DISCLOSURE / FILE
Segment 1 of 2 of the Apollo 17 post-mission crew medical debriefing at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, where astronauts discuss the cosmic-ray 'light flash phenomena' they perceived during the mission.
NASA-UAP-D028, Apollo 17 Crew Medical Debriefing, 1972
Segment 1 of 2 of the Apollo 17 post-mission crew medical debriefing at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, where astronauts discuss the cosmic-ray 'light flash phenomena' they perceived during the mission.
This NASA file is the first of two segments of the Apollo 17 crew medical debriefing, recorded at the Manned Spacecraft Center (now Johnson Space Center) in Houston, Texas, dated December 21 1972. The crew discusses the 'light flash phenomena,' the perception of light streaks or flashes caused by high-energy cosmic rays passing through the eye and striking the retina. Two of the three crew members reported observing the flashes at points during the mission, including in lunar orbit and on the lunar surface. The record is image-only with no extracted page text; the debriefing continues in NASA-UAP-D029.
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Page 1 · audio transcript
We're picking up a 12-door show, left off, right in the middle of the dock, and again
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Concatenated page-by-page transcript. Born-digital pages came through pdf.js; scanned pages were transcribed by Claude vision OCR. Pages marked unreadable failed multiple OCR retries (heavy redaction, microfilm artifacts, or blank separators) and are kept in place for audit.
We're picking up a 12-door show, left off, right in the middle of the dock, and again
we're going to, where things went nominal as per the checklist, we're going to get the
lunar surface checklist checked.
Okay, we're going to say so.
Tomorrow, in launch prep, went well, we did not do the P22 and everything else just went
as advertised on the limb, she came up and powered up beautifully.
Okay, the lift off was, again, went normal, we got all, obviously all our pyros, and we
lost no change over Parker valves or anything.
The only thing that I would like to mention, let the people get up here is that very soon
after lift off, we had apparent loss of calm, a lot of noise in the SPN.
It turned out that we were downlucky, but there was something wrong with the uplink.
So the CDR watched the, most of the guidance, and we'd call out in the blind, altudes and
goals, and what have you, as we pitched over and pressed on up, but for about the first
two or three minutes, I think the lunar module pilot had to concern itself for trying to
get combat.
Yeah, I mean, again, it was when I was apparently, I got it, my goalstone, dropped the uplink,
and when they were getting it back, I was switching on these, and for a while there
was just completely out of phase, and what they were, kind of, had a continuous dynamic.
It was a very inopportune time, I might say, because it happened just right after ignition.
I think that's something that the encodes are going to be able to clarify, because we
certainly can't give you the details, it was essentially no calm in all the antennas.
We got into a, they briefed us on a trajectory, we flew into a trajectory that appeared to
be nominal.
The AG showed us slight out of plane, I believe, and as a result, our tweak had a nine foot
per second.
It was minus four, minus nine, and plus one, we burned out X, Z, Y, net order, and it looked
like the AGs out of plane.
In the case it was good, about seven feet per second, it looked like we might have had
a somewhat AG sensitive drift in our Y accelerometer and the pings, but the tweak as it turned
out was an excellent tweak, because our rendezvous resulted in just as nominal rendezvous and
a nominal trajectory and profile, as I guess I've ever been involved with.
The drift in an accelerometer did not bother us anywhere else in the tracking, or in the
in a rendezvous at all, rendezvous navigation was followed the checklist.
We got a radar performed very well, we had auto updates into the AGs.
The only thing I might mention here is when it came to making a TPI burn.
The residuals in the TPI burn were greater than what I had expected them, and we did
not record them because I wanted to get them, I wanted to get them nulled out just as soon
as possible, and I don't know the tense, but they were minus seven in X, and they were
four in four, and I'm not sure whether they were plus or minus in Y and C, but they were
the point I'm making is they were larger than I had expected, they were minus seven in four
point something, and four point something.
We reduced those to less than two tenths of a foot per second, and from there on continued
a plot right through the mid courses, right up the pike on a nominal trajectory.
Communications after that first, Lychef, you got any comment about that?
The comment was good, a couple comments about the AGs, after about five or ten minutes, or
early in insertion, I always check the accelerometers on the after insertion, and they look really
good, and I checked about five or ten minutes later, and I can't remember exactly, I looked
and I had accumulated a foot or two foot, maybe a foot and a half per second in X, so
Gene went free and I did a gyrocal, and after that there was no significant accumulation
in X, I went very well, I did that when I talked to the ground, but I thought I had an understanding
that that was something that we could do, you know.
Okay, the, let me just also mention on the TPI solutions, the AGs had essentially, within
a two or three feet per second, a good TPI solution after six marks.
The insertion solution was not very good.
It was off by a number of feet per second in X, and even more in Z.
This was your first 2017 marks, this was your first 2017 marks, you know, the PING's
recycle and PING's final were very gross, but a couple feet per second in X, and a PING's
recycle had, I don't remember exactly the cost for 15 marks in the kind, so I had seven
to seven, and there's more data in the data card books about various AGs, certain times
of marks with the AG solutions.
Okay, the mid-course solutions, first mid-course I agreed effectively all systems except AGs
out of plane was a little bit high, and the decision was made to burn the I-board PING
solution out of the little M, which was minus 1.2 plus 0.4 and plus 0.3.
We continued to track right up the pike, mid-course two came up, and we again compared
all the solutions.
The AGs out of plane was still a little bit high, and actually the opposite direction
from the PING's, we had a slight variation in the CSM solution in Z, I don't know why,
came up with plus 5.4 feet per second in Z, so we really didn't get a very good correlation
between the CSM and the LEM on the second mid-course, but the PING's was still performing
and the radar was still performing, and based upon our trajectory plot, and based upon our
following the nominal inertial line of sight rates, we decided to burn the PING's on-board
PING solution in the LEM, and it was minus 0.4, minus 0.7 and minus 1.6, and from there
on out, we just continued to follow the inertial line of sight angles and very little tweaking
in either in Y or Z, and we just sort of floated right through the braking gates at one mile,
I think we took about six or seven feet per second off to hit 30.
We met all the gates as prescribed, and just came, moving very slowly into the final station
keeping, went into a formation flight around the CSM, got a good inspection of the spacecraft
and the SIM bay, the report of which is in the transcript, everything looked good to us.
We eventually went over to the command module to the docking attitude that LEM just took
his position, his docking attitude, did his pitch and yomit over, and gave the station
keeping control to the command module to pitch and yomit over and stood by for docking.
Okay, as the member was about proceeding on with the docking, I think one of the more
noticeable differences between this docking and the docking with the S-4B is the fact
that the SM stage did dance a lot more than the S-4B did, S-4B studies a rock, but you
could tell the, just watch the LEM did that because it would change attitude and you'd
try to follow it, and looking on the first attempt coming in, I must have had less than
a tenth of a foot per second, just barely closing on it, I just taken it nice and easy.
I made contact and did not get captured, okay, as soon as it didn't get captured, it's obviously
you're closing too slow, I backed off a couple of three feet, I guess, something like that,
re-know all the rates and initiated the closing rate and made, got captured, as soon as we
went to capture both vehicles, went to the CMC free, and you look around and check the
barber poles and whatever, look back out, and here I had some rates in the CSM and I'm
sure now that the LEM had rates also, you must have had them, but we did one, as soon as
we went free, so it's just captured the LEM went free, and the CSM, trying to know all
the rates, ended up perturbating the LEM and giving us rates.
So we finally gave up on that mode, had the LEM go to attitude hold, and then once you
go to attitude hold, then the CSM got all the rates, and we got lined up, and attempted
the hard docking, no problem, broke retract, came back, this time it didn't sound like
it was as much of a river fire, it was more of a, and it was a quicker docking, and I
put that hard dock than it was the previous time, again we're taking, okay, I want to
say something about visual sightings, during the round of the, I was able to, from the LEM,
I was able to see the command module in, when it was sunlit, that somewhere around a hundred
miles, and definitely defined that that was a command module, after the command module
wanted a darkness, I could not pick up his tracking light, until we were well within about
40 miles, I think this transcript got more an accurate time, but could not pick up the
docking light, the round of the light, rather than the command module, we were well within
40 miles, and then just a very, initially very dim, faint flash.
I was able to verify on board that the LEM tracking light was working, and I finally
figured out how it was reflecting off the underside of the EVA handrail on the left
forward side of the LEM, so I could see the LEM tracking light flashing, and also whenever
there were some particles we took with us that stayed with the spacecraft, and you could
see the sequential flash off of those particles, there was a result of our LEM tracking light.
Okay, this is the command module pilot, I've already mentioned in section 11.0, about
the visibility of the module through the optic.
I've got down here, this is, anything else to add about the round?
>> It's entirely in television, if it's entirely in the LEM, we'll just have to look and see
how it turned out, I took a lot of footage, in fact, as we put it on, not only the Async
Mag, we put it on the Another Mag, we had part of the Mag, so, and it includes the Cymbae
right or wrong, we did have the Hasselblad on board, so we had a lot of Hasselblad photography
and the rendezvous and some of the surface stuff in the process.
>> Okay, post docking check, we're going to 13.0 lunar module jettison through TEI, post
docking check and pressurization.
Well, first of all, I guess you said you had every last made this time, right?
>> Every last work done, overall docking latches worked.
>> Okay, that's something to do with the mass and the other vehicle involved.
The general comment I want to make about the post docking operations is that throughout
the round of both pilots in LEM kept their helmets on for dust, keep the dust off primarily,
the commander took off his gloves, almost immediately after insertion, and flew the entire round
of it that way, he took yours off sometime later.
>> I kept mine on after we've done a lot of transfer, I can't remember, I kept your gloves
on to it.
>> Okay, after insertion, I did most of my pre insertion work with the gloves off because
I didn't want to take the time, I want to get that initial act solution, and I could
get that fairly rapidly with the gloves, and I didn't take the gloves off until maybe 10
or 15 minutes after insertion, but I kept the helmet on all the way through most of the
time, just to avoid reading the dust, and I've had the irritation on the surface.
>> And the commander kept the helmet on throughout the round of both, and docking, I took my
gloves off after insertion and left them off.
Now, when we started, when we started getting prepared, as soon as we were a hard dock,
the commander took off his helmet, and as I look back at that, because of the dust debris
in the lamp spacecraft, I'm sorry I did it.
I could have left the helmet on, and I would have had a lot less trouble, but it was just
I in my type of irritation, and you knew you were in a very heavily infiltrated atmosphere
in the lamp, because of the lunar dust, although I don't know how much lunar dust previous
flights had, but I think we saved a great deal of grief by taping up, by sweeping all
the dust we could find on the floor, into the holes, and putting our tape covers over
those holes, I think that had to help a great deal, because there was an awful lot of dust
on the floor that we didn't see.
So I had the commander had his helmet and gloves off throughout the entire transfer.
Basically the way we handle a transfer was the way we had planned, I think the lamp pilot
did most of the preparation of the gear in the lamp, and the commander stayed in the tunnel
and passed things on, and the inventory was going on on the command module side, and on
the lamp side both.
We backened each other's suits the best we could, and everything else that got supposedly
transferred un-bagged or un-covered.
This is the young thing, and despite of the seeing of these comments to the contrary,
I think we got things remarkably clean, and there wasn't an awful lot of dirt in the
landmark that was coming back.
Really was it?
Oh, that's true.
I didn't want to say that.
The contrast he made, I thought it was dirty, but I was surprised we were able to keep the
level of part of the expression "contamination of command module" down, as well as that.
That atmosphere that the commander was referring to in a lamp after he took his helmet off,
I could go halfway through the tunnel and stick my head up into the command module, and it
was totally refreshed, un-proluded atmosphere up there, and it never did get polluted.
I think having a vacuum cleaner running in the lamp had a lot to do with keeping the
flow in the light.
We never did vacuum in the command module, because this wasn't necessary vacuum in the
command module.
The suits were noticeably cleaned by the vacuum cleaner.
You could tell you were pulling stuff off of them, although they were still dirty, and
every other stuff from the time we handled them we got our hands dirty, but I think most
of the free dust was taken care of.
We effectively stayed on a transfer list, I say effectively, throughout the transfer,
however, some things got transferred out of order and got temporarily stowed in the command
module, but we effectively used the transfer list as a, not as a cookbook, follow recipe
type of thing, but as an inventory list, and we inventory it several times from both ends
and found out that we were satisfied we had everything transferred, and then pressed
out with the lamp closed out.
The lamp closed out went nominal.
We got back into the command module, and the commander closed out the lamp, and for convenience
the commander effectively went back and closed out the lamp hatch, put in the command module
hatch.
Because of the slow tunnel vent, or the long duration of tunnel vent, the commander stayed
in the tunnel in the LFP in his seat, in the CMP in the left seat.
We suited up and got prepared for our, for our integrity check, as soon as the, as soon
as the long tunnel vent was complete, and we were satisfied with integrity of the hatch
we went into the, to the, to the suit integrity checks.
You know, this is CMP, let me make another comment on a tunnel vent time, I bet it must
take, and I'm not sure if this is correct, but I bet at least three or four times longer
than the simulator is for the tunnel vent move.
And I think that's going to be applicable to Skyland, because they're talking, they're
going to have to vent before the end of the day, it took quite a while.
But tunnel pause I was easy, we had no, no, a drill, no bro, which were stored in the
limb for, limb jet, going through the rest of these mind triggers under the amount of
jealousy and through TEI, we just followed the checklist and it all seemed to happen
just as advertised.
Well, we got a little bit intrigued with the, the limb jet isn't, you know, at this time
it was, it was great, it just sailed out there nice and pretty, and we got a lot of good
pictures where we should have been maneuvering, and we ended up getting into P-41 after the,
for the self burn, a little bit of light, but that's no problem either, because we just
trying to reserve those, and people would have wanted and got a good self burn.
I want to make a comment that I think cleaning control in a command module was excellent,
clearing all the dust and all the dirt, that just seemed to hear everything in a limb.
When we got back in a command, command module with the exception of the suits, and with the
exception of the LMP and the CDR, everything was clean, and that's for the most part is
because everything was bad before we brought it over, bag and zipped, and we never did
open anything once we got it zipped up, so the command module stayed, and I think that
suit fan filter is probably going to be very, very clean state, exceptionally clean throughout
the remainder of the flight.
Let me add a bagging, and a decontamination bag, so I made a special effort as per request
to pull those zippers as tight as I could, and they should be pretty tight soon.
Okay, orbital navigation, high gain, why don't you just pick that up?
Okay, I'm already from except the TEI, I have no comments.
High gain and always were good, Omni's and S-band were good.
We had a lot of time when as advertised, we have a lot of targets of opportunity.
Assembly operations have been mentioned before.
Let me just make one gross comment about the way we handled it as a three-man crew with
assembly operations which after, did we, yeah, okay, it's covered, I think I did say so.
Okay, the TEI updates, now, section of Star Trek, we're good for TEI.
I got the commander's master arm and every one of them all through the flight, which
made me feel very good, but you kept trying again.
I made sure I got it, I made sure I got it, I was the last few, I was going to change
any mode of operation.
I'll tell you that last one, where our entry was the last one, but I made sure I got it
on the TEI.
Just make you guys feel at home, I figured you'd think I didn't do it right if I didn't
get the master arm.
The TEI, a half G or whatever we were pulling there, was, seemed like more than that.
Quite noticed, you know.
Sure did, it seemed like it was really pushing you back into the seat.
Yeah.
Around my growth, I think, started out holding our heads up and eventually relaxed them
back on the couch.
I guess we must have had the spacecraft pretty well stowed or tied down because as I brief
the CFP and LNP and as I recall those kind of burns back at Apollo 10, lots of things
started moving through the spacecraft and find their due on the end of the spacecraft
because of the G load and much to my surprise, all we had was initial thought as we moved
away from the station and we didn't have any gear coming from anywhere flying through
the spacecraft.
So we must have cleaned it up pretty well.
I got a, I got a white tag, wet white, a white tag wet white.
But other than maybe one or two of those things, and looking back, I would have expected more
gear to come from somewhere, but we prepared for those burns pretty well.
Well, that reminds, brings up another point that reminds me though, is always water condensing
on ECU, you know, the pipes and whatever you're back in there when you get back to clean the
suits of the return belt.
And when we put our suits on for the UVA the next day, your suits were noticeably wet.
And also, when I pulled the PGA bag up, it was damp down underneath the PGA bag.
So I think as a normal procedure, we should have, either after the burn, probably before
the burn, make sure that we wipe out the water and the LAB somehow would be there.
I wasn't really aware of our suits, for example, put them out, but I was not aware.
I could look down here, and I could not find any real water down in the, down there.
It's just done.
On ECS.
Yeah, on ECS, there's always water down there in ECS.
I just assume that's where all I came from, but it's not a flow of water, like you said,
it just dammit.
But almost as if it was over down in the LAB, and water was convincing on all over the suit,
it wasn't as if they were in a pump.
Yeah.
Okay, I think that covers right on through to you.
Let's see.
Yeah, the one thing I want to mention on TEI is that, again, the simulator is set up such
a roll dead band that goes over to one side of the roll dead band and just kind of stays
there.
And during the TEI burn, it was bouncing back and forth from one side of the dead band to
the other side of the dead band, and when it's bouncing back and forth, the roll rate is up
around all 4/10 of a degree per second, arching back and forth across the roll dead band.
Okay, 14.0 transverse coast and the thing that I just realized we've neglected is anywhere
about systems, like I mentioned chlorination at this point in time.
I think without fail, do you ever talk about that?
No.
When fail, almost every chlorination leaked.
Sometimes larger quantities of water, other times just small quantities of water.
And I'll tell you where it leaked.
Water are pouring.
Well, it's pouring in your chlorinating and in buffer or water when you withdrew the buffer
sample here.
But where it leaked was, it appeared to me to leak within the ampoule itself around
the bag because it was the cylindrical chlorine dispenser that was continually wet.
It was not where the dispenser fit into the needle or where the needle adapter fit into
the spacecraft.
It was within the barrel chlorine dispenser itself.
We continually, chlorination was a case of always cleaning your hands with chlorine because
you always had it available down there with the net dispenser and in some cases you had
larger quantities of water that had to be wiped up with a tissue.
That plagued us throughout the whole mission.
It turned out not to be a serious problem because we learned how to handle it, but that
was one system anomaly that never had really been brought up.
Okay, let's see, CMP, let me amplify that a little bit.
In two cases, almost positive that when you put the thing on and the bandhead fitting and
cranking it on there, it did not puncture the ampoule itself.
The reason that I can believe that's correct is that when you start to crank the outside
of the cassette down to push the chlorine into the water system, it was very hard to
turn.
If you tried to force it, you could force it on down there and I'm sure that's a good
way to break an ampoule on the thing and if you take it, just in two cases, took the
bandhead fitting loose again and put it back on there and in both cases, then you just
try to squeeze the chlorine out of the ampoule into the system and it would turn easier,
but it's still hard to pull it out to crank that thing down.
But we did not.
We got the chlorination done.
We didn't miss any injections of chlorine and we didn't miss any of the buffer samples.
So I guess we got the job done, it was just a little bit messy.
And chlorine was evident in because the CDR eventually peeled all the outer skin off his
right hand and I'm convinced it was due to the chlorine and it had nothing to do with
the EVA.
Oh, you lost a little flash, a little skin on the EVA.
Transurist Coals, systems navigation, let's press on and see what we can say about that.
Okay, let me see how much transurist coals we're going to do.
Yeah, let's go through up to the CSM EVA anyway.
Okay, Transurist Coals, the first thing I want to mention is passive thermal control
was at what I would call unusual attitudes because of the UV and IR requirements.
Now these unusual attitudes did two things they put us, they required us to re-maneuver
the spacecraft several times and exit, enter and exit PTC several, several times, which
in itself was not a problem, it was just an additional coordination.
Coincidentally, most of these particular PTC attitudes were within 30, certainly 45 degrees
of gimbalock most of the time.
So we were looking at the red apple, good portion of the trip home.
But they also, some of those attitudes where you actually were not, we were in attitudes
and/or PTC at these relatively unusual positions, change the equilibrium heat load on the spacecraft.
You could see it in RCS quad temperatures where I think you could see it in helium packaged
temperatures, and most notably you could see it on the change in condensation from the
tunnel hatch to the forward hatch, the tunnel hatch eventually from most of the way home
ended up to be very dry.
And about the second day out on the way home, the four, the center hatch, got soaking wet
to the point that Ava took a dry rag and wiped off some of the latch components and
some of the gearbox components, externally, not that it did any good, but there was just
that much water on it, and I think this is all due to the PTC attitudes required for
the Simba experiments on the way home.
Oh, it's colder in the spacecraft, too.
Oh, yes, it was colder in the spacecraft.
Not as cold as the commander thought it was, but it was cooler.
Cold enough to warm up.
On the commander's orders.
And I just mentioned we warmed it up with the ground suggestion of an extra inverter and
going to manual on the 10th end, I think we discussed that.
Ron, all your rough map changes, your talking and platform talking, all those went very
well, I thought.
That went great.
All the way back home, it was just changing attitudes, changing attitudes, changing attitudes
with the exception of the EVA day, which we'll cover here shortly.
Yes, I'm EVA.
Okay, on EVA prep.
And I think the only and only we came across as the CMPs, well, I'll see you on EVA prep,
but I really didn't have any, because we didn't know anything at that point.
I was going to say on the CMPs comp there, but the EVA prep went right down the line,
essentially it was all well laid out within the experiments checklist, and we checked things
off as we were, and stayed pretty much on the timeline.
We started about a half hour away, and we stayed a half hour away.
We started, we were half hour early throughout the whole thing, and we lost that half hour
and opened the heads just about, and it turned to you man, exactly on time, and I can't remember
a small little stuff that I'm chasing down.
Comp carrier change.
We lost that half hour during a comp carrier change on its own.
And Ron, I'd like to add that post EVA, that I think one thing that helped us immensely
on what ended up to be, I think a very fine entry storage was that we sort of backed off
after the EVA, and took a good long, was the long range storage as well as the post EVA
storage, and really effectively started housekeeping, cleaning up the cabin, and effectively stowing
some of the articles that were not going to be used any further in the mission for entry.
At that time, entry storage really started with the post EVA time frame period, and I
think that really helped us out in the long run.
Okay, I think we should mention how we got out of the suit, and I think to me that was
a pretty important way to get things done.
The only change, the only change to the prep and/or post was the order in which we doft
and donsus, because it was very evident that there were certain convenient ways, because
of the way the suit suits were stowed, and the way people fit into the checklist that
we, when we donsuits, the commander got down, you got in first, and I did, and then the
LMP, and the NSCMP got down last, and it worked out very fine, it worked, plus the CMP had
less work to do in his suit, which also aided him in the long run, when we doft, the LMP,
because that was first, then you done the CDR, and then the CMP, and that wasn't exactly
what it was called for, but that's the way it worked out the best.
And we stowed our suits, and he'll shape back prior to putting the center couch back in,
which was another good decision, I believe, in helping us get the suit stowed back, and
I'll shape that.
Okay, let's go down to the cabin depress, no problems, the normal depress hatch opening,
even though the hatch was completely, or the cabin was completely depressed, and we're
in zero pressure on a thing, as soon as I opened the hatch, there was enough residual pressure
or something inside the spacecraft that it actually tended to pull the hatch out of my
hand.
The suit is bleeding into the cabin all the time, so you never truly get zero.
That's right, you never truly get zero on a thing, but the dump valve was still open,
and if I hadn't been hanging on to the hatch, it would have blown it all away.
All right, to give you an idea, that's not unexpected, because it's exactly what we had
on the lunar surface.
We completely dumped the lamp, and I'd still have to break that hatch loose and hold it
open about six or eight inches until things just bent it, and then I could leave go of
the hatch and open it all the way.
If I didn't, it would slam back closed, so it was basically the same thing.
It got open, and it really let things get down to zero.
Okay, well, when I opened the hatch, then all of the, excuse me, all the little ice crystals
and everything started flowing out, a pen floating by, something else went floating by.
I wasn't quite sure what it was, but there's all kinds of little particles and pieces
that started coming out through the hatch.
But I sure didn't see, I looked specifically for the scissors.
I didn't see the scissors go out that hatch, I had to say.
The other one by my watch, I didn't, none of them went by me.
Ron, I'd like to say that they went off the hatch, but I sure didn't see them go.
I caught the one thing, it started to go by me, and put it in your pocket, you got it.
Okay, the, once all the particles and jumpers all the way, then you just push the hatch
open.
We had disconnected the counterbalance with the beat to tool B there, so that we locked
the hatch in the open position, so I just shoved it open, and went beyond the center
position and locked in the open position with no problem.
Egress, I had a tendency, I guess, just like any other thing, it seems like you want to
fold up, and I had a tendency to fold up against the MDC and had it consciously stuck, and
get as close, my face is as close as I could to the bottom of the hatch, in order to get
past the, get the OBS past the MDC and get on out.
TV and DAC installation, work fine, I could hang on with the right hand on the hatch,
the great big D handle on the hatch, and with the TV pole on the left hand, and it worked
out real fine, just stuck it in there, and then line it up with the mark, and make sure
it was locked in or clamped in, and then climbed on up the pole to turn the TV on, or turn the
DAC on, and it was, you couldn't see the light, it couldn't see the light on, I think, but
you could feel the camera running once you turn it on, you could just touch it, you could
feel it vibrating a little bit.
The lunar center cassette retrieval, I think, they should be on the onboard, or on the
aircraft takes, as I was describing, and we'll just go on with no problem.
The pan camera cassettes were next, no problem on the pan camera cassettes, and the pan camera,
it's obviously a bigger mass, and it's quite apparent when you try to move that big mass
around, that it is heavier, it weighs more than the other things, it's easier to move,
but it just takes a little more effort to get it started, and you know that if you ever
get it started in one direction, it's going to keep on going, you have to stop it.
So I just moved everything real slow, tried to keep it down to control, the mapping camera
cassette had the same problem I had, and the C squared S squared getting the thermal cover
off, it's stuck underneath the mapping camera, it weighs around a timmer door, but there's
no real problem, you know, it's had to feed on the shoes, just give it a big jerk, and
then it finally came off.
Simba inspection, that's all covered in the onboard, I mean, air ground tapes, TV and
back removal, again it was real simple, it just had to squeeze the lever, and TV came
out, and it was easy to hang on with one hand, and maneuver the TV around, and point it
toward the moon, because I didn't have to worry about trying it into the sun, and I
tried to, again, hang on with one hand, and point the TV around toward the earth, it was
well maybe 10 or 15 degrees, probably 15 degrees from the sun, and I would try to be a little
more accurate on the thing, and when I did that, then I lost, kind of effectively really
lost control of my body position, because I was trying to, I think, maneuver the camera,
and they just, you need both hands to maintain your body control again, so rather than try
to flash the camera through the sun or something like that, and give up and try to point the
camera out there.
Con during EVA, it was loud and clear for me throughout the EVA, there was a lot of background
noise, the hissing of the air flow, and I'm sure that was probably going on with the box
circuit.
But, don't you think anyone, it didn't appear to me that anyone had any trouble on the ground
region?
I think one of the big advantages around me on pity that one thing we did, because it was
bothering me in the first week, I turned the air mopox sensitivity down about two notches,
and apparently that really improved the conformers, the impression I had, I had that impression
from the ground, I don't know if it did, for me, the difference is not, but I got the impression
that it did help.
Com into the cabin was excellent, I never had any trouble understanding, I had to hissing
in the background, but we did.
Yeah, I thought it sounded much better than I remembered other flights, sounding.
On the air ground.
Well, our CMP made more noise than that, I guess he's the wrong word there, it was clear.
Clear.
Ingress seemed to me like it was easier than the egress.
Yeah, for some reason, hash closing was harder than I anticipated, and I guess maybe this
is the same reason is that I must have been exhausting into the cabin all the time, and
just that light, the hash would come closed within about an inch of closing on the outer
edge, and then it took an effort to pull the hash closed so that you could activate the
latching handle so that you could get the lashes over center.
Of course, once you got the first stroke of the latching handle, I got the hat to lashes
over center, then it's really just a couple more cranks on the hatch closing.
Can you repress, I don't know if any of my content here is LNP, all I did was work in
the hatch area, and I want to emphasize what everybody has always said is that you do your
best work when you take things slow and easy, and just let yourself move yourself in small
increments to where you want to go, and you can turn and dip and save yourself out, and
I think it's also useful for any cabin, hatch, or port operations to have somebody else available
to push you out on your tether as far as you want to go, and I'll pull you in just to
ease the operation being with doing this occasionally for me, but with the kind, with the scruts
and everything available there, there was never any feeling that I couldn't have a way
to control my body position, sometimes it took a few seconds to get it where I wanted
to go, the one thing, invariably every time I went back inside, I had this 90 degree disorientation
feeling for a few seconds, until I got the perspective of the cabin again, and said okay
that's right, and I get back in, and then I go back outside and come back in again, and
once again it seemed as if the cabin had rotated 90 degrees to my perspective, and it's just
something that's no problem, it's just a change of perspective for some reason, I experienced
several times, I guess the biggest problem working in that angle from a sun angle, our
attitude was, I had the sun in your eyes most of the time, and it sort of made it hard to
look in detail, and see what you were doing, you were clear and it was there, and I could
see every major offer to do it, but if I had to specifically see details of this.
Oh, I don't know, one point I wanted to make, also it wasn't, I had no awareness whatsoever
that I had an umbilical on my back, it was, I never got the feeling that the umbilical
was tugging on me, restricting my movements, or anything, I didn't even know it was there,
but did you observe at any time did the umbilical ever get tangled around, I feel the umbilical
was easy to tend, and I frankly don't remember a single time and I had to clear it, there
may have been one, somebody had a vague impression that one time I asked you to hold up, or maybe
I didn't say anything, I just moved it away from a handhold or something, but the umbilical
was very, it didn't tend to snake around, you seem to have everything you needed on it.
I worked out a little job on it all, I didn't even know it was there, I guess, that's the
point I was making, is it really, that being tied to the umbilical does not restrict your
movement, or give you a feeling that is restricting your movement at all.
Suit doffing and storage, I think we've already discussed that, this is continuing
on the EVA part of it, but I don't know, this is just a different section here, suit doffing
and storage, we've already mentioned the suit doffing and storage, the light flash phenomena,
we thrilled for blindfolded for an hour and never saw a light flash.
That was the final second round, I don't worry about transverse, eating, resting exercise
and don't worry.
Let me add to the light flash, the cell, the next, that evening, I guess it was, I did
see them again, falling asleep, so I did too, so there was just that period, apparently
during the actual experiment that, if there's some reason they weren't this way.
I think we've discussed the eating, resting more, exercise covered already, cabin atmosphere,
the one thing that I don't think we've ever mentioned yet, and I think should be noted
is that we never really utilized a waste storage vent to get rid of any orders out of that
waste storage compartment, and if you, if you kind of drifted over in that area, it was
always a crime that you were in that area, you got real close to what I thought it was.
I think, I guess maybe I did when you opened the door, that's when you really noticed it.
The cabin, generally, turned over the atmosphere in pretty good style.
It got saturated sometimes with gas and it took a few minutes, but once the exhaust,
that gas was, was plugged up, the cabin did a good job of recirculating, cleaning up the
air, and I think it did a real good flight plan updates were super, the flight plan was
excellent anywhere hell to a minimum, and we really didn't change any part of the entire
flight except a few dates and times and what have you here in attitudes, but other than
that it was really at a minimum.
Let's say the entry preparation is really begin after EVA and continue off through the
next day, and we had very little final storage to do on entry morning, just those things
that we had to leave unstoed until we got out of our sleep restraints, so we basically
just had to tie the big bags down, I wanted to in 7 and 8, and final entry preparations
went by the checklist, and if anything, we stayed about five minutes ahead throughout
the entire checklist, including separation and activation of the command module RCS, and
picked that five minutes up, of course, right at 05G, which came on time, the communications
I thought were very good through that period of time, we were through Orion the last couple
minutes prior to RRT, and I understand how the ground heard everything we said right
through Blackout, into Blackout, and then I understood we came out Blackout, they still
had Orion, and they could read us, and we could have read them, but they never transmitted
anything.
Well, that was it, okay, I don't know how to take care of myself, you know, I can't think
of anything at all, on the quarter section, so we got Horizon and Moonset, without any
problem of looking, but we had a lot on the over, within seconds of the actual time.
And they were all within seconds, and you know, in this CMS, I'd always look for the
2G when the quarter light would go out, though, I didn't even notice it in the flight.
So I must have been, I was either watching something else, I must have been checking
the EMS or the...