTl~t
I Conrad I've got down here the GMT of liftoff . I wrote down ... 13 plus 59 plus 59 which they l ater change to 14 plus 00 plus 00 . I have the one A time they got " it up to us okay, which was 10 pl us 11 . Then I have the 2 dash 1 they gave us was 01 pl us 27 plus 16 which they later revised to 01 plus 26 plus 27, I wrote those down. 3.3 Insertion Activities Cooper Okay, l et ' s start on inser tion activities. SAFE t he swi tches we did that just right for our check list . In fact , we are even more convinced than ever that a good, thorough, accurate, checklist is the only thing to have and Conr ad Physically marked them off when they "·e r e done . Cooper We followed it conscientiously. The sequential light t ests, we did it j ust by the teE.ts . Stowage:; . we already had modified our checklistE, ·and we already had written on some of it that we would do these i f we decided to. For instance, the D- rlng safety pin, we did install them at right t i me, and there was no problem on those; they wer e nruch easi•~r under zero- g to get in and out than we had thought and I had no
31 Conrad .. Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad .kQt4FIDfNJ1 A.L , trouble getting my D-ring in, did you? I waited on mine , remember. Yes , you waited . .. . I s towed my D- ring thing So we closed the cover immediately and I decided I woul d go ahead and see if I could get mine, and I got to i t right away and it went right in, so I put it in . W e, of course, got in trouble in the second orbit , but we did not unstrap or put t he drogue pins in the seat or unstow any items of gear other than the flight plan books and the 16mm camera and the Hasselblad. I take it back. We went through the Flight Plan as advertised and then stowed the items. We had D-2 canera out, the Blob out, but we did this in the proper places in the Flight Pl an. But we never did unstrap . We never unstrapped and never put the drogue pins in until after we go to 6 - 4 GO. We got a 6 - 4 GO. But we restowed too , after we got in t rouble . We throught maybe having to go into 6-4 why, we'd put ourselves back into the configuration
32 Cooper Conrad were never up . to reenter lready decided t hat I was not going to launch with th£~ They " are just useless as far as I am concerr..ed, and I as delighted I did not have them; and I didn ' t miss I don't think, I think could remove th€m and - The arm restraints are there for the pressurized case and high altitude ejection . I did go with m ine up . I would prefer to go with thEim down, but there wasn't any reason , I didn ' t need to get my hands on the hand control or anything ~ .o I left them as they were, but I don' t think tr.ey were necessary. •
FtDENTtAL 33 Cooper Okay, belts . I couldn ' t ~~ he belts . The harness - While we 're on the harness , I don ' t like that harness worth anything. t hink what we need is a simple type adjustable type harness wi th clips on the legs that you can undo legs to get to some of the functions you have to : uri pation and defecation and so on in the spacecy ft . I do ' t see why we have to have a big, expensi/e, custom, made ha~ss that you can ' t readily get on off and this on~ you can not readily get and if you had one with on it and snaps like you do on harness , it would be, I think, a hundred times useful as this one . Conrad Let me ask you a ~uestion . Do you really - now , do you r eally - I agree. Let me say this . I agree you should firs t be able to get your harness on and off, but in zero- g I ' m not convinced that three , especially two leg snaps type arrangement. In other words , a harness that would come completely loose and have many straps that hitch to the other straps would be really good in zero- g . What I think we need to do is to be able to get in and out of that harness that we have, easier. Like, maybe you could loosen the leg straps on it but not have them come apart . Now , I ~ NftDENTrAL
Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper took my harness off in flight twice . I took 1 em " off once- - Yeah, but you wouldn ' t even have to step through these :: leg loops if you had - just like on an airplane harness . You could undo that and you wouldn ' t eve· '.l. have to worry about the leg loops . Then all you 1 d have to do is just slide out of the torso area. Yeah. Well» lets sees that ' s what I' m saying. If you unhook both of those leg loops and you throw the whole thing down in the footwell and then you pull it back up again you got a leg strap floating off ever here and you got a - - Well that ' s no problem. It ' s no worse i.han it is find ing your lap belt . Did you ever have i;rouble getting your lap belt back on after you took it off? I always hitched it on the Velcro over on the side . But you never had any trouble ~ ting t o it. I didn ' t . / I let mine float free and I never had any trouble getting t o them at all . Well , I just don 1 t lmow now. I really d:i.dn ' t think it was that bad getting in and out of this harness . My only concern was that if- - I stayed- - How many times did you get i n and out o f it? ~
( OhJFt0! 35 Conrad Twice . The big problem was having you unhitch the straps on my suit . Cooper That ' s right . With the cables to go over the harness . Conrad The harness--the easiest thing was getting in the legs . That was no problem at all . Cooper Yeah. Conrad Where I needed help was getting over my shoulder and getting the straps on the suit hitched back up again, which is a two man operation. Cooper Well , my point is that for normal wearing around the pad area or wearing around when your suited and every thing, you ' d be much more comfortable if you could have those straps loose where they ' re not gouging you in the legs , Conrad Yes , well-- Oh, I agree. Cooper Or where you had adjustments on them . ... Conrad . .. adjustments see- - Cooper Okay, well . Conrad Where you coul d make the legstraps loose but you' d never disconnec t them so you don ' t have free floating straps around t here . It was no big problem .... Cooper My suggestion would be to have them exactly like you did in a parachute harness . You have the leg adjust -
Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper ment and on that same fitting you have the little snap " wher e you can unsnap in the places you want to . Oh yes , you dan do it either way. Sure . You cou,Yd either loosen them or--I just thi we've gone to such complex tailoring devices in orde f ovide some company with a great elaborate pro of providing expensive harnesses that they .. . per - sonally don ' t think they ' re worth a darn for what they're ·ntended for . I don ' t think you gain that much . I think'y~u loose a lot of it . ~ stow that harness . The life 7 est. Now I disagree wit everybody that ' s ever said that those aren ' t in the way. e were them all the time mainly because we didn ' t hav a darn place to I s i ore them and they're a pain in the Ii,leck t o get on and off but they are really in the way. The;r' re in the way @f everything you do . They bump int0 your arms . Tbey ' re there to cut down visibilit on ;rour chest and they ' re just a nuisance, Yeah, e didn ' t have a place t store them. We didn ' t store them or we'd have taken them off and left them off . I am here t o say t hat I
ONFTDENTl~t 37 think they ' re r eally bad where they are . Conrad After the big sweat was over and we got a GO and we were relatively sure we were going to stay there for awhile unless we , you lmow, had some other emergency come up , I would have preferred to take off the harness and the life jacket and stow it somewhere if we ' d have had a place to stow it . Cooper Right . Conrad But the other thing is that maybe that ' s just my per sonal feeling . I ' m extremely m eticulous and we kept that spacecraft as empty as possible . Everything had it ' s place and it stayed in it ' s place . Cooper And that harness and the vest--are pret t y big, bulky items - Conrad And I wasn ' t going to have it rattling around down there on the floor , loose . Cooper Okay, on the drogue pins . By golly, I thought those new l i ttle things on the drogue pins made them very easy to get in and out. There wasn ' t a bit of problem wit h those . Conrad I popped the drogue pins in and out on mine . Coope~ I put mine i n or out once just to ... . Conrad I think Gordo put his own in and out once to see if he
could do it and he coul d . That worked real well . Cooper Okay. Fuel Cell o and Fuel Cell Hydrogen Quantity Read . 2 Yes , we read them at least a million times . Fuel Cell • Power Readings . Yes , everything checked out fine on t hose. Bermuda 2- 1 update : fine . Orbital Flight . FCSD Rep You ' d better get out your flight plan on this because t his is the original stuff I was telling you about . Conrad Well , that ' s all right . This probably will go fairly.... FCSD Rep All three , if you go the way you did it. 4.0 Orbital Flight Cooper Okay, on 4 . 0 Orbital Fli ht . Platform Alinement. Conrad There ' s our first problem . Cooper There ' s our first problem. Our plat orm mode did not work and I don ' t lmow what ' s wrong wit but the darn thing does not zero out on the space I craft. It allows a good e to sit in there and won ' t zero it out and it is ex remely s l oppy ·n pitch . The whole thing, I think tb7:r was something ~rong with the whole thing because it d esn ' t work at I a \ 1 like the ones in the simulator, an the whole thing ... plu 's or minus a half a degree a very, ver y system lucky to be plus or thing really wrong with it . I personall y think that
~pl&f~T A~ 39 \ something was wired up wrong or something in i t because it was not working right . Conrad We didn ' t really get a chance to evaluate it too well because we had trouble with it so we stopped using it and by the time we ' d been able to do anything with it we had other problems , fuel problems and so forth . So we never did get back to using it again . Cooper Well, we had other control system problems which were overpowering, platform problem wise , but we did try one burn on the platform and it was a terrible mistake . The darn thi ng did not have the accuracy to really hold it and we got one foot per second in and out of plane there . Conrad Yeah. That was in those coeliptic . Cooper In one of those , that coeliptic burns and we ~ade our other burns then on Rate Command and man, that Rate Command system is just beautiful . It holds that space craft so tight that it can ' t vary. Conrad Yeah . We had a beautiful control system, I thought . When Gordo made any of the burns on the Rate Command or anything l i ke that it really responded - - well. Coope1: Rate Command has tremendous torqueing. Boy, it ' s strong and it ' s instantaneous and you can just stop it right on the money. Really good.
40 FCSD Rep Okay, on this platform alinement thing. You went to SEF and caged and SEF and Platform Control Mode, Cooper We pitched down to visual when we went to CAGE and then went to SEF and we went to Platform mode and after fid dling around with it awhile we decided the Platform mode wouldn ' t work so I went to Pulse and then I , just using my needles , Platform needles then , I just pulsed the er rors out until we torqued around and got the ... got it ... on a fine line. Conrad Okay, Now , there ' s no doubt in my mind that the Primary Scanners , there ' s no doubt in my mind now, but we lost on Primary Scanners . We started to aline the primary Scanners and I don ' t think we ever got to platform aline correctly because the primary scanners were not working correctly, Cooper Now the primary scanners, The funny part of it is the Primary Scanner was working in such a rr.anner - working just enough, that it checked right because when we checked out t he alinement of it and the tolerances on it it was working fine , but there was something in it on one of the tests that we did later showed thai it was actually driving, tending to drive the spacecraft down . Conrad Continuing to torque you down to about fifteen degrees nose- down ,
Cooper .. Conrad FCSD Rep Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper 41 • Or more . In other words , it continued to try to aline t he platform at about fifteen degrees . It tried to put the nose on t he horizon is what it did. It tried to aline the platform up at fifteen degrees nose down? Or more . I figured it was about somewhere around- Well , one time it alined us at about 40 degrees nose down and it still was indicating in scanner limits . The scanner got worse as the flight went on, but I don ' t think it ever worked correctly . No . I don't think it did , now I look back . That ' s the thi ng right there and I think that this- - I 'd l i ke to know what they decided from tracking the REP on how we put the REP out because we put the REP out in the proper position, but I don ' t think the platform was alined correctly . We had trouble with that scanner in the sunlight on the horizon and this was right when we were using it to aline - j ust before we put the REP out . Just as we were using it to aline and put t he REP out , the Scanner began to skew all the platform needles off and it skewed off and , --went to ORBIT RATE.
42 L Conrad Now wait til we get the onboard tapes because the tape recorder was working and this all is on the onboard tape ; the conversation that Gordo and I had about that. So we weren ' t really sure it was working right but it f wasn 't that far off that we were going in the dark- - Cooper . Approximately 30 seconds before we had to pitch around or had to yaw around to eject the REP, I had to go back to CAGE and try getting a real rapid P] a tform aline in there , SEF and PULSE and I had the neec.les zeroed and we may not have been so far off but you don ' t know . That isn ' t enough time to really get it alined. In other words . I had about the time we did it and got there we probably had maybe , 30 seconds to Plat::orm aline . That ' s about all we had . Conrad Well , we were just hoping that if it had been pulled off only in pitch why, you know , we ' d get it right--we'd pull the pitch right back in again. Cooper But the scanner was acting up very badly by that time . FCSD Rep How long did you aline the Platform initially? Cooper Initially, we alined the platform for about 15 to 20 minutes and it seemed to aline allright although at that time Pete and I had a discussion right then that we seemed to be alining nose down . ..
Conrad Now , you see . Here ' s something that I've never heard from the other guys . Cooper Now there ' s another thing. See, we never had a simulator to show us . Never once did we have any darn thing to show us what out the window should look like . Conrad And when the Platform is alined and you ' re zero- zero- zero , boy, oh boy! That ' s a , just - - It's a very peculiar looking situation and it ' s not what I expected to see at all . Cooper No , it isn' t me either . Conrad And I ' ve never heard either Gus of John or Jim and Ed say "Put a little gouge out" Now I ' ve got a gouge tha t I can draw for you where I 'm sure tha t I can put the Plat form in roll and pitch within a degree in roll and pitch of where it should be out the window on the horizon and it ' s by using the corner of the window and the RCS thrusters on the front : the front RCS yaw thruster in the lower corner of the window and you can put the Platform-- you can put the spacecraft zero- zero and roll and pitch just, well , like that. We didn ' t know that before we went . Cooper This is one of my strongest recommendations if we aren ' t going to have any kind of a visual out the window display at least we ought to get some of the great planners to •
----- 44 • Conrad Cooper Conrad draw up on a piece of paper what the window , what the ;: horizon should look like through the window whic~ d requested several times and never got -- to show ~~~) guy what these various things should look like out the ......__ window;'---...We spent the whole darn eight days trying to ~rt=--'l;fl:e-s-0--~~~43 ~ ould look like and I'm not sure we were very clear on it to the day we re- entered, Yeah. Now that 's ridiculous! And it ' s becau:3e of this odd angle that you sit off in there . It completely fouls up everytning, as to getting these various angles : inverted and right side up and 90 degrees angles and all this . /1think we ought t;=-I ' ll tell you i;~ d recommen dation for the guys who are going to do this on GT- 7 with that Hasselblad can take a pound or two of fuel and sit up there and pl:.otograph the camera back inside the spacecraft get the window perspective in this thing. zero- zero- zero , bank right 90 , bank lnft 90 , at ifferent nose pitches above the horizon , <iOt◄r ,ee Nirr Xt
Really , we sat ther e and had hours worth of discussions in drifting flight when we'd be drifting through , you know , and we ' d say, "Hey, doesn ' t that l ook like they'r:e about 30 degrees nose up and roll right 60 degrees?" and then we ' d try to find those lines and match them and see . . . there ' s an awful lot of learning there . By golly, if we ' d have a Platform Aline Gouge , a visual gouge idea , we'd have picked up this trouble right off the bat. We real ly didn't think the platform. was alined right , but we really didn't have anything to tell us t hat it wasn ' t . Cooper Now looking a t it where we know now after we went to the other scanner finally and we got proper operation knowing what we learned during the flight it appears now like we were--the number one scanner was trying to aline us several degrees down over what it should. Conrad Yeah. FCSD Rep Did you ever go back to Primary after that? Cooper Oh . We checked it a lot of times after that and tried it numerous times and it got worse and worse and worse and it finally was actually driving the spacecraft down to minus 90 degrees and still the scanner, that ' s the funny part of it , the scanner wouldn't go off until you were about 60 degrees below the horizon.
46 Conrad It seems to me we ' ve got some data for them on Primary scanner over the states so they could h~ve it on telemetry, They should be able to find out what happened on that , Cooper Yes , something was really fouled up , I think , Insertion Check List- - Conrad We went through it by the numbers , Cooper By the numbers , Thruster and Control Mode Check - we went t hrough by the numbers. Everything was fine . Conrad W ell , we were a little bit late, We get a little bit behind and it was about the time when we were late per forming the thruster control mode check because that was supposed to be done before you got to the Canaries and we did it after the Canaries . Cooper That ' s right , Conrad We were behind, but we started catchine: up . ,
Cooper FCSD Rep Cooper FCSD Rep Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad ee,~FID El'<ITIAI! - Com Systems Check. We were right on the money, on time, on that . Everything checked out okay on that? Yeah. Com System? D - 4, D - 7, I did by checkoff list and checked out okay over Carnarvon. 6-4 GO/NO GO, well , that was quite late . No. We got a GO for 6- 4 over Carnarvon . That's just to get past 2- 1. Okay, Yeak Okay, got the 6- 4 GO/NO GO, that ' s right, D - 4, D-7 GO/NO GO . Those were right on the money and everything was fine there. Third adjustment maneuver. Was nominal Was nominal end everything was fine there. Power down D-4, D - 7 was nominal . 16mm, 35mm, D-6 equipmert unstowed and mounted and there we begin to deviate a little because just prior to this time we began to get this rapid decrease in the -well- where was it there? It was - let me go into the log-book here for one second because I got some.
48 FCSD Rep Cooper Conrad - This Perigee adjust. Did you do that i::1 Rate- is that the one you did in Rate Command? O r is that the one you tried in PLATFORM? ~ Did that in PLATFORM and it worked fine on that one. Did that one in PLATFORM and it worked ,~eat, but then on some of these other burns we did I tried it in PLATFORM and it really didn 1 t work well at all. That 's why I rather suspect the P::.ATFORM thing. There's something wrong with it . I think i t was better at some times than others . It was allowing a lot of drift. Okay, in the log book I have it at 50 m:.nutes which is just prior to Carnarvon that I found the Fuel Cell o 2 and H Heater Circui t Breaker OFF. Now 2 that--I found it off because they told us to heat the Hydrogen not the Oxygen, but the Hydrogen final ly drilled down to the 220 and they want ed us to use the heater and I turned the heater on and I noticed that I didn 1 t get any ammeter rise and so I looked at the circuit breaker panel and the Circuit Breaker was OFF. So, now in ret rospect seei?hg·the o ON which is on the same circuit 2 breaker burned out, I'm sure that it blE,w when this thing burned out, f
.. FCSD Rep Conrad Cooper Conrad FCSD Rep Conrad Cooper Cooper Conrad We were at the power do':m. on the D- 4 and D- 7. Oh Yeah. Well, about that time I think we were getting back on the Flight Plan. We got the 16mm out. We got the 35mm out. D- 6 equipment was Well, it ' s really D-2, it ' s what it was and I had that work so I decided, "I ' ll put together in pieces at the blob and the camera put together separately and they had it all loaded with the right film and everything and had it on the floor, and we were ready to go . " Were you pushed for time to do this? We were right on the money. We finally caught up after Canaries and we were on the schedule at Carnarvon. Yeah. We were in good shape at Carvarvon . Radar test #6, at 01 : 30, that worked fine . We did bring it on. It worked . Observed the transients on R dot, range and range rate. 6- 4 Preretro command load came out fine . Blood pressure on the Command Pilot there past Carnarvon, let's see . Now that was back over the Cape here, yeah. No , you broke the O-ring didn ' t you? Right off the IAL
50 Cooper Conrad Cooper FCSD Rep Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad :JI bat we broke the 0- ring. .. That 's right . That ' s right . That 's the first one . We broke the 0- ring and couldn ' t give them that blood pressure . I think that was the one. That 's right. We fina l ly gave that one up , The 0-ring was broken on that one. Let's see . This first blood pressure that you got an hour... They got that one and then when Gordo- - When I, When we transferred over to me and I plugged it in the ... 0-ring broke and ,:e didn't have time for tha t pass again . We had a bunch more 0-rings . I forget when we fixed it but we fixed it.. . Fixed somewhere around there. ... shortly thereafter . M -1 experiment . W e turned it on on time .
51 .. .,. Cooper Conrad FCSD Rep Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper FCSD Rep Cooper Conrad FCSD REP Cooper Conrad FCSD REP Conrad Yeah . I got a lot of comments later on that on. That thing is so noisy. Oh, you know , I found out what happened, you know. They went back and recomputed and they found out they had four days worth of air in the bottle--Ha Ha! Four days? Yeah. It ran out . But the thing. You can turn it off and it keeps run ning back there . And it goes SMACK- CHOO , SMACK- CHOO , SMACK- CHOO . Yeah, it 1 s pretty noisy. And in a real ~uiet cockpit it really sounds loud . This radar test #6 here at O1:3O - Used to turn the radar on. Used to turn it on. Used to turn it to standby. Turn it to standby and warm it up . Used to observe the warmup transients . And all this happened, right? Yes , and it 1 s on the voice tape. Like Gordo said, you lmow, what the radar needle did , What it does is it has sort of a cyclic thing when you put it in standby and it 1 s ready to run why it sits there and the lock on
52 L Cooper Conrad FCSD REP Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad l ight blinks Green/OFF, Green/OFF. Lock on light will blink on and it will come out R and R dot will go from peg to peg. And they'll settle out when it really is warmed up good and you' ve gotten past the transient periods and they ' ll all come back to zero . I think what they ' re looking for are clues to tell you that the set is warming up correc t ly. Ba.ck in the early days of TACAN we had warmup problems. In other words , this would be your firnt indication if something was wrong? Purge Section. One and Two . Well , we got our first load , this 6-4 load. The first load that came up over the DCS system and it came up right over the Cape. Purge Section. One and Two . Got that? Yes , no . Yes . That ' s when we were getting rushed . Let ' s go back to that . Let ' s stop right there. The REP was supposed to go out at 02 : 07 and I purg·ed early and I always had been purging early because I purged it about 1+50 and then I went through the check off list and they were all checked off here. I powered up at 1+50 , I purged the fuel cells and here I checked them off here. . . . prop gauge experiments and the RAD 1 on and the cold
53 IR on and the power on the exmitter on and the recorder off and I went through these by the numbers . Com puter, we went to Catch- Up . We had the hundred feet in the window . We were really getting ready to put the REP out and right then and there was when we came over the hill and we were beginning to get to the dark side you know, and the sun was getting low and that ' s when the scanner started going out , Cooper That's when the scanner started dropping out . Conrad And we started getting the scanner light and then now , you got to visualize there ' s part of the problem. We're coming into this "Fuzzy Zone"- horizon and that is the best way to describe it . Cooper Yeah, you can't see anything. Conrad And the spacecraft looks like you're pitched up tremen dously when you're zero- zero- zero to begin with and we both had the impression that the scanner was pitching us up. Well , that may not have been true. It just may have been that that's the way the sky got to looking as we approached the dark side zero- zero- zero . Cooper Actually, you have a transition point there where you cannot see the horizon and it doesn ' t look like either sky or earth or anything. It's a complete blank ,
Conrad FCSD REP Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper It ' s really a grey area. Right at dusk. Yeah. Right at dusk or right at sunrise. Yeah. Now the first time we went through there we didn ' t even see it . We were working. That wan right after insertion . So, mind you , this is the s1~cond time we got to see it and I can' t emphasize thii, point enough, even though we were on the flight plan and everything else, you got to let the guys learn what ' s going on up there. You haven't been up there befor~ in that darn vehicle you've got to learn it . That ' s :right where we started getting in trouble . That ' s right . That's the exact point t ·:1.at we made . I made it for six months now. For many, many months we've made this over this flight plan, sticking this REP, thi s whole REP thing in that early in the Flight Plan before you really have a chance to get the systems ironed out and checked over and everything and if everything goes exactly right and nothing fails you can run through it time and time and time and time again and you'll make it and you ' ll make it on time.
55 Conrad Cooper Conrad , / \ .. Yeah. But you add one little failure in there and you ' ve had it . Yeah . That ' s where I made my first mistake. We got purged in an hour and 50 minutes and I was going by the check off list and right there we got in this discussion about what was happening to the platform and I missed the most important thing on the check off l ist . I for - got to • st as sim- That ' s the whole G-- d----- been running for the D - 4 cold IR, it ' s been our biggest constraint and a thing that I knew as well as my right arm but there was a glitch and the glitch got us off the scheduled activities and I missed it bigger than - eek. I di ors on the cold IR and it ' s all my fault and I accept the blame for it . We went through this quickie aline business and we got turned around and Gordo had it right on the money, we wer e right out of plane and we got the REP out 15 seconds late. It went out at 02+07+15 and we turned around, waited for one minute, got the radar on, locked on it and we were whistling away from it and I was back on the Flight Plan and happy as a clam when I suddenly
C Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad @ OMFIBEt4t4A.L decided that something wasn't reading right and I realized that I hadn ' t blown the doors on the cold IR and I blew them and at that time the REP was at 25JO feet from us , which is the end of the experiment, but I think it was still reading- - But it was still reading on the, according to the gage . Yeah . I think that cold IR read to a great, great thing. Now , the Radar gage, this is where--here comes the next mystery- the radar gage said the REP waE leaving us at this point in time and that- - Five feet per second? Yeah. I have 3 1/2 feet per second written down. Oh, at that particular point . Oh, wel:. i t - - when we first got our first measurement on it ·;he range rate on my analog dial over there read exactly 5 feet per second that it was going away from us . Yeah. Okay. Right on the money. To go back to the D- 4 in time it was 0.2, it was 02+ 16+ 15 when I blew the doors , which was corre3ponding to 2500 feet and I ran that REP D- 4 recorder until 02+37+12 and--okay, now. That darn REP! Gordo had the needles right on the REP and that REP was going straight out from us at 270 on the ball . It just went , I just 'COr'1 FIDEtf Jal>Att
, CO► I F 1 DE NJ:1A t 57 thought everything was going perfect . The REP was moving just exactly out of plane away from us and it was moving at about the right velocity and then the mystery came. It just kept on going. Cooper Yeah. Conrad It kept right on going straight out, and- Cooper It wasn't slowing down very much. Conrad And I got over here on the graph and I kept reading the mileage and we were up to about 7 feet a second. It was leaving us , and I realized, I began to think , well gee, this is- That ' s when I was really convinced that the platform wasn't alined and we must have kicked it out some screwy way. Then it started to drift:~ us quite fast . It finally did peak out an --- - ------ - a~ he corner at some phenomenal dis ance , mile away from us , but drift aft quite rapid ent ) ...--n:-~---------;---:--:--:-----;------:-:--:;-,i"'T"--,-----,-----r-;-;:--:-:-- Cooper Conrad and .when we got to the nodal crossing time, it was behin~ ( us by a mile , according to the radar. Now this is all / on radar. And now , mind you, it ' s nighttime and it was right there. We could see it plain as day. Okay, let ' s see, we were at the- - Okay, that's when we got to this next screwy thing. was almost nine tenths of a
C Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad. See, the REP went straight out and kept on going. The REP goes straight out and then it just kept on going. It was slowing down very l ittle and just kept on going and going and going and going. And it never really stopped. What it d:Ld was it sorta, it sorta starting going off this way, you !mow, and it never got out to a node point wh~re you had a definite stopping range and a start back in again. Well , the range rate never got below a foo t per second . The range rate never decreased. You never got a decrease in range rate , but it just kept-it started drifting slowly of f the 270 line on back out, but it we·nt straight out the 270 line to a- - What was the range? Do you remember what the range was when it sti ll was out there? It went straight like relative motion to us would have looked like it went out looking down a plan form, if we were here. It looked like it went out like this and it slowly started doing this . Yeah. And it never did have a stop to it. It finally crossed behind us back in here someplace.
Cooper " Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad 59 eNftOf We never got the point where it crossed behind us be cause somewhere when it was about the 210 point was when we were out of fuel, of fuel cell o 2 . Yeah, well , you see, we went by Carnarvon- - And this was coming down just BALOOM BALCOM BALOOM BALCOM BALCOM. See, here we go . We went by Carnarvon. Here I was trying to figure out in here what was going on and what we were going to take out and everything and we went by Carnarvon and right here at Carnarvon and that's when Charlie .. . called up and says check your o 2 heater switch to AUTO . Now I had seen it fall , had noticed that it had been falling and I had gone to the AUTO position when without even being told - - You had already gone to nanua.l. And then I was doing many other things and I decided it wasn ' t coming up and so I'd gone to manual and held it over there a couple times and sort of looked at it and - - That didn ' t work either. I must have kidded myself into thinking that I was getting something out of it, and then I forgot it again and then~ -
60 Cooper Conrad :But you did go back to the AUTO. Yeah . I put ii; back in AUTO , you know , and then I called t hem, I think it was on the tape and I think I told them, I said, the S'f!litch is on AUTO . W e're okay. Don ' t worry about it and then right aft er that we got up to this 240 or so in there and we realjzed that something was wrong and the heater was out and I guess we told them- - We told them at Carnarvon that t he heater was out . Cooper Well, we checked at that time then on ·~he annneter on and off and on and off t hat on both manual and AUTO and it was obvious . Conrad And that ' s when we- - Cooper And it was coming down so rapidly that it looked like very shortly thereafter we were going t o have fuel Conrad cell stoppage.. We were getting below 200 and falling pretty fast and we had a big discussion between ourselves and we just made up our mind to forget the REP. We felt we were Cooper really in trouble. So we elected at that point to start rowering down because we knew that we were using fuel cells a t a very high rate . Conrad And we secured the Platform and Radar and everything else.
r ~ ENTI~ - 61 Cooper So we said okay and we ' re stopping it right here and of course about this time we were in the boondocks area away from everybody as always occurs. Conrad We were between Carnarvon and Hawaii . Cooper And--so we just started powering down everything and holding on. Conrad So from there on we were off the Flight Plan. Cooper From here on to the next twenty orbits the REP was right with us. Ha, Ha, Ha ! Conrad That ' s what I cam't figure out . How did it get 375 miles from us when it hung around f or 5 orbits? That darned thing. Everytime we went on the night side- Cooper It was so- - Conrad As a matter of fact, I didn't see it for a time or two and then all of a sudden, the nose of the spacecraft was lighting up ! Cooper We even saw it in the day side . It was so near we could even see it in the day side and at the transit areas when the light woul d be shining on it we ' d be just going into the darkness we could look back and you could even see i; the dipole on it as it tumbled. The tumble rate was very, .. very slow. Conrad And then you guys called up and told us it was 375 miles
62 C Cooper Cooper Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad That 1 s impossible. That thing wasn't that far away. It hung right in there. I think that 's the whole things . But 1 1 11 tell you there were two differnnt night sides we went into. Several- - Two different night sides- -well , I reaU y-- i t wouldn 1 t have surprised me if it had hit us. Me either. It seemed to me like it was a lot closer. That's what made me think that well, th? platform was aligned and I don't know what exactly happened. I did notice that it sort of climbed on us. So then I had the feeling that m aybe it was doing sort of a figure eight type thing. That maybe we had fired it off up or down a little bit yoQ know. .And it was in three dimensions ; a little bi t out of plane working it's way around us , backing up and going a.head and coming back around because the darn thing was always there . It was there until the darn lights burned out on it. Anyti me we wanted to find it if you wanted to move t he spacecraft around you could find it out there . EOl"'lf!ltJEt ◄ =F hA. L
Cooper It was close enough so that almost any attitude you were in you could see i t shining on the spacecraft. Even if it was clear back out here you could see the nose just lighting up from it. Conrad So I know it couldn ' t have been too darn far away. I mean maybe up to five miles or something l ike that , but it didn ' t get that far away from us . I don ' t understand the 375. I was really surprised that those guys called up and said it was 375 miles away. 1 Cooper Yes. Well , I don't believe that figure. Conrad It will be real interesting to see what they dig out f r om it . Well, all the radar and everything we had is on the tape , isn't it? Cooper Well, that was our first big heart breaker . Conrad We ought to be able to put that all together . Cooper After all the work we did on t he REP , then not to pull the rendezvous out , we sure- - Conrad Well , from there until we got the GO to 6- 4 we just were along for the ride . We just stayed- - Cooper I knew that--I was just so sure of all the time we .. put in simulating that darn thing I just had a queasy , uneasy feel i ng that maybe we better put
64 in more time on other things . That something was going to go wrong-~ Conrad I felt every problem that we had I felt real good about the fact that we had either t he smarts t o lmow that it was straight forward-- It didn't take too long to figure out that that h1~ater was on one line, both heaters , and that we'd had a single point failure. And as a mat ter- of - fact we t ook the schematics out. Cooper And there's another argument for our ha-ring it;' for when it occured there wasn ' t anybody around to ask advice . Conrad I t was very straight forward to throw t he switches and look at the amp meter to see whethe:c you were getting anything out. There was no dou·:it in my m i nd that it had burned out and the sam,= daml thing with the thrusters. When we finally decided we had a problem with them we went through the ci rcuit breakers just like we did in th= trainer and it was obvious that number 7 was out and 8 went out and then the rest of them started getting sour. So, I think that all the training we had we were pretty well prepared.
Cooper I do , too . I ' l l tell you - - the launch - -we were perfectly normal and right on the money- - Conrad Yes , we were sitting there waiting to find out what they wanted us to do . I mean we !mew we could go on the batteries long enough to get to a fairly decent re - entry place and we wer e taking bets wi th one another and we were kidding about McDivitt. There must have been real pandamoni um at MCC . They were burning up the lines to every where . Because ther e r eally wasn ' t anythi ng we could do after that but just sort of w ait . We re- stowed everything and we w ere ready to go i nto 6- 4 if they wanted us to . We wer e all prepared to go i nt o 6- 4. W e didn 1 t want t o. Cooper We really didn 1 t thi nk we ' d make 18-1. Conrad Gor do was the eternal optimist though. I ' d s ay , " 125 pounds" and he'd say, "Well , it hasn't really fallen anymore . 11 Then it would fal l about another 20 pounds and I'd say, "Wel l , that ' s 100 pounds now," and he'd say, "Well , that's really not much bel ow what it was before." I think we had a little more confidence than the guys on the ground , I really do . I r emember old
66 1':0 NEIDE bll I AJ. .. Cooper Conrad Cooper Steiner saying don't worry about that liq_uid : going through that heat exchanger . He said it will go through just fine . The one thing that I thought was that we might have dinged the tank with the REP but as long as the q_uantity stayed up there we were in pretty good shape , but I wasn't sure that we didn't just might have sorre sort of a hole back there and were just slowly leaking pressure even though the q_uantity- - That was one thing--we always worried E ~ bout that REP with that big diapole hanging out. If it skewed up a little going out what woulcl it wipe out going out . It just happened to be with a lot of that OAMS--fuel cell lines and all 'Ghat type stuff back there and that was one thing that always kind of concerned us about ejecting the REP now and then. So that was one thing we kept running )ver and wondering what i t had wiped out . Yes. That was the only thing that kept bothering me , but it held to 60 though and that was pretty good. O kay. Let's see boresight on REJ?,nodal crossing. We didn't get the nodal cropsing. I · sure wish we toNFll)Et~t1'1L
FpSD Rep Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper COMflDEN I IA[ » could have hung on long enough to find out where i t crossed us behind there . Let's back up just a minute on your lock on . Okay . Boy, it just clung right on to it and zap. We got the lock on and the darn range and range rate came right on there . It was moving right out at about 5 1/ 4 feet per second just throttling right down the old line . Address 69 was reading just fine. Everything was right on the money. Address 58, 59- - The range was moving right on out just like it should and we were sitting right there on our 270 point on the ball tracking right straight out for a long ways out . Then is when the variance came in, when it kept going out . It should have started slowing down on range rate . But , it seemed like it was slowing down awfully slow . It seems like the range rate kept on for quite a ways . You know I had a 58,of -63. 8, and a 59 of a 13~8 at .89 miles and we should have never gotten that far away from i t ever--in the beginning. See with it moving out at the R that we had, all the figures we had ever run on it--we had our own
68 little calculations right here--finally we were off our graph up there, weren't we? Conrad Yes . Well , you ' ve got to realize that the graph ' s based on out of plane and this was the hypotenuse to the thing, but even so- - Cooper But s t i ll you 've got to- - Conrad It still went away more than it should have . Cooper Because you cosine angles were fairly 1 3mall in t here . Conrad It still went away more than it should have. Cooper I don't quite understand it. Conrad We 'll know what the platform--I presume they can t ell how well we had the platform al igned . Cooper But there again, there 's the f irst little horse shoe nail that throws the glitch in things. When that darn scanner screwed up right at the most crucial time . It probably had been screwing up all along , we just hadn't really caught it . I t really threw the glitch in right therEi at a point when it really shouldn't have. We ma~, have lucked out still , and gotten .it out right on the money and it may not have been the problem. I don't know, but anyway with the best we had to work with we got it out the best we could and it looked like =
Conrad FCSD Rep Conrad FCSD Rep Conrad • it went out in good fashion . I think we still would have been all right if we had gone ahead and done the rendezvous with no problem even if we had gotten a little out of plane with it we could have handled this later on. But, there again it made it difficult for Pete because it got him completely off his schedule , too . It got him late blowing the doors . Well , we s till were reasonably well on top of it . Let ' s see . We can skip all this REP s t uff . You got anything else you want to lmow about the radar? It would be best I think to go on through it and say what you did and didn ' t do so we can stay on this . Yes, well- - Use your flight plan. Well, we got as far--let ' s see, it says when on bore- sight read and record address 58 , 59 , and 69 and this was just before 2: 51 when we were supposed to have a reading to give back on the ground. This is the reading I got: 58 read -63. 8, 59 read 139 . 8 . The distance was-- address 69 was .89 miles and I got that at the t ime that it was supposed to
70 Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad FCSD Rep Conrad Cooper Conrad be gotten, Why don' t you bring the flight plan over here " and let's start down it. W e might as well skip what he has in the flight plan here because it varies so from there on. From here on you can for get this flight plan . That ' s right . Right here . Where 's our little book of the fl i ght plan? I've got i t right here . Oh , okay . Okay. All this time we sweated out getting home and that ' s when we wound up-- here is where we s t arted on this flight plan, at 1 day a nd 02 hours, so that's 12 hour s after lift- off. We finally got back on A f light plan ani - - Yes , and that ' s the first thing we started to do was to power back up . One day. That's 24 hours . No . That one day remember we- We star ted that one day- - We went CEl' to 2400 Zulu and then tha t became day 1 , 00 hours and lift-off was 1400 Zulu. CON·rrD Et ◄ ifI ,A. L ~
Cooper From lift - off until 2400 hours the day of launch was elapsed t ime and s t arting a t tha t t ime we started calling it day one and then GM!'. Conrad Okay. So , we went through a l i ttle deal here where we started to power up and they let us tum - we'd been drifting hadn ' t we? Cooper Yes . I ' ll say. Conrad We turned up the AC , ACME inverter on and the ACME bias power on OAMS attitude on and we went t9 pulse and we were supposed to power back down again at 02 + 27 + 25. We were supposed to have this H 2 purge a t 02 + 45 + 00 . Tha t was the first thing, they were just going to let us purge H we 2 didn't purge the o:xygen. Everybody was worried about that . Then we were on the flight plan and they gave us an update time for our first medical pass and we stayed - - ! think we took these vision tests , didn ' t we? Cooper Yes, we did. Conrad We just stayed right on the fli ght plan , had the vision tests , and I have a comment in here that at 01 days 04 hours and 32 minutes we saw our first meteor r e- enter . Cooper ~an , we saw a lot of those meteorites re - enter
72 Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper €Or<tFlt,fN Ii.2u • below us . That kind of startles you when you :: realize they are 9ntering below you. It means ve you. This is when the exp imenters went out of their minds . They handed us this flight pl8l1 you wouldn ' t believe where they had 1, 2, 3,4,5 , 6,7,8,9,10 , 11 , 12 , 13,14 , 15 , 16 ,17,18 , 19 , 20,21 22,23, no 22 experiments they gave us to do in a row an they ir.volved everything in the spacecraft anti we had gear all over . You wouldn ' t believe it . I never had so much junk--we went wild. That '/s when we called up and said, "Hey, gang let ' s be a l i t·~le more reasonable." The other problem didn't list them seque Yes , that ' s right. They put them in there and we had to keep skipping around on them to get the sequential time on them and that was a mess . Now, what we did is we copied down in this book and then we'd write it down at the proper time so that we had it sequentially in the flight plan. It worked out very well . NFIDE
• 73 Conrad FCSD Rep Cooper Conrad Cooper You , don't want to get into which experiments we got done and which ones we didn't or do you? Do you want to go through it that detailed? Well, there's an experiment section in there . Well , let's cover all the experiments in the experiment section . W e might just comment right now how that I think our book arrangement worked out extremely satisfactory and I don't know how we'd have ever kept up with where we were if we hadn't had these books to follow . We just passed these books back and forth and we managed to keep them stowed pretty neatly. I knew r ight where they were . Pete· kept them stowed beside his left leg in the seat. They slid right do~m the seat. Right here and Gordo kept them on his right and if he had them and I wanted one - - If he was asleep I would just reach over and slide them out and vice-versa. And then our Volkswagon pouches held the l i ttle ones real fine . These books were used a jilli on man- hour s-- just back and for th. They really worked out well. They're easy to write in and we tried to keep meticulous logs on everything and I think we did reasonably ftBENTIAt
, L well . Conrad Okay, now we also wrote in these little screwy ditties . This is where we kept the things if they wanted us to power-up something or pull one of their nutty tests that they dreareed up in the middle of the night . We ' d write them down just in order in which they came. Cooper Do we just want to go right on down thrcugh here? FCSD Rep Okay. Why don ' t we go right on down anc. list what we did and then when we get in the experiment section we can go into detail . Cooper Okay. Where did we leave off here now. At--okay , one day 4 hours and 40 minutes . Let' s flee we didn't do this- - Conrad No , we didn't do the cryogenic test . Tnt's right. Cooper Then at 1 day 5 hours we did the S- 8 , I)..13, Connnand Pilot. Conrad That's another thing. They had you doing these things while one g.:;.y was asleep' and one guy was awake . You wake up and have a briefing period it's just a bunch of baloney. We were both awake and when we took a test why we took it together and got it out of the way. Cooper l,'e ate together and slept together and took the •.•. together. W e'd been completely st~rtled
75 with terrible pulse rates when we ' d hear somebody calling from down in that deep barrel , Gemini 5, Gemini 5, Gemini 5. Ha ,ha. Lights on all over the place trying to find the radio switch. Ha- ha. Out of a deep sleep . Cooper Okay. I think maybe if we'd just go down through here and hit these things that particularly- - Conrad Tell me where we are in time and then I'll look in here to see what notes there are in here . Cooper Well , and then we left these pretty well as we went through the flight plan here and then we left those pretty well- - Conrad Well , these are all the next day s o- - Cooper These things are all ready listed in there--I think were just mainly the things we wrote in here . Conrad These S-6 passes Cooper S-6 weather pass at 1 day 6 hours and 10 minutes . 1 day 7 hours 48 minutes 26 seconds . Sequence G8, we did that . That was the hurricane too wasn' t i t? And then we had another sequence on that - - the next trip around at 9 hours 22 minutes 49 seconds . We looked at it again. Then at 9 hours 27 minutes 33 seconds we had a sequence 208 and that was- - Conrad Man, we've got logs for the logs.
76 "C O ► li 1DENJl4,L Cooper Conrad I don ' t know but what we might be better :: on this just to go through our individual specialty logs and log where occured at what time, because that's the more accurate one of all--because this was kind of our running logs of what was going on--to warn us when things were coming up ahead. As far as going back into this and doing the whole thing that isn 1 t as accurate as going into-- there are so many specia:.ty areas in here . We have those logged real accurately according to time. I think :.t might be better to go through and get a:.1 those and build a flight plan out of that r ather than go through the flight plan because the flight plan had to be just completely- -we didn't sleep when we were supposed to and we didn't eat when we were supposed to and-- . Well, let's go on through this thing, and now as far as the experiments go those guys have a complete log of what they sent up to us and that should jive with the complete log that we have of what we received and from that and what we logged and what
77 Cooper Conrad Cooper FCSD Rep Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Cooper Conrad Cooper we did we can tell you at any point in time whether we got a certain experiment done or not. If they want to know if we got something done or not and if there's a reason why we didn ' t do it why we usually had that recorded somewhere. Either in here or in the flight plan. Why don 1 t we go through this one? Okay. When we get to a point of the experiment or s ome thing we can check in here . We did the UHF test . Why don't you read off those days . Okay. One day and 8 hours--let 1 s see 1 day 10 hours 49 minutes . Sequence 03 UHF test 3. Right . We did that . We had--were supposed to do an Apollo a t 01 12 36 17 , Now I don't think we got that one. I think that was sequence 208 . Why don't you check that one real quick--yes. I think that was the one we couldn ' t get because- We had weather over that one . Covered by clouds . Okay, we had UHF test number 3 at 10 hours 49 minutes .
78 FCSD Rep Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad One day? :: We've al l ready mentioned that one . We did get that one. W e have that one written up here actually i t occurred around down here. Flight plan up - date . Yes, we had lots of those. Now, here was the D-4, D-7,421 . D- 4, D- 7 421 occuring at 1 day 12 hours and 7 minutes . I ' ll tell you whether we got it done or not . No. We didn ' t do that one . I don't know why we didn't do it . We were in drifting fl±ght by then, I guess . Then we have a note right here. The D - 6 number 19 scrubbed for the State side pass . They scrubbed that one . There was a weather problem on that one . Yes. Yes . Okay now this is an interesti ng thing at 01 days 14 hours , completely different than GT 4, we started getting these RCS hea ter lights. Those guys--the only time they got an RCS heater : light was something like day 3. Ed said. it was in ring A and he turned on the heater a.r.d he got
79 the light 2 or 3 times and he turned the heater off then it ca.me on again. You lmow , for an hour's per iod of time and he nBver had the lights again. Now, this is another reason why I suspect this OAMS system-- one of the biggest mistakes ever made--whoever recommended it on the ground to power down that OAMS heater to save electrical ener gy foul ed our whole system because we started at this point time having RCS heater lights . I checked for 8 days throughout the flight and I could always get an RCS heater light. If I turned off that heater switch I 1 d·have an RCS light come on every once in a while and so we left those RCS heaters on all the time. Cooper From one day and 14 hours the RCS heater were on the whole flight. Conrad You lmow they're auto . And the only heat when necessary, but every time we turned the heater off we wouldn't run for an hour or two that the light didn ' t come back on again and it would either be on ring A or ring B. Cooper And the temperature that we'd get on the gage when those lights would come back on was something in the order of about 60 degrees wasn ' t it? I
80 Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper L , 55 degrees . Yes . They ran when the heater was on--it kept them :: between 60 and 80 . One time ring B got up to 80 degrees. But it ran between 60 and 80 degrees, that those heaters kept the RCS., A and B. But , any time if you turned tha t heater off it wasn ' t any time at all until the light cl3.me back on again so we just turned them on and l ,~ft them on the whole flight . And that RCS couldn't have worked better . It was the most beautiful system you ever s~w. Boy , i t sure did. Now, here of course- - As you say, in contrast to what we had before . Here 's another thing when we got into these high tumbling rates that really kept the spacecraft cold. Shew! The windows even froze over. Yes , i t was darn cold . We were down to minimum flow . We had beth suit flows off--completely off. We had the fui t coolant completely down to the next to Jast notch and we left i t cracked as we were afraic. we would completely freeze up the whole coolant if we shut
frost all over have enough time e -- I 81--- - - it completely off and later they told us that we could go a.head and shut it completely off. And we were sitting in there just shivering and shaking and I was a lot colder than Pete. He was cold and I was really cold. I was really thinking seriously about--if we couldn ' t get that thing warmed up I was going to take my suit off and I did for a while in fact ~ake my inlet and exhaust hoses off . Conrad Yes, that was his answer to the problem. When he got too cold, just disconnect. Conrad Just let it blow i nto the cabin. Cooper But, it was so cold in there that ·ndows froze over and we were sitting there spinnin@. Conrad It had a rapid freeze on them. I didn't see that except when we were doing the high tumqling and i t got really cold in there . I Cooper You could see the frost bui ld up on the outside all over the spacecraft . Outside up o the nose section around the thrusters down there . When you tumb sunlight- - when the sun- think to warm up that particular section. When we damped it immediately thereafter
82 Flf)ENTIA .. the whole thing star ted to warm up . You could see the frost melt outside . Everything seei:ned t o go up. The fuel temperatures would go up , and t'.le whole ECS system would warm up, the cabin wouli warm up and everything. We were sitting there- - Conrad A slow drift or stabilized fl i ght- - Cooper When we wer e sitt ing t her e r eally spinning up, th:ings just got colder and colder and colder . :IJ"ow by spinning up I ' m talking about we got up )nee to 12 degrees per second. It wasn ' t any bother to us except visuall y . You just couldn ' t stan i to look at i t out the window. It just gave you 3uch an awful looki ng pi cture . Like you were in an inverted- upside down--wrong side up- -. So we fin~lly put the polar oid filter s up . . . the holes . Conrad We got completely i n the dark ther e . Cooper I didn ' t even want to look at what was ~)ing on . It was odd because before you could take a penci l and put it out here and it's the best attitu,ie indicator you had. If there ' s any little r ate goi:1g on at all the penci l would give it to you. You ca1 sit and hold it r i ght out in front of you and it's just like an arti f i cial horizon. It ' s the most be,mtiful- - or camera or whatever you ve out there it will do NFIDENTIAL ~
Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad ~rqflDENTIA~ the same thing. You put something out in front of you and it would just disappear. Whew! It wouldn ' t sit in front of you. It would move from one side to the other of the spacecraft due to the rates you would build up. Yes, here's where we got into this business of the OAMS Heater- Off and ACME-Off and the C adapter to Command and the Scanners-Off and they wanted to up date the computer. We brought the IGS and the computer on and then we powered down again and this is- - One day 14 hours where this started. Yes , right in here . That was passing over Carnarvon . And then is where we brought up the second fuel cell . We brought back on- - Got the pump back on the line and then we got ready for our first big day over the States. Yes, that's a great da;y . Boy, we were busy though. We learned a lot . I tell you though , those passes over the states were really good. The third day was our best day as far as being organized. They gave us about the proper amount of experiments and we were well organized.- -
84 Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Yes, we had a great day . That third da~r was a goody . Man we had everythi ng right on the button. We got good shots of it and everything just worked ou t right on the money. Okay, let ' s se,3. This is 15 hours 40 minutes, that's still with everything powered up . Then we had this D-1 and D-4 and we got those . Those were photographs . We got the photographs of the moon and the IR measurements of the moon and with the IR film and I think they're probably pretty good. Of course the Air Force has tha t film . We found that the I R and the retical and the radar and everything were pretty well right on the money. Everything seemed to be boresighted pretty well, and Pete could look thr ough his questar lense at a s t ar and be boresighted right in the m i ddl e of the darn camera. I'd have it right in the middle of the ret icle. Yes , I ' ve got to eat crow on that . I Fas the @J.Y that was complaining about did they reE,lly have this stuff boresighted. Everything was extremely well boresighted. : Yes, it sure was . Can ' t complain about i t at all. •
85 Conrad No, it worked very well . Cooper Let ' s see we had an observation of the storm and some ... pictures there at 17 hours and 12 minutes still on day 1. Oh, we brought the radar to stand-by to warm things up there at 17 hours-- 16 hours Conrad Radar temperature went down to 19 degrees. Cooper 16 hours and 50 minutes-~it wa s the secondary coolant loop that got so cold. They wanted us to bring on some added heat source so we brought the radar on to stand-by for quite a period of time to warm things up , and let ' s see- - Conrad They wanted to warm the radar up , too . It got too col d . Cooper Yes , that ' s right. What did we do in here . Conrad That was S- 8, D- 13, Cooper That was S-8, D- 13, and that didn't work out very well. 'That was too early. That was the one that was so early in the morning. Conrad It seems to me that's the first time we looked at it and we saw the smoke. Cooper Oh yes . Cooper Now, let's see was it the first one or the second that I saw and you didn 1 t see. Conrad I don't know. I never saw it.
86 G@ t lfill.Et ff1,1'1_ 1 FCSD Rep Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper S- 8 , D- 13 , One day and 18 hours . I saw it . That ' s right . We couldn ' t se e it at all unti l we were almost over i t and then I found the target . We could see the smoke and we were looking at the smoke and looking at the smoke- - The sun angle w a s very low and it was very bad but just after we got right on top of i t and going on over I located the targets and was trying to point them out to Pete . At least I sor-; of got a pattern on the ground and I think tha·; ' s why I could find them. I recognized the pa·;tern on the general area of the ground that I could find . They were in between two r ivers and a bi g r e i mud hill. Okay, what did we get on that? That wa:3 next and I got on that one . Let's see that was three and four and 18 hour s and one day 20 hours 4 minutes 43 seconds . We got that . And then S- 8 , D - 13 , The same one . The same one we were discussing there. Yes . ; COt ◄f ll'Et ◄ tf lsA,b ◄
87 Cooper Okay , we moved to Med Data to Hawaii at 19 hours and 55 minutes which we did. I got there at 7 i n the Caribbean at 20 hours and did the MSC - 1 at 21 hours 52 minutes to 22 hours and 44 minutes. Conrad Then we stayed on the flight plan there and at Hawaii had a critical tape dump at 1 day 23 hours . I congratulated Gordo for exceeding his original flight time at 2 days hours . Cooper Just barely started . Conrad Gee . Ob! Here's that "dinged by a micrometeorite . " I haven ' t told anyone about this because I ' m not really sure that was what happened, because it happened twice and it happened right in the same place . It might have been metal cooling, but right over my head something dinged the hatch . Just bigger than heck - dinged. You know , just like someone shot a B- B off of it . Cooper Yes, I could hear . That's just exactly what it sounded like . Conrad I was convinced that we had gotten dinged by a micrometeorite . So I put it on the voice tape and wrote it down here . Then a couple of hours later we got dinged just as loud just about in the same •
88 Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper ac: 0 1 ◄ F 1 D E N J J,A L ~ place again, so that made me think , well, you know : they aren't going to strike the same place twice so maybe it wasn't a micrometeorite after all. I :: really don ' t know what it was, but I think it's worth a look at the hatch. It could have just been that metal was cooling down or expandin~· or some thing, you know They were right directly overhead on thE! right hatch . Yes. It really sounded like someone fired a pellet or a B- B, or a . 22 off of a piece of me·;al . We decided we wouldn't put this out ove:c the radio or we would get everybody all shattered . Okay, well essentially that day 2 - that whole page from 2 hours to 4 hours - went right on flight plan schedule . We did the Vision Test there and we called down the scores from both that one and the day before . Now we were on this split purge cycle . Yes , now here is where they started making a mistake. Somebody didn 't realize that I could not purge the fuel cells from my side. I can ' t get to those switches, and I had to wake Pete up €O t ◄ FI 0 Er ◄ T I A k-'
every time he was supposed to be asleep when the fuel cells were purged . Well, I could get to them , but I had to crawl right over in his lap to do it, so he was awake then . After that I learned to wake him up early and let him get awake before he purged them. Conrad Scared the heck out of that guy at Carnarvon , too , I ' ll bet you -- We were going to purge the fuel cells for the first time and I was sound asleep. Gordo said, ''Wake up , wake up, we ' ve got to purge the fuel cells!" I reached over there and turned on everything and all the Delta- Plights came on . Cooper He hadn ' t put the crossover - - Conrad The crossover valve on. I said , "The Delta- P lights are on!" The guy at Carnarvon said, "Stop purging! Stop purging!" He must have thought the cells were going to go right then and there so Cooper And then Pete woke up . Conrad Then finally I woke up and got to thinking about what was going on there and found out that I'd fouled up, slightly. Cooper All right, let 's see. We deleted on day 2, 6 hours, and 35 minutes, we deleted that Philippines S-7 and they
90 Cooper Cooper Conrad were - - I wonder what the reason was for that . There was some interference with something. I conldn ' t get to that one. Oh, what the heck was it? There was something else going on they had us doing right then . Oh , somebody was asking me somet:1ing. They were having a big discussion over cryo . That ' s right . We had a great big 2 days 6 hours - we had a big discussion over the net on something on these cryos and it occured right at the time when we were supposed to get this one on this Jass . Okay, at 2 days 7 hours and 45 minutes we did MSC - 1 again, and in fact I think we did all the MSC- l 's pretty much on schedul e. At 2 days 9 hours and 15 minutes we were supposed to do an Apollo Landmark in Africa, and the one they called out for us to do in the Flight Plan , there just wasn ' t any description of it . It was very poorly described and we couldn't find where and what it was they wanted us to get. They never did call out a number on this nor did they have it listed here . What was the time on that? . .. Cooper It was almost 02:09:20 : 00 .
91 Conrad Cooper Conr ad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conr ad Cooper Conrad Cooper 02: 09 , huh? Yes . Gosh, that doesn't even show here . So , I guess they never did even call it up from the ground . You just saw it in t he Flight Plan . It was in the Flight Plan - - But they riever called it out . They never called it out . I haven ' t got it written down , either . Okay, on through the second day we did another UHF Test , another Medical Data, on 2 days 12 hours and 50 minutes. That ' s when we first powered the platform back up. We were still building up. Two days and 13 hours, we powered the platform back up and we did a UHF No . 1 , we did a D - 1 sequence 2, we did a D- 1 sequence 3, we did a D-6 sequence 12 ; and these are all s t ateside passes . That was a busy time ! We did a D - 6 at day 2, 14 hours . We did a D - 4/D-7 at 14: 35 . What ' s this , now? I have the platform power up , a D- 4 , a UHF 2 Right .
92 Conrad - - an S- 6 at 15: 45 - - Cooper You ' re ahead of where I was . Conrad Oh, I ' m sorry. Okay, we'll back up. D - 6 at 13 :41--46 . We got Tampico instead of Monterey beca-i;.se it was clouded in . Then we did the UHF No. 1, and we got this S- 5/S - 6 during our African pass - dicn ' t we? And we got the D - 4/D-7 over Kano . Wait a minute, I ' m not sure we got that one. Let me look in the log here. 4 : 20, no clouds over Kano , so we didn't get it. It was supposed to be cl oudy O 'rer Kano . Cooper That ' s right . There were supposed to b1 ? clouds over Kano. It was supposed to be clouds we '~ere getting pi ctures of, and there weren't any clouis . Conrad Yes , it was clear. Then we had an S- 1 , which we did not do . We did the S- 1 later. That's when we went to platform power up and the computer on, and then we started a D - 6 at 15 : 16 . After D - 6 at 15: 16 was a number 20 , which, if I'm net mistaken , was supposed to be Waco ; and we got DaJlas instead because Waco was cloudy then . Yes , it was supposed to be James Connally and we took Dallaf1 instead, because Waco was clobbered. Cooper What ' s this I have here? That ' s your note there. r
93 Conrad Cooper .,, ... Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper ·GONftf1 21 . 1 feet per second Delta P . Oh, that was our pre- burn stuff. At 2 days 17 hours 34 minutes and 31 seconds we had a maneuver load . Well , I have the whole thing here . We powered up the platform on day 2 at 15:50 with the plat form caged BEF, and at 16: 15 we alined BEF with the rate gyros on. At 16:45:00 the computer went on and we addressed 25 90201 , and apogee adjust maneuver was a t 16:50 : 17 . We translated forward to zero the IVI, so it was actually a retro burn . I mean we were BEF. We were using the aft-firing thrusters. Yes. We had a D-6 on the ship , and we didn't see it, at 2 days 16 hours 56 minutes and 49 seconds . We didn't see the ship. Then at 17:20 the second day we alined the platform SEF and we sat the computer up to address 25 00158 . We made an SEF burn, which was a phase adjust maneuver, at 17 : 34:58 . Now , that one we did in the Platform Mode and it didn't burn for schmaltz. The platform didn ' t hold it . It allowed us to get a little bit of left-right and up- down .
Conrad I don't bel ieve that Platform Mode was holding the t olerances it was supposed to. It was drifting a full degree, and it was supposed to hold better than t ha t . Cooper I t is supposed to hol d plus or minus half a degree . Conrad By drifting off in yaw a degree , it burned the whole time 1 degree off in yaw in the same direction . You see, that accounted for the sort of l arge out of-pl ane number; it was like 0.8 foot ier second that we got in to the out of pl ane. Okay, then we had a D-4/D- 7 at 17: 42:00, a 410 Band a 407 over Carnarvon; and it was not done . Cooper Tha t 's right; we didn ' t have a reticl e . Conrad Because the reticle pooped out . We thought the reticl e had burned out . It wasn ' t unti l l ater on after we were going to fix the reticle by putting t he auxiliary light in there that Gordo found that t here was a short in the cord when the cord was stretched , and that t he short wasn ' t i n the cord when the cord wasn ' t stretched , and that the sight was okay. That rem inds me of another thing. Right af ter we got airborne I went to use the little auxil iary l ight down here . It was in the
95 clip so hard that when I pulled it out , I pulled it completely apart. I shattered it . I broke out my lens . Glass floating around and everything. Where did we stow that? I forgot . I gave it to you and you stowed i t - - Cooper I put it in the garbage bag. Conrad That ' s right ; it's in the garbage bag, someplace. Well , they have gone through all that. Cooper Incidentially, that one single-point cord that we have in there over on my side , if I had had something to cut it with, I should have cut it right in two so it wouldn 't be used again . It's no good . It works fine as long as you don ' t put any tension on it. When you s t ring it up to put it in the reticle, it shorts out . Conrad Then we went through another maneuver preparation at 17:50: 00 on the second day. We alined the platform SEF and we sat up an out-of-plane maneuver and address 27 00150 , 15 feet per second out of plane burn, and 90 degrees yaw left . At 02 days 18 hours 06 minutes 50 seconds we made that out-of-plane burn . Cooper We did that in Rate Command and right on the money.
Conrad Cooper Cooper Conrad Yes, we did that in Rate Command right on the money. Then we had an S- 8/D-13 and we documented those t hings ; Gordo saw part of it and I did.r. 1 t . W e never did really get a good score . ThE·n at 18 : 50 again we alined the platform SEF and seit the computer up to 25 00164 and burned thiE1 reverse coelliptic maneuver at 19:04:18 , and that was a good burn too. MCC had put in their Agena computer an Agena ephemeris, and they ran a rendezvous solution on a fake Agena. They had us make the actual burns, and then they computed hJw close we would have wound up. I was told over the radio that we got within 0 .2 mile of altitude and 0 . 3 mile horizontal distance from where we should have actually been. That was well within the tolerances , so they were apparently fairly pleased with the burns . Then we had S-7 at 2 days 21 tours 33 minutes 02 seconds , and Gordo shot moet of those. They always happened on your wat ch. Yes. Then we did 2 days 21 hours and 50 minutes . We had ,, Apollo Landmark south -· Th.at' s when I woke up and you had tha·~ Lake . . . I
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99 got the S- 7 again, or you got it , at 3 days 06 hours and 32 minutes. We del eted an S- 7 at 3 days 05 hours for some reason . I just have "delete" in here . Cooper What was that? An S- 7? Conrad Yes. Cooper Yes . I don ' t know ; they just told us to delete that one at 3 days 05 hours . Let ' s see ; we deleted a Cabin Lighting Survey because Pete was asleep. That was one time when you were asleep and I didn ' t want to disturb you . You hadn ' t had any sleep in awhile . Conrad You have the note down here that at 3 days 6 hours and 33 minutes you found the OAMS Control Propellant circuit breaker open and OAMS Control Regulator No . 1 circuit breaker open ; and you don't know when they were opened, and I don ' t know when they opened, but we know what did it . We had been parking the water gun up there like you are supposed to be able to do and then pulling i t off . You tend to pull down thi s way , which would cock the gun barrel up into the circuit breaker panel ; and I think I probably knocked them off , but when
100 Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper • I ' m not sure . So , from that point in time on we never used the hook-up that you can hock it up on the -- -. We al so found that little-hook up was i •eeling gray paint off of those bars and i t was floe.ting all over the cabin, That ' s right . It kept knocking the gre.y paint off the guards and i t kept floating around the cabin . So from then on we always put the water· gun in the gun holster down there where it belongs . As a matter of fact I think it was easier tc get it in and out of the plastic thing that holds it on the circuit breaker guards - holds it on tt ere so tightly that it is a big swivet everytime you pull it off. Okay. At day 3, 6 hours 32 minutes 46 seconds we did an S- 7 Experiment that aircraft surpor t on it . This was over the Philippines. We got four pictures . Right . We did an MSC-1 at 07 : 40. We had a medical data pass in there at 0~: 53, Right ,
101 CONFIDENT~ Conrad Then I have Pla t form to ORB Rate , Prelaunch , and horizon scan for some r eason . ~uestar 01 , 90 degrees left . Cooper We alined SEF at 13: 10. Conrad Oh, that was these platform tests 1 and 2 that they wanted us to do . Cooper That's right. W e were getting ready for another stateside pass, too . We installed the photometer, we did an S- 8/D-13 pass at day 3, 13 hours 32 minutes at Laredo . Conrad Oh , let me make a comment right now on S- 8/D- 13 . We were supposed to make a measurement , a window survey, of the window before day one and the last day. Okay, the window scan was done on 1 day 18 hours 26 minutes 00 seconds. That was the first window scan . A second window scan was never done because the last 3 days of the flight we were in drifting flight . This required a 30- degree sun angle on the window, and we never did have a control system back until we were on the RCS sys tem. We weren ' t about to do any experiments on RCS fuel . That was right before retro . The second window scan, the one at the end of the flight , wasn ' t done. But
102 I will make the comment that I don't think the window changed, just from my looking at it . Cooper No , I don ' t think it did, either, I think it was just as bad at first , as it was at l ant. Conrad That's right. Cooper And it was pretty bad . Conrad So, I don I t think they lost anything ·;here on that data. We just couldn't ge t that one. Cooper Okay. Let's see. We had a medical pgss at day 3, 13 hours 50 minutes - 13 hours 47 minutes, actually. Alined the platform Conrad We went through a really big day. This was day 3 and this was the day we were really organized . The experimenters sent us up about the right number of experiments. They gave us enough time between experiments , and they planned them well enough so that we didn't have any troubl e changing the gear around or anything, and we had a big day that day. Cooper This was a great day. Conrad We had enough time to do it all and we felt good about it. We felt that it was the best day we flew.
103 Cooper Let ' s see . Day 3, 14 hours and 18 minutes , we did that Zodiacal Light . Conrad That ' s right. Gordo really had it on there . I think he got some good dope out of that Zodiacal Light . The pictures should be good . Gordo held it right on the money. Cooper Let ' s see; and then we did D- 6 . Conrad On the D-6 134, we looked for the ship again but didn't see it that day , and that was one thing we didn ' t get . Cooper I have here now a D-6 . We did it . This is El Centro. No , no. Conrad 021 is Dallas , I think , or something like that . Cooper That's right . And then day 3, 15 hours 8 minutes .
104 Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad FCSD rep Conrad We had a full day this day , Let ' s see- at 3 hours-- day 3 , 15 hours , ]3 minutes we had D- 6 134, ,:, When was this? 3:05:13:51 Yes, That was a 134--that was the ship and we didn't see it . Yes--that was the weather. Yes--I have "no joy for sunlight here," OK then we had a D- 4 at 15: 59 , Right 409 and 410b and we got them both done . We got both of those. We had a platform aline at 16::.5 :00. And a medical pass - right - pl atform aline . What was that--the computer waE: off by 240 miles? Yes . Their computations were calling for 240 short based on what waE put into it . That ' s right--that 1 s just what happened and we were trying to fly short . CQNEJD;l»TI~ •
@NflDi~TIAL • 105 FCSD Rep Conrad Cooper Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad FCSD rep . Conrad FCSD rep. Cooper Conrad Cooper Yes . Well, do you feel better? No- - At 16 hours and 24 minutes we had a medical pass . At 16 hours and 15 minutes we alined SEF, powered up the radar, rate gyros, etc . At 16 hours and 37 minutes we had a D- 4 pass 423a, . That was the first missile . And we saw it . Saw it come up thru the clouds--or right at the edge of the clouds. Which one was this--out of here- No--we didn't get any missiles out of here. It was out of Vandenburg. It was the Minuteman out of Vandenburg. You got it as soon as you came out of the clouds? Yes. Yeah- -just as plain as day. Right on it . Should have gotten some good readings on that . We powered up the computer then at day 3 , 16 hours
106 a.nd 45 minutes a.nd radar was on a.nd radar off, on--we had that radar test right in there that they wanted to do. Conrad Did we get those pictures of Venus and Fomalhaut. This platform 1 and 2 business? Cooper I thought we did. Conrad I didn ' t have a done log on that and I don't think I wrote that down anywhere whether we- - Cooper I don't remem ber whether we ever got Venus or not. OK, let ' s see---the tape recorder was apparently still working there because you changed the tape there. That day at 17 hours-- yeah- - he:r:e we go. Conrad Wait a minute- - here, I got it down here. Platform test 1, magazine 9, picture 23, l/30th of a second- no - somet::iing Questar. Cooper Didn't get Venus- - Conrad Platform test 02 , magazine 9, picture 22, I/30th of a second- - oh, no fili;er--I 1m sorry. Fomalhaut--we got Foma:Lhaut but CO~FIDENTIAL. -
107 :: Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper we didn ' t get Venus . We never found it . That' s right. That ' s right. We never even found Venus on that night side. Platform test 2- - And I got a remark here to find out that on day 6 at 01 hours, 02 minutes and 15 seconds where in the heck were we because there were great fires on the ground? Yeah. OK--so I did write it down--all right- SA- D-13, day 3, 18 :16:14--and I had some comments about that here some place . 16:14 - We scored a 4 and a 1--and the 4 was in the upper--the 1 was in the upper left hand box and the 4 was in the second box in the second row. Right. OK about this period of time- let ' s see we had an S- 7--0h, first before this--then we had run some more tests on our primary scanner and found out that it was completely inoperative and- -
108 Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Yeah. Just kept getting worse, worse , worse- - and so--Pete has a note here--tell Houston about primary scanner--which we did shortly thereafter at 3 hours, 18 minutes , 3 days, 18 hours and 16 minutes we did an S- 7 , and then at 3 days , 18 hours and 25 minutes we purged, powe:('ed down , computer off, platform off, re·;icle off, rate gyros off, etc. , etc. Yeah. Then you have a--you 1 ve got an S- 7 done at 03:21:20 : 08. Right , You had an Apollo landmark at 03:21:38 :02 a 213 and I think that--we got Lake De Poo Poo or whatever it was , when we got t hat done. We got that one. There was a D- 4 D- 7 at 03:22: 48 :17 a 425a--I don ' t know what that was but- Well , we also got in addition just before that at day 3, 22 hours and 15 minutes we got an S- 6 magazine 4; exposure 12 ,109 C Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Coop:er Conrad Cooper cyclone off Japan which has been added into there. And then you start on that HF test number 1 starting at 22 hours , 55 minutes . Oh, yeah, 425a was Hawaii , Maui. Oh, yeah, you got that one. Maunakea was the volcano--it ' s not active--but anyhow- - Wait a minute--oh--213 is what- - Huh? That's Apollo landmark--this was the D- 4 D- 7--let 1 s see the Apollo land marks--let me look there and see if we got 213 on it . All right , then that was at 22 :48 - the D-4 D - 7 was at 3 days , 22 hours , 48 min utes , and 17 seconds was the 425a--and 416 . You got the Apollo landmark at 03 :21 : 38 : 02: 213, magazine 4 , frame 10 , 1 - 2 pictures you took. Yes . Camera 11. Then--day 4 start at day 4 , 00 hours ,
110 Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper 25 minutes, cabin lighting. 19 minutes was the medical data, at 40 let•s see- - 40 minutes there was the D - 2 series 1, 4, 5--sequence 1, 4, 5. Mode 414 I have here--What was that? 145 was a military, U.S. Yeah. What I s this Mode 414- - That was if we saw it we were ·;o be in Mode 414 on the IR. Oh, OK. Then we had a D- 6, mode 01 at 44:10, day 4, 44 minutes and 10 seconds . On day 4? Yes. I don I t have anything down hero for that. 04:00 Mode Ol--that 1 s--I think. that 1 s . -~ I may have the numbers wrong. OK--at day 4, two hours, 20 minutes - vision tests, both of us. Had that HF test in there someplace. Yeah, I've already called that out. Medical data pass on me over CSQ at 03: 11:00. We had an S-7, day 4, 03 hours , 'AElEN:J:
111 C Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad 20 minutes and 25 seconds , we got an S- 7, sequence 01 and let's see--and thru this period was where we both completely ran out of steam--here on--we were trying to get you to sleep so I deleted all of these tests right in thru here to let Pete sleep . On day 4, starting at 3 hours and 45 minutes on- - Deleted the HF tests here- - Kept adding these tests in here that were--just weren ' t going to get him any sleep at all. This was this 145 mode this was at D- 6, D-4, D - 7 and D- 2. It was the 145 mode for the 01 and 414 . That ' s right . At day 4 , 48 hours- - Yeah, here I have this thing--4th day, U. S. passes--we started at 11 :00 o!clock. What 1 s this 04, 4 hours , 48 minutes a.rid 58 seconds there was a D-2 that we had no success on, Now comment on that . To do any of those things you have to have the platform on.
112 FCSD r ep . Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper FCSD rep. Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Then the platform wasn ' t on? Was not on . That ' s right- -see you got to he able to have an accurate means of pointing of having yaw and- - They said pitch up 83 degreeR, yaw 45 degrees left--out of that window. You don I t have any idea in the wo:dd. I mean, we didn't even have rat1 :! gyros powered up. You have no idea in the world where you a.re pointing, just- You are wasting your time try:Lng to do this kind of job without a platform . What is this a shot of--what "i.s this target? Well , for any pointing r equiraments , especially ones in the sky- - Where they are going at different angles , see. You have to have a platform. Then along at day 4, 5 hours and 40 minutes , Buzz ' s eX])eriment was placed in there on a switch- - f
Conrad Cooper Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper 113 Yeah. That was the straw that broke the camel's back--we didn't do . Did MSC- 1, day 4, 5 hours and something to .6 hours and something. Let ' s see- - then on down to day 4 , 11 hours and 5 minutes Powered up. Then it ' s powered up platform, had a medical data pass , 11 hours and 25 minutes aligned SEF--11 hours and 40, powered up the rate gyro and computer on--11 :51 bio-med recorder number 1 off, number 2 on. That was half way through the flight . 11 : 55:55 we had a D- 6, the recovery ship, and that wa$ ~he one we saw. No , we didn ' t get it . I got no joy on that one . OK . We got them the next time around I think. 11 : 55:55 , 134 sequence zero A. Yeah, we got them the next rev . OK . Conrad OK--I 1 ve got the D- 6 at 12:24:02 was done -
114 Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad that was the sequence 091 or W:~atever it was. Right . The platform aligned SEF, for t he command pilot we got- - Purged the fuel cells at day 4 , 12 hours and 50 minutes . Yeah, SA D- 13 on Laredo at 13: :?3 : 39- what happened? Neither one of us saw the target--on that one. I'm not sure I 1ve got anything written down. I don ' t . Why don ' t I ? Huh. I don ' t know what happened. Then we had a D-6 089-what the heck was 085'? Day 4, 13:58:50 , D- 6 in F.a.st .Af'rica- - 0h yeah, that was Blantyre Aercdrome and Malawi. I don't think we got that one. Yes we did. Did we? Malawi airport--remember? Maybe we did- -I don't have a done written on it for some reason.
115 Cooper " Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Yeah, I remember we had the picture of it you know and it was out there on that little point--or w a s that the one by Ka.no that we couldn' t find because of the weather. There's one in there where we did 089- let's see what it looked like . Look up 089--that 1 s the one wher e we had all the weather on it by Ka.no , wasn ' t it? Yeah, well , we saw these lakes but- We saw the lakes but that was in under a big deck of clouds . Did we or didn't we get the aerodrome. guess we didn ' t get the aerodrome. No , we didn't get it. Because remember we saw the lake and saw the river come out and then there was this whole deck of clouds over there so we couldn ' t get that because of the cloud cover . That's right. We saw the general area-- where it was at--but we couldn' t get on it at all . I
116 Conrad Cooper Conrad Let ' s see at 14:15, day 4, D-4, D- 7 , 410c. D- 4 , D- 7 , 410c was--that•s one of the ones where we were supposed to track a star or something--yeah , we were supposed to track Nunki and we never could find it because it was- - It was up in first, early- - It was up early-- we had troubln with that . That ' s another thing I could have recommended those gu:ys--we got enough to do in the spacecraft not to worry about setting up the star chart and figuring out from the- -somethir..g you can ' t do from the star chart is figure out a pitch and yaw angle and the grormd ' s got that information up the kazoo, so on any of these ones where they want you to photograph some stars or anything else-you' ve got to platform up again - the easiest thing to do is send up a pitch and yaw with it and that just takes all the work out of it
117 .:: Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper in the spacecr aft. Gosh, we ' re messing around with the star charts- - still don ' t tell you how much to pitch up or yaw around to find the darn thing. They tell you where it would be on yaw path. You just sort of got to figure it out it •s over to the left or the right and go over and look for it . Well , that ' s not the way to do it . Heck, we never navigated that way in the Navy. You go into star chart with local hour angle and it gives you the elevation and azimuth to the star, from North, and that ' s essentially what you need here . You need the elevation and azimuth angle off the orbital plane. OK , let's see--at day 4, 14:56:50 we had a D- 4, D- 7 White Sands Sled Run which was successful . And then we got the ship. An then we got the D- 6 424a r ight after that. At 14: 57 : 31 we got D-6 sequence 134.
118 Conrad FCSD rep. Cooper FCSD rep. Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Which we did photograph the Lake Champlain. Did you see this thing-- how dii you pick this thing up--did you us: a tele scope or- We saw him visually - found h~n visually and then From the wake- - Put the pipper on him and Pete took pictures with the big camera. Then we got a D- 6 15:04:40 series 134. What was that? That ' s the ship . Well, what was the 424a? That was the White Sands MissiJe Run. Oh, OK, We got a D-4, D-7 at 15:19:00 that was the 419- - The 419 was the ascension calibration. We did that darn thing again for them- remember that over Australia or something I don't know what the heck we did it for because I told them we got that thing once. Anyhow, then we did a platform aline.
119 Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper ~FI DE~TIA All right - 15 hours 40 minutes- Then D- 4, D- 7 was the second Minuteman which we saw but we didn't track. 16 hours 28 minutes, 423b - we did the HF tests 4 at 17 hours. Wait a minute- I got a - we had an S- 7 at 16:37 and it was the thunderstorms in southern Florida. I think we got those. We got that one. All right - We had a D- 6 at 16: 51:25 which was an 065 - Right And if I ' m not mistaken that was that Island off Brazil and we photographed the wrong island - then we found out our mistake in time and - Just as we were going over we shifted over to the other island - And we photographed the right island - it lookeQ. like there was only one island out there and we found out there were two i s lands out there so we did get the right pictures . There again, the maps we had just weren ' t
120 Conrad Cooper Conrad big enough in their overall look at things to give you a clue as to what - I ' ll show you this - This is the kind of thing that you just can•t have-that was 065- now what you need to help you find an island is some clue as to Khere it is located in the world- well, t hat ' s what we had- - Yeah, there was the island- - Now it turns out that right up about here there ' s another island--laught er--and man we took all kinds of -- sE!e fortunately it was far enough away - you •• look 15 seconds up there is 15 x 8 is 120 miles- and 120 miles is a lot of dist ance but you are covering that in 15 snconds - well fortunately this was about 15 or 20 seconds - we·were pitched down and we were at least at the 90 and Wt:! got the second island a little bit pa::Jt the nadir, because we already had been t :cack.ing t his first island see and thlm here we came drifting along feeling how great we were
121 Q©~fNTtAE, getting the picture but we really dirui 1 t think it quite looked like the right island but because we didn ' t see an air field on it - well here came the island with the air field - it was a good 200 miles down the pike but you need a little more - Cooper A little more help as to where it ' s at. Let ' s see 17 hours was HF test 4 - we did that, Conrad Yeah, we powered down . Cooper 17 :40 - Medical data - we did that. Conrad Yeah, now here is a good time for a comment on this thing. Every time we went thru these state - side passes now a - to operate on a state- side passes - they start out two orbits before you hit the state- side passes- you started getting chatter--the first time you hit Carnavon and then well- no , I take that back - the first thing that happened is we come by that low sweep up thru Central America liliere we got Canaveral and Antigua and we get Houston
122 remote from there and it would be Dave Scott and Elliot ,a.nd they would start giving us a little poop about what was going to go on that day see--and heck they'd tell us a little bit acout the latest hydrogen calculations er something (laughter) and that was - we 1 ci. sort of get an idea of what was going on, then the next t~ip around is the first time you pick up Carnavon and then he'd sta.xrt to give you an update and he'd get about half way through what you wern going to do in those state- side passes and we ' d pick up Dave Scott again at Canton and he I d finish it and then we'd come by that fringe pass by the states and that ' s when they changed the watch and we'd say hello to everybody that was going off and coming on and then we'd have all the stuff and the next trip around - that would start the three revs over the states see and then it was just go--you had gear all over the spacecraft - gee we had everything
123 Cooper Conrad Cooper we owned out and we ' d be going through books and writing and flight plan and then we ' d leave the states and it says pilot ' s nap period and Gordo was supposed t o do something else and that was imposs ible - it would take two more revs to clean up the spacecraft before we ever got to do anything else so we never got on that part of the flight plan. This pilot nap period - that was a big joke - Now pilot's eat period and nap period and all - Always cleaning the spacecraft and we had to clean up the whole thing - it was a good time to do it -- we ' d have meal garbage out and we ' d have all the experi ments out so we ' d -- up to the states on that last one . It was handier to eat together too - because you had to get the stuff out anyway--so it was handier for us just to eat together so we just always ate at the same time . •
124 Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad And we would be in the procesH of cleaning up when we'd come by and we ' d have that Guaymas pass where we'd come ·1:iy and have California acq. and Guaymas acq. and we ' d go right down the side of Mexico , the west side, and then cross the isthmus and go down Brazil and then fI'Om there on you - that was your last contact with the states and you'd stay out there with the CSQ RKV cycle through the rest of the night and that time we got all the way around there and picked up the CSQ the first time and we ' d have Hawaii once more - Then we were already through my s l eep period and that ' s supposed to be Pete ' s sleep period - that was the not:'lllal sleep period. We worked our tail off that wh:>le time - That was the normal sleep peri,:,d and we just barely have things all sq·.lared away so then we both powered down - · - Go thru this terrible 50 minut,:s with both of us like this - we ' d uh- uh, oh, yeah - hi
125 Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper there - laughter . Yeah, ok, everything 1 s fine (snoring) ( 1a,1g~+.er) . Talk about lonely--that •s when it really got bad. You really knew you were out in the no place. We just discussed one thing while you were out, was this window situation. You couldn't even begin to see out of Pete' s window when we launched. It was really terrible and it was in between those outside panes and glass . And my window between the outside sealed units and the inside unit of glass there was a bee - Oh, yeah , yeah, that stuff is on the inside of the outer pane. I ·don' t know how that got there. And inside these two outside units on my side in between those and the inside pane of glass there was a little bee and a fly and a whole bunch of flecks of dirt and odds and ends in there. And my window wasn ' t as frosted over as his.
126 Conrad FCSD rep . Cooper Cooper Conrad Over the period of time, they both got a certain amount of little frosty scum on the outside of them and when we fired the scanner covers there were about foUT or five little gray flecks of etuff and debris just flew everywhere right in that period of time and four or five· little gray flecks came on the window. Heck, that's before launch isn't it? Oh, I didn ' t know that. Did it ever clear up? No . I think it was just unforg:i.veable. I think if they can I t do bette1· on windows than that they ought to just qt.it trying. I could see maybe having some El.lllount of debris-and then when you use the thruster s the debris would all show up again. We were on--here we are up here--t his med data. Day 4, 16 hours and that data - did. 16 hours 28 minutes - D -4, D- 7 , D-6 , 423b. Yeah that was the second missi:.e - which we didn I t get any track on -- ue saw - i'
127 Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper ONFl0ENTIA[ HF test 4 then at 417 , 4:17:40 med data was done. HF test 4 ended on - down there - OK, day 4, 19 hours 44 minutes was S- 7 which was completed . Yeah, both the ·s- 7 1 s were completed. Then there's an S- 7b, 21 hours , 9 minutes and 50 seconds storm Doreen - we completed, Time of closest approach was at 21:09:30, They had us tracking this storm - you see Oh, yeah. We estimated the eye was 250 miles left of course approximately - Have you got the orbits - yeah, here it is . This thing is the greatest thing in the whole world . It 1 s the simplest - cheapest thing in the spacecraft and - It is - it is great. We would have been lost without this thing. This orbital update map. Boy, it really- well, the orbit was really good as far as - You really don't know where ~ou are at -
128 ,,, Conrad Cooper Conrad Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper But this is a good little map t oo . It really has the right things on it. There wasn't anytime we didn ' t Look down and know exactly where we ·Here. This thing is really great. Probably the cheapest thing in the spacecraft. That 1 s one Jerry Jones made up. We tried out a long time ago and I said I liked it and I wanted to take one like that rather than this big elaborate one - Yeah, it really worked great. Yeah, I just saw all these map star updates we had here. Yeah. One thing they could do . They could put about 3 or 4 more orbi ts on it and not have t o update it so often . Might be a little handier. Just a tr.ought - but it 1 s good the way i t is. C K, l et's see , we ' re on day 4, 22 hours en d 20 minutes - we did a cabin l ighting survey. We did the radar test 10 . Cabi n lighting S-7 , MSC-1. And med data. ~tf>fNT=IAL
129 ~ ffDffiTIA[ Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Apollo landmark 207- that was at 07 :14:25 must be day 5 , No , not that far along - We did UHF 6 we did at 2 hours , day 5, 2 hours and something. You said you had an S-7 that was again during my sleep cycle and you said missed while discussing Cryos with CSQ. Right. And then you had an MSC 1 at 05 :40 and you got that done. Now you're ahead of me--hold up just a minute . We 're down here now - let~ see - here's the S-7. 05 :40 MSC- 1 that was done . You got your Apollo landmark - Apollo landmark at sequence 207 at 7 hours and 14 minutes. What was 207? Lake Titicaca That was the Canaries - Oh, yeah , all right. Then we had SAD- 13 - vision tests on both of us which we did together instead of separately. And then
130 Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad NFl0Etsl:TIAt '4 at 5 day , 10 hours and 20 mim:.tes we had Apollo No. 208 , which we g'Ot . We had S- 502 which we got . We had D- 4, D- 7, sequence 414 which we got and we had the platform tests which ·Ke did . Yeah then we got the radar teet run - And Pete has a note here "Get serious," it really starts getti ng thick and heavy.- - Well , I don't know--they were really getting wild - We had a platform aline - plat form test, radar test , this is day 5, 11 hours and 35 minutes - We had D- 6 , D- 4, D- 7 , platform aline, radar test - That ' s where they were off the·ir rocker. But we got them. Those were s.ll in the day 5, 11 to 12 hours - Listen, there ' s a lot of sloppy things in there - I mean we got thine:s done but we missed little subtleties -· like we were supposed to run the 16mm camera along with some part of the I R gear and I wouldn I t get that on - and E. bunch of 0NF-IDENT.IAL .Iii
G0MF-IDFiNTl~"t 131 little things . Again, we were always man, they had stuff thrown at us as fast as you could say Jack Robinson, Cooper Let ' s see- - S-B , D-13 at Laredo--do you have one of those right in that period- day 5, 13 hours - Conrad Day 5, 13 hours - no . Cooper I don ' t have it either . Conrad I have this all scratched out for some reason , Cooper D- 6 - This is where we really began to have trouble with something -- what was it we were really having trouble with? Conrad The O.AMS systems cut out. Cooper That ' s right. The O.AMS systems pooped out . Day 5, at about 11 hours when we were cranking up for this is when we found that our OAMS systems was really getting bad, and we already had discovered that we had one thruster out and a partial otrer one out but this is the time when we found out we had about 3 others that were just about out. Conrad Yeah, I have a little note here - report - ~ NFIDENilAl
132 • Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad to flight ~oi ce tape out - num·oer 7 yaw left thruster out and OAMS heat er light turned ba ck on again. And so we were supposed to ask 7 Keywest and D - 8 S- 13, SAD- 13 about 6 : 22:50 - OK - From ther e on for a while things just got scrubbed i n the flight plan on that day five , the l atter part of the time on entries there . Yeah, that ' s when they got us into this minimum power down - voice cont~ol - 1 suit f an - 2 coolant pumps , 1 a,Jq_. aid, UHF r eceiver, DOS receiver, PCM - That ' s when they decided the hydrogen wasn I t going to l ast at the preoent electri cal rate . That ' s what I wrote down - Houston hot dope - drift for three days - r icky, tieky. (Laughter) Sorry - But at day 5, 19 hours and 25 minutes we did get a fix on Doreen - wher e she was ther e . Yeah, everything happened that day. That
133 Cooper Conrad IDE1'1TIA - was when the PC02 started to read for some reason. PC02 came off the scale and was reading way up there for a while. We broke out one of the co 2 tapes, and it showed that we were still all right . We figured the gage was its usual reliability. Okay, now, I think this is good for the recorder right here. At that time, as of 5 days 21 hours 00 minutes they wanted to know what our experiment status was. So on the UHF , we had completed tests 1, 2, 3 and I said 6 just so that if they were still trying to keep that number under their lid. That's what it sounded like because they kept mentioning it. We ' d done D - 1 , 1, ~, and 3 which had completed D- 1. D - 2 we had done nothing, because we didn ' t get the REP. D-6 we'd taken 72 pictures . D- 4 , D- 7 we ' d had completed 405, 408, 409, 410, 410a, 410b , 411, 414 , 420 , 422 , 423a, 423b , 424a , 425a. We had 16 minutes and 8 seconds of Jeo~~f6i~tW on. ~
134 Conrad On S-8, D-13 we completed all tests although we didn ' t see the targets several times. On S- 1 we completed it. S-5 and S-6 we'd taken three maga zines for a total of 210+ pictures . S-7 we had 23 pictures or 8 groups that they had ~anted plus we had taken cal card picture. The M-1 broke at 4 days and some odd hours, and I don ' t know the exact time . M-3 didn't make any difference. MSC-1 we did on day one , three, and four. Apollo-we got Landmarks 207, 8, 12 1 and 13. We'd done 4 cabin lighting surveys. The humidity sensor we read at least once a day, and the 16mm film we had one and a quarter magazines shot up which is general stuff. That was what we had completed in 5 days. Then from there on, we went through this big drill of sending up of all kinds of experiments but don't expend any fuel on them. An so we were pretty well restricted to S-5, S-6, and S-7 type phJtographs which was about all we got. Cooper Catch as catch can. Conrad We marked down all this other stuff. W 1 ~ did catch a D-4/D-7 occasionally if it was the ri 1 sht sort of thing-if we were sort of pointed in the right
135 FJD~TIAL ~ direction. Like I got a--in drifting flight I got 417 and 418 at 6 days 8 hours 41 minutes . I don ' t remember what that is . Cooper From here on , we just-- we drifted through this period of time and the only time we ever powered anything up was when the drift rates got up pretty high. We would power up, damp the rates , and power right back down , and hope we- - and did manage to keep somewhat attitude so we could get occasionally some pictures . For instance on--we did continue doing MSC-1 experiments which incidentally-- even in times of minimum power when they wanted us powered right down to our eyeballs they still left MSC- 1 on. I don ' t know how much fuel i t takes , but it always erks me if we had to have everything off why could they manage to leave that one on. Day 6 , 8 hours, 41 minutes we got D-4/D-7 417 , 418 , and 414 . Conrad Yes , on that one day, Day 6 , when they had the HF tests in Houston--0roadcast HF- - we had Houston on HF till 15 hours 59 minutes 00 seconds and this included the remoting through Ascension,and the remoting through Ascension was beautiful . That
was really good recepti on. And then tl:.ey were playing 'Never on Sunday' and that faded out at 15 hours 08 minutes. Cooper That was the best HF test we had . Conrad Yes , and we started receiving the music again coming around the other side of the wo1·ld at 15 hours 49 minutes. This must be 16::9. 14: 59? 14: 59, I got the wrong number in here J think. I'll just make a note to check it. No, thi~ is 15:08, 15:49 which is about right half way arcund the world and this number may be wrong. Cooper Is that day 6? Conrad Yes, check it and see if we got a note in the Flight Plan. Day 6 at 1400, almost 1500. Then we did some of these radar tests and for the 1ikes of me to underst and do you know what was ~ome of the discussion on why the radar didn't work after that . Gee, it locked up so beautifully the first day on the REP down there. Cooper The one REP pass we had, man, things Jt;.s t worked like a charm. Conrad And it just never did work after that. We always got a lock on.
137 • Cooper And I read analog. My analog read beautiful , but he couldn ' t read out digital and that ' s impossible because the analog data comes from the di gital da ta . I could even tell where it was . It was s i tting out on Meritt Island, wasn't it? I ' ll bet--it w a s accurate enough--I ' ll bet you that you could almost t ell what building it was in. It looked like it was r ight out here in the south part of the complex here . Conrad Where wer e we receiving music f r om? Cooper We got a little Chinese HF br oadcast every now and then. Peoples program. Conrad We went through these radar tests just drif ting around out there . Cooper Oh, yes , they were trying to jam our r adios . Everytime we went over the China area . Conrad I had the decided impression that they were t r ying to jam our UHF. So it was either that or--oh, yes , where was it where we heard the radar on the r adio . Cooper China. Conrad No , we were along the fringes of Russia , but we went over China. We were over something like Indi a . Cooper We wer e coming right over the Tibet - - the hi gh Tibet QWflO
138 area there , and we were just on the south edge of China. Conxad Have you ever t axied close by radar? You can hear i t on radio , i t goes "beep , beep, beep, beep," and you can even clock the antenna sweep , and you can get about three pulses . . . . "Beep ,beep ,beep," and then , "beep, beep , beep" , and you can see that old antenna down there on the ground going around and we could hear the UHF as big as heck and we were way up in the middle of no place, and I know darn well it must have been--Russian radar. Cooper We were up on the high of southern China. High plains area. Conxad Okay, then we ran another eXPeriment summary, and this eXPeriment summary was for the sixth day. And on the D- 6 we did not see 135 which was the Laser. Laser out of White Sands . Never did see that darn Laser . And the D-4/D-7 we caught a 417, 418, and on S-6 we ' d taken five more pictures . On S-5 we'd t aken 43 more pictures and on S-7 we ' d taken one more storm or two pictures . On S-8 , D- 13 I have no- - we didn't get to mark the targets , but we may have gotten the 70mm pictures of them that
EM=FfAL 139 they wanted . I had to point--I may have all spacecraft in the picture . I don ' t know-we were just drifting by this one . And then at 11 hours 30 minutes on the sixth day , we went through this crank up this number 2 fuel cell again after it had been shut down for 20 hours . They wanted to bring it up by warming up the coolant loop so we went through this drill of shutting off the Primary Cooling Valve Circuit Breaker and opening the Rad Flow to BYPASS so that we could bypass the SECONDARY LOOP and let it warm up a bit . Then we went through the purge procedures and brought the fuel cell on the l i ne . And i t came on pretty good . Conrad We never got any of the rest of the experiments on that day. They wanted general photos of the U. S. and so forth , D- 6 1 s and we just were never in position . We were always pointed straight up or something like that . Then we had another UHF test leaving the States and on the seventh day and we lost HF on the seventh day at 16 hours and 27 minutes and 00 seconds . I had the Squelch set on 4 , and I brought the Squelch up higher and ..
140 Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad ~ NFl0ENTIAL and we got them back again and lost it 3 minutes later at 07 days 16 hours and 30 minufos . Then we did a MSC- 1 . I have a note here 7 days and 20 minut(~S was that large storm where we located the depre:3sion on it . Take a look at it , and see just where :Lt was , and weather breaking off from it . And then when they came up with their :1ext ground t est whi ch- - Had two S-7 eXPeriments . . .. which I think we could have done without and that ' s when they had us warm up the solenoids for ten minutes . The thing that got to us was that we had turned-- They had us shut off the Propellant Valve and what we should have done w a s dumped the Propellant by rotating through all control posi tions on the handle , but what they had us do was go to the full yaw left position and dumped the whole load of manifold pr opellants out through the the mal functioning left yaw thrusters and man did .that couple up into a couple of beautiful rates, and we were doing it at night, and we didn ' t realize until it w a s too l ate and all of a sudden there were the
141 stars going by , and we were just going through the world every which way , and we were supposed to hold it that way f or ten minutes and we were--okay , we were well aware .. . . Cooper Where were you? This day 7? Conrad Yes , and I just got to this big set of procedures on that test and it didn ' t work . Cooper I have a note here at Day 7 , 3 hours and 19 minutes only 22 more r evolutions to go . Same length as MA - 9 . Conrad Okay, now , here are the comments of the degregation of the other thruster s . Now left roll only with the roll logic switch in pitch. We had no right yaw . Right yaw only with the roll logic switch in yaw position. No left roll. Then if you had the roll logic in yaw , pitch up and down were okay in yaw right gave right roll also . Pitch up , right roll , pitch down you a lso got a right roll . You ' ve got to figure out which thruster s were weaker than the other ones . Cooper Roll right gave yaw right . Conrad Right , and then r oll logic and pitch rolled right okay. Roll left okay . No left yaw. So and the
142 Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad CONFIDEJ\ITr other thing is is when you hit the thrusters you can very definitely tell from the sound that some were putting out· more than others. I think that ' s what w as giving us the yaw roll off was that in pairs of thruster of one would be strong maybe and one weak and would give you couplings . That was exactly what was happening. ~'.hey were cross coupling. It was really messy. And then I 1 ve got down here the roll.. I have nothing else in the book until we start talking about retro here and the changes that we decided to go into 121- 1 instead of 122 . And t here would be 27 minutes over Carnarvon instead of 36 and all the power up sequence . Now , I ' ve got one comment . We came up over Carnarvon and when I hi:.d-- when we left the Cape on the Rev going into retrofire a transmitted a val id load up t o the sJacecraft and I called McDivitt and I said , "I ' m putting the Computer into Reentry," and we came up over Carnarvon and the guy says , "Stand by. I ' m going to update you computer with a new load . Boom!" GE>NFH:)ENffA L '
143 ,,. Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper ::. And the computer was in reentry and I said, "Golly," and I swi tched that thing to pr elaunch and he said the loads in and validated , and I didn't get a DCS light . And I ' d gotten a DCS light everytime . We never f ailed to get a DCS light . And I was never reall y convinced even when we checked the two cores that the l oad wa s r ight that he put up there , but I guess it was . Tha t ' s been checked out . We did have the right load in the computer. That procedure is r eal ly poor , very , ver y poor . I don ' t understand . ... We had agreed and agreed and agreed that nobody would send a DCS load or anything without permission f r om you first--t i ll they cleared with you first . And he just right out of the clear blue sky with 12 minutes-- something like that to go to retro . 27 . 27 was it? Well , anyway , it ' s getting down darn close . Here we were all l i ned--all set up to go and everything all squared away and what we thought was a real proper load out of the Cape . Had gone into reentry and here we wer e all set . Then here -CQNElQ f=.W+tAL
144 this gu.y just says, "I ' m sending a DCS update , " and WHAM! her e it comes . No warning. No nothi ng. Before you could even tell him to wait, t he darn things i n reentry . Conrad He didn ' t check his ground information, becaus e if he ' d looked at his boar d , he would t.ave seen that the computer was in r eentry. He could have told us to put it in prelaunch. It all happened so fast . Boy, my heart r eally sank , because we had that thing-- we were all set up . We were rea~y to go and everything and that was a bi g· blitz.· Now , after 121 orbits and we'd left the Cape after stateside track. Why, after 121 orbits did they have to update that thing between the Cape and Carnarvon? I mean they should have known where the heck we w here . I just don ' t understand it . Cooper I don ' t either and if they are going to play around with that , boy, my feelings r ight now on i t is that that DCS circuit breaker oug~t to be off all the time. I felt that way befo:ce , and I deci ded well , those guys worked out so well that maybe it would work , but after that one time , that just convinced me that you ought to just
145 :z Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper turn that darn thing off and leave the DCS circuit breaker off . Okay, the next thing before retrofire . I had one note here, just a second, at 7--Day 7 , 22 hours, and 30 minutes. We were on that real black night side way down there somewhere on the South American area . Remember we saw those tre mendous series of thunderstorms . Just fantastic , you could- - The brightest lightning I ' ve ever seen anywhere . It lit up the inside of the spacecraft . - - see hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of miles almost as far as you could see in any direction out the windows you could see lightning just lighting up-just blossoming everywhere . There were hundreds of miles of thunderstorms of which you could probably see at one time-you could probably see 20 or 25 thunderstorms light up at the same time . And I've got somewhere on the 16mm film . I opened the stops up, and I took pictures of the lightning. I don't know whet her it came out . They would just light the whole spacecraft up.
Boy, I ' ve never seen such fantastic big areas covered by .thunderstorms . Just , tremenious ! And they were big, each individual CB lookei like it was maybe 50 to 100 miles across and just whole columns of them stacked around. They must have really been. ... Conrad Okay , about the only other thing that I can think of that we did in the test nature there--was wanted to and did fire the oams Squibb on the regul ator , and you can ' t hear it . And every other Squibb--every other thing that we ever fired we could hear . But that one we couldn' t hear. Cooper That simulator was really good on that SEP OAMS , SEP ELECT, and SEP ADAPT . Simulator could be a lot louder on the SEP ADAPT. That thing really takes off . Conrad How do you want to cover the reentry phase? Because that's about it. I ' ve got one other comment, but this one is written after landing. It ' s the . HF whip antenna didn't deploy. FJDENTIAt
JI 147 FIDENT ~L Conrad Well , why don't we get ourselves down on the water? Stowage wise when we left the United Stat es on the last Cali fornia- Guaymas pass which occurred at- - it occurr ed around 7: 18: 40, something like that. We started our reentry stowage right then and there . Very early i n the game , because we wanted to make sur e that we had- - that was almost 20 some hours to reentry. Cooper First of all , at least once a day, we went through the entire cockpit and br ought everything up to completely clean configuration . Everything stowed and we had about a 2 day basis . We planned what meals we were going to need for the next 2 days and we would get these meals out , get them stowed in an easy- to- get- to place--around the footwell areas- generally i n the footwells back in our feet area and would restack and restow garbage and try and get it completely caught up on a day- to-day basi s , so that we didn ' t have a lot of garbage sitting around . Conrad We always did i t right after that California Guaymas l ast pass over the States starting out into the boondock area and this conflicted with the Pilot ' s naptime . That was my scheduled napti me . Of\lFIDENTI
148 .€>MFt0ENTt. We never- - we always ran late on that . I ' d get the nap, but I'd get it much later and that would cut a l ittle bit into Gordo ' s sleep per iod and that would wind up overlapping into my sleep period and then w e would both catch a nap . . . Gor do's napti me which was just before Carnarvon . Cooper I don ' t think we ever came over Carnarvon but what we were asleep. Conr ad The next morning we would both be asleeip . . . . but Gordo ' s right. The meals--if we wc,uld like to stop and talk about that . We did not E ? ven get into the left food box until the fourth day. We ate the meals that were in the footwell . There! were two stowage footwells to start with and th1:.t gave us the two garbage bags that we always hac. out . In other wor ds we always had two silver be.gs, food bags , open that we could put garbage ir.--any kind of garbage-- and we always kept two of t hose out, - one on Gordo I s side and one on mine. ~'hen we ' d actually collect more- -we ' d eat more me•als , but we always ran with two of those out at least and we ' d wind up with maybe two in each foctwell and that's when we would restow at the end of that day. What we did was put as much of the garl:,age as '
149 possible back in the r i ght hand box. We completely emptied the right hand box at the beginning of the fl i ght and stowed the articles around the cockpit in those red bags that we had built for the back of the seat and they really worked well. On the top of the seat . I kept two meals always stowed i n the area that led to the right hand stowage box over my left shoulder . I kept my two meals there . Gordo normally kept his two down on either side of his helmet in the footwell area. We kept our garbage bags--our silver garbage bags down in there and the reason I say silver garbage bags is because those green ones that McDonnell made just didn ' t work at all. We never used them in the whole flight. Cooper They are no good at all . Conrad They tore up . Cooper They are hard to get into . They tear . The top- the way it puckers up there you have a hard time getting anything in and out of it . I finally used one over there to fasten that camera- -that 200 millimeter camera, that 35 mm camera. We put the lens down there so that it would hold--so that the L
150 Conrad Cooper Conrad bag would hold it in. Keep it from floating and then fasten the velcro upon the back of the maneuver controller. Now there was one thing that one green bag that I had originally had the REP plan stow in it. The REP plan was never taken out and I never took the bag off the wall. Then, the other green bag had the Poleroid light filter in. I took that light filter in and out so many times that ihe elastic on the top of the bag broke and the bag ~ot completely frayed from my right leg rubbing agai:n.st it. My pressure suit actually wore that clott all through. You can see that on that bag t hat came out of there . So they didn' t work at all . We kept s.11 our food garbage and all that little sort of tl:.ings in the silver food bags that we opened and wl'..en we filled one we would wrap it with tape and stew it down there until it was time for our daily housecleaning. I might add for stowage two items that we found were extremely important were rubber bands and tape. " We actually ran out of tape on the eighth day pack ing the last of the garbage. We used every bit of tape that we could lay our hands on. We took the tape off of the bags. ftBEN,T"'L •
151 Cooper Conrad Cooper FCSD Rep Conrad Cooper ~GNaDENTIAL And I had a whole pocketful of rubber bands. And Gordo had a whole pocketful of rubber bands . We found that was the only way to handle the food. After we ate a rehydratable package or even a few solid packages that we opened. We always resealed them again wi th tape and rolled them up as small as we could get them and used the tape to wrap them with for stowage. To keep them very small and compact. Did you get all this stuff where you originally planned to put it? I have a copy of our reentry stowage here which shows what varied from the way it was. Now the big items, there was only one big item that didn't go . There were only two i terns that didn't get stowed i n the place that it was called for that I remember right now. The S-1 camera went over in the right food box rather than the left food box and the urine device we kept out until the last minute and we restowed it in its original stowage place which was in Gordo's left box. And then there were two partial bags of defecation bags and an empty bag and one bag full of about a half of a meal , paper and wrappings from one meal
152 that went in behind my ejection seat. I managed to work around the side and get clear down around to the back and manage to shove it down in behind the seat. Conrad Then I had a little bit of miscellaneous trash like that in the right lower wrap around reel pouch that was over the seat for reentry. It connisted of several things which we hadn't planned t o stow any place . The cardiovascular cuffs that :: cut off were one of them. Some loose paper trash Lke the top round paper ring off the defecation bags. This was j ust a convenient place to put light trash and I saw no reason to remove it from there . And that was about it. I forget--they'll have a list of the other items that were in there but they were all minor paper things . Cooper Yes, I had a few pieces of paper and things in the outboard back wing. Conrad But we pretty well had everything s towed in its proper place before reentry. Very l i t-;le exception. Well, let me look right now. I marked what we had stowed in the right place. Okay, in the two left--they ' re called left and right food box extensions . The back ones that had thEi rubber coveTs ~0NFI L
153 on them. They had originally had the- - in my side the blood pressure reprogrammer , the hose intercon nect adapters and the pilot's personal preference kit . Gordo's side it had just the personal prefer ence kit and the hose interconnect, right? There wasn't anything else in there , was there? Cooper I don ' t think there was . It calls out here for a blood pressure reprogrammer but we only had one. Cooper No, we only had the one on board. Conrad Okay, I removed those three items and Gordo removed his two items just prior to reentry . Cooper The hose interconnect--! had Conrad Yes, that's what I sai d , the hose interconnect and the pilot's personal preference kit . The two kits we stowed in our leg pockets and the two hose things we stowed up in the green pouches during reentry so that they would be handy on the water to connect the hoses up . We filled those wing boxes with food trash from the last days worth of meals because we had completely filled the right hand food box with trash and we had completely filled the left food box. Let ' s see in the left food box we did stow the 16 mm J:lDEN
154 camera and we di d stow the 17 mm lens and the 18 nnn lens and the 75 mm Hasselblad. We did not stow the urine receiver there . We stowed that up where it had started out in the left side food box. We did stow the mirror sight there and we did stow the r i ng sight and we did stow the 18 voice tapes. Now the 18 voice tapes cartridge holder was entirely unsatisfactory. We had to take the 18 voice tapes and take them in groups of three and wrap them with tape so that we had something that was a little handi er to work with than stuffing that box. Cooper Yes , that thing is just too big. Conrad We stowed them in groups of three in that box, but we got it all in there and the reason we didn't get anymore in was that that box was still half full of food . Matter of fact, you didn ' t hardly get below the level of the lid. Cooper I got just to the bottom level of the lid. Conrad Yes, there was a good three days worth of food left in that box. Everything else went where it was supposed to go . Except we only stowed two 16 mm film bags in the center compartment and I left two in the original right hand box because they were not exposed. We spent so much time in drifting ,eawflQEblJlAL I ·•
155 .. FCSD Rep Conrad f l ight and everything that we just di dn ' t ever shoot up the 16 mm film . There just wasn ' t that much to shoot it up on. How long for reentry? Starting stowage for reentry? Would you estimate? We did it in three steps . 20 hours before reentry we started really really thinking about the big stuff . You know the thing that we thought m i ght cause us a problem. The one place that we were worried about was getting all the stuff in the left hand box . So that ' s when we got t o looking at the tapes . We got all the gear out that we had to stow in ·there i ncluding the Hasselblad and sort of got an idea how much room it was going to take in that box and that was when we decided we had to tape the cartridges . Now when I say tape 18 car tridges, heck, that sho t an hour r i ght there . mean, you just don ' t do anything fast up there , and so we were ready for reentry 6 or 7 hours before reentry. We could have come in anytime , because we took care of our major i tems very early. Now, this doesn ' t m ean that we couldn ' t afford to pull that camera gear and run experiments because all that stuff was still in the same place and we I
• could have laid our hands on it. We didn't actually stow the Hasselblad till the very end. Cooper We stowed it about 4 hours . Conr ad And so we were prepared by working constantly through the night but not steadily. We worked on and off . We took little rests. Then we went back and- - Cooper To give a time estimate though for purposes of planning I would say you should figure on it taking you at least a minimum of about 4 hours to really thoroughly restow. And this depends 0:1 how messy t he cockpit is . If its really messy it will take longer than that . If the cockpit is r,~asonably squared away and reasonably clean you ;,hould figure on it taking about 4 hours to rHally complet ely thoroughly stow everything and get ready for reentry. Conrad Now we were really conscious all 8 dayn - - we would say to one another, "Boy, it's time to stop and stow things right now," because the si·;uation is getting out of hand and you'd be surpr:.sed at how fast you can build up trash in tha"; cockpit and not realize that it is in there, ycru see . •
157 Realize that if we had to reenter shortly or even if we pack it t ightly, but I think the bottom of the box I think I wasted a--1 1 11 say I could have put another silver bag or two worth of trash in there by stuffing the lower part i f I had known about it in the beginning. But it didn't t ake us much past day 2 to realize that we had a trash problem and we had to keep on top of it every single day if we were going to ever have it cleaned up at t he end. And we were in good shape. We were as clean as a whistle when we came in . .. ONFIBENi lAL
158 .. FCSD REP How about the power up? Cooper I think that the power up went just r :Lght straight forward. Conrad Yessir, I've the checklist right here. Just like the insertion checklist we went by the numbers and I actually marked it off as we did it and you can see it right there. I went through power off check off list and we went right down the thing we had. Our checkoff list is wrong and we had changes in it right h,~re. We had Attitude Indicator with FDI, Computer :?ower-ON, Computer to PRELADNCH, Platform- CAGE, Scanners :?RIMARY, Rate Gyros ON and it should read Attitude Indicator with FDI Rate Gyros-ON, Computer in the PRELADNCH MO:)E, Computer Power-ON Platform, Scanner etc. Cooper The arrangement of it was wrong. Conrad Yes, the arrangement was wrong. But w,~ did it just by the numbers right here. And it was completely straight forward. Interesting note on the Plat.form, we went for many days with the platform powered do,.;n to that it got as cold soaked as it was ever goi~~ to get and the platform took the maximum time. Heat dxop out took exactly 25 minutes and then it was a l :Lttle slow coming in. On the cold starts it took 28 minutes to get the
Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad 159 €0NftDENTIAL attitude light. It took 3 minutes after the fast heat drop out . And then I noticed after that was the first time after we did that- powered it up two or three times why the platform came in at 25 minutes of a f ast heat drop out. And then ;x ~gat after tha t it would start to cage up and you ' d get the Attitude Light on and you ' d be in business with the Platformt but that platform performed beautifully. Well ~ I might make just one remark on the platform. Some thing that I thought was extremely interesting to me. People have talked about the bad platform drift and everything but we had one occasion we had our platform powered for some 18 or 20 hours . Let ' s see t why did we do that? Because they wanted us to- Oh, it was after we tumbled up there with that OAMS check which they really didn't think out too well and they thought we might lose our gas volume. We were about to lose the gas volume by starting to vent again so they wanted us to power up , bring the power up to a pretty high level to keep below the vent pressure on the hydrogen. Yes , to keep the platform warmed up incase we had to -
160 Cooper So they wanted to keep the platform warmed up also . So we went for some approximately 20 hours with the platform warm-running- up. Conrad In drifting flight . Cooper In drifting flight. So what we did- we caged the platform, brought it up to cage and the~ we just went to orbit rate. Left it in orbit rate and we caged it at a time when were just guessing pretty close to o 7 o 1 o and then went to orbit rate . Some 20 l'..ours later drifting all around, - tumbling all over the sky, -·all over t he places- Conrad It was amazing how close the pl atform 1,,as . Cooper The platform was almost right on what cur attitude was after that many hours of orbital rate errors and drift etc . etc. added in to there and it still was a good relative attitude indicator I thought it was really good. Conrad In all three a.xis it stayed on. I was pretty surprised. Cooper I really thought that was quite good. That platform really behaved well and it really took a l ot of abuse. Dif - ferent times we powered it up- in drift- did all kinds of things. You couldn't have mistreated it more if you tried. Alining the platform very straightforward. We alined it in BEF. First of all , we went right to
-, Conrad Cooper Conrad FCSD REP our old platform position which was BEF and started right from there in lining in a fine line by BEF position going out just- lining from there and we found that we had quite a yaw error in it. We noted that- That showed up in roll real fast . So we noted then that our yaw- what we figured was our yaw star one of them that we remember as our yaw star was a little bit over to the right about 10 degrees. So we just went to cage. Eased it over about 10 de grees, uncaged it in BEF and sure enough then we went to platform position in BEF showed the needles weren't very far off. Right away they began to aline.... very closely and we had it alined very shortly. Yes, I can't say too much for that star chart either, boy, it was real comforting to have those yaw stars and it turned out that Scorpio went right down the middle of the tube for us. We just always knew that we had the platform in good alinement be for retrofire. We knew that we were right on in yaw all the way down that line and we could just name the stars and we knew that they were just going to come right down the middle by watching them go and it worked real well. How long did you aline the platform?
162 Conrad Cooper FCSD REP Cooper FlDE NTIA One and a half orbits. We really aline• d in about one and a half orbits. We powered up two and one half and thei:. actually, we were actual ly alining for about an cr bit and a half before retrofire. And we were on all the aline ment and everything was done on the RCc system. How about the preretro checklist? Let me say this on this alining. We fcund t hat we coul dn't even see any decrease at all jn RCS after an orbit and a half. The way we were doirg this we were doing it i n Horizon Scan BEF then using· the Rllse MJde in the H ')rizon .Scan. To really keep tl:.ose needles real ly closely centered. Now, you can do the same thing in Tu.lse BEF, - but the Ibrizon Scan if you ne glect it for just a minute, the lbrizon. Scan would hold it in there real closely and wouldn't let you wander off anywhere in pitch. 00 F-t0E-N:f:t~L ....
Conr ad FCSD Rep Conrad Cooper I can't sey too much f or that star chart either . Boy , it was real comforting to have those yaw stars , and it turned out that Scorpio went right down the middle of the tube f or us and we alweys knew that we had the platform i n good alinement before retrofire . We knew we were right on in yaw al l the wey down the line, and we could just name the stars and knew that t hey were just going to come right down the middle of the pipe , and watch them go . It worked real well . How long did you aline the platform for r etrofire? W ell, we really alined it about 1½ orbits . 1 We powered up for~ and we actually were alining for an orbit and a half before retrofire . All the alinement and everything was done on the RCS system. Let me sey this on this alining. We found that we couldn 1 t see any decrease at all in the RCS quantity after an orbit and a half . We were doing it in horizon scan , BEF, and then using the pulse mode in the horizon scan to give you the fine control within the horizon scan to really keep the needles closely centered. Now you can do the same thing just in pulse , but if you neglect it for just a minute, the horizon scan would hold it in there real close . It wouldn 1 t L - -
FCSD Rep Conrad Cooper Conrad FCSD Rep Cooper let you wander off anywhere in pi tch and roll . You had to watch the yaw very carefully, of course , but you could concentrate on doing other things for just a few seconds time and you didn ' t get your errors built up into it . You still have the iulse correc tion within the wider band of t he horizon scan . W e found that little teensy little blips to make your correction and I don ' t think we were u:.:irig any fuel at all . Did you get any reading on how much yoi. did use? I checked this morning and it ' s not i n yet . I don ' t know how much fuel . We used Ring A sir.ce we powered it up at 2 orbits , over Carnarvon the first time . What I r ecall from the preretro checkl::.st - - it commenced at Carnarvon one pass before r eentry. In other words , we went an orbit and a ha:.f on the RCS system -- Ring A. Most of that time wEi were alining. W e used dual ring RCS rate command for r etrofire only. Then we turned Ring B off and d:_d the whole reentry on ring A. Pulse . You operated Ring A all the way? The last I saw of Ring A in the r eentr;;r, down before
we went to drogue chute out, I still couldn't see any decrease in Ring A. Conrad Well, I'm not sure that Ring A wasn ' t out of fuel , somewhere around between 100 000 on down. But the other ring wasn ' t . I know darn well it wasn't . Cooper What do you mean it was? It wasn ' t out before we put the other ring in at all. Conrad No . I know it wasn ' t out before we put the other ring in . Cooper Did you take a look at it around 100 000? Conrad Yes . I know the thrusters were firing. It was firing. Cooper Well, the gauge indicated it still had all kinds of fuel lef t ir1 it just before 100 000 . Conrad ! Well, thats regulated pressure . Cooper Yes , it ' s pressure . Conrad It's not going to tell you anything in the way of fuel usage . You have to see source pressure to find out what - - we don't have that . Cooper Well , you would - - Conrad I'm not sure that Ring A didn't run out of fuel, but if it did , it did it somewhere around the time we put the other ring on , because we never got any
oscil lations or anything. The rings were f iring -all the time . Cooper I ~ never was out of f uel before we put the other one on , 1 1 11 guarant ee . I know because I was sitting there controlling with it and I know that we had control . Conrad I know that both thrusters were physically burning inside - - you know , the throats were burning when I shut the propellant off. In other words, t he pro pellant was shut off and there was no fuel f low going to them, but both Ring A and Ring· B thrusters t hat I could see had throat f lames i n them. Cooper That ' s just from residual fue l . Conrad Yes , that ' s what I mean. So , I had the impression that t hey r an al l the way down , and then i f Ring A did run out of fuel at all , it did it a.t the very end , you know . I think that you ' ll find that there was f uel in both RCS rings and there sr.ould have been plenty of RCS B fuel left , because we didn ' t even turn on RCS B until l ess than 70 000 . We wer e at 50 because Cooper Yes . Conrad - - Gordo put the drogue out instead of turning the ring on. 0Nft9ENTt'A~
OONffl:) erqTfAL FCSD Rep Why don't we pick up on page 26? Cooper Okay .
168 5 . 1 ~ -36 Events Cooper Conrad FCSD Rep Conrad Cooper Conrad • 5 . 0 RETROFIRE TR- 36 TR-36 is not right . There ' s no aft- f i rjng thrusters verification . That ' s for OAMS . And thEre was no TR- 22 either because that was for OAMS , nor was there a TR- 13 or 12. What we had was a TR- 27 clock set over Carnarvon . You started your event t imer at TR- 27? Thats I because we changed from 122- 1 to 121-1. W e went r ight down the pre- retro checklist before that by the numbers , and we had what we call a ~R-36 which was nothing more than pick up the event timer . So we had the pre-retro checkli s t complete before Carnarvon . That ' s when t hey glitched us , and I 1 m going to complain about this one . We had a valid load in the comput er and a valid TR when we left the States on Rev 120, and I see absolutely no reason if those guys don ' t know what the heck our orbit is aft er 120 of them up there , that they had to go ahead and send a quick up- date over Carnarvon - - Yes . -- I f elt that screwed us . I still want to know what happened.
~t0EN,-IAL Cooper And we told McDivitt - - Conrad W e didn ' t get a DCS light . Cooper W e told McDivitt when we left Houston that everything I was all square and that we re going to Reentry Mode on the computer then. W e did , and then at Carnarvon the CAP COM, before he even gave us a warning or asked us about anything or even checked to see what mode our computer was in, sent an up - date . Very , very poor. Conrad He said , "I'm sending you a new load and a new TR. Stand by." Boy, we were all over the thing trying to get it back to PRELAUNCH . I never got a DCS light on either the TR or the load . I quizzed him and I told him I didn't think the load went in. He said , 11 No , the load was valid. " We r ead out a couple of I cores and checked TR , but I don t understand why we didn't get a DCS light . Now I won ' t understand it because we should have gotten two DCS lights . Cooper Yes . One for TR and one for - - Conrad I didn't get one the first time when he sent the TR, and I didn ' t get one when he sent the load . We were in the process of switching the computer to PRELAUNCH, and I think the el ectrpns got lost in the shuffle there . I gather that they took the computer
170 ONFl[;)ENTIAL out yesterday and that the load in it was valid . It 1 s just that they computed the wrong place to land , in Houston, and sent the wrong load , period . Boy , that was a heck of a thing to do, and I really that darn I 1 DCS! m going to do just what I said I was going to do. I f I ever fly again , I ' m not going to fly with that DCS circuit breaker on. That ' s just exactly what I was afraid was going to happen, and they couldn ' t have done it at a worse time in the flient . They just absolutely couldn't have done it wcrse . The one thing that I had forgotten many times was putting that computer from PRELAUNCH to REENTRY. I had it underlined 50 times on the check- off liflt . I was going to make sure that it was in REENTI'.Y . When they told me leaving the Cape we had a valid load and a valid TR , I called McDivitt and I said :: 1 m putting the computer in REENTRY. The next thin/~ is , at Carnarvon the guy should have seen on h:.s board that the computer was in REENTRY and should have told me instead of sending a load like he did . We moved as f ast as we could when he said he was sending loads to put the darn thing back to PRELAUNCH . That really screwed us up and I 1 m really mad about that . That ' s the only gripe I have against them, but it's a major one .
= - 171 Cooper Yes . It 's major enought that , by gol l y , my recom mendations exactly like Pete ' s . From now on my rec omendation is Conrad That did it . Cooper - - that the DCS circuit breaker is left in the OFF position. Conrad Yes . The next time I ever go for the reentry and we put a valid load i n the computer, I'm going to turn the DCS off so they can ' t screw it up again without me turning it back on . Coop_ er Absolutely. Turn that circuit breaker to the OFF position. Conrad That's right . I 'd rather miss a load and go with the earlier one. I still can ' t believe that after 120 orbits they didn't know exactly what our param eters were for orbit . I don't even know why they needed that track over the United States the last pass . They 'd been tracking us all night long. They ' d been tracking us for 8 days, and they ought to know where the heck we were . If they want to do it at the last minute, then let's plan on loading the computer at Carnarvon and not load the computer at the Cape . This loading it at the Cape and then chang ing it again at Carnarvon has got to go . GON.flDENTIAL
172 Cet-ctftDEt~ rrt~ Cooper And t hen saying this is your final load. Verify - Conrad Bad news. I 'm r eally mad about that ! Cooper Then unscheduled and everything else - - Conrad I don ' t blame that guy at Carnarvon because he wasn ' t expecting to send us a load either . I hlame Houston. Houston sent it down to them at the las·; minute , obviously, and he was doi ng the best he could and he got rushed. The whole thing we wanted to do on r eentry and the reason we stowed early md sat there with nothing to do was to make sure that we were never rushed . W e weren't until the guy sent that l oad . And there we were , 27 minutes fr:>m retrofire , and I r eally wasn't convinced we had th~ right load in the computer even when we left Carnar von. Boy, I Im really mad at that ! Cooper Conrad I Okay. Ive got some recommendations. I think we ought to rewrite our TR - 256 check - off list because there are too many things that happen en it at TR - 5 and TR - 256 . W e changed the procedure in f light I knew I was going to do it that way ar.yhow , in t hat I brought up the main batteries early. I brought them on at 7 minutes . I verified the computer in
Cooper Conrad 5 . 3 T - 1 -=-It- Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper 173 REENTRY again, of course, and squib batteries . We were already on the RCS system, so we didn 1 t have to bring-them on, but I did bring on the other ring at that point . At the 256 , we wanted to go platform to ORB RATE as late as possible, so we did that after we got TR- 256 function light -- the attitude indicator light -- and that showed we had all our clocks were in sync ..just perfectly. There wasn I t a clock in the spacecraft that wasn ' t in sync . The TR was in sync with the event timer and they were in sync with our back- up watches . There was no doubt in our minds that everything in the TRS system was working right down the line and that we were working right down the line. We went to retro attitude punched the - - Went to retro attitude, set up the whole thing for • the reentry , and at TR- 1 - - TR- 1, SEP OAMS, SEP ELEC , SEP ADAP, four squibs on - At TR- 30 seconds - - Arm retro. We already had that . I've al ways made it a procedure to arm auto- retro at TR- 5 seconds Let's see -- SEP OAMS , SEP ELEC, SEP ADAP -- we did a t0NilQE i L
174 CO~EIDENTI L Conrad FCSD Rep Conrad 5.4 T - 0 =-R- Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conr ad Lets I see, retro rockets squib all four armed at TR- 3O, arm auto- retros at about TR- 5 seconds Ye s . TR- 5 . And I absolutely positively go on record that the manual retro- fire button was pushed, because I pushed it four times at one second ani the COMP l ight went green at - - One second after auto? No . One second after the retros actual l y fired. At TR- O' spacecraft attitude was right on the money. Ther e were no rates . Control mode was dual RCS I've got a couple of comment s about the retro s . There ' s no doubt in my mind that the number 3 retro stopped firing at l east a half a second before the number 4 retro started t o fire . It sure did. And there was another one in there - - There was no overlap . iI I m pretty sure that between the second and the l t hird , there was no overlap - Between 2 and 3. -- but they were much closer together than between 3 and 4 .
Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad FCSD Rep Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper ., 175 Number 1 was firing and it was just tailing off when number 2 took in . It had the proper sequence on i t . Number 2 had completely stopped and there was an interval ther e of , it seemed like , several seconds . It wasn 1 t , but it seemed like there was a definite distinct - - Between 3 and 4 was the one that. really seemed l ike an eternity. There was a definite distinct separate interval there where there was no firing going on. Then 3 fired . Then there was an even longer interval in there involved and then 4 fired . Yes . That was long enough between 3 and 4 fo r m e to think maybe the fourth one wasn ' t going to f ire at all. I think we ought to get some comments on the night Oh , we weren ' t even aware of it . We had the lights up bright in the cockpit - We went with the lights bright We decided we ' d play it just like we did in the simulator , just like we were going to be in the simu lator , you know , with all the lights up br ight and not even worry about what was going on out the wi ndow. However, I did sneak a little peaky or t wo and you fJBfNIIAL
G~El0ENTIAL , look like you were sitting in the middl11 of a fire barrel . Boy! When those retros go off , the whol e spacecraft ' s enveloped in flames jus·; looks like the whole place is burning all over bac:c there . This flame comes all the way back over che spacecraft and all the way up - - Conrad At SEP OAMS , electr ic and adapter, though , we didn 't see much of anything. Cooper No. I saw a flash at SEP ADAP. Conrad I I saw a l ittle flash , but I thought maybe we d see a lot more f lashing- type f l ame . Actual l y , no big prob- l em in that night retro , but I 1 11 tell you one t hing , I you re not ever going to do it out t he window. Cooper You ' re never going to see anything out the wi ndow i n a night retro . You ' re just completely enveloped in f lames. Conrad Those RCS ' s are firi ng away like mad and there ' s al l kind& of light outside and everything, so night r etr o is an instrument- type thing. Cooper It's purely instruments . If you don ' t have i nstru 1 ments , you re just not going to shoot :i. t . Conrad But otherwise , I don ' t think t here was any di ff erenc e . Cooper No . Conrad We were completely in the dark f or a l)ng time . W e
177 didn't have a horizon for 5 minutes after retro-fire , We were in the middle of the United States bef ore we saw the groU.Ll.d. Cooper The first place we saw was White Sands . Conrad White Sands - - Cooper Just past the terminator Conrad - - was the first place I saw when we CaJlle out of the terminator on the ground. Of course, by that time, we had a sort of what you might call a discernable horizon, but it was so fuzzy. There is no such thing as a horizon at sunrise, looking the other way. I Looking 180 from the sun you re looking into a gray , black, fuzzy - - boy, there's no discernable horizon . You ' re looking at the terminator. It's not a usable horizon. I don't call it usable. We were on gauges all the way and not until we got past the Mississippi River did we get what you would really call a horizon. That's when the reentry started getting different than the ones in the simulator. The reentry was much dif ferent in ball attitudes, in that we were much steeper on the ball. We were looking at more and more white that I ever saw before. I was hard pressed - - if we didn't have the bank angle index on the ball you couldn't tell what your bank angle was. f-lDEWJ~L
178 .. €>MFl0ENflA~ Cooper Conrad FCSD Rep Conrad Cooper · Conrad FCSD Rep Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper FCSD Rep Cooper Yes . There was no horizon. The black part of the ball was gone. It was gone for the rest of reentry. We l ost it awful earl y. Do you remember a point, say 400 000 .feet, •:,at what pitch angle you were on the ball? 400 000 feet - - the trim hadn ' t begun to affect you too much and Gordo was at about 30 degrees. About 30 degrees . Yes. Yes. But he was still flying the spa~ecraft, just holding attitude there . Okay , how about when you hit the atmosphere? 280 K. At 280 K we were - - It seemed to me that's when t hings started to steepen up. We started to really trim up. We were beginning to get g - - By the time we got to 280 K, we were at about 50 degrees pitch, roughly -- 50 or 60 degrees on t he ball. We were quite a way down. From there on, we were moving :: right on around on the ball. W ere you able after retrofire to roll i t up and put the horizon on the top of the window and hold that? Yes , on the ball, but we couldn't see t he horizon. FtOEM
Conrad GCSD Fep Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad FCSD Rep Cooper L 179 Yes , those lines were useless as far as the horizon on it , because there wasn't any horizon out there . You had to use the 8-ball entirely? Yes. That was a pure instrument retro. I I You're darn right, boy. 11 guarantee you anytime you fire retros at night, you'd better have instru ments because you ' re not going to have a visual out the- window, because those RCS thrusters out there will just blind you. Yes, and this t alking about doing this stuff on rate needles and no ball and everything is a bunch of hog- wash. You'd better have the whole panel. You're darn right. Or you fire them in the daytime, with a good horizon . Let me see now. You rolled it upside down , and what did you hold? You held 20 degrees - - 20 , degrees until it s t art ed trimming out . Then, I'd } switch between rate and attitude . I ' d just hold that attitude and when I'd see a little tiny rat e creep in -- I was on single-ring pulse - - I'd just pulse that rate out. Of course, _: that was establishing my trim ./ angle right there. You'd see it on the rate. You'd
180 FCSD Rep Cooper Conrad Cooper Conr ad C0oper FCSD Rep Cooper Conrad see the pitch rate needle start to mo're just a l ittle tiny bit . That was showing you that you weren ' t quite on trim. Then I'd tweek it and it would sit right there, and it would just start trim - ming itself out on the ball. When it trimmed out you damped the rates. You were in single- ring di rect? Well , at 400 KI went to single- ring direct . Yes , we were in pulse Yes, single- ring pulse . Single- r i ng pulse to 400 K - - Then I went to RATE COMMAND on the attitude control selector and took the ACME RCS switch to direct - - one to direct,! the other one was to off. Then I used , ) single- ring direct throughout the ree'.ltry , until very late when the oscillations got so rapid that 1· had to concentrate too much on them rather than the attitude . Then I went into ACME just put the RCS switch to ACME and then flew the attitude with the stick and allowed the RCS to damp the oscillations. Still one ring? Still one ring. W e di dn't go on dual- rings until below 70 000 feet .
18 1 Cooper FCSD Rep Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Col').rad Cooper Conrad Cooper W e had the drogue out before we went on dual- rings. W as there any problem? The thing was steady as a rock all the way. Yes, it was beautiful. I ' ve been hearing 40-degree oscillations on the drogue and all that sort of stuff . The only oscallations we had on the drogue were high ~requency low- amplitude oscillations, where the drogue was stable, sitting above us steady as a rock, pulsing longitudinally like this It squidded super-sonically for we were about 112 - And then the shrouds - - Did you hear about the Mercury tests where the drogue was a few times? The shrouds on the spacecraft had a high frequency 1·ow amplitude oscillation, but the nose was like 5 degrees , it seemed to me . It ' s just surprising. We were as steady as a rock as far as I was concerned. W ell , I think the whole The oscillation was there, but I think the I think the whole retrofire and reentry is so much easier than Mercury that I can ' t believe it. It is really a piece of cake . L •
182 Conrad At 30 000 we shut off the propellant valves to the RCS. It was still working away merrily there trying to steady it down on the drogue. As :: ar as I know, there was propellant in both Ring A and Ring B when we shut them down. 5. 5 1 Retropack Jettison Cooper We jettisoned the retropack right in retro attitude - FCSD Rep You didn't see the retropack burning up or anything? Conrad Yes, I saw it reenter behind us but nowhere near like those guys did. It was miles behind us when I saw i t . Cooper I thought I saw something way back thEire burning. I guess that was it. Conrad Yes. Up and on the left side of where? I was looking . I saw it burn up behind us . But it was miles behind us by then. You see, it had been chaf:ing us in the dark so we never did see it close up. We never saw anything like pump packages blowing O\;.t when we set the retros. •
183 5.6 Communications Cooper Conrad Cooper FCSD Rep Conrad Cooper Cooper Conrad t1'EI TTIA7: ~ Communications were good throughout the whole re entry. We went into blackout right on time . Right on time. Yes, just right on the second when they said we' d go into blackout. We came out just exactly when they said we would.. The only thing was, when they asked us what our over - shoot or under-shoot was I ' ll be dam if I could t ell them at that point . I sure as heck didn't know with this computer t ell ing us one thing and yet it not doing the right thing. We'd better put the retrofire IVI readings in here . 269 aft , 010 l eft , 181 down . And that comes out amazingly close to a nominal combination . As a matter of fact, it shows that we should have had about a 60 degree bank. angle, and if you compensate the 6o degrees for the off- set it would have been 54 or 53- - Yes. Almost completely nominal. I think this chart's a handy gouge . It agrees with what the ground gave us. We didn' t fly it, of course, We flew the computer, but- -
184 Cooper Well, this is the bank angle we flew until we got cross, and down-range at 280K. Conrad We went from full lift at 400K to 53 degrees, which was the given bank angle by the ground which we agreed to use. We went to 53 degrees until guidance came in, and it came in at 280K. The needle showed that we were high. It showed that we were very high, that we were going to over - sho,)t by a large distance, and- - Cooper This is the first normal indication. The computer is supposed- - Conrad · ·• do anything which is what you're supposed to do. We sat there to watch the trend. No,;hing happened. The needle didn't come up off the peg. I looked at the high scale and it didn ' t look to me like the high scale was pegged out. Cooper It wasn ' t pegged. I went to the higl:. scale and it was about half way down. Conrad Less than half way down, indicating that we were up around a 75 mil e over-shoot, which just told me we were humping a little bit to get down into the target. Cooper Right. Conrad And, in fact, at that time we were G>NFIIDENTIA
185 6NFIDENTIA[ . Cooper •.• to get on down to it because it told me- - Conrad We were just sitting there waiting for the needle to come up like we had seen it do a million_.:t.ime - - - ------ - in the same situation. It never came off the peg. Then , we got in a little discussion, you know. I fel t that we ought to go to full lift because I thought something was wrong with guidance . Gordo agreed that something was wrong with guidance but he reall y t hought maybe we really had over - shot . I'm sure the retros were on time and they were nominal , almost. So , we final l y wound up going back to the nominal l ift vect or- - Cooper I went back to the nominal bank angle, which we had agreed we ' d go to i f anything happened . We had agreed with FOD that if anything happened throughout re entry--something was wrong with guidance- - Conrad We flew- - Cooper --we would go back to the nominal bank angle , that we wouldn't take any great abnormal- type situation. We woul d go back to t he nominal bank angle, so that in the event they lost communication with us or something screwed completely up in the reentry, they would know that we used as near as possible to the nominal bank angle.
186 Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper FCSD Rep Conrad Cooper Now , what really hurt there though was that he sat there at the nominal bank angle of 53 degrees .. until we got to, say, 2 1/2 g's , which is a fair .long time through the guidance... . When he elected to roll to the 90 degree bank angle, that' s when we were getting the most lift. Boy, we dug in- - I 111 tell you we shot up there to 7 1/2 g ' s in nothing flat. It was at about that time that we rolled back out again, you see . We ' d lost the main lift that we were going to get out of it, but, as it is, I don't think we did so badly ·Ninding up 83 miles short. I understand they were targeting 240 miles short . That's apparently what the load they had in the computer turned out to be--erroneously put in a.t 240 miles short . Yes , they were off by a factor of 240 miles . So , if we had followed the computer e:icactly we'd have been a lot further shorter than we were. Fortunately, we recognized that somet:1ing was amiss. Did that down-range needle ever do an;rthing? No, I don ' t think it moved at all, I don ' t think it ever really moved. I think one time it moved a little, but I really don ' t think ElQENllAt •
187 it moved much. Conrad I think we were hoping to see it move, you know, but it was just one of those- -that's a fast time situation there, and it was jus~ one of those things where we made the right decision in the end to go back to the nominal bank angle. Everything in the computer indicated--the time to 400K and roll needle initiate were within a second of one another. What the ground gave us- - Cooper And the time to 290K was exactly right . Conrad And 280K time, roughly as far as we knew and every thing- -BANG! in comes the guidance initiate down range predict on the needles. Everything up to that point--the computer had come on green, the IVI's read nominal, we saw the kind of thing we expected to see . We were completely suckered on that, because the computer worked just like it was supposed to- - Cooper And the down- range needle indicated exactly what it always will do and exactly what we'd briefed with FOD. They had agreed that what we should see on the computer is just about the maximum deflection on the low scale when it first comes on. Conrad And that's just what we got. O NEIDE~ JIAL,.
188 Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad I Because that ' s exactly the way things ar E' all set up in the math flow. You' 11 get that anc. then very shortly thereafter if you hold the nomim.l bank angle it will take a little bit of time End it will start easing on up. And you ' ll get an idea by the rate of ea~ing up . If you roll to the 90, of course, in thai position you ' ll get to it in a big rush, but you \\-ant to be careful not to overshoot . You'll never get back. But, then when I held the nominal bank angl e and it didn ' t come up and didn't come up , then I rolled to the 90 to see if I was going to be able to bring it up. Of course, by this time I realized that when I didn't see it come up something wa.s really wrong. I then went back to the nominal . Fortunately, that period that we held at the nominal is what carried us down as near as it did. The short period that we were at 90, of course , is where ~e were really digging in- - It cost us 83 miles, probably, because I think if .. we had flown the nominal bank angle all the way that we'd have really wound up real close to the darn carrier.
--- Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad We'd probably wound up 45 miles from the carrier- That going to the 90 degrees for the time period that we did cost us 80 something miles . Otherwise, we flew the ~ The ,.....wholy ning is if we hadn't tried following the computer we would never have known ,,/ Yes, and I'll tell you one thing. I ' m still con vinced right now sitting in this room that computer will bring you right in to where you want to go if you have the right load in it, because it just \worked magnificently. It came in just like it was supposed to and it did it on boost, too . I was really sold on it. I think the computations in that computer are accurate enough for the kind of work that a guy can do onboard the spacecraft, and··it ' s a darn fine piece of equipment and it was working well . We're the first ones to get a good look at 7 and it worked just l ike it was supposed to . If it had the parameters in it we'd have split the Cooper FCSD Rep Cooper ship right up the middle . I think so. I think it's just a dirty shame. What was the cross- range needle doing? Cross- range was showing that·we needed left bank in there--that we needed to move to the left. In other
/ / 190 Cooper Cooper <;ONFtDEN TIA [ . words, you're flying opposite. You're flying your needle to. In other words, you' re flyir.g back course ILS on lateral and you ' re flying a standard ILS on the glide slope--front course IL~,. The cross-range needle was showing off to the right, which indicated that we needed to bank Jeft , which is exactly right , That's just exactly right. We hit 10 miles short. We never did get t he cross range--cross-range was coming in--cross--range did move in on us. Down-range, I don't believe, ever really moved . Cross-range did move in ~ 1 ome on us, and that's when I went back to the nominal. I thought, well, we're past the time to rEiverse bank angle. Maybe I ought to roll right. So, I rolled over to the right side and said, no , by golly, I'm still going to follow the cross- range. At least it's giving us the proper indications, l believe . So, I rolled back in to the left bank, ,rhich was smart because we still hit slightly to t he right. Were we off to the north or the south, Pete? I had it all figured out one time. I don't really know Gordo. I didn ' t pa;i, any a tten tion to the cross-range needle. Anyway, the way I had it figured out here the other
191 FCSD Rep Cooper FCSD Rep Cooper FCSD Rep Conrad day the cross-range needle was indicating properly. The down-range needle , when it came on, stayed in the same place all the time--all the way through? Yes. Full- scale. Full- scale . Right. Just about full-scale on the low range . Okay. How about any of the up- dating done during reentry? We got all the times . We got all the times just fine and I wrote them all down . They gave us enter blackout at 16: 14, out of blackout at 21:20, reverse bank at 19:25, bank left 54, and bank right 68 . The drogue time was 22+05, and the main time was 23+48 , They were all good times. I had them all written down. No problem. They got the up dates in before blackout and in plenty of time be fore blackout, as a matter of fact . We whistled right in there. No sweat on the times . I guess maybe we went to the 90 degree bank or something like that , but from about the time of lg to the time of guidance locking out, which is roughly 100K and t he altimeter coming· off the peg, man, I don't knov whether it was just because we did it for real
192 Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad FCSD Rep Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad ~hJEIDE~TlAL .. but everything else worked like the Eimulator timewise, but that time period seemed extremely short to me in comparison to simul ator reentry. Yes, it sure did to me. Yes. Now we can go back and look at the times and see what the actual times were to these- - Maybe just in real time- - This might have been the real - time case to make- How about the altimeter? It worked very poorl y on lift-off. It had been very jerky and jumped all around but it was smooth as a bell. Boy, it came off the peg. It locked up at 96 000. What was it? It did it in the alti tude chamber. 96 800 feet or something like that. It didn't ever run to 100 000 and it never had. It didn't do that in the altitude cha.rlber, and it quit where it always quit- -96 800. I t came off the peg smooth and just wound right on down. No jump ing or jittering. It was right with the barostats comine: down . Yes, it was right with the barostats coming down. I called the altimeter off the peg to Gordo and he put the landing arm on, which was roushl y at
193 100 000. Then, I said, "Stand by for 70 000." I was going to tell him to go attitude control RCS A and B to ACME , and he punched out the drogue. So , we qualified the drogue at 70 000, and then I got the rate command, both rings on, and we were some where below 70 000 when we put Ring Bon. ~NFIE>EMTIAL
194 6.1 400K Cooper Conrad Cooper 6 . 0 REENTRY By the time we hit 400K I was at fuL lift positi on from Retro Jett until there. Roll command gave a roll right and a roll command the bug just as it a lways does . Time correlation was r t ght on the money. 400K occurred right to the s econd when it was supposed to . Guidance initiate e>ccurred just at 280K at exactly the right time anc. it indica ted we had a right .... the azimuth needle indicated right and the down range needle indicated full scale it was well up into the thing. I would sey maybe half deflection. Yes . That was full scale . High sca]e was not - The bank angle was 53 degrees left bank which was our nominal bank angle which I went to a t guidance initiate and held 53 degrees l eft . ~he rool needle at this time the roll needle indicated off full right and vecy shortly thereafter then . . .. before I even got suspicious that we weren't getting down on this , the roll needle then crossed over the middle position and held there indicati ng we had the r ight bank angle there for a minute and then crossed full scale over to t he other side . . . . OhJEIDENTIAL
195 <;GNFtf>EMftA1. ,, which gave me one little old tweak of suspicion there that something was wrong right there on the roll bug. At that point then, I rolled 90 to see if I could get on that too , the down range needle. The cross range needle moved in some from the right. It had been out . . . not completely full scale, but ' I quite a ways out . It moved in slightly but not much. Down range needle, let's see , I don't believe it ever moved up · from there on and then at that point when I saw that the 90 wasn ' t going to hold it in there, I said I was going back to the nominal bank angle. I went back t o the 53 but then put in 60 . . . . 67 degrees bank right, to see if I can get the roll bug to change . It didn ' t change at that time so cross range was still indicating that I should be banked left so I went back to my bank left to see if I can kill off the cross range. I knew at that point that something was really seriously - 0llg and I was just trying to hold it as nominal as possible . I shoul d have probably at that time since I was already passed the time of reverse bank angle, I probably shoul d have gone ahead and hel d that , but that was a mistake, I probably should have gone ahead and held that 67 degrees bank right, and •
196 GNr;l0ENTIA~ held that on in . It probably would have corrected us out a little better cross- range- wise, but the period of time that we were at 90 degrees trying to get the glide slope, to get onto the glide slope there, is what cost us that 86 miles. Had we held the nominal bank angle all the way ani ignored the computer, I think we would have hit v3ry, very near the carrier. But, we ... .at least we 1save the com puter a try. I think that if it had had the right values loaded in it , I think it would have done very well by us . The spacecraft behaved very well . Ionization, we got into that ionic layer. After the 280K point, we began -to really ionize quite a bit and got into a typical fire ball E •ffect back there although it didn ' t seem to me l1ke it was as much of a fire ball effect in this as it was in Mercury. It seemed a lot less . 6 .2 Acceleration Profile Cooper Acceleration profile, I noted the g ' s very early be f ore we got the 2g's on . I noted the g ' s felt pretty strong in there. I could feel them fairly severe now. I never felt at all from there on . I never even felt like we had any amount of g's on us until I noted we had seven and a ha:.f and I could ~0MFl0EI\JTIAL •
ONFIDEITTIAL 4 197 hardly believe it. So , I didn't have any trouble controlling or... I just didn't think about having f j I I it on there. Pete noticed the g's more t han I did because he wasn ' t as busy, I guess , as I was. 6.3 Spacecraft Control Cooper Spacecraft control was beautiful . There was no problem at all. I was on single ring DIRECT and then had gone fairly late down in the guidance program there when the oscillations got to be often enough in there that it was taking a little concen tration to damp the oscillations as well as to watch the guidance. I just went over the single ring ACME or RATE COMMAND ACME and let the RATE COMMAND damp the oscillations and I was doing the steering, with the RATE COMMAND also . Still single ring. 6.4 100K Feet Cooper Let ' s see, at a 100K the altimeter ca.me off the peg very shortly thereafter . I was going to arm both RCS rings, bringing on ring B to ACME .at 70K and instead I deliberately, calmly, cooly, and del ibera tely deployed the drogue chutes . And it worked beautifully. Most stable drogue chute I ever saw. It squidde~ just like a supersonic drogue test that were done in Mercury that I saw. In fact, 70 was
198 6.5 50K Feet Cooper FCSD Rep Cooper Conrad Cooper the point where he put the Mercury d:t'ogue out . It squidded a couple of times very nicely and stabilized out and was just beautiful . . . .We nev,3r had any oscillations on it or anything. It was just as nice as it could be. By 50K we had both RCS rings .ON, jus·: letting them feed on out and then were blipping away out there and the spacecraft just came right s 1 ;raight down . No oscillation or anything. What kind of oscillation on drogue dnployment . . . . what would you estimate the I don 1 ·t think we had any at all . I c.on ' t think we had a single oscillation real ly, wher. we deployed the drogue, do you? Oh yeah. It oscillated but the . . . . . it was sort of high frequency and low amplitude . That's just what I say. I mean it was just kind of like .. . ..It was just kind of like -- a little quiver on the line. Like when you pluck a bow string, you know , the string . . .. the spacecraft would kind of go like this but not any- amount of - - These guys were talking about 40 degr3e yaw angles Conrad
Cooper ,. Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad 199 and stuff like -- Nothing like that. I bet you couldn't make it any more than 2 or 3 or 4 degrees. Yes , I would say 5 at the most . Now I don't have any horizon or anything to reference this to . All I ' m doing is watching the drogue . But I didn ' t have any physical sensations , or - - There were no physical sensations of any kind of oscillations. The frequency was too high to ever get any amplitudes that big. We were just sitting there and the drogue looked steady to me , see, and all I could see was the nose and the shrouds zacking back and forth like that . Ob, sort of around, and , you know . They were both at pitch and yaw.. .but I felt comfortable all the time . I didn't have any idea that we were really going to - - It was well stabilized. Stable as a rock Now, I'll tell you that RCS was really working. Now, we were in RATE COMMAND not REENTRY RATE COM MAND, we were in RATE COMMAND. So , it would . I mean, it was firing full time . Yes, it was really working. We were outside the rate command bands .
200 CQNFIDENTiAL FCSD Rep Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad You don ' t use the reentry command? Heck no! No, no that's useless . We had fuel up the kazoo . We had all kinds of fuel . We figured to just go into RATE COMMAND. That ' s exactly what - - to see how smooth a reentry you could make . The only thing we deviated from our very carefully calculated preflight plan was that I , ins tead of going to dual ring RCS, I put the drog~e out at 70K. We just had that step backwards betwee:1 50 and 70K . There must be a hold over from Mercury there some where , too , still getting to me . Okay , now the next most important thing was that at 50 000 or shortly thereafter, we went ·;o repress . Gordo turned on the REPRESS and I hit ·;he o 2 HIGH RATE , and as we planned you know , we wHr e not going to vent the cabin or open the inlet snorkel , and man , going through 27 000 feet that neEidle hit zero faster than you can say "Jack Robinson." That cabin came down from 5 paid to nothing and I said "Holy Christmas" ; it came down so fast t hat I was really humping to get the ... . . I wanted to get the
201 ,. Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper CQnrad Cooper ll' vent open and I opened the vent and opened the in - let snorkel and set the recirc at 45 degrees in pretty fast order . But, all the fancy calculations by the ECS people are dead wrong , because there isn ' t enough in that repress or the o 2 HIGH RATE to keep up with that differential drop off. We got fumes too, but not many. Boy, I dind't think they were hardly noticeable, at all. It was noticeable . Just a musty smell, But it was noticeable . I 'm suxe the o 2 HIGH RATE and the REPRESS it helped to have on all the way down . But then the one thing that we did do then at 2000 . We closed it back up . Closed it back up and left t he REPRESS and o 2 HIGH RATE on , s o that I expect that we had a little bit of delta pressuxe in the cabin when we touched. O h, we did . W e had about a pound. It was very s l owly coming up . It was up ..... We had about a pound. Now I think this kept a l ot of the fumes out .
202 '" Conrad Then we sat there in the water, very leisurely. It was still building up . I went and cy~led the o 2 HIGH RATE handle OFF. .. 6.6 35K Checklist Items Conrad 6.7 Communications Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad 6.8 10,6K Barostat Cooper Before you leave that let's just say that at 35 000 feet for the check off list we uncovered our D-rings. At 30 000 feet we turneci off the RCS propellant A and Band they ran out I shortly there - after. We W e . . . communicated with the recovery forces . Tal ked to them at that point twice on the wa;)' down and they asked us for a short count. W e gave this here. We gave this a short count, reading you loud and clear . " at 270 degrees at ..... 289 , I think i t was. They sai6. "Roger, and they had us fixed 289, was it? Well, some .... ,I know you had a degree and a bearing and a range on us at that point, We managed to get all the way through our post main check off list, too, Then at . . ... the baros t a t came on, deployed the
203 CQNf;Ur>ENTI~[ • drogue just as the barostat came on. It came on right at 10.6 , right on the money. I punched the main , deployed the main just as the baros tat came on. As we have already said , the main deployed..... Conrad There seemed like an awful long time to me though from the time you punched the main for it to go through the sequence . It seemed like an eternity for the Rand R can to blow . Cooper Well , you could see the sequence going on out there, all this thing trundling out and all the long lines going out , and all the sequence happening, and then the main coming out . Conrad It was really pretty though . Cooper Well, I guess I was anticipating. Conrad It was just like in that picture . Cooper You see all this stuff coming out, you know , that drawing where it shows all the cy~les of the stuff coming out. Just like advertised. 6.9 Main Chute Deployment Cooper We reported when we had a drogue, when we had a good main. The main came out nominally. De- reefed ex actly on time .... . Conrad Beautiful thing. No gores out, no nothing, rips or anything, nothing. It was just nominal all the way. tG©Nft0ENltAL 4
204 Cooper It was a real pretty main, and we wer,~ very stable on the main . We weren't oscillating a.t all , I mean obviously. It looked like we were ju:3t coming straight down. Conrad Yes, the whole thing damped out. That is another reason the water landing was so smooth . Cooper And when we touched in the water, as :: said, we went to the 2000, we went to - - 6 . 10 Single Point Release FCSD Rep Okay, single point release . How about that? Cooper Single point release. It ' s there . I mean it's really a jolt when you go to single point release, but being aware of it we were both brc,ced like this when I hit it, it oscillated us a couple of t imes and then that is all there is to it . Conrad You hit the end of the strap and then you see-saw a couple of oscillations . That ' s exactly what it felt like.... . Cooper As long as you lmow what to expect there is no prob lem. I can see why Gus and John woul d lmock the heck out of themselves . Conrad Not expecting it. 6.11 Blood Pressure Measurements Cooper O kay, we gave a blood pressure at Guaymas after r etrofire and I told them I wouldn' t put the programer O~F-IDENT.IA
205 GGNFIDEf';ITIAL ON until we were on the water and I gave them three ,. blood pressures and I don ' t think a:ny of them worked, I don't think the bowl bled down. 6.12 Post-Main Checklist Items FCSD REP Okay, we g-ot the rescue beacon without lights and the suit fans and ACME BIAS power OFF. This is post main check list and landing attitudes . .,. E@N~IDENTIAL
206 7,1 Impact Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad ~GNFl&ENTIAf , 7, 0 LANDING AND RECOVERY Impact, was very very soft . We just hit . We hit very easy. We didn't go under water at all . We didn ' t change attitude one bit from t he time we hit the water. We went bloop. We just pitched down a little bit The nose pitched down 8 or 10 degrees but the water didn't even come over the windows. lhe main hit parachute release, the chute drifted off in front just slightly out to the right of us md just sat out there in the water on the right fJr a long time. We did skip this one thing here with this 6. 13 post main check off list . We got all the way through that and I wanted to say that I had the decided impression that we got to the post main and got back over here on this 2000 foot check list pretty fast. I mean that time happene,d faster than the simula tor but it took us a little while to get our heads unlocked, and after we went to 2-point and get back on this check- off list, and boy, we hadn ' t a:n:y more gotten through this when we were .. • 0NFIBENTIAL
201 Cooper Conrad FCSD REP Conrad G0NFIDEI\ITIAL over there to the 2000 Kand I was . . .. One thing that took a little bit of our time there though, Pete , was the fact that the AIR BOSS called us twice there and we were actually busy answering that. We were talking on the radio and a little talking to Houston on the radio too . Why don't you talk a little bit more about the 2000 foot that pressurized in the cabin . Yes, well then we went the D-ring safety cover. We covered our D- rings but I can't put my D - ring pin in so I didn ' t put the pin in until we were on the water. I can't put that pin in , in flight, strappen in the seat. I can't reach down there. Gordo , can. 'Gordo can reach down and get it. I can't do it. So, I didn't put mine in. Then I went to cabin vent UP and inlet snorkel UP and then left the recirc valve at 45 degrees, and of course the repress had been on since 50,000. So had the o HIGH RATE, or some altitude shortly thereafter. 2 The cabin seemed to be coming up very slowly. It doesn't even with repress on. That's a, I guess, a lot of volume in there or something, but it just doesn ' t come up fast. So we were about a pound when CONFtDENTIAL
208 CONEIDENJIAl F'CSD REP Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper we landed. Never got over a pound? Never got over a pound I don ' t believe. Then we ca.me OFF on the repress and we opened .. our face plates, Then we opened our face plates and tcok a sniff in there. It didn't smell to bad . I had a little smell of RCS fumes. Now mind you we were s ealed off at 2000 so I know it didn't come in on the water. The RCS fumes that were in there came in there at 27000 when we opened the vent and the inlet snorkel so I ' m stil l -- if the structure would take jt, I really think you should come in and leave that inlet snorkel and that vent closed. If you did that you would ha-re a clean, cold cabin when you.hit the water. Okay, now . I didn't really think it was as object ionable . No, it wasn't objectionable. It was cool. One thing we might add ,:ight here right now, that we didn ' t cover back :.n the pre retro area was trat we went the full cold on everythi ng. We had that cabin so cold , and we went to cabin fan and so that the cagin wae1 about, wha t , 40 degrees, 50 degrees.
209 G0MFIDENTIAL Conrad No , the cabin was a bout 53 degrees . Somewhere in there. It was a little over 50 , and the suit was rll!llling Cooper The sui t was rll!llling about 50 on reentry so the w hole thing was pretty cool. Conrad It was never hot at any time. Cooper When we opened our face plates the cabin was still cool, the suits were still cool , and the snorkel and vent when we did open them and both fans came on after we went OFF of o HIGH RATE, Repress and 2 both fans came on. We were getting nice cool air through . .. . Yes, we have been hearing everybody say, you know, boy you've got to get those suits off, you really get hot in there. You see and Gordo said "Well come on we are going to be here for awhile, we'll get the suits off" and it was perfectly obvious that we were getting a good flow and I said "Well, why don ' t we put our neck dams, on and we ' ll leave the inlet snorkel open here and get this fans running and see, just see , just sit here for a second , because you get awful hot getting out of the suit period. And by golly we were in good shape. We could have stayed in tlut
210 Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad 7. 2 Checklist s Cooper spacecraft 2, 3 hours. As a matter o.f fact the longer we stayed •.the cooler we wi~re getting because we were just sitting back letting - - .. We really debated seriously about wait ing if the carrier had been an hour or so nearer we would have waited for a carrier pick up rather than go with the choppers. Because we wer ei in good shape in theriuand w e didn't feel bad and the smells weren't bad and what little RCS fumes where in there from picking them up a t 27000 went right out . Of course we had -- let 's f ace it thotgh , we had an ideal day on the water. It was like a. mill pond out on the water. It was nice and smcoth and sunny and everything was i n good shape , witb t he space craft. I t was early in the morning and the air was about 80 degrees - air t hat it was pulling in the air craft pumping in our· suits, see. But we were in good shape. Check list . I thought our check lists were very good with a few minor things we hav e m ,~ntioned CONFIDENTIAL
211 tfYENifP! 7, 3 Communica tions Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper here that we might .. . we would suggest ma;ybe reshuffling a little there . The communications were excellent all the way , all the way down until impact and from there on we were hearing everybody in the whole darn world but nobody apparently was hearing us . Now, Houston read us twice on the water, but .... Houston read us twice . We transmitted both on UHF and we transmitted on HF. Our HF antenna never did extend on the water. They don't lmow whats wrong with it at this point, but we went through the right procedures several times of extending it . Point: · of impact, we found out fairly shortly what our point of impace was by hearing the discussion in the air on where it was. Status of recovery. We were kept well informed of that because our radio receivers were working fin e . 7, 4 Systems Configuration Cooper Systems configuration,ECS was excellent . No probl em at all. Electrical was good, control was good , aeromedical - - what does a eromedical have to
212 do with it here? FCSD REP Biomed records and all that stuff. Cooper The gear worked. The one thing was, the blood pressure bulb wouldn ' t bleed down and Pete never could get a proper blood pressure there when on the water. Conrad I took the bulb up to the helicopter .md gave it to the doctor and told him to check it right away and find out what happened because it wor:£ed fine all flight. 7.5 Spacecraft Status Cooper Spacecraft status . There was a faint odor of fumes in there but I didn't personally cons:Lder them objectionable at all . Conrad It cleared out once we got the fans running. Cooper Ma.in chute was excellent. The windowii - - visibility was doggone good out the windows . .. ue were fogged over just a little bit. Conrad They steamed up a little bit. I coulc. see out of t hem all right and could see the airplanes flying overhead. Cooper They steamed up a little bit. After ~- e sat there ,. they steamed up more than they were when we first landed and they . . but we could see outside very NFIDENTIAL
213 C0~61DENTIA~ well and I guess the guy outside probably couldn't .,. see in as well as we could see out . They were fogged a little. There were no l ea.ks that we could tell. Electrical Power , everything was nominal . o 2 was fine. Conrad Electrical power, we,we, we, did not power .down the squib betteries after we got on the water and we went through the landing check list and powered down all electrical equipment except the radios and the beacons and a biomed recorders and the blood pressure. Cooper We took a complete power down check list. We followed check list right on the money. Sea condition was 2 to 3 foot easy swells. 7.6 Post Landing Activity Cooper Post landing activities . Let's see, we proceeded to continue to try and contact and answer somebody. We heard all the activity around and over and around us. The firs't thing we finatly heard in the way of communications was when one of the swimmers plugged in this outside phone jack and talked to us. He wasn't r eal clear but he was coming through pretty well . He wanted to know if we ,,
214 C..ONFIB~Nft~t wanted to wait on the carrier or if we wanted a chopper pick up. I asked him how fal' the carrier was away and he went ahead and told t:.s about 75 miles at that time. We told him we relieved we wanted to take the choppers. 7.7 Comfort Cooper Comfort was fine in the spacecraft. EDSD REP How long were you in the spacecraft in your suit? Conrad 35, 40 minutes . Cooper About 35 or 40 minutes I . . . Maybe a little bit more . 7. 8 Recovery Force Personnel Cooper Recovery f orce personnel and communications . As I say they did communicate with us with the telephone. First of all one of the swimmers came up and looked in the window and held up his thumb and we held up our thumbs okay, so that took the sweE.t off them. Floa tation collar, they had slightly more trouble than usually getting it around but not a great deal. It probably took th~m maybe 10 or 15 minutEtS to get it around there and inflated . 7. 9 Egress Cooper Right after they got it inflated we told them we were coming out for the chopper. I opened the left --~ ONF-IDENTIAL
215 CONFIDEf\lTIAL 7.10 Survival Gear Cooper 7,11 Crew Pick Up Cooper FCSD REP side hatch. We did have our . • • we saw that they had the floa tation collar around there and the sea was calm and there was no problem getting any water in the spacecraft and we decided we weren't going to go in the water ourselves . We did have our neck "'1ams on but we did not have our gloves on. We left our helmet and gloves in the cock - pit and decided well if we did go in the water for unforecast reason we had our water wings and our wrists are tight enough to hold your arms above water and not get much in. So, we didn ' t fiddle with any survival gear or anything. We just stood out on the nose of the spacecraft. In fact .•• then I moved from the nose over into one of the liftrafts. Pete came up out of the hatch and stood on the nose and he took the first . . . horse co~lar came around. He got the ho~se collar and went up to the chopper first and they lowered it again and I went in behind him. Oh, one thing we didn ' t mention here . How a bout cutting the chute, the main chute? CONFIDENTIAL
216 Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper RCSD REP Oh, you mean jettison? Gordo jettisoned about 1 second after we touched down. About 1 second: after we landed I hit Hand away it went. It sat right there beside us and float ed around for quite a while . It sat there about 30 yards off to the• f ront and slightly to one side of us. O kay.
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