# NASA-UAP-D016, Preliminary Gemini 4 Crew Debriefing, Part I, 1965 ## Page 1 DECLASSIFIED Authority: NW 91526 82 CLASSIF!CAT:ON CHANGE o_ _ __ I By authority of--~4,...L.11.1-...___.~~L--L-....t.-e=---1 hanged by U~1:i:.~1 LDate 1973 38 42, /0 0 / /4- PRELIMINARY GT- 4 FLIGHT CREW DEBRIEFING TRANSCRIPI' PART I Prepared By Spacecraft Operat ions Branch Flight Crew Support Division June 16 , 1965 This material contains information affecting the national defense of the United States within the meaning of the Espionage Laws , Title 18 . U. S . C Section 793 and 794 , the transmission or revel a ­ tion of which in any manner to an unaut horized person is prohi bi ted by law . f Group 4: Downgr ade at 3 year intervals I Declassified after 12 years NOTICE: This document may be exempt from public disclosure under the Freedom of lnfor• rnation Act (5 U.S.C. 552). Requests for Its ra• lec1~e to persons outside the U. S. Government should be handled under the provisions of NASA Polley Cir-ecti11e 1382.2, ## Page 2 _No embedded text extracted._ ## Page 3 COI\JFIDENTIAt PREFACE This preliminary transcript was made from voice tape recordings of the GT-4 flight crew debriefing conducted aboard the recovery ship, the USS Wasp , on June 9, 1965 . Although all the material contained in this transcript has been edited, the urgent need for the preliminary transcript by mission analysis personnel precluded a thorough editorial review prior to its publication. Errors in this transcript will be corrected as soon as possible and an official transcript will be published at a later date. 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 June 23, 1965. It will cover systems operations, operational checks, visual sightings, experiments , pre-mission planning, mission control, and training. ## Page 4 _No embedded text extracted._ ## Page 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS Paragraph Page Number 1. 0 COUNTDOWN 1 . 1 Crew Insertion . ... ................... . . . .. . 1 1. 2 Cornmlll1ications . . . . . ............... .. ... . .. .. 2 1. 3 Crew Participation and Countdown .... .............. -..6 1.4 Comfor t . ....................... . .7 1. 5 Environmental Control System .................... ' ..... . ,9 1. 6 Sounds ...... . .... 11 1 . 7 Vibrations .. . . ... 13 1. 8 Visual .. . ....... .. . . ... 13 1.9 Crew Station Controls and Displays .1 5 2. 0 POWERED FLIGHT 2. 1 Lift- Off Cues ....................... 17 2. 2 Roll Program 2. 3 Pitch Program ... . ..... 19 2. 4 Aerodynamics .... . 20 • • M • • 2. 5 Environmental Control System . .... "" ............... 20 2. 6 Maximum g ....... . ....... 21 2. 7 Windshear ...... . . . ...... 21 2. 8 DCS Update ........................ • • • • • • • M. • 22 2. 9 Engine 1 Operation ..... . 22 2. 10 Engine 2 Status .. . .23 2.11 Accel eration g's .. . . ........ 2 3 2. 12 BECO ........ . ...... . . ........ 24 2. 13 Staging . . . ...... . .. .................... 25 2. 14 Engine 2 Ignition . .. 25 2. 15 RGS Initiate .... . ... 26 2. 16 GO/NO GO . ............. . ... .... ...... .... . .. 28 2.17 Systems Status ........ . ' .... . ..... 28 2 . 18 Acceleration ................... . . .. .. 31 2.19 SECO. ....... . ...................... . .... 31 2. 20 Steering ....................................... . . . .... 32 3.0 INSERTION 3.1 Post- S.EDO •... 34 3.2 SECO + 20 Seconds ................ .. 35 3.3 Insertion Activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 ORBITAL FLIGHT 4. 1 Sta ti on- Keeping ....... .... .. ......... . .......... ... 50 4.2 Extravehicular Activities ............ . . ......... - .. 87 ## Page 6 _No embedded text extracted._ ## Page 7 Ot her Orbital Opera tions ..... ~86 Preretro Preparations ... ......... ..... 250 5 .0 REI'ROFIRE 5.1 T - 36 Events ... . . . ............ 259 5. 2 ~ - 22 Events .. . . ... 260 5. 3 :5:i- 13 Events ... 260 5.4 :5:i- 12 Event s ... . .. 26 1 5. 5 !R- 5 Events .. . ........ . . ... 265 5. 6 ~R: 1 ~eennttss • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • .... 270 5. 7 iir.: 0 .c, v •••••••••••••••••••• .... 273 5 . 8 Ret r opack Jettison ........... . . ... 280 5. 9 Communicat i ons ... . ........... . .••• 281 6. 0 REENTRY 6. 1 Reentr y Parameter Update .•••• 282 6. 2 400 K .................. . . .... 282 6. 3 0. 4 g ................ . . . .. 284 6.4 Accelera tion Profile ..... 290 6. 5 Spacec raft Contr ol ........ . .... 296 6. 6 100 000 Feet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ....... . ...... 296 6. 7 50 000 Feet ............. . .. •.. 299 6. 8 Main Chute Deployment . . . ...... 302 6. 9 CommUJ1ications . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . .... 303 6.1 0 Singl e- Point Rel ease .... . ........... . .... 305 6. 11 Pos t main Checkli st Items ......... ·• ....... 306 1.0 LANDI NG AND REDOVERY 7.1 Impact ...... . ... 310 7. 2 Checklists .. 313 7. 3 Communi ca tions ... ... 314 7.4 Systems Configuration ..................... 316 7. 5 Spacecraft Sta tus ...... . .... . . ............ 320 7.6 Post- Landing Activiti es ..... . . ............... 325 7. 7 C·omfort ............... . . .. . .. .... ... 325 7. 8 Recovery For ce Personnel .. 326 7.9 Egress ......... . .. . . . 327 7. 10 Survival Gea r ..... . ...• 328 7. 11 Crew Pi ckup ......... . . ....... 328 ## Page 8 _No embedded text extracted._ ## Page 9 CO ►~FIDE►~TIAb. 1.0 COUNTDOWN 1.1 Crew Insertion White The only problem during insertion was that I fogged up again in my suit before we got the fans on. I think I'm just going to always fog up in that suit of mine. We turned the fans on quick, but with the visors closed it doesn't go out. McDivitt We did have a problem with crew insertion on the Wet Mock and I think we had that probably pretty well taken care of. They put us on the suit loops and didn't turn the fans on. Normally you wait for a clearance from the 1:t>acecraft Test Conductor before you throw any switches. Well, after we almost "died" of carbon dioxide poison­ ing during this +,est~ we got this matter clarified. As soon as we got in the spacecraft and one of us was on the suit loop, we would go ahead and cut the switches on to put us on two fans. We did this during insertion in the Wet Mock. It really went well. White We really went for a long time in Wet Mock. I was beginning to wonder if I was going to have to open my visor. I was really uncomfortable. COt74 FIDEt~TIAsb- ## Page 10 2 McDivitt But everything worked out okay on this one . White Yes. McDivitt The timing was excellent , I thought . I didn't think we had any prob l em at all . White No. I don ' t believe they missed a stroke on the insertion. 1 . 2 Communications White I think the communications were pretty well worked out, Jim? McDivitt Right . One thing, the last three minutes or four minutes, we got a little confused about who was talking to who . I was getting the Spacecraft Test CJnductor , the Booster Test CJnductor and the CAP COM at the same time . White We got a split count , too, on lif't--off. McDivitt The f irst three or four minutes I was hearing the B)os ter Tast C?nductor . I heard what was going on on his loop , and I was listening to him get checks in f r om all of the guys . I really wasn ' t getting a clue a s to what was going on . I was supposed to be getting the booster clues from the test conductor . I was supposed to find out when the engines were going to gimbal and when they -€9·NFl9E~TIA;t ## Page 11 COl>J~IDENIIA~ 3 were going to open the prevalves and stuff. I wasn't getting it from him . We were getting a lot of other information that made a lot of sense to the Booster Test C :>nductor, but not an awful lot to us . There were cal l - outs l ikeVSequence 05003 complete." Well, thi s just didn' t mean any­ thing to us . On top of this we had the Spacecraft ~es t Conductor calling out the times , and super­ imposed on all of this was Al Shephard , the Cape CAP COM , calling out events that he was reading off that went on at certain specified times . He called out','Stage 1 prevalves Vand we could hear the fue l gushing downstairs and the whole booster rumbling. He called out ','Stage 2 prevalves','and you could hear the same thing all over again. I thought t hat was a lot more meaningful than the test conductor comments. White I think that was wrong, the way they were doing it . I think we weren't supposed to be on any loop except CAP COM at that time . McDivitt Well, I think what happened was that we got this thing over-coordinated. Al was going to give us all this information, but then as a result of GT-3, (Gus and Jolm said they didn ' t get enough -t:ON FI0 Er\JTl~L ## Page 12 4 r<3 e II TI Rt information about the boosters) they put this in­ formation on the test conductor ' s loop too . We ha.d too many guys talking . I think if just CAP COM talked from thr ee minutes on down we would be all right . White This is the way I thought it was going to happen, and then from three minutes on down it really got busy with the yak , yak, yak of everybody talking . McDivitt I don't lmow whether we got off the Booster ~st C)nductor's loop or not, but at final countdown , Al gave me 2 minutes , 1 1/2, 1, 30 , 20 , 10 , 9 , 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 , 1 . I got a similar count from the Spacecraft Test C~nductor but it turned 01 ·. t that they were a second out of sequence on the countdown and Al was giving me 10 and our Spacecraft Test Conductor was giving me 9. So it went ten- nine , nine - eight, eight - seven . They were at the same t ime . All I knew was that we were getting close to engine ignition and then it started . So , we got a little over-communicated there . I think t hey kept us adequately informed on the hold . As a matter of fact , I ' d say we got over- informed there at the end . We had too many guys keeping us informed and I t hink the pendulum ,~ 7 did. McDivitt That's an excellent point. The flight crew's participation should be the final count, not the midcount and precount. It doesn't tire the prime crew out doing a lot of chores that they don't really have to do. I think this is a good pro­ cedure. 1.4 Comfor t White Initially, the first 20 or 30 minutes, I was squirming around and I felt a little uncomfor­ table. But after I had been in for 30 or 40 minutes I didn't feel there was a real restric­ tion on staying for several more hours. I would have been very disappointed if they had said, "Well you have been in there long enough and we will work on this gantry and try it again tomor­ row." I would have been happy to stay there several more hours while they fixed the gantry instead of pulling me out. After an hour and 40 minutes,which is the end of the normal countdown,I didn't feel uncomfortable. We sat in the simulator and were a lot more un­ comfortable than this. I didn't feel uncomfor­ table. I had a chance to take a couple of little CO ► 4FIDE~~TIA~ ## Page 16 8 COl'IFIDE~4TIAt naps . I noticed Jim was napping too . McDivitt Yes . I concur with F.d, although I don't want to get carried overboard. We shouldn't scrub due to crew fatigue . White I think it is up to the crew. If the crew is un­ comfortable they should come down. But I don't think he should say, "Okay, two hours and 30 minutes . You cut this off. ", because it is an operational procedure. McDivitt When I first got assigned to the crew I always fe l t one of the toughest things to do would be laying back for an hour and 40 minutes or so prior to launch . The time we spent in the simu­ lator laying on our back, I thought to be a very uncomfortable position. As we went through all the training and testing at McDonald , and again at the Cape , ;ny back got more callouses on it. I got used to laying with my feet over my head . At launch time I wasn't a bit tired from laying on my back . White This is brought out in one of our last simulations , where we ran the whole four hour simulation and we forgot to have them tilt us up to 30 degrees. We just got used to running that way, COl"I P"te E~~Tl,\l ## Page 17 €Otr4FIDEttftAl 9 McDivi tt That ' s right, I just don't think we should scrub the flight because of fatigue.I don ' t think we should do that. We weren ' t approaching this point. White We had a long way to go. 1 . 5 Environmental Control System McDivitt I think we ought to get this water management panel squared away and everybody figure out what we are supposed to do with those switches. I don ' t think we should be arguing about where the switches are supposed to be on the launch pad. If I hadn't asked somebody where the waste manage­ ment switches should be we would have probably launched with it in · EVAPORATOR. I knew that i t wasn't supposed to be in the evaporator . At one of the ten thousand briefings we got on it, we were told it shouldn't be there . We ought to get· this kind of stuff squared away before launch day. Thirty minutes before lift-off we were arguing about where that switch was supposed to be. White I wasn't confident that they knew where they wanted that switch to be. McDivitt Well, I didn ' t think we should have it in the eva­ porator. So, I think that water panel could have cost as much as a wee~s slip on our launch because coNFIDENTIAt- ## Page 18 10 €01'1FIE>Et Et-q ftAt ## Page 19 11 White I was convinced of that, too, after the mix-up in putting all the water in the lithium hydroxide tan.ks. McDivitt There would have been about a 30 minute four-day mission. McDivitt The people that built the thing don't know how it is supposed to go . They had better decide this and let us know. I felt that George Roe at the Cape knew what was going on except the Cape personnel got the valves in the wrong position and almost lost the lithium hydroxide canister full of water with no water in the tanks. I ' m not pointing a finger at George Roe • I think he' ·s pret.ty knowledgeable about the system.. Maybe somebody just wasn't following directions. But somebody ought to find out about the water management system and make it clear to everybody how it is supposed to be operated. 1.6 Sounds McDivitt You can hear the prevalve~ both first and second s tages. The prevalves and the fluid gushing are very loud noises comparable to the engine gim-- baling. I wasn't really aware that they were ~ going to be that loud. C-0t~FIDf~qflAb ## Page 20 12 'COI\IFIDE~◄ llAl White I got that feeling when I read Gus and John ' s debriefing . McDivitt Did you? I didn't . I got the impression that it was going to be a much quieter noise . White Well, the whole noise level of the engine girnbal­ ing was louder than I thought it was going to be. It surprised me . McDivitt Yes . Engine gimbaling was much louder than I heard before . We heard this during Wet Mock and during precount and at midcount. You can hear those engines gimbal around; they really shake t he spacecraft . But, I really wasn't prepared for the big noise that the prevalves make, and such a long noise as that fuel gushed down to the bottom. I guess that was what it was. I didn't like t he sounds and vibrations we got when they raised and lowered the gantry. White It shook the whole spacecraft . McDivitt It shook the whole spacecraft--did you notice how it never came up straight? The spacecraft was supposed to line up kind of like this and then wham! I had visions of them knocking us off and laying us flat on the ground before we were launched , co~,Fl0Et'4TIAI: ## Page 21 cor:,-~FIDEl'~TIA I 13 1 , 7 Vibrations White Those are closely associated with the sounds. McDivitt Yes . I think that the engine gimbaling makes a tremendous vibration in the spacecraft and pre­ valves on opening and make a tremendous vibration. The gantry going back and forth vibrated the spacecraft. I don ' t think there is anything else , do you? White No. 1,8 Visual White Well, you can sure see the gantry lower and the whi te room disappear. That is about all you can see besides the sky. McDivitt That's pretty impressive. That's when I sort of got excited,when the gantry went down. That ' s a new realm. White I thought they were going to launch me. McDivitt You're sitting there by yourself then, instead of all those people milling around. I do want to make one other comment on this visual thing . We did Wet Mock about one or two o'clock in the afternoon. The sun was shining right in the window, almost straight down, such that the sun came across my visor from about just at the GOt~FIDEMTIM ## Page 22 14 t:Ol-1TJAL ## Page 27 19 things go. White I agree with you. I knew we weren ' t going to hold it when that lift-off went. 2·. 2 Ro ll Program McDivitt Roll program came in at ten seconds just like it was supposed to. I t was smooth, and it was just the way it was planned, on at ten seconds and went out at twenty seconds. Could you see it roll out the window? White You can see everything out the window, I think. McDivitt You can probably tell by the way the sun rays are moving, can't you? White Yes, by change in lighting. The right seat has a better view. You have to wa tch the guages so closely. McDivitt I didn ' t even look out the window. White I know you didn't. 2. 3 Pitch Program McDivitt Pitch program started just like it was supposed to, at twenty three seconds. Pitched over the proper amount, the pitch needles looked like they were hanging in there all the way. White You could see the booster pitch definitely, and that was mainly due to a change in the lighting. ## Page 28 20 co~~FIDE~~TIAt: 2 ,4 Aerodynamics McDivitt We were getting aerodynamic noise, which built up to max q . We got some pretty good vibrations at max q . White That's where I had the most vibrations . It was just shaking like this . McDivitt It was vibrating and noisy. White That was the loudest noise we received the whole flight. McDivitt Right after max q it got very qui et . White This is where I had the most vibrations . There were more than I expected. McDivitt Yes, me too. You can ' t simulate this in a simula­ tor . You get more vibrations than you do noise . The only thing they have in the simulator is noise, they don't have vibrations . It was pretty loud and the spacecraft was actually shaking around a lot. It was really vibrating. White Yes, it was . More than I expected . McDivitt The whole thing was really going at it . Almost like a F-80 or a T-33 at a.bout 0.8 Mach. Whi te Very good analogy . 2. 5 Environmental Control System White The cabin started venting shortly after lift-off ~O~◄ FltJEf~ 11;) El>fftAL ## Page 49 41 pletely intact. There was nothing wrong . McDivitt Okay. Let ' s try to follow this insertion activi­ ties list here . I jettisoned the fairings , as I said , as soon as I started turning around . Then Ed went through the checklist for us . After I fired the fairings I turned off the BIA Switch and the retro rockets when he called. I was probably doing this before Ed called, wasn ' t I? White We did things just like we had been doing them on the simulator . We don't just take a checklist and run down it item for item because there ' re things you have to be doing , and it just doesn ' t go in a sequence like that . I realized this was the way it was going to go, and I actually took a pencil and checked items off. If you did an item I checked it off, and if you didn't I left it un­ checked and we got it later. You just can ' t ex- pect to run down the checklist item for item because you ' re not ready to unstow your life vest or to get up out of your seat belt. You don 't do that for some time . I think the logic on the check- list we have here is a very good sequence--. McDivitt We reviewed that checklist 50 times. That's 00 tq ftf)ENftA-t- ## Page 50 42 corITIAL ## Page 53 .-CQ~qfl9tNTIAL 45 White That' s correct . I could put yours in fairly easy. McDivitt That's right . I think that when you turn towards the center of the spacecraft , you end up with more room than if you turned to the outside . You can ' t see a thing if you are turning toward the outside . White This is probably covered later, but my hose lengths were not long enough to permit me to turn all the way around , I knew this when we went through We ight and Balance . I knew my hoses were not long enough but it was too late , as far as I was concerned, t o change them at that ti~ . But, I couldn't see the holes on my side to insert the drogue pin. I couldn ' t see the holes for your drogue pin either, but I could get a better view of them over there so I knew approximately where t o put the pin , I think in all respects the drogue pins are not satisfactory. You just can't see them ; the pins are incorrect, the holes are in­ correct, and I think we can certainly do better with them . McDivitt I think what Ed is saying is that it 's lousy. White That's right. In two letter words, it stinks ! This is the way the batteries were reading out when I checked them at insertion. And this is what CO ► 4FIDE~~rft"AI: ## Page 54 €O ►~FIDEt4Tl~L I had suspected they were doing when we launched-­ why we had unbal anced stack readings . 1-A read 6 amps, 1-B read 10 , 1-C read 11. This accounts for your high reading on Stack 1. 2-A was 6, 2-B was 6, , and 2-C was 6 . . Ttis was the way they were reading. I ran through a check on them when we were actually in the booster phase. So that is why I felt the reading wasn ' t bad. They were both reading about 23 1/2 or 24 volts . They looked pretty good. I got my 2-1 update. I got the t:N of 167, 6T of 3+35, and GMT to retro command of 14 48 34. I have the other times too. The time to 400 000 was 2+18, as read up to me and the time to reverse bank angle was 8+47. This is what we wrote down . This is one time I remember now when I was a little irritated, because they gave times to us in a manner in which I hadn ' t wanted them to e They were supposed to give elapsed time but they gave it to us in GMT time for our retro. We had asked them to give it to us in elapsed, They came right back up and gave it to us both ways. I remember writing it down twice, on the elapsed time of 01 32 35. I can see why they did it because it ## Page 55 CONFtf>E~ftAi. 47 was two minutes past one hour 30 minutes, and I guess they weren't sure exactly what we wanted. So they gave it to us in GMT and elapsed time also . But that is the information we received, as far as our 2-1 area was concerned. McDivitt I think Ed had better cover unstowage. I didn't unstow anything. I was just trying to stick with the booster at that time. White The first thing I got into was my right-hand stowage compartment and I unstowed the blood pressure bulb. Then I started into the center section to get at the camera . The first thing I wanted to get out was the Hasselblad and the 16 mm. I was dying to get a picture of that booster. So , I unstowed the Hasselblad and got a good back on it and the 16 mm camera. I didn't unstow the urine nozzle as the flight plan had called. We both had decided we were going to use our launch­ day urine bags as long as we could, and we had hoped to use them right through the ENA. As it turned out, we did. That was about all I unstowed at this time. I unstowed the cameras, the blood pressure bulb and also got out the film cartridges and the tape cartridges. I put them on the side CONFIDENTIAb ## Page 56 48 COt'4FI0EN-l+M. of the foot well , where I planned to keep them, so that we could keep a good tape cartridge available. ## Page 57 ---G0N F-40 ENTIA L_, 49 4. 0 ORBITAL FLIGHT McDivitt I think that the orbital flight should be broken down into some very distinct sequences . I think there are really three of these . The first one is about the first three or four orbi ts where we were trying to stay with the booster, where we di d the FNA and where we finally got back in. The time that we finally got the spacecraft depressur­ ized ends one phase of the mission. The next phase or sequence of the things that come along is really the second phase . This is the middle 50 orbits or so , where we did the experiments and where we did the flight plan in a highly modified manner . We did the flight plan we started out to do . And the last phase or series of sequences wa s the ~et ro- prepa ration , r etrofire and the reentry . The retro- preparation was actually another distinct phase of the mission . I think that we ought to divide it up into those three phases-- the station-keeping and FNA as Stage 1 , general orbit as Stage 2, and retro- preparation and reentry as Stage 3. So I think we should CONFID ~~:rt Al ## Page 58 50 ~-IE>ENTIA L- start in the orbital flight with the station­ keeping on the booster. I think that we should just pluck that thing out and follow it through in its entirety , and then come back and pick up these things like the thrusters , Control :fode Checks , Com Checks , and those things . 4 . 1 Station-Keeping McDivitt The station-keeping with the booster--Well, as I said earlier on the insertion phase , I started turning around as soon as I completed the forward thrusting. I jettisoned the nose fairings after about 30 or 40 degrees of yaw. I rolled right­ side-up and then I started yawing around to the left. We saw all kinds of debris floating around and we finally saw the booster back behind us. It was already in a peculiar attitude. As Ed men­ tioned , when we separated from the booster, it didn·• t really feel like we came off straight ahead . It seemed like we got knocked off to the side of the thing. The spacecraft-booster combination sort of bent in half at the separation plane . We yawed on around and saw the booster , and I thought it was around 400 feet back. Eli thought it was a little closer. -€0·N FIDE~L ## Page 59 £.ONfll)ENTIAf 51 White I would estimate it at between 200 and 250 feet. McDivitt Okay. We were in pretty good shape right then and I applied about five or six seconds of thrusting that should have come out around 5~ feet/second . I was in a hurry trying to get our separation velocity stopped, so I was thrusting. I had it in Rate Command . I pointed the space­ craft at the booster and started thrusting, and by the time I got the computer in the Catch- Up Mode and the Start Comp button on, I had already thrusted ' 2 or 3 -~ feet/second out and I counted up another · 3 feet/second on the IVI's . It looked like we were probably stopped, although I couldn't tell tlBt quickly. I knew I had as much f::.V in there as I had at separation, and possibly a little more, because I tried to hold the separation f::.V down to no more than •5 feet/second. We watched it for just a short time and then it was obvious that we hadn't stopped our separation velocity--our relative velocity--so we were still separating. So , I applied about ano- ther •• 3 or • 4 feet/second, which should have more than overcome the : 4 or · 5 feet/second I put in initially . It looked like we had stopped .CO NFlD-E-~ IlAL ## Page 60 52 then . Our relative velocity looked like it went to zero . Here, I thought, we were out around 500 or 600 feet. F.d thought we were: probably in closer than that. White Yes . I thought we were in a little clos er. McDivi tt I put in a tota l of around· 9 feet/second in the first minute and a half after we turned around . White I think we commented together on the speed with which the booster was going away ~om us . Right off the bat it looked like it wa.s- -it surprised me that it actually looked like it separated ·rrom us as fast as it really-- McDivitt It looked like it had a lot more velocity than the 4 or 5 J feet/second I added at t he separation. It looked to me , as an off- the- top- of:. my- head-guess , that something in the spacecra ft separation thing had really built up a lot of relative velocity between the booster and the spacecraft . I don't know why or how. Al so , it looked like we weren ' t inplane anymore . It was actual l y out-of- plane so that we had an out - of­ plane rela tive velocity that I took out . I pointed at the booster because , obviously , if --EONffOfNTt~t. ## Page 61 €0NftDEM11:At~ 53 you're separating away from something, whichever way you ' re going, if you point at the thing and if you t hrust in that direction you are to take out your relative velocity in all planes . So , it looked like the thing was off to the left or to the south of our orbital track by a couple hundred feet and it was going down rapidly . Losing altitude. After I thrusted this second time, I knew I had more than enough velocity, much more than I needed to kill off the 5 feet/second we'd added . I watched it and it looked like it wasn ' t going away from us anymore. It looked like our relative velocities had stopped. I wanted to ·· --- get the platform alined somewhat in case we did have to come down in the 2~1. We really hadn't had much chance to check over the spacecraft yet. So I quickly went to as close to zero-zero- zero as I could get . I used the zero yaw and the zero roll off the ball and I went to a pitch at t i tude that looked like it was about zero and tried to get the ball to aline to zero-zero- zero . At that time the booster was mostly behind us--mostly back toward the Cape from us--back behind us with respect to our velocity back there . It iwas in the ## Page 62 54 fNT-l;4h sparkles everywhere . And it looked like almost a starlit sky, but it just didn't quite look right to me ; it looked like an artificial star- lit sky . It looked like some of these star dis­ plays they have created for us . And I looked over at Jim and asked him if he was seeing this and about the same time I noticed that he had nothing but dayl ight out his window. This was the first time that I had the daylight- dark experience of one guy looking into pitch black night and the other guy looking into a complete daylight window over there . Jim remarked rather disgustedly to me, "We are pointed straight at the ground!" About the same time I realized I was looking out at the fire flies everybody had s een, but probably in a much more profuse quantity than had ever been seen before , because we were getting a ll this fuel that was vaporizing into many , many particles from the booster and a little bit of a contribution from the spacecraft also . McDivitt And we were thrusting, too . I ' m sure we had all that junk on it from our launch. White That ' s right . And the whole area out in front of my view was just entirely taken up with these CONFIOENft-AL ## Page 67 little pa r t icles , and this was at sunset . As the flight progressed, each time we had a particle or a group of particles such as a urine dump r ight at sunset or sunrise, the sun would pick these particles up and they would act just like litt l e magnifying glasses and make very bright spots. This is exactly what happened . Did you ever s ee that then? I think you were more in the daylight side . McDivitt No . I was on the daylight side . I didn't see what you were talking about. White It was really something. The whole sky within my view was covered with these little particles- ­ thousands of them . There was obviously a great deal of that stuff in the air all around . McDivitt As soon as we got turned around I could see trat t he lights were flashing on the booster, and Ed saw them , too. It was pretty apparent . I cal l ed out r i ght away to the gruund that the lights were working . I don't know if they understood what I was talking about or not. I also called out shortly after we came off the booster and we saw it,that it didn't look like we were going to be able to touch it .. because of the high rotational ## Page 68 60 CO·N·F~DENTIM rates that we already had . We were into darkness by the time that we got turned around, and I had thrusted just two or three times at the booster . We were still quite far above it--I would guess now on the order of 2000 feet or more and it was still dropping away from us rapidly; I had already used about 25 or 30 feet/second to get toward the booster. I knew I had to catch it during the night time because when we came out of the dark­ ness on the next pass, we had to be next to it , because we were supposed to take some photos of it around that time . So I thrusted some more right at the booster trying to just overcome orbital mechanics with brute force . It was too l ate to start playing fancy games with the orbital mechan­ ics . Finally, I got us down to what I considered a good position , and this was prior to Carnarvon, I believe . Remember when we finally got it on the horizon? White It looked like it had finally stopped . McDivitt The relative velocity had finally stopped. And let me now make a general comment about what I thought of the lights on it . We had two lights on the booster that flashed and they were diametrically CO~Fl0E~TtAL ## Page 69 €01~FtDcNfJA~ 61 opposed on the center of the booster . And when the booster was in such a manner that I could see both of the lights, I could tell relative rates and I had an idea of how far away I was . Did you find this to be true too, Ed , or not? White Well , I can ' t honestly say I was looking at it with that feeling . McDivitt Okay . Well , what I am saying is that it was difficult-- White I want to hear what you are going to say. I 'm not sure what you ' re saying yet , McDivitt It was difficult to tell how far I was away from it , at best , but when I had the booster in such a position that I could see both lights at the same time , I could tell by the distance between the lights whether I was close or far . White Okay . I agree with that . McDivitt And when I could see these lights flashing over a period of time , I could tell whether the distance between them was getting larger or smaller so that I knew i f I was closing or not . Unfortunately , becaus e the booster was tumbling in this scre,ry manner, I couldn't maneuver around ~he booster because it was tumbling so fast ; I was just trying CONFtDENftt\L ## Page 70 62 to get close to it and not even maneuver--not to pick specific positions . All I wanted to do was just get close enough so I wouldn ' t lose it. When I could see these two lights, I had a pretty good impression of whether I was closing or opening; for a long part of the early part of the mission in the night time it looked like we were holding our own, and then we finally started closing with it . I finally worked it down where we were at the same level , All this time I had been above the booster. I worked dovm until I was at the same altitude with it ; at least it was on the horizon . I felt that by then I had gotten the thing under control and we stood a pretty good chance of still coming out on the daylight side with the booster. I can't tell you what the range was . It looked to me like I had worked the range back dovm (it had been opening up as · we went into darkness)-- to 2000 or 3000 feet again--probably around 2000 feet . It might even have been as low as 1000 feet . It could have been lower than that . At one time I got the impression that we were quite close to it . White Yes . You were wondering whether you should retro­ grade away from it . 6ONFt01:M"flAL ## Page 71 McDivitt It looked to me like we could have gotten as close as 200 feet . It was extremely difficult to tell how close we were. What's your guees , Ed? Just pick a number. White I wouldn't say that close . I 'd say you ' re more in the ball park in the neighborhood of 700 to 1000 feet. McDivitt Okay. White You could be magnitudes off. McDivi tt Before we got to Carnarvon, I remember , we were in reasonably good shape , because I had finally gotten down to the booster. I felt if I could just keep it down near the booster we would be all right . Then it looked to me l ike we were closing rather rapidly. So I thought we were going to get next to it and then we were going to be all right. 'I'he reason I felt this was because I could see the two lights . It must have been rotating in such a manner that I could see the two lights . Almost every fifth or tenth time they blinked I could see them . I could see two of them . So I knew by the distance that we were in quite close and everything looked pretty good then . And then for a long , long, long period of time after that I never ## Page 72 saw two lights again . I don ' t lmow if you did or not . I kept looking and there was a single light and a single light and a single light, and I didn't lmow where I was with respect to the boos ­ ter . And then I started getting the impression without really seeing the double lights , I guess, that it was going away very rapidly . Maybe I did see two lights and I just don ' t remember it now. White My impression was that the light was getting fainter . McDivitt I think that must have been it . I think that must have been it. But all of a sudden I got the impression that it was leaving me at a rapid rate . I It wasn't that easy to see . During the few times that the booster was up against the sky back- I ground it was easy to see , but when it was down against a ground background, it was very difficult to see . I think it was just before we got to Car­ narvon that I felt we were in good shape . And then as we passed Carna rvon , I remember calling I could see the lights of the city. Well, during this period of time all of a sudden I thought it was starting to pull away again. So I started thrusting at it again . And I never really got the ~itAL ## Page 73 EONftE>ENllAL.. 65 double blink of the lights for a l ong , long, long time. And finally I thought I could see them blinking again, and they were a lmost a single light this time since they were so far away. And this occurred over a very short period of time . TRn minutes? Five minutes? White Yes . McEivitt Is that right? Whatever you think, Ed . White Yes . I fully agree wit} you. McDivitt So then I said to Ed, "I ~hink we are losing it ." So I started thrusting a t it again. All of a sudden it was apparent that the thing wasn't as close as it had been. So we started thrusting at it . White In fact, that was one time you said we had lost it, didn't you? McDivitt I said I think we have lost it . I had it in sight. I didn't saj that I had lost sight of it. White I thought you meant you had lost sight of it. McDivitt No. I still had it all the time. White But it wasn't getting any bigger. McDivitt I didn't have e:n:y idea in the world where we were . And I still couldn't really tell. Finally , we could see the sky starting to get a little gray ~NflDENTb\L ## Page 74 66 GOt\fPID Etft+A L and I thought at least we were going to get to see where t he t hing was. And all of a sudden the booster came out just like that, and you could see it . The lights disappeared and there was the booster. It was ·2 or 3 miles away, I'll bet . White You asked me there and I estimated 1 1/2 miles . McDivitt So , it had gotten that far away in such a short time, and it was down . I think what really gave me the clue that we were losing it again was that I had it on the horizon and it had sta~ted going down below us . White Right . It looked like it was about 30 degrees below -- McDivitt It started going down again . And I could see it was coming down below the horizon , so I knew that I wasn't right with it . But I wasn't really sure how far away I was so I did thrust a couple of times--a foot/second or so--to make sure I always had a closing velocity with it . And finally I got the thing down . It was down so that when it came out it wasn't directly below me ; it was out in front of me and down again . And like Eli said, I guess it was down about 30 degrees . White That's what I ' d estimate . ## Page 75 67 C-Oloblern. I Didn t you thL1k so? But you know we went back to reentry a n tenna, over Carna:::-vo:i one tine . WH got just as good r~cept i ::>:1 o.ff of i t that ti.me as we di.d any other ti-:ne . White I remember when you were rnak i.ne- yo·.1r Cornmuni catio:J.s Check. That wa.1 ·.-.r1hm I was ai:;leep. You were ,;h ecki :,1g the two and you endJT IA.L The Control Mode Check was a catch- as- catch­ can . You did unstow, the equip~ent that we were supposed to unstow . The bl ood pres sure bulb, the Hasselblad camera and its packs , a11d a 16 mm camera. During this time when I was chasing the booster , I did manage to get to reach back behind my seat and pull out the bracket for the 16 mm c amera. You tracked the booster while I smoothed the thi.ng ou t . White That I s right . McDivitt We didn ' t get out the urine nozz l e . How about the utility cord? Did you get out that fancy utility 0ord , the three- axis utility cord? White Yes, I knew where i t was. I didn't give it to you beca~se you didn ' t need it . McDivitt No , I didn ' t need it . That ' s right . As Ed said, we did not pressure check our suits a t 30 minutes like we were supposed to . McDivitt There ' s this little thing here that says meas11re all LV~ . All I did was put the co~puter in Catch- Up, hit the Start Comp button, and just l et the numbers fall where t hey would . At the time that we stopped chasing the booster around , I had about 60 f eet/ second in one window, C-O~ ◄ Ftf}EMTIAL ## Page 91 03 -€0Nf-U)ENT1Al 30 in another , and 30 in another. I never really ea..11e to a posi tio:1. to try to ni1ll all these things out to see what the total 6V was . I was putting in the thrust with mostly the aft thrusters and the down-firing top thruster. I don't think I used the left and right thruster, at all. I don 1 t think I used the bottom thurster at all . There was no difficulty controlling a~y of them . I used the forward­ firing thrusters once or twice to try to slow dow:i, to take out total velocity. McDivitt Then there was the Accelero~eter Bias Check which was another one of those things. I don't l know hon I let it get into the flight plan . White We both joked about that one , huh , Mac? We were really going to get an Accelerometer Check when we were trying to track the booster. McDivitt I was putting 1 6V ' s on the IVI 1 s at a rate of a foot per minute at least. We ended up with over a foot per minute, I think , over that period I 1 of time . We couldn t have checked anybody s accelerometer bias, so I just didn't even fool around with it . We were supposed- to take a blood pressure. Did you take that blood ~ F.10ENTIAL ## Page 92 84 OONFIDEN I I.A:L pressure , Ed? White Yes . McDivitt You did ta!t easier . What do you think? McDiv"a t t Tbat ' s right . White Particularly getti~g it out that center thing. You can just zip :hem o:.it of there with no probl 1Jra ;lt all. McD:ivi tt So, a~ about 1 : 30 we started to assHmble the gun . If you look at the checklist, yo:.i see that we probably gcit the gun assembled :Ln nothbg na.t . White It 1 s no problt:im to assemble the gun . McDivitt We started our eg:-ess preparations essentially on time . As a mattHr df fact , I think we evtm got star ted a little earlier. White Then, we weren ' t worrying abo-;.1t anythi11g else . McDivltt Then , we w:ren I t worrying abo·J."!; staying with the booster. We probably started it abo~t 1:35 or 1: 40 . Over the States we started our ~gress preparat io~. We went to our .Jther checklist . White You were o,•er Ascension , calling off the check­ list. McDivitt I sta::ted reading the checklist off to Ed and COl>IFJBEN+iN. ## Page 97 EO·MFIDENTIA't:- 89 we w1:nt through it . He unntowed evet'ything. Why don ' t you tell them what you did there, Ed? I just read the checklist off to you , and you went a.head and riid i.t. White Okey . I had to get bar.k .i.11":o the r"ight -h.md box, and I un:=i tow0d the item:, there . The first time I went back in there , I took the firs t items out, and I did :1 ot unstow the full II box . I rem,~mher I told you, It I s all comi.r1g out , Jim. I ' m gol11g to bring them all out on the 19.11yard. " Remember? McDivitt Right . White We'd tak~ them o~f piece by piece if we n eed it . At that tim,1 I pill lfld the wh0l,'! lanyard out and the cockpit was full of little bags . I was qu.ite happy that they had prevailed upon me to put a lanyard on all th is equipment . I had thought at one time that it woulri be mvt'd des iri-:l,bl ~ not to p,1t a lanya.rcl on . We 'd been wo:::-k.ing a lot in our sim11lations without the lanyard and it seemed pretty easy . But looking at it now, I highly recom..n~nd that eve r-ybody k,-lep that stuff on a l anyard . McDiv.i.tt We would have r eally had a mess if we ' d had all -€0NFl0ENflAt· -- ## Page 98 90 those thitJ.gs floating ar.ound . It was bad eno~gh as it was . Wnito Yes , eight or ten of those little bags , and I was glad they were all tied Jn to Jne string. I could con trol them in t hat manner . They were quite simple to U'lsn3.p . I thought the snap attachmP-nt made it p:::-etty easy to UtJ.stow , and selectively pick o~t the items that I wa~ ted . I unstowed the pouches that I needed, and then we g,)t ready to tak~ the long um'J il ical out . I h'ld a little difficulty . It toJk m~ about three trys to get it out . It ' s f airly big package to come through a small hole . It was a good thing th~t we had tak~n the Velcro off of the batch , beoause t here was no tendency for any th i. ng to hang up as w,~ remewed it . On the third try I got it out . McDivltt I thought yo~ did an extremely good jJb getting the bag ou~. You got it out a l ot quicker than TC'ai.nec in Houston or in the simlll ator at the Cape . Whi t e You didn ' t know it . It took m.1 th:::-ee tr.rs . McDivitt Wall , maybe it did , but it sure l:,okH i like it 1 CQtqffDfNTtAtl ## Page 99 C~Ptl)E~TIAL 91 camP. out a lot eaf-Jier. I thought you got it out in a big hurry . I didn ' t notice that it took yo:J. three trys . I saw you stat't, and then jllst a f-Jhort t.i.m,1 la7-er, it was out . White Well , it d:id come out pretty easy , and I think the storage was .satisfactory , bllt I ' d certainly reco1nm,1ricl thA.t noth.i "lg b ~) on ';ht1 outside to k~ep it from coming vllt. It's a real tough-- McDivltt Yes , we need the velcro off of there . We ' re pretty wd 1 sure of tha-~ . White The reGt of the ::iquipm•:111';- the " y" con:1ectors , the bag thA.t contained the "y" connectors , and the attachments for the chest pack , I handed to yot1 . I thi'lk you wi;c~ k:➔ep.L ,1g tra,)k of most of those things 1mtil the time I needed them . McDivitt Yes , I was . Waite The storage of the ventilation module froc:i the fioor came off pr~tty easily. That ' s when 1 started goi!'lg ahead ;md putting it all on . You read the checklist off to me. I had gone ahead. and done a few things anyhow . As you read them off I checkP.d them off to be sllre that I had done them all . I think we h-':l.d 4€0NflDENTIAb ## Page 100 92 cor ◄ FIE>f~IAL everything out without m~ch problem at all . I think it took •ls longer actually to p1lt it all together. . McDivitt That ' s right . It d id . We started going through the checklist here and putting the things on and W'3 started getting more and more rushed . We were supposed to s tar. t the E[,rress Preparation Checklist at abo:it 1:44 . We probsbly sta::-ted it at about 1: 35 or so . We started it about 10 minutes early, roughly , maybe five to 10 min1tes early. We were supposed to be ready to start the depressu r.a7,a­ tion at 2: 30 over Carnarvvn . White I think I could h.3,ve gone through ari:i l1ook2d ev8.rything all up , but I felt that we should go -:hc:-ough fairly close to the p~ocedure w1; had set up on the checklist. McDivitt That I s r igh t . White I think this slowed us down . McDivitt Well , we set tht, procedure up so tha~ when we finished wlth it, it would be right . I think this helter- sk8lter thing that we were being forced into was for the birds. So an Ne g0t farther al:mg , it beca;n,~ .:i.ppar,mt to nt, that eot~Ftl:>ENll-AL ## Page 101 ~ I DEN f ~kl111 93 the thing to do wo~ld be to stop . White Right . McDivltt Go aht-,acl with the assembly of the stuff . Why d-:m 1 t you cor.1:nP.n~ on that? White I I ve co;::rnt'.!nted in my Self Debr: ~efing aboc1t th,? equipment and the assembly of it . I thought thec-e was no d-i.fficul ty at all in conrn-,cti 1g the "y" connectord, the hoses, anj the chest pack . I thought the connection of th•e chest pack to 11\Y harness was a good o~e . With the velcro I could m•, we it in and -:)Ut wheneve.c I waa~ed to s:) th at I could mak~ '!\}' connec tiorrn on the i,il,?t side of the ECS hoses . It w.mt along pretty smoothl y , as a matter of fact . I think as we progressed along in it though , we I felt tha~; we hA.Cl r3ve.cythi'.'.lg d,me . I didn t rea.11.y feel that; w: hail 13verything done 1,n a thorough manner . And I think yo'J. had that sarnr~ feel i.ng. McDivlH That ' s right . Wnen W8 got to Kan:) or Tana1.,;1.r·Lve - ~I th::nk it was TananR:-'l. ve --I cal'led whoe ver I was talking to and sai:. t . Whit9 It wa,, Carr1arv0n . It was just before we McDivitt So , we postponed it until the next orbit . As a matter of fact , after that w~ j1rnt sat ther::! . We d idri I t dn a thi-ig for abor.1: 10 mi.nutes . I let Ed cool off a li.ttle bit . We were on two- EON~l(;)ENTIAL ## Page 104 96 fa'1 o;>eration ,q,-: the time. We j·.1st sat there and we were cooled o.! 'f . We went ~o,x1.d for White Okey . The.n as w~ wr:n '; back around , I asked yo,J. to go thro:;.gh the checklist ag-'3.in , a "'.ln. ·,m wen'; through item by item this time . McDivltt bi.11-:k to the beg-Lrming checkl i.st , the EgL·ess Prepa':.'ati:>n Checklist . We started at the top 0111; , and we dU. every step on it again . We verified e ve ry s tep to make s1u·e ,rn hr-tdn ' t left an;rthi--ig out . WhL te We actually went in ~d check8d t hi s time . Another thi ng ,m ha it . McDivitt We did the .&lit I ntegrity heck befo:ce we started the .Egt•e ss Pr~paration 0he.-;klist . That ' s when ·,.e did it , over the States . White I think we d-Ld thA.t just about the t .ime you decided to give up on the booster . We di1 the Suit In~egTi.t;y Check . Both suits checkHd ::>ut all right . I t we nt up to 8.5 and it leaked do~ to about 8 . 3 Qr som,,thing l i.kH that . McDivitt Same thing with mine . It went up to 8. 5 and laak1--?d down ju:1t a little bit . Not enough to ~e concerned about . White No . Oh , one thing that we d id do on that extra orbit that w~ went around -- I discon_~ected the .0epress 0ystem 1ind we Wf.: mt back nn the-- McDi vitt Oh , yes . We never e ·.ren got on the .;·_e press system, di.d we? White Yes , I be lieve w•~ were , but then we turned it off . We w~re already to depressurize and then wcj wimt back on the spacecraft ECS system, full, and ~ent through and reverified the whole checklist again . The onl y thi 1gs that I would (;6)N.f-lDENTIM • ## Page 106 98 I say we h~dn t done to ffi3" sati.sfacti.,_.,n t"le fi.r;;t time ,1as t:J check the inlet ann doing r 10 tn; 'lg ex•)ept pc,~par.ine for EVA, aJ1.11 we dldn ' t quite gHt thA job done . I ca11 ' t believe that we could ·'lA.ve poss ibly flown f o:-mation w:i. th the booster and taken pictures of it and all the other thi 'lgs t:i.at we had and even comH close to compl-? ting it . White Well , the way we wo11ld h'3.ve had to do it, would have been witho11t a checklist . I would h~va had to just go ahead :.md ~1:>ok c~verything •... p . I think tl'J could 111-w-3 do,w it satisfact)rily l-i C~~ftDEN-l+AL ## Page 107 EONfl0ENTIAL 99 this manner , but it wouldn ' t have been the way we would have wanted it . McDivitt Yes, that ' s right . I don't think that ' s the way it should be done . It was just too bad that we had a time limit on it , but when we did get rid of the booster, or the booster no longer became a part of the flight plan , then the time limit vanished. We found out that we really needed that extra orbit, or probably could have used another 20 minutes. White Yes. We went back. And I remember as we came over Carnarvon, we had about a 15 minute chat back and forth- kind of a rest period . We were all hooked up at that time , and that ' s the time we went on the ~epress flow, ready for the depressurization . I think they gave us a GO then for our EVA. McDivitt That ' s right . We depressurized the cabin and got down to 2 psi to check our blood pressure . We tried to put our blood pressure plugs in the blood pressure plug port and found out that we didn't have any blood pressure plugs on e ither- suits . This was quite a surpri se . An unpleasant one , I might add . Well , we dec i ded ## Page 108 100 that from our past experience and our knowledge of the suit that even if we did spring a leak in the blood pressure cuff the size hole that we had in the suit would not be catastrophic , and we decided to go ahead with the EVA. White It was within the·capability of the syst em we were using. McDivitt At Carnarvon we not onl y got the go- ahead to start t he depressurazation , we also got the go- ahead to open up the hatch , the go- ahead that we weren ' t supposed to get until Hawaii . So , - - .______ we went ahead and did that . White Yes . I ' m kind of curious of the whole time . We were out nearly an orbit , I think . We didn ' t get it closed back again till we got back around to Carnarvon . McDivitt We were in a whole orbit depressurized . White Yes , I don ' t think people quite realize that . McDivitt We ' ll remind them . As we got to the hatch opening t hi ng , we had our first difficulties with the hatch . The gain gear , I guess you want to call it--actually I call it the ratchet­ didn ' t want to engage into the UNLOCK position . ## Page 109 101 We fooled with it a f ew times a~d it f inally engaged in t he UID.iOCK position , and Ed was able to go ahead and start . White The first indication of trouble was when I unstowed the handle to open the hatch . The handle free ly moved up and dovm with no tension on it at all . I knew righ t away where the trouble was . It was up in that little spring on the gain pawl . So , I went up and manipulated it back and forth in hopes that I could break the lubrication loose in the spring to get it to work. We must have spent several minutes with t he hatch. I thought perhaps it might have been stuck in the manner that the hatch got stuck in t he Wet MOc k , where it just was stuck. You could ratchet it open , but the hatch itself wouldn ' t open. It was pretty apparent the trouble was in the gain pawl . I jimmied it back and for t h, and then I decided to go ahead and try the technique of actuating it in sequence with the hatch handle . If you actually replaced the operation of the spring with mechanically moving the gain pawl up and down, you can do the same work that the spring does . EONFtDENTIA~ ## Page 110 102 McDivitt Your fingers sort of take the place of the spring and drive this l ittle pawl home . White This is the first time we actually tried this in a suit . It requires you to press up with your left arm to get at the gain pawl, and at the same time hold yourself down . And I think l ater on t his was a source of some of our problems whi ch I brought out now so that we can find out later on. I f e l t it start to engage , and start to ratche t the lugs out . Jim also verified that they were coming open. I backed them off , and I remember Jim saying "Ooop ! Not so fast !", and at t hat time it popped . The hatch actually popped open , jumped open about 3 or 4 inches . McDivitt I was expecting the hatch t o come open with a bang. Although we had the cabin to vent and it had bled on down to where there was nothing indicated on the Cabin Pressure Gage , we still really had the repress valve on. He was bleeding right into the spacecraft . We never got down to a vacuum and even though we had a cabin pressure of only a tenth of a psi , we spread it over t he entire area of that hatch, OONFl0E~TV\L ## Page 111 103 and that puts a pretty good size forc e on it . I had a real tight hold on the hatch closing device , and when it popped open I was able to snub it . White It didn ' t really open with much force , did it? McDivitt Well, it did. It opened with a fai r amount . It popped and I couldn ' t stop it the first inch or so . Then , of course , as soon as it opened that much pressure bled off . I just sort of snubbed the thing to keep it from fly ing all the way open. Now if I hadn ' t been holding onto it, I don ' t think it would have gone open more than two or three feet . White This is another point too . There ' s more force on the hatch actuator than I thought . I didn ' t just flip the door open with my hand . I had to actually forcibly push it open , similar to the forc e with which I opened the hatch laying on my back under one ti g II . That ' s about the force that I had to put on the hatch to open it . McDivitt This extra force that we are talking about is due to the 0-rings they put in the pyres that are used for jettisoning the hatch . This is something that they put in just before the Ee-NFt0ENTIM. ## Page 112 104 OO~~FK:>fN--TIAL flight . Something that we 'd gone out to the spacecraft t o feel . We knew just about wh at t he force was , but it was pretty high . White Okay. At thi s time I had certain things that I had to accomplish . I had to mount the camera on the back of the adapter , and mount t he umbilical guar d on the edge of t he door . I elected, as I had pl anned , to go ahead and mount the camera f irst and then the umbilical guard . I mounted the camera and it went on without too much difficulty. The t hree little lugs on the bottom are a good mounting scheme . I think I would make a littl e eas ier engaging device for working out in a hard suit . I had familiarity with it , and it did lock up there all right . The umbilical guard for the umbi lic al on the side of the door took me a little longer to mount . Back to opening the hatch--I had the thermal gloves on when we were opening t he hatch , and because of the fine work I had to do with the little gain and the drive lugs up there , I had to remove the thermal gloves so thtt I could actually actuate those small l evers. I couldn ' t do them with any precision EOl'JFIDEN+JAL ## Page 113 G()NFIE>ENTIAt 105 with my gloved hand . So, I took the thermal gloves off at this time and I handed them to Jim. When I got back out I didn't notice any temperature extremes . I felt quite confident that there wouldn I t be any heat since we just came out of the dark side , so I decided to do the actual work in putting this equipment on with my plain pressure suit gloves . I had much more feel with them . Let me get back now to the umbilical guard on the door . I t went on pretty well . It took me a little longer and it took me four or five trys to get the little pin into the hole that actually snubbed the guard down on the door . I did something then that I hadn ' t planned to do . The bag had floated up and out of the spacecraft and now it was above the point where the hose was going through the umbilical guard . I had planned to keep it down inside . I left it there for two reasons : (1) I figured it was there already and I would have had to take the umbilical cord off again and scooted it back down , and (2) I also felt that Jim might have had a better view if it wasn't sitting right in front of him on the hose coming CONflDENTIA~ ## Page 114 106 up from th1~r ~press v ,1.lve . I elect ed to go ahead and leave the bag there . I t hen reported to Jim that I had everything all mounted and was ready to go . I had planned to take a short series of pictures. Since we had gotten out early, I had a little extra time at this time , so I went ahead and turned the outside EVA camera on . I took a short sequence of pictures that actually gives the egress up out of the seat . I kind of went back down and came out again so they would get an actual picture of it , and then I turned the camera off again . I mounted the camera and I turned it on while it was on the mount . I took a short sequence when I asked Jim to hand me my l eft thermal glove , which he did . I put the thermal glove on while the camera was running. I t urned back around . I wanted to be sure the camera was off , so I took it off the mount and I turned the camera off and actually visually took a look to see if the switch was off. McDivitt Did you lmock it off one time? I thought you said the camera f ell off . GO MF tf}ENftA L ## Page 115 107 €0tt,lflQEDlllA I spacecraft . I think you called me and said I was out of the spacecraft . McDivitt I called and told you that you wer e cl,3n.r . That ' s right . White And that ' s when I started firing the gw:i a"ld act~ally pr~pelled myself under the influence of the gun . I don ' t believe I ga ve any input into the spacecraf"t whm1 t 1,3ft that t Lne , did I? McDivit t No , you left as clea,1 as a whistle . White Later on , I gave you some pre tty big ones . McDivitt You were re~lly boun0ing arou~d then . White Now at the tjme, J l ef t entire ly under the influence of the gun avid it 0arried me right straight oat, a little higher tha"l I wanted to go . I wanted to ma:.~euver over to your side , but I maneuv•;r~d out of the spacecraft and forward ru1d pBrhaps a little higher· than I wanted to be. When I got out; to whst I estimate • I as p~obablyone- half or two-thirds the way out on the tether, I was out past the nose of ·t'ne spacec:::-clf t . I started a yaw to the left with the gun and that ' s when I reported th~t the gun r 8al1J worked quite well. I believe that I ## Page 119 111 ~ONFl01:~TtAT stopped that yaw, and I started t .1.·a.nsla:b.• 1-"' back toward the spacecraft . It was either on this translation or t~'1P. one following this that I got into a bit of a combination of a pi·tcl-i roll and the yaw together . I felt that I could have corrected it , but I knew tha. t i.t ww.~d h av0 ta.-·EN'fl7'L 113 whatever you want to 8all it, I wouldn't fire the thrusters . White You asked that already wnen I was out . McDivitt Yes . I asked you if you needed it and you said no . So , then I felt it would be better not to fire the thrusters , because you were drifting back up over the co~kpit . I could see that you were going up over us . I couldn ' t see back behind me , but I could see by the motions that you had when you went by me that yuu were going to continue on . I felt th~t it would be a lot safer if we just let the spacecraft drift unless it got into very high rates . I fired the jets a couple of times just to bo~k ,:,.ft the rates . I let it start drifting when y0u got on the tether so tha~ you wouldn 1 t get back there on top of one of those thrusters when I fired them . From abou-: the time? you ran out of fuel until you got back in I didn 1 t do mu-:::h attitude controlling. I did some . Everytime the rates got up pretty high, I 1 d knock them off . You were able to ma...~euver around the spacecraft when the spacecraft itself had rates of say plus or minus • 2 degrees/second in a <;9·M'FID ENTIAl ## Page 122 114 couple of the axes at the same time . Here again before the flight we discussed the axis system. Ed selected the spacecraft as his axis system. It didn ' t a:;:>pear that he was having a bit of trouble with i t . He was maneuvaring with respect to it , regar,lless of what the earth , sun , moon , a~d stars were doing . It was pretty ob\·i,..,us to me th:l.t was exactly what he was doing . White Well , when I came back the firs t tims to ·~he spacecraft with the gu-:r-- I had used the tether to bring me back-- I did go back up on the adapter area. This is the first time it had happened . I said , "All right . I ' m ~omL'1g back out again." This is one of the most impressive uses of the gun that I had . I started back out with that gun, and I decided that I would fire a pretty good burst too . I started back out with that g.m , a.~d I literally • f lew with the gun right down along the edge of the spacecraft , right out to the front o~ the nose , a..'1d out past the end of the nose . I then actually stopped myself with the gun . Tha t was easier than I thought . I must have been fairly tD~L ## Page 123 115 fortunate , because I must have f ired it right thro..igh my CG. I stopped out there and , if my memory serves me right , this is where I tried a couple of yaw maneuvers . I tried a couple of yaw and a co:..1.ple of pitch maneuvers , and then I started firing the gun to come back in . I think this was the time that the gun r an out . And I waa actually able to stop myself with it out there that second -';:irne too . The longest fi r ing time that I put on the gun was the one that I used to start over the door s up by the adi=tpter section . I started back out then . I probably fired it for a one second burst or something like that . I used small burst all the time . You could put a little burst in and the response was t r emendous . You could start a slow yaw or a slow pitch . It seemed to be a rather efficient way to operate . I would have liked to have had a thre~ f oot bottle out there-­ the bigger the better. It w~s quite easy to control . I f eel that with the gun there would be no dif ficul ty in maneuvering back to t he a.ft end of the spacecr:eif+ , and r.h;.s was exac tly what I did later oi-1 , j u st on the tether . I got CO~ff)EN"FIA~ ## Page 124 116 CONEJDtNI-l~ all the way back. So , I ran ou~ of air with the g~n ani I reported this to Jim . I didn ' t attempt to take al}Y p-Lotures while I was aotually maneuvering with the gun . The techniq·.1e th;,.t I used with the gun W 3.S tne te:.!h.aiq 1e ~hat we developed on the air- bearing platform. I kept my left hand out to the side, and the gun as close to my cente::- of grcrri ty as I could . I think l;hat the training I had ,)n the air- bearing tables was very representative , especially in yaw and pitch . I felt quite confident with the g.m in yaw a:u pitch , but I f elt a little l ess confident in roll . I f elt that I would have to use too mich of my fuel . I f elt that it wo~ld be a little more difficult to control and. I didn ' t ,,,ant to use my fuel to take out my roll combination with the yaw . We divided our plan so tha.t I would havd a part of it on the ma.YJ.euver and a part of it on the tether . I don't know how far along we were whP.n the gun ran out . McDivitt Right on schedule when the gun ran out . We planned f ollr minutes for the gun port ion of it . We were just abQut on schedule . GeN FID ENTIA-l ## Page 125 ..CE>-NFIDENTl~ l:- 117 White I bet we used a little more than four , because I think we came out earlier th'll1 we thought . Mc Divitt No , I sta~ted the event timer to time it . White Well, this is where m:r control difficulty I began . As soon as my gun ran out I wasn t able to control myself the way I co-..1ld with the gun . With that gun , I coi.lld decide to go to a part of a spacecraft and very confidently go . I think right no·,. that .1. wish that I ha:i given Jim t he gun ,u1d taken t he camera off , Nov, I was working on taking some pict.1res and "lorking on the tethe:r dynamics . I immediately realized what was wrong. I realized that our tether was mounted on a pl ane ohlique .to the angle in which I wanted to translate . I remem·i:cL' i'.c-•.1::n our air-bea:::-ing work that every·- time you got at an angle from the perpendicula-:7 where yom.· tether wafl r:iounted , it gave yo.1 a nice a::-cing trajectory back in t he opposite direction. You I re actuall y like a weight on the end of a str ing. If you push out in one direc;tion , and you ' re at 911 angle fron ~he perpendicular , when you reach the end of a tether , it neatly sends you in a long ar.c ba:k e6NFIDENrlAc-- ## Page 126 118 in ~he opposite dir ection. Each time this arc carried me right back to the top of the ad.9,ptec- , to th~ i;np ,.:;(' 1,;he s_pa~e(;raft , in fact toward the adapter section. One time I w11s so close to the t hrusters back there that I called • . J :i.;n I s,:u.•d , "Don I t f ire . a.nymor:; . ti , b eca.use I was right on the thrusters . I was even closer than that f oot and a hal f wh.ich I had noted to be tne leng!;1:1 of the thz-uster plumes , and I didn ' t want to sit on a firing thruster . °CONFIDENT'IAL ## Page 127 119 White We were discussing the EVA and I was si:1.ying that I spent approximately 70 percent of my time , it seemed , trying to get out of the area back a:1ove the spacecr aft in the adapter area . McDivitt Yes , you intended to go toward the position that was directly over the cockpit . You always arced passed it beca.11,•11~ y ::n W1'l ce coming from the front . White This was exa~ t ly rig'•rl. because that ' s exac Uy wher e my tether was connected . Chris had been very emphatic that he wanted me to stay out of this area , and I had agreed to stay out of there . I tell you , I was doing my level best to keep out but the tether dynamics just put me back there all the time . McDivi tt Let me inter ject something here. When we were talking about the control modes and how we were going to control the spacecraft , we decided on the Pulse Mode rather than the Horizon Scan Mode , or anything like th..,t . The Horizon Scan Mode would leave me free to use both hands to take pictures of you and that way I wouldn ' t have had to control the spacecraft . But since it CONFl0EN-'flAL~ ## Page 128 120 was an automatic mode and it fired whenever it felt like firing. It didn't give us any flexibil ­ ity, and . this is why I felt that the best mode to be in was Pulse , in case you did get back there . White That ' s exactly what happened . McDivitt I didn't have to worry about the thruster going off in your face . I didn't want the thrust ers to fire and they didn't fire because I didn't touch t hem . It was a wise choice . White I think this was good . When you look at it f r om a picture-taking viewpoint , it gave a wider spectrum of pictures. You got different views of the earth and the horizon . I ' m glad we weren 't held to a specific mode . McDivitt I think that the picture we did take or the attitude that we started out , which is shown i n the newspaper , is just about right . McDivitt I guess we banked over to the right, I don ' t know. White That must have been just as I came out . McDivitt I don't remember, but it had enough of the ground in the background so that it was certainly CO~FTDENT~L ## Page 129 ce,~F~f>ENsrlAL 121 worthwhile. White On one of my passes back to the adapter area I got so far back that I was about 3 or 4 feet from the adapter separation plane, perpendicular to it . It was rather jagged . There did appear to be some sharp edges but it really didn't look very imposing to me . I took a picture of it . That's one picture that I believe was good and should come out. McDivitt The trouble is it was probably set on infinity and you were up about 5 feet . White No , I set the camera to about 15 feet or so . It might be a little fuzzy because it was too close. White No, I didn ' t see the far side of the adapter . It didn't go all the way around . I think I could have pushed off and gotten back that far. McDivitt No . Better to s t ay away from it. White Well, I felt that if I got going I could h~ve swung all the way around and had my umbilical right on the edge, without anything to hold on to or any gun to control myself. This didn't seem like it was at all safe and I had told Chris that I wouldn ' t go behind the craft. So I didn ' t go back there . -e(:)'Nf ro ENrttrt ## Page 130 122 McDivitt That must have bee~ just about the time I told you to come back in . White No, I would estimate this was about two-thirds of the way and about this time I was after pictures. I knew this was a part of the flight plan that I had, in my mind , fulfilled satisfactorilly. So I tried to get some pictures and this is where I really impar ted some velocities, trying to get away from the spacecraft into a position so I could take a picture. I went out to the end of my tether cord quite a few times doing this . I seemed like every time I would be completely 180 degrees to the spacecraft . I'd have beautiful views of the ground but I couldn ' t see the spacecraft. It was a definite mistake to mount the camera on the gun . That made it very difficult to use the camera . I had to point not only the camera but the gun with the long thrusters mounted out on the little arms. I 'd want to take a picture of an object like t he spacecraft, • and there were too many loos~ items to get tangled up in and block the camera . I know my tie-down strap was floating loose . I had left that out intentionally so that I could ## Page 131 -CONFIBENf-1-M 123 get it later on anytime I had to pull my helmet down . Occasionally when I got in close to the spacecraft, the bag and strings associated ..,,-; th the bag were tangling up around the vicinity of the gun and the camera . And it seemed like the umbilical was right in front of the camera all the time . So , I think the pictures will verify that I was flicking my right arm quite a bit in the l atter part of the flight , trying to clear things out from in front of it to get a picture . Whenever I was in a position to get a picture it seemed like I was facing away from the spacecraft . I took a couple of shots in desper­ ation and I think I might have gotten a piece of the spacecr aft . But I never got the picture that I was after . I wanted to get a picture of Jim sitting in that spacecr aft, through the open hatch , with the whole spacecraft . I know that I didn ' t get that . In fact, as time went on I realized that I wasn ' t going to get much of a picture . I was trying everything I knew to get out there and get stabilized so that I could turn around and get a good picture . I just couldn't do this . This was at the time when I was looking ~F-tDEN+IAL ## Page 132 124 a little into the tether dy,1amics , and I actually kicked off from the spacecraft pretty hard . I remember Jim saying, "Hey, you're imparting 2 degrees/second rotational velocity to the space­ craft when you depart . " I was pushing the space­ craft quite vigorously . I wanted to push off at an angle of about 30 to 40 degrees to the surface of the spacecraft , And anytime I pushed off from the surface of the spacecraft , my main ve locity was perpendicular to the surface . It shot me straight out perpendicular to where the tether was attached . Again , this wasn' t in the position that Jim could take a picture of me, and it wasn't too good a position for myself . I usually ended up facing away from the spacecraft . McDivitt Let me interject something here . In desperation I took the Hasselblad camera and stuck it over out through :Ed's open hatch , and asked him if he could see the camera and if he could tell me which way to point it. He couldn ' t see the camera so he never really did tell me which way to point it . White No . This was the time that ~rou said , "Hey, get in front of my windo;,.· ." It just so happened that co~~FtDENTl:AL ## Page 133 125 I was right up close to the spacecraft and that's when I came over. Do you remember me coming over and actually looking about a foot from your window, Jim? McDivitt Yes . White Looking right at you. McDivitt Yes, I think that was the time the movie camera wasn't going and I was fooling around with it , trying to make sure that it was running . White Oh, that woul d have been a very interesting picture. McDivitt I'm not sure it was going, Ed , ~ecause, as you know, we had so much trouble making the left hand one run . We had that t rouble throughout the remainder of the flight. You pushed a switch over and it seemed to run so:netimes, but sometimes it wouldn't. I kept worrying about whether or not it was running so, I would grab a hold of it to see if I could feel it clicking over. I switched the ON-OFF switch on a couple of times to make sure I could tell the change in the feel of it. I'm afraid this time is one of the times that I didn't have the camera going, because I was trying to make sure that it was !eeNFl0ENTIAb-- ## Page 134 126 c»Ot\JFID l:t'4TIAL going . I ' m not positive . I hope I got :,he picture but I ' m not sure about it. White That was the time that I came right in , and I couldn ' t have been more than a foo t from your window , looking in . I could actual ly see you sitting there . McDivitt That 's pr;.,bab ly :,..-hen you put a mark on my window . White I think the way I did that--I could actually see you in there and I pushed away with :ny hands a litt le bit . I think this was t he time t hat eHher my arm or my shoulder contacted the upper part of your window and you called me a "dirty dog" because I had messed your window up . You know , as you look back in retrospect , I wish you ' d handed me a kleenex and I wish I'd cleaned up the outside of those two windows . I think we could have done it . McDivitt Yes. We'd have never gotten to the kleenex at t hat time , but I think we might have done some­ thing about it . Whi te I think I might have but we might have smeared them so irrepairably that it might have -- . McDivitt That ' s r ieht . When you looked a t that wi ndow of mine from the inside while the sun was shining CO~~f1f}fI~TrAL ## Page 135 C-O ►~FIDENll. A b. 127 it looked like it was a black paint smear, such as if you I d take a piece of v:hi te linoleum and a black rubber soled shoe and made a mark on the linoleum . It had that kind of consistency. It was absolutely opaque . Just as black as it could be . White Yes, I could tell . When i hit it I could see from the outside that it turned white . McDivitt It tu~ned black from the inside. White From the outside it was white. McDivitt From the inside it was black. When I got the thing turned aro--.md a different way with the sun on it , it was perfectly clear as if you had taken the coating off , and what I ;.•as seeing was through a perfectly clear surface. So , I don ' t know really whether the thing was black, that you placed something on the window that would make it blac~ or whether you ' d taken something off that was very white , very thin . White I smeared the film that was on your window. I 'm quite confident that is what happened. McDivitt I looked at our spacecraft windows after they got it onboard, and I could still see that little hunk of window. It looks to me like wh•1t ## Page 136 128 COt'4FIDE~l·l1tt- you did was remove a layer off the window, rat her than put something on it. You took something off it . Except I can't possibly imagine why it was so black and opaque with the sun shining on it at certain angles . White I'd like to comment on the ease of operation outside on a tether . If you've ever tried to hang on the outside of a water tower , or about an 8- foot diameter tree , you can visualize the problem I had out there . The decision to leave the hatch open was probably one of the very best ~:1at we made . I had nothing outside the space­ craft to stabilize myself on. There just isn ' t anything to hold onto . I think Jim will remember one time when I t r ied to hook my fingers in the RCS thrusters . I think Jim could see because- - . McDivitt I could see . Whi te I was right out in front of Jim I s windo•,.r . This gave me really not hing particularly to hold ,):nto. I t didn't stabilize me at all . I had nothing really to hold onto, and so if you have ever tried to grasp an 8- foot diameter tree and shinny up it , you know the kind of feeling that I had -'ZO~fNll'M . 131 McDivitt Yes, it ' s white. White I felt that this wasn ' t quite the thing to grab onto , this was at the ti~e when I want ed to get out at about 10 or 12 feet directly in front of the spacecraft. I certainly had the urge to hang onto the antenna and push myself out. But I didn't and ther e really wasn't anything to hold onto . You really need somethine to stabilize yourself. I worked around the open hatch . McDivitt Let me ask you a question? How about putting the hand-hold inside of the nose cone? A fairing is up there for launch , just the fairing.We could mount a hand-hold right inside. White I think we could have rea'lly made som,~ money if we had had an attachment for the tether out there right on the nose o.f the spacecraft. McDivitt Strong the tether out there and then attached there? White Right . Rave a seoond attach point and put it right out there. It would give you something to hold onto out there. McDivitt Yes . White There wasn't anything to hold onto o~ the R & R Section. ..-::eeNFIDENTIAI:- ## Page 140 132 CO t>~ ~IDE NTt,AcL, McDivitt I know it . White It had smooth corners and the only thing I could have grabbed was the a 1ten1a , a:id I didn ' t want to grasp that . we tho·.1ght one ti:..e of holding oa out there and th:usting , but-- . McDivit t There isn ' t anything to hold onto . I think you pt'obc>.bly co'.lld have gotten a hold on the antenn'3. and held onto it witho~t hQrting it . I examined it pretty closely before the 1-3.'mch , and i t look­ ed pce~ty sturdy . White I thought this was somet hing we needed and I didn 't want to fool wi th it . McDivitt As it turned out we really needed that antenna be~ause that was the antenna thu.t we used the whJle flight - -that stub antenna in the nose . W'n ite Yes . McDivitt When we opened up the spa~ecraft the hatch came open with a bang. The air that wa had inside was obviously of great er pressure tha':1 that o:1t ­ sitle , and we had a great outflow of t hings inclu­ ding a piece of foam that we had used to pack our tnA.neuvering gun in it ' s box . It was the first thing t hat we put in o=bit . But then throughout the time thit Ed was out, he wanted the doJr wide CO ► ~FIE>ENTIAL ## Page 141 133 open. It was pretty obvious that the flow was from the spacecraft to the outside because part­ way through his maneuvers his glove floated out and floated away from the spacecraft wi th area­ sonably good relative velocity . The entire time he was out , even after we h.'.l.d the hatch open fo~ 20 to 25 minutes, we were still getting particles floating out thxough the hatch . It was the flow. The streamlines were very obvious. It was from inside the spacecraft to the outside. I guess the spacecraft was out-gassing at a sufficient rate to cause a reasonably large pressu.re differ­ ential from inside to outside , and it was cer­ tainly relieving itself. I noticed this even as we were trying to get the hatch ~losed . There was still a flow from inside to outside. White Okay. I think that pretty well covers most of the things that we actually did while I was out there. McDivitt Now , as for getting back in--. White Yes, let's go all the way back thxough and come back in . The time r eally did go faet! I had watches with :ne, but I dii:a ' t look at them . McDivitt I was watching the time. I noticed my watch 1'f)N·FIDENTIA~ ## Page 142 134 around 4 minutes and 6 mi.nutes and 8 minutes . And t' .en you got involved in floating 1:3,ro'.l.Yld as we were t rying to get that last pict,\u'e . White The tim,a really flew! McDivitt You kept getting behi.nd me all the t ime and I became distracted from ;he t ime we were on VOX, co'llpletely blocking out the g rou.'ld . Our VOX must have been triggered constantly , be::::ause whenever we were on it they coul::l:o ' t tra.'lsmi t to us. Whi te That ' s where the time got away from me . McDivitt That ' s right , and it was 15 minutes and 40 sec­ onds when I looked at my clock. So , I th::>'.lght that I had better g::> to the ground. I said to the ground , "Do you ha-.re any ,rn,ssage for us? 11 because I knew it was time to get back in. And th-9y just sai:i , "Yes . Get back in ! " White Right . I remember hea ring Gus say," Yes, get him back in ! " McDivitt This is what all the fuss was about . They might have been transmitting to us to get back in hut we ware on VOX a.-id couldn' t hear a t hing . White I did a few things after this time that I wasn ' t d·::>ing to deliberately stay out . Bc1t I was deliberately t r ying to do one last thing . I was ## Page 143 135 C-oNflD fz.NllAL t r yi ng to get that last pi cture . And this was one of a couple of times that I kicked off the spacecraft really har.d, to get out to the cmd ·':l'!: the tether. And [ wasn 1 t successful in g~tting t he positi on so t hat I couli get a picture. I fe l t this was the one part of the mission that I had:1 1 t completed. Everything else was successful and I wanted very badly to get that picture from outside . I spent a moment or so doing this. This was also the period of ti~e in which I called down to Jim a~d said, "I ' m actually walk- ing o~ top of the spacecra.ft. 11 I took the tether heU onto it, and ui:ied it as a device to pull me down to the spacecraft. I walked from about where the angle starts to break be+ ·"l the nose section and the ca~in secti':ln. I walked from there ~robably about two-thirds of the way up the cabin, avid it was really quite strenuo'.ls, Could you see me walking along , Jim? McDivitt No , I couldn't see but I could feel the thumping on the O'.ltside . White That ' s when 1 got to la11ghing so hard. This was when Jim \•tas sa,ying to com,, in. McDivitt Yes , I think this is when T got a little ster n ## Page 144 136 and said, "Get in here! " White When I w,3,s •t1':il king on the •:,op and w,3,3 .l:3.1.,5·!1ing , Jim pr:.>bably did·:1 1 t think I th:mgh t he wa.s s erious . But i t was a very funny sensation . Now as far as delayi:ig , there were ce::::-tain things that I ha1 to do befo~e I came in . And there wasn ' t anything in the world that was going to hurPy me up in do:l.ng the;n . We had just agr eed that we'd do things in a slow manner and this is the way we ' d do it . McDivitt Let me talk about the tine here. It is implied in the ~apers that Ed didn ' t really wa"lt to come ba.ck in , and didn ' t . I think one of the things is that we didn't hear . We didn ' t have any t ransmis s ions fr om the ground after he step~ed outside until I went off VOX at 15 : 4) . They said , "Come back in . ", an:l I told him to come back in . I think that he pt•obably del q,yed .~'::>out a minute or t w? minutes . W':lite I thi nk so , trying to get the pictures . McDivitt And at that t imn I got a little i t-ritated a.."ld hollered at Ed , too . Th,~n he started back in. White But whe~ I came baJk 1 had things to do . McDivitt Yes . I k-1ow it . That 's what I ' m t rying to say ## Page 145 COt.L .. McDivitt That was the last th.ing Ed put into orbit . White Right . I put that L:1 o~bit. Earlier , it was r eal ly quite a sensation to see the glove float­ ing off . I asked Jim a few 1.nin.ltes before about thf~ glova , ".>r Jim had asked me, "ne:v , do you want this other glove? " About a minute 1-9.t e r, I saw it gQ floating o'.lt of the hatch . McD.ivi tt All I can say, Fil , war,, about a half hou.'..' 13.ter I was sure t hankful that we had g')tte!1 r id of so:ne ­ thing . We had s·:i much other junk that we didn ' t want . I saw t he glove come fioating r)at of the righ > hand hatch , and it was a perfect ly c lear picture of t~ glo·,e as it floated out . It floated ::mt over my right shouLler arnl t1ut - -it l:ioked 1 ike i t waG on a defL'li te trajecto:r-y going somewhere . I don't know where it was going . It floated very smartly out of -i:he :Jpa:~ecraft and ,:mt i. n-~o s pace . McD:ivitt I thi n~-< this ha:l. a lot to do ·11ith t hat C'lt- gas­ sing . There was a definite stream- -. White Yes . It was following the s tream:..ine ri~ht :m~ of i:he sp~1i::ecraft . McD:ivi t t It went oat perpendicular to thP spacecraft , '~01\tffl,·l:NTt;~r ## Page 147 139 whichever direction that is . White Back to getti'lg bade L°l the 3pacecraft- -I hc:l,d the one thermal glove o~ the on~:aand , my left hand . I always wanted my right hand to be free to op­ erate that g,m a--id the camera . The way the cam- era was mow1ted on there, I had to use both h9.nds -­ one hand to actually stabilize it with the glll1 and the other ha.;1d to cea.ch over. Again, I think dynamics pl~yed a little bit of a role there . Everytime I brought my hand in from a position ou~ on my left, it tended to tur.n me a. little bit, which is exactly what we found happened on the air-bearing tables. I think that the camera should have been velcroed to my body somewhere and used independently of the gun. McDivitt Yes . I g 1)t that same impression . I got the impression that what you reall y should have d•:me was--. White Dropped the gun. McDivitt Unhooked the camera out there floating around and j.1st throW!'l the g,m away. I don't think you ever should have tried to bring it back. White Well , what I should have done was fold the g~n and handed it to y◊u, C~l'JFlDENTI.AL ## Page 148 140 CO i'wn in . McD:i.vitt Because, while I co1.1ld steer Ekl from where I was --CONFIDE~ ## Page 152 144 (:O~FlDENTl~L I really didn ' t have the strength to pull him in . McDivitt It was ';)0 degreea to the ·,my that he t:'ea.l. ly wanted to be pulling . I co'.lld steer . I did do a lj .,tle bit of pushing , but n::>t a heck of a lot . I w:as>1 1 t really contributing rn,wh to the effort t her.e e x-~ept- - . White You were guiding me down into t he fcotwells . McDivitt Yes . That was aoout it . White B'J.t once I got my hand,, 11p 11:1dernP-ath the irrntcu­ ment panel , I was back pre tty well in familiar groun:is--the work that we ' d done five dnen times in the zero-g air.pla,He , and I kJ1ew the tecMi.que pretty well. McDivit t 10 0::)0 tim,~s ! White does check pretty ...,ell . White I really did it a lot;. Maybe the suit wa,3 stiffer , or maybe I was .fatter , b:.it I wasn ' t going in quite as easy as I had b efore--getting into the initial positio:1 to pull myself dow~1 in~o the seat . So it took ma a 1ittle longe.t:' . I f you recall , I had to go back o'.lt again one t ime . I got back do•,1a and started to wedge my­ self d::>wn anrl I got t wo fat cr-:1inps at the bot­ toms of my thi.gha in both legs , whe re the muscles star ted to bal l up a little . cer'.lgh . I can tell by looking right straight d:>1,m at the edge--. McD:ivi tt Yes . I can tell by looki'lg ,111 llndernP.ath the r ight - ha.':1d side to see where the dogs are. Whi.te Okay. So I tho'.lgh t the hatch Has doW!l far enough to close at that time . I reached up and CQ~lfif)·l:NflAL ## Page 155 147 got the handle , but I don'-c k11ow what I said to you . McDivltt You didn't say anything . I do~ ' t know whether you said anything to me or not , bu"':. you didn ' t have to sa~ anything to me . I saw you move that ha.."'ldle and I saw how easy it was going and I saw that the dogs were~ ' t moving. White I thLnk I said somethL'lg. I don ' t re1nember w:hat I said . But I said something anrl you knew right away what had happened . McDivltt You didn't say a word. I waB watchi.'.l.g the dogs and that lever a"'ld I krle•,1 what the trouble was . White Right . So I guess that ' s when I sai d , "I ' m going to ha·,re to take the visor off because I can't see." And then we went back up and J i m said, "Well, we're not going to open the hatch again . Why don ' t you thro·,1 the visor out ." I hesitated for a mir'l.ute to throw it out because I thought that we might have a pt'obl em. McDivltt Actually , we had a little more difficulty than we had explained . We fooled around for a min­ u~e or two or m~wbe even th:=ee or four with the handle. It was pretty apparent to us that we weren ' t going to get the hatch closed with nor- eQtqFtDfNTIAb ## Page 156 148 COlwn and mo·,ed the handle once or t wice , it was oYer about a three or four rnin11te period , at l east . White The ~orinal meth::>d of closing the hatch is for me to co~e d::>wi.1 and wedg➔ ~yself down , hold onto the llttle canvas handle up t~ere , a."1d ,c1.ctL1ally aJply a ur techniq·.1e we wollld alway::; use , and !:ever i n t he past , has Jim had to help mo: with t he hatch closing device . Thi.;, ·11as'.l.' t the c>:3.se this tl!lle . As so-::>n as I ha:i go-l;ten np ~here to operate the ga in lever, I co~ldn ' t ope~ate the canvas handle anymore . I co~li n 't apply any torque O'."..' pull there beca,1se-- . McD:iv.itt N-::>t only that, b:.it you were actually pushi.ng yourself u p off the seat . And I 'm not sure that even the firs t ti .ne that WE; had the hatch closed far enough . It looked li.ke it was closed far eno•..igh . As a ms.tter of fac t , later on when we got it down to that posit:ion it looked li.ke it ## Page 157 149 was closed fine. It really wasn ' t closed far enough because you never did get those dogs out until we - - . Whi t e No, the dogs came out, Jim, the first time 1 got torque o~ it. Those dogs started out, then it closed. McDivitt Did they? Okay. White Yes. I think we had it down f~r enough. McDi vitt It looked t :J me like we did, and I couldn't unde~stand why they weren't coming out . I knew that the :oo.tchet wasn't engaged, but I got the impressiJn tha t i t was from watching your hand when you came down one time. You had the ·ratchet engaged and the littletit pin that sticks in the doer that doesn't allow things to come closed wasn ' t there. White No, the. ratchet wasn't engaged. There was nothing on the handle at all. It was free, completely free. The s:ituation hadn't changed at all. Another thing I'd like to point o·.lt now, too , was the chest pack was in the way of bringing the handle down to a full-crank position. And I wanted definit ely to do this because you can interrupt the sequence of the dogs if you don ' t ## Page 158 150 fully stroke the ha"'l.dle each ti.maL White \Je went back up so that I could "ictually see a"ld observe the levers . This was the time Jim sa..id to th.row the visor o·.1t because w,~ pr:)ba.bly would ­ n ' t o_pe'!1 th1, hatch aga.i.n , onca w,3 g8t it closed . And this see~ed like very goo1 so:md advice to me . The o:':1.ly thing I was a little q·.1esti::m1ible abou ~ 1,1a::; that 'it this ti.mt, I ha.ii the inkling in my mind that we ~ight spend quite a bit of time g':tt i ng this hatch closed , and I mi.gh·~ want t he visor when 1 was back out ~ i1 j·1. . B'..lt I thoilght the judgmfmt to t hro·11 the v ls'.:>r out was best and I threw it 0'.1t --opaned the door abo'..lt a foot and a half and thr.ew the vlsor out . The next t ime we canlf? back dow:1, I was s t ill having the l i ttle bit of p:oblem with the cramps, but not ~-9arly the pr~obl:=:m 1 wa'9 having with the gain lever . McDivi tt One superseded the o LheT. White That ' s right . 0~1e p.::-oblem became of much higher m:agnitude tha!l the other . So this was the t ime that we started ·Norki ng . I k."lew what I hai. to d-J . I k new I had to work the gai n lever in sequP.nce with the han1le again , juAt like ~e had w~en we ~ONFTDENf1AL ## Page 159 151 opened it . We both had a.."l inklirig that this was going to happen when we opened it the first time . But this posed the problem of when I reached up with my left arm to work the gain lever. It takes a great deal :>f force . This isn ' tthe direct­ io:2 that the suit is designed to reach in . And it tak~s a great deal of force to lift your arms up in the vicinity of your helmet to operate something there. In so doing it pulled me back up :)Ut of the seat . An1 I think this is the time that Jim noticed that I was up higher than I had ever been before, and he actual ly felt that my helmet was up against the hatch. I tend to agree that I was up in that posi t ·i on. McDivitt Yes . I actually pulled Ed 1own in the seat by pulling on the--. White I think so. McDivitt I did it in steps. I'd pull down and 3d woul-i cooe down. Then I'd pull some more , he'd ~ome down some more. White I was actually pushing up with my left hand and IJl.Y helmet was wedged right up against the hA.tch. I had a little bit of area in which they actually see t he dogs that I was working with up there . ## Page 160 152 -co~~FID[i'~rt,\L McDivitt You could see them though? White Yes, I could see them . At least I coul:1 3ee what positions they were in . I could see the little .,. lever operating unde-r the spring:..._where I was actually operating the spring on the g~in leve-r. This is where I think we grJt some very good team­ w~rk, because it was neces sary that Jim pull do·tJn in conjunctio-:-i with the time that I pulled down on the c,1osing handle and Jperated the ga:i.n l ~ver . I just hope that the tape worked because I can rem~mber I was in there . Jim was talking to me , and. then when it came to ~he point when we really had to make the big pull I felt a little torque on the handle . I knew that we had it at that time if we co:.ild only get the hatch down ,;lose enough so that the dogs W')uld engage . And I ca..~ remember giving the old--I think I was yelling HEAVE! HE.LIVE! Is th13.t what I was yelling.' McDivltt I think so . White .And tt was in perfect ti~1d.,1ig, because I could see Jim or I could see the hatch come do~n each time that I was yelling IE.AVE ! I think i t was probably the mast-- . McD.ivitt The most int eresting mome!'lt of the flight. 0 '~~'F--{;)ENA-ittb ## Page 161 153 White Yes . It was the most interesting moment of the flight , but I think i. t was probably the m::.H,t , if you wan~ to say, draimitic. I don 1 t know the right word . But it was probably the most dramatjc moment of my life. About those 30 seco:i.ds we spent t'ight there . The dogs started l~tching. I co~ld feel them going in, and then I could feel them co~e over dead-center . Jim called out that the dogs were in . McDivitt I knew that once we got them moving we'd be all right . White Yes , once they started coming in . As long as we got those dogs to engage , with the little lever that permitted them to come out and l~ck, I knew that we hn.d it hacked . McDivitt Yes . So did I. Even i f e "ould 'tave had to reenter with the hatch in that position, we 1 d have been all right. I don 1 t thi.nk that the heat leaks were that tremendous. Whi i;P I knew we could continue and dog it on in all the way. It seems like whenever you know you're right on something, you want to be darn sure that they fix it. This was going through my mind then. And I remembered that I felt I was ## Page 162 154 right in that the bar and the attachment on that bar and lanyard were not strong enough . I re­ membered that and I knew how hard you were pul­ ling on that thing. I t hink , if nothing else, they ought to :Je sure . How many times did we break that attachment at the bar? McDivitt We br oke the attachm~:mt ab od; three or four t imes on the zero-g airplane. Everytime they kept telling us it wasn't made out of the right kind of stuff and the st~ff we were going to have in the spacecraft would be the right material. ~•'ell , it didn't break in the spacecraft . Just co in­ cidently, or maybe because we both had doubts about the strength of that particular piece . The same thing crossed through my mind . I was thinking t hat the success or failure of this hatch closure depends on whether this hatch closing device s t ays hooked onto t hat space- craft and doesn ' t break offo White We would have been flat out of luck! McDivitt We would have been in deep trouble ! I 'm not sure we woul dn ' t have been able to get the hatch closed, because we had put that canvas strap on t here and I might have been able to pull you ~rbENIIAt ## Page 163 155 down that way. But I had about all the pull I had in me on that last-- White I know you did . McDivitt --on that last thing and I had a lot of mechanical advantage over it. When we went to that canvas strap we would have had to go with no mechanical advantage. As a matter of fact, a mechanical disadvantage. White This is one thing that didn't fail, but I recommend that it be made stronger. McDivitt Stronger anywny! Whi te I think so . McDivitt For nothing else than a psychological purpose . Whi te Right. I'd like to take the spacecraft now and see if I could break it, because I had the feeling that I never had been confident that that • attachment nor the bar nor the lanyard were strong enough. McDivitt When I say I was really pulling as strong as I could, I really had some pull left in me, but I guess what I should have said is that I was pulling about as hard as I dared pull at the time. I guess I could have pulled another few pounds, but I hated to apply more than was needed on ## Page 164 ~CYEFTTTAT there because of the lack of confidence in the strength of it. White Everything I had was in it over there . I was pulling down with my legs as hard as I could and operating . I was pulling on the handle . I remember one< time you said , "Hey don ' t pull on that handle so hard ! You're going to break it! " McDivitt I was cautioning you to take it easy, which you don't usually have to do. White This was when we were yelling HEAVE! I was heaving on the handle as I was pulling it down each time . It felt like to me that the handle was giving . But I didn't give a darn! If it broke, it was going to break. So o:".e of the points we learned out of this was we'd like to see the bar and lanyard strengthened. White Let me say one thing about the decision to go ahead and open up the latch . I f we hadn ' t done so much work together with this hatch and run t hrough just about every problem that we could possib l y have had , I would have decided to leave the hatch closed and skip the EVA when we first started having trouble with it . We had encountered j , .st every conceivable pr oblem that we could possibly CONffDENl~ ## Page 165 157 have with that hatch. If it failed we'd know exactly what it was. McDivitt That ' s right. I personally had disassembled this cylinder and piston and spring combination up at McDonald prior to the altitude chamber, so I knew exactly what it was made of. I am sure the problem was t hat the dry lubrication coag­ ulated, or whatever a dry lube does, and was causing the piston to stick. I knew how we could do this thing . Carl Stone and I had dismantled it and put it back together, cleaned it out, put it back together, relubricated it , put it back toget her, and i t operated fine. I figured out how to make the t hing work with it not working properly by using your finger as the spring. White That ' s the exact technique we had used. McDivitt I f we hadn't had the training together that we had , and had not encountered all these problems before, I know darn well I would have decided not to open the hat ch. Whi t e Maybe we wound overdramatic about the effort we made getting me back i n, and I 'll honest ly say it ' s one of the biggest efforts I ever made in my life, but I don't think we were all done then . CONFIE>ENTIAL ## Page 166 158 McDivitt There were a lot of things we could do. Whi t e We could have gone around several orbits working on cl osing the hatch . That wasn ' t the last time we were going to get a chance to close it . So , there were things left if we understood , and ot her procedures we could have used to go ahead and close it . When we got it cl osed back in , I was completely soaked wasn ' t I? McDivitt Yes . You were really bushed . White Swea t was j us t pouri ng down . In fact , I could hardl y see . It was in my eyes . McDivitt So I told you , "Just sit ther e and I ' ll ge t a r epr ess . Don ' t even move for 30 minutes ." I just left the r epress valve wher e it was . I closed the vent valve and we had a lot of in•• structions from the ground to close the water seal and e. A1ole bunch of other things that didn 't make any sense to me . I knew that the spacecraft was repres surizing. I watched . There wasn ' t anyt hing else ttat we had to do right then , and we were both bushed , especia lly Fd . He was perspir '.ng so that I could har dly see him inside the fact plate . So , I just said ,"You sit there and I ' ll sit here and we'll just coast around . COl.s if my vision was what I would consider normal . I was looking at the different parts of the spacecraft and down at the ground , and ctJtffibEM I IAt ## Page 169 6€01>-JFIO.ENTl.4 L 161 the view that I received at this time vas what I would expect on a normal sunny day. I was cer­ tainly glad to have the visor and I left it down throughout EVA . I think on a later flight we might recommend going ahead and lifting the visor and observing any changes we might see in visual acuity when looking down at the ground . the ground vision through the visor really didn't seem to me to be degraded at all. Eviden­ tly just the intensity, and not what I was seeing, was cut down. McDivitt Let me comment a little bit on that visor . I didn ' t have a visor and the bright sunlight that was in the cockpit didn't seem to bother me. I imagine that the visor turned out just like a pair of sunglasses. You go outside on a normal d~y and wear a pair of sunglasses . If you don ' t have them , you ' re squinting. But if you start out without them you tend to get accustomed to it. I think I was accustomed to what light there was coming through the space­ craft , admittedly much less than that outside. F,d was accustomed to the sun visor and it turned out just like two people with and without ,O~fi&EN+IAl-- ## Page 170 162 C~l'IFIOeNllAL sunglasses. They both could have adapted. I didn't look into the bright sun straight ahead. White Well, the first time I looked into the bright sun, the first thought I had was, "Boy! Am I glad I 've got this vis::>r on!" McDivitt I know you mentioned it on the radio. White --because I was looking right atraig-ht into the sun. I had to look into it t o attach the camera onto the a:iapter section. I d-:m' t normally wear sunglasses. As you know, Jim, I have never worn sunglasses very much , and I didn't n::>tice it from then on, through·~ the t Lme I was out. I hail n::> impulse whatever to lift my visor . My vision was a.s clear as I co·..i.ld have expected it to be without the visor. There are a few design points in the visor that we could make better and· I'll briefly go into them right now. When you are seated in the spacecraft one visor slips up underneath the other a~d back along the back of your helmet, so th~t instead of resting on your helmet on the headrest you're resting the visor o~ the headrest. You certainly aon't want to do that. The visor should be restrained in some manner from slipping up along the back of the ## Page 171 163 helmet. Also, my visor was quite difficult for me to raise and lower. Once it was dowr it fit quite snugly, for which I was happy. But it was difficult for me to raise and lower. It was actually a two-handed operation, which is one of the reasons why I didn't raise it outside; although, I had no impulse to raise it when I was outside. I think that we might be able to design them to be raised up and down more easily. McDivitt Let me make a comment on that visor . I never did see any need for the little lexion visor . White That's exactly the point I was going to get to next. I think that one single visor made as close to the helmet liner as possible, p~oviding the maximum amount of headroom and a minimum amount of interference, is what we actually need. I don ' t believe we need that lexion outer visor. As they pointed out to us, it doesn't really protect, because it bows in a.~d it doesn't really give you the protection th~t it should be affording. I would recommend one visor, one sun visor only. It'll be simpler to operate . McDivitt I think so, too. White Okay. The ·v;ntillation Control Module, I can say CO ►~f JE>EN+IA..L ## Page 172 164 CQtqflOr:NTl"L without qualification, worked exactly as it was planned to work. There was not one complaint that I had with it. It provided me with the proper flow. The flow was lass than with the no.:-mal ECS suit system, but it was adequate to keep me cool and ventilated, except for two times during the flight. Those times were when I atta~hed the camera right before departing the spacecraft and reen t erdngthe spacecraft. But I think it performed without fault. White The umbilical was another item that I thought performed its part of the flight quite well. I had no complaints about it. I did tend to get it tangled up with the bag and the strings that were attached to the bag during EVA. White I am very thankful that we decided to design the gloves in the manner in which we did, the two­ piece glove that was easily donned or doffed under pressurized conditions. As it turned out, I took them on and off twice while pressuri zed. I was quite happy that we had them designed in this manner. As it turned out, the heat on t he side of the spacecraft, or the cold on the side of the spacecraft when we ca.:ne out of the dark ## Page 173 COlelieve t hat by being in that 1 ight s:.ii t he ·11as able to do this tni.1,::h easier than if he had been in a heavy suit . McDivitt I might make a comment on that suit, too. When we opened up t he hatch we were in~ vacuum . I n::iticed that the temperature of thA suit dropped slightly so thci.t the suit was a little bit cooler inside . I was w)ndering if I was going to get too cold through the suit , but the rest of the time we were out the the temperature never changed . I don ' t remember looking ~t the s uit ## Page 177 169 inlet temperature, but the suit itself stayed reasonably warm. I had sun in the cockpit and I had the cockpit open w:i.thout the s1.m ii i it for a rel.:1.tively long period of time, four or five minutes at a time. This didn't seem to affect my temperature inside the suit. White I think you felt the temperature more than I did . McDivitt I felt the temperature go down , rather than up . White I felt that also while outside. I would say H was lery co::nfortable figu.re. I figure that I was probably at 68 degrees temperature out there inside the suit , which was cooler than I had been anytime during the flight . It wasn't a cold feeling, just a very natural comfortable temperatnre . McDivitt ~uit inlet temperature was running about 55 degrees during most of the flight . It got d•:>wn around 52, s0 it probably might have even been cooler than yo'ir 68 . White Wel l, it was cooler insi1e the suit when I was outsi:ie the spacecraft thn.n at any other time during the flight . It wasn't uncomfortably cool there at all. White I t hink that we can go on with some co::1clusions . ## Page 178 170 Some conclusions that I had were: 1. I didn ' t notice any extremely hot temperatures on the outside of the spacecraft . I a l so didn ' t co~tact surfaces for any period of time to tra~sfer much in the way of a hea~ load to any part of my suit including the gloYes . 2. There I s a de.fi·-iite req-.ii rement for som(3 type of hand holds outside the spacecraft . 3. We should think a little more o~ where we want to operate during EVA and where to attach the tether . The tether was not attached at a po.int that wo·.1ld provide me the capability to operate in the area that I wanted to . McDivi tt You coul dn't get to the nose. It p.i:-ovided great operatio~ for directly above. White Straight above. McDivitt I just don ' t know how you would get the thing out there . You would have to run it along the spacecraft , then attach it somewhere at thfi " front . It would preclude operations in other areas. You would either have to accept ,,,here we a.re going to operate or-- . ## Page 179 €0~4FIOENT+A L 171 M.oDiv:itt ·::·ou conld have n::..lt iple attachment points around the spacecraft . White Of course , now , if you have a g-..m with a good air sour0e, I wouldn't particularl y care where it was attached . I thi.nk you could go ahead a..'ld, maneuver to a:ny point you want if you have a gun . Again, when you're p~shing off of surfaces , you tend to go perpendicular to the surface from which you push off . I found when I p·.lshed as hard as I wanted to I'd still tend to go straight up above that hatch instead of ou t toward the fron ·~. I think this is a fairly obvious con­ clusion, but it proved out . Everytime I pushed off I went straight up instead of at an angle to the surface where I wanted to go . McDivitt So!lle thi.ag that you should bear in mind is that yo•.1 were pushing off fro!ll the front wh i.ch tended to make the front go down as you went out . White Yes. Everything was working against getting where I wanted to go. Everything I did tended to put me up. McDivitt When you started you went in a straight li.ne forward and tended to p~sh the spacecraft down. ## Page 180 172 CO ►J Flf)fNf1M I think , initially , where I was holding the attitude, yo'J. didn't have that much trouble . Of course, you weren ' t pushing 13.S hard ei·~her, be­ cause you had the gun . White No , I wasn't . McDivitt Later on , when we started free drifting, you w,~re ba~k behind m~J where I couldn ' t see. White Did you feel me stomping around back on the adapter and hitting the adapter . McDivi tt We il, I felt you hitting things back behind me and once you went behind the line thEit was dir­ e ctly over'.,.ead the spacecraft. l cottldn ' t see you t hrough your open hatch. White I never reaEy had a good co.!ltact with the adapter back there . McDivitt Just as -:,.r,21 l . We W':r:.ildn ' t want to disturb those • radiator tubes too much . White No, Well, now that we 're back, we'll have some conclusions on the adapter area . I made it a point right from the beginning -~o take a look at the thermal lines , the thermal p~int on the adapter. It looked like it was in good shape . It was all there. There was discolor­ ation arou.~d the attitude thrusters , particularly, GONFIDEt>ilTIA! ## Page 181 173 from the thrusting. The color of the thrusting is just like the RCS thruating--nice and clear plume. It looked lik~ from o~tside, thu".lgh, that I could see a lot more of the plume than I could when I w~s sitting inside the spacecraft looking out at the RCS thrusters firing. Again, the cam,era was not attached in a.n opportune ma.n'ler to operate. McDivitt Which camera? The camera on the spacecraft? White I'm really after that camera on the gun. That one wasn't attached gooa. The cam-era on the spacecraft was okay. It was a little difficult to attach because of the attach'Dent on the bottom of it . You can't have it at any angle to make it engage. It has to be perfectly flat with the mounting plate on the bottom. A big co:!1.clusion that I came to-- and I' 11 see how you feel ab.:mt this one, Jim --I feel that storage in the back of the adapter section wa:s certainly a very high priority for l ater missio:!1.s . I feel that we can adequately store eq·.1ipment in the adapter area , particularly larger pieces of equipment that we don't have room for in the crew station or pieces we don't ## Page 182 174 co~~FIDENllAb-.. have particular use for in the early part of the flight . If we ca~ lick the p~oblems in opening and closing of the hatch, we can store equipment in the back of the adapter section as a routine operation . McDivitt That ' s right . I think the extravehicul ar activ­ ities have proved to other people what we all ready knew a long time ago--that 'FNA is quite simple . I think the thing we ' ve got to iron out is the hatch opening and closing. This is really our. problem. I don ' t think you or I will ever have any doubt about the extravehicular activity . That was , I thought , going to be pretty stra ightforward . It looked like to me it was pretty straightforward. White I felt that I could operate equipment 01.1t there . I co,1ld assemble equipment . I could put pins in, pull pins o~t, and screw thLngs in. I did all these things during the flight. I tu.rn~d th.a gun ::m , a::i.d I put i n the pin to operate the um­ bilical guide . I attachad the camera . I don ' t think yo~ could do these operations very effect­ ively with big heavy gloves on . Alth:>Ugh my gloves oper ated satisfactorily, I think that for CONFl0-Et+T-tAl- ## Page 183 175 assembly of i terns you wa.---it to have ....--you ought to look into the glove area a little more thoro'.lg'hly anii try to get a piece of a glo-re ·,1ith so:ne type of a surface that will give us some heat protection and gives us a high sensitivlty of feel through it . The big conclusions , the final co~~lusions , that I ' d like to draw are that EVA can be made a normal routine operation if the following modificatio~s are made to the space­ craft : 1. The highest priority is that the spring back there on the gain lug has convicted itself and I don't believe that that's a good design. There should be s:>me way ths.t either the l ub ­ ricatio:?1 is :nA.de foolproof or the spring mH.de stronger . McDivitt I think what we really want to say here is that the locking mechanism is inadequate as it is , compl etely inadequate . Until i t is fixed , I think we should take it easy. White Th11.t 1 s right . I think we almost had a bad experi­ m:,e with ths.t gain thing . We knew about it ahead of ti.me . We thought we had it fixed, but it ' s not fixed . I think it convicted itself and it's ,oMftOf:NllAL ## Page 184 176 guilty and it has -Lo be fixed. 2. I recommend that at least the egress kit on the right of the crew compartment be remo·red to provide more room in the spacecraft . I see no reason for it being in t here. I think it wo•.1ld be worth the effort a~d the ajdi tion-- al money to p.rovlde the extra room .in the spacecraft. So , my second recommendation ,::m EVA is to remove the egress k.Lt, at least from the right -hand side, to provide more head room . McDivitt Yes, that ' s good . I might add that it ' s a good thi.ng that we had that egress kit modified- to the m:i.nimu.11 height , because without that we would have been in deep trouble. White That's right. White Yes . You and I had been telling each other t hat that was the biggest thing we did on our whole nine months prior to the f l ight- -to get that thing cut rlown . I ·t 1.1ink it sure paid for itself on ou:r. flight . 3. My third item is to make the bar and lanyard completely foolproof in strength. That was a device that provided us with the added force Get:Jf:IDENJ]A-1:- ## Page 185 07 COt~ft0ENftAL 177 we !leeded to close the hatch , just as we sat there and said we might need during the SAR of thfl spacecraft in St . Louis. I think the attachrnl'9nts of the bat' and the cable to the spacecraft sho~ld probably be at least doubled in strength , so there just isn 't any question in the pilots' minds or the engineers' minds . I guess the eng:ineers were co::winced that you didn ' t have Jim and I co!'lvinced that those tw~ attachme!lt points-- . McDivitt We've seen it break too many times, I think . White We've broken the bar and we've broken that atta::)hn:ent point. I ha::!. actually physically twisted the attachmen t right off the spacecraft up in the zero-g airplane. I certainly wouldn't have put my full strength into it if I knew my life depended on that attachment. It should be ma.de absolutely foolproof. McDivitt Well , that was t l,'.e point I was trying to make ea rlier when I said I was pulling as hard as I could . Then I said that I really wasn 't pulling as hard as I was capable of. White You did::1 1 t have confidence in that attachment. McDivitt I didn't really think that I shouln p~ll O!l it ## Page 186 178 €0NflDENitM any harder . White No . I think that shouli be t he third recommen­ dation and it should be corrected . McDivitt I think we could spare a couple of extra po1.1.-.ida of weight there , just for the pilots ' peace of mind . White That 's right . Take the time it takes to put a new attachment on there . They told us they d.idn ' t want to do it beca~lse they ' d have to re­ rig it . I ·~hink t hey ' d better re-rig it and take the tim~ to put a good attachment o~ there. 4. The final thing really doesn ' t fit in with the first three recommendations , but I would sure like to have the opportllnity to use that gun 9gain with about a 10-times supply of oxy~n in a great big canister. I think that maybe this is one of the items wa could carry in the back of the aiapter. We could use a small supply to provide t ~e means to go back there to get a great big canister. Then we ' d have a :mit that we co'.lld actually do s ome maneuveri ng with . McDivitt That ' s r ight . I think that , in essence , we proved the usef ulness of a self-stabilized or a ~OENflAl ## Page 187 eQN=F19-ENTIAL 179 man-stabilized maneuvering unit-­ White Yes . McDivitt - -rather than o.na that is gyro- stabilized with automatic stability features. I think that al­ tho'.lgh you did·'.1 1 t burn up a lot of fuel , you certainly p~oved the feasibility of this type of ma.neuveri ng unit . Whi. te We had a1 awfully small amcr.1i.'1t . We j..lst had the 6 feet/second-- White We p~oved , in my mind , that I had the capability to go .fr om Point A t::> Poi nt B with that mr1.neuver­ ing U."lit . McDivitt Let me ask you thi8 question , a.."ld be ho::1est about it . Would yo'.l detach yo'..lr tether and _go without i.t? Don ' t be too optimistic , because other people ' s lives may depe::1d on it. White I think that we probably have not done enough investigati on to do that at this time , but I fee l we are p:.:-ogr essing toward the point . We made the f irst , say 50 percent , of th~ step toward being able to detach the tether and go. I don ' t believe that I wouli deta:::h the tether aJld 5 o ·,.ii.th that 6 feet/seco::1d-- . McDivitt Oh , no . I didn' t mea."l t hat . I mean with that -,Qt\lFtDENflAb ## Page 188 180 type of a unit . White If T had some more !:::,,V in a U:'lit like that I think that I would be ,.:illi ng t o detach myself on the next fli.gh t , right n::>w , fr,Jm the space­ craft and go . That ' s com'bined with tw-) things, you see . You h<1:ve two th.ings working f or you . You have the capability to maneuver yourself , and if you should get out of control the space­ craft still has the capability to come over a~d get close en::>'.lgh so that you could get yo".1.c-self baGk .Ln control and get in the spacecraft . White I think that 40 or 50 feet/second would be a minim'.l.,n. I hnd 6 and I ' d like to see , pcobably, a capability of about 10 times that . _That may be a li ttle-- . McDi vitt It ' s diffi~ult. I wo~ld think it would be difficult to fix a number on it until you fi xed the jo'b . White Yes . McDivi tt If you want;ed to go to som.-1thing that was 1::> feet g;way and come back, you ' d probably get by with 20 feet/second . White If I wa-:1ted to get out of the spacecr aft and g •> a long to the back of the a:lapter and get in the ~ONftD ENTIAt ## Page 189 cor~FIDENTI QJ.,. 181 adapter without being attached to the space­ craft, I ' d only need two or thr-ee time the a'.'llount . I'd be happy co go with that . McDivitt There are some problems in th,~ capability to alin9 on,3 1 s self onto an object . I think chasing the booster around points this o~t. You say you'd be willing to go away becaur-Je the spacecraft can oome and g~t you . Admittedly it can, but kseping in mind the difficulty wa had with th9 booster . I don ' t really an~i~Lpate us ever get­ ting into the si tuat Lon like that beca~1se ;rou I d never get so far away that you're in different orbits, like we were with the booster--. Whi.te What I vis·,.1al i.ze is a 25 to 50 foot operation where you ' re goL'lg ou.t to investigate ei-l:her a.."lot~1er spacecraft or another satellite up there, or making a trans.fer similar to the type of trans­ fer that we visualize as a backup mode for Apollo. I think with the gun I had , if tbc LEM and the Com­ mand Module were there , I'd be satisfi ed, .i,0 d9part the Command Module aJ.l.d maneuver over to the LEM situated 10 t0 20 feet away from the Comma·'ld Module. I feel I coul::l io that at the present time. I d:m ' t think it would be a very smart -=cot~FH)ENT+Ab- ## Page 190 182 thing at the pcesent time to go m~neuvering off 200 to 300 feet away from the spacecraft with this type of device. I , think this device is designed and has its greatest usefulness in close operation around the spacecraft . McDivitt That ' s right. There is no need to maneuver off about 4-00 or 50-0 feet away because if you want to go that far, use the spacecraft. This gun is for a close working job . White I think it's a valuable tool in this manner. McDivitt Okay . That's the same conclusion I came to . We'd be willing to do it at close range . White I ' d be willing to do it right now . I might not go tell somebody else to god~ it , but I 'd be willing , with the training that I had with it , to transfer 15 or 20 feet without a te'Lher . But , I think we sho~ld spend mome more time ·..nth the gu..-i . McDivitt I think so , too . White I also think it would be of value to go in the zero-g airplane with it . McDivitt Yes , I think so, too . White I think the work that we might do in the z.aro-- g airplane doesn't necessarily have to be done in CONFI0El'Jl.lAL I didn't want to wake him up . I was hoping it would go through without waking him, but it sure didn't . McDivi tt Man! It liked to have scared me so bad I don't think I went back to sleep. White No, you went back. You slept better at the end of your sleep cycle than at the beginning. McDivitt So you were trying to get to my end earlier. White I think I did the other. I always slept best at the beginning of my sleep. McDivi tt No, I al..ra.ys slept best at the beginning. White You did too? McDivitt There was a period where I had to get to sleep, then there was a period of solid sleep, sometimes 15 minutes, sometimes an hour . But after I went by that first bunch, then I was in a state of semi­ wakeness . White Kind of like dopey, fitfull sleep . That's the same type of sleep I had , at least until the last time . Okay. There really wasn ' t anything else that went on except a few tape dumps and an update for the orbital plotboard. I found this to be very use­ ful. I used the plotboard to keep track of my orbits , where I was during the first part of the ~Otv4FIDEt'~TJAL ## Page 207 CUNFIDl:~L 199 mission , exclusively. It was very accurate . You could check the times in the plotboard as against what you saw on the ground and you could locate yourself quite adequately . How about you? McDivitt While I ' m thinking about it, I thought the plot­ board information early in the flight was excellent . But I thought t hat the plotboard i nformation at t he end of the flight was not correct . As a matter of fact , I started ~o ca ll them a couple of times , but I never did . By the time I would get the stuff plotted , and get the map put where I wanted it , we would be someplace else . I ' m sure that that in­ format i on they were sending up to me wasn't right ; I ' d be off an orbit or two . White After about the last day and a half, I used the nominal orbit plot maps exclusively . I could see the time and the location . I could spot it right with the ground . And I think I figured it was seven minutes behind near the l a tter part of the mission . This didn't bother me . I could tell how far it was behind, and then update my position on the map quite easi l y . I thought those pre- plots were real good . McDivitt So did I . I t hought they were , too . But I was a OONFIBENTIAL, ## Page 208 200 little disappointed with the map information at the end of the flight . I don ' t know exactly what was hap~ening. But I ' m convinced that it wasn ' t right . As a matter of fact , a couple of times I was even on the wrong orbit . They ' d give me a time and a l ongi tude and I'd plot it. I wasn ' t even over that part of the world . I'd be over a whole orbit from that . White Jim , I made this mistake once , too . I was using my plotboard. I ' d plot evecything out a.nd I came down in a place in Mexico at night , Tampico , Mexico . So I told them something about seeing t his spot in Mexico . T:!ey didn't pick up my mistake . I was back checking over and I got to looking at my map and sa id , "What the heck are we doing here at nigh t?" I was actually on the other side. I was clear around in Australia. McDivitt Had you plotted east instead of west? White No, I don't think I did. I think I plotted it correctly . I went back and checked it and I never did get the plot . I went on to do something else and I didn ' t get the plotboard squared away on that . But I rea lized that instead of passing over Tampico, Mexico , what I was really seeing on the ground was ## Page 209 201 Sidney. McDivitt You only missed it by half the world . White Tha t 's right . It was exactly on the other side . But not exactly. It was about 120 degrees off. McDivitt Mine was something like this . One that I remember specifically--they gave me a map update and they wanted me to do a check over El Paso and El Centro . Looking at this I could see that if I was at the right time, I would have come up from the south; whereas, my pass was down l ike this , and I was an orbit or two off. Whi te Well then , we're not talking about the same thing . I think I had probably slipped it somehow on here . McDivitt You might have plotted 60 Fast instead of 60 West, or something like that . White Yes . McDivitt But I was off by a time fac t or. White It w~sn ' t too hard to realize that Mexico wasn ' t at night. McDivitt I have a ne t! here that says , "RKV tape dump and a No . 1 Medical Pass on the Command Pilot at 07:02 GMT ." White That 's right . And I got you up a few minutes before 07:00, if you recall . In fact , just before ## Page 210 202 ~QNElDENll~ you had to make your Medical Pa s s I woke you up , So I'd es t imate t hat Jim got up around 6: 55, just enough time t o transfe r the equipment to him and let him make his Medical Pass . McDivitt At 7: 15 Greenwich Time I was supposed to eat . White Right . At 11:15 Greenwi ch Time I was supposed to go back to s leep . McDivitt I s that when you did? I don't even s ee that on here . Whit e Where it says "Pilot s l eep". McDivitt Is that a penci led- in note ? Whi te Ther e was just a s eri es of instructions that we got from them . McDivitt Okay. Good, becaus e I don ' t have that . White It doesn ' t really mean that ' s when we went to sleep becaus e you know we did t hings somewhat out of sequence . McDivi tt At 8: 55 over the RKV we got a list of PLA's and CLA ' s . White Was this one of' our first big batches of them? You know, initially, we di dn ' t ge t too many of them, and then we started getting them on a very regular bas is throughout the flight . I thought that com­ munications of those was quite good , once we started . ## Page 211 203 McDivitt I have a list of notes here that say: Rev 12 was over the RKV where we were supposed to get the CLA 's and PLA 1 s. We did. Rev 13 was over Canary where we were supposed to have a C-Band track. I think that meant C-Band went to CONTINUOUS , but I'm not really sure . • White This is the time at about 17 or 18 hours that I called down and asked them how the tape dumps were coming out, because we weren't holding any attitude for them. We were holding nothing more than a drifting attitude and I know that over some stations we were blunt-end-down and rolled upside down . We were t alking , I know, upside do~m to the stations and getting good transmissions through. They came back and ## Page 212 204 said all of the tape dumps to this time had been exce11en t . McDivitt At a GMT of 12 16 00 I got a comment : "No fuel , but do a Flight Track Orientation . " This is like saying, drive from here t o ~he drug store, but don ' t use any gasoline--a.~d don't take the car . So as I flopped over near around 12: 16 , I looked down to the ground . We could do a Flight Track Orientation pretty well, considering that we had this movable orbita l map and we had a pretty good idea of where we were going to be to start with so we could pick out where we were. Got a map update at 10 17 49, · 73 degrees West . A tape dump at Canaries on Rev 13 and at Carnarvon at Rev 14, Around 19 hours , I checked on our orbit and it was 155 . 7 by 88. At 11 52 43, turned the C- Band Adapter Switch to CONTINUOUS . At 11 59 23 we turned it back to COMMAND . This is Greenwich time . All the stuff in the flight plan such as the Orbit Navigational Checks and the Apollo Landmark Inves t igation were not done . We were doing tape -EQNFIDENTtAL ## Page 213 EOt~FIDENf~L 205 dumps , medical data passes and that was a bout it . The next M- 3 Experiment s wer e a ll par t of medical data passes. I don't even lrnow why they ' re in the flight plan . White I couldn ' t figur e that o:1t either. McDivitt We did an HF Check. Check began at 16 58 30 GMT , and ran on t hrough 19 07 00 GMT ; this inc luded the sunrise , sunset , day , night--all the HF checks and we' ll cover those in the experiment part of our d ebrief ing. McDivitt During this period of 16 58 30 GMT to 19 07 00 GMT , we did the HF Checks . White Oh, here it is! Command Pilot asleep . McD:i vi t t Where? White At 11 : 45 Zulu . Pilot awake at 11 : 30 , I do~'t know when I went to sleep here . McDivitt Okay . Let's check that some other time . Whi t e Okay . McDivitt I t'll take a long t i me to sort that out and I don ' t think he needs that right away . Whi te All right . I got Command Pilot asleep at 11 : 45 , McDivi tt Okay. I don't have me up or asl eep or anything. What I ' ve got here in my notes is , Ed to bed at ## Page 214 206 20 :15, up at 22 : 15 , back at 23:15 , These are Zebra times , I ' m sure . So I don ' t know exactly what happened in there . White Well , you ' re clear over on 24 now . Okay , you ' ve skipped the time when you were asleep . McDivitt That ' s r i ght . I don ' t have anythi ng on that . White Okay , I have you going to sleep. I logged myself awake at 11 : 30 , Command Pilot asleep at 11 : 45 , These are Greenwich times . If you add 8:45 onto that , it comes out 20 hours and 30 minutes , elapsed time . You gave me the instructions for the C- Band adapter times . I did tur n those on at 11 52 43 to continuous C- Band ori the adapter , and at 11 59 23 to COMMAND . Also during that peri od of time , I had been told to go ahead and run Apollo L~ndrnark Investigation without any fuel . But luckily, the spacecraft rotated right around as we came up to it and I was looking right down at the junction of , I believe , the ... and the White Nile . McDi.vitt That ' s right . That was the first task we had of finding something on the ground . White Yes , it r eally worked . ## Page 215 207 McDivitt I t was no trouble . White It -really worked . That was the one that I was probably most famil i ar with. It's such an obvious one . It's out in t he middle of t he des ert and it ' s t he intersection of the big Nile , where it junctions into two other sec tions, a little island and a northern tip of the island . I was able t o pick the island up from the t i p quite clearly. I did take a couple pictures , I believe , of it , but we were just passing and I wasn ' t tracking. I did r eport that it was a good landmark and qui te easy to see . We did get an instruction at this time to go to the normal flight plan at 22 hours. This was something that was kind of hard to do . I don't t hink we really ever got back on much of a normal flight plan for the whol e flight , but we did ge t instructions at 22 hours elapsed time to r eturn t o our normal flight plan . At this time Jim was still asleep. We got the update th9.t the Hawks won 3 to 2 . McDivitt Ha ha ha ha h9. . White I r elayed t hat information to Jim when he woke up . "€76MflDEMTtAi:-- ## Page 216 208 McDivitt That ' s right. Okay , I think we've already covered our HF Checks , which were part of the regular flight plan . White Yes , we did that . McDivitt I said they were between 16 58 30 GMT and 19 07 00 GMT . Whit e Right . McDivitt We scrubbed the Apollo Landmark Investigation at 28 :40 and again at 29 : 10 . We were allowed to do the D-9 at about 29 :30 in irifting flight o~ly. Doing the D-9 in drifting flight means that you look outside w:i th the sextant and you pick out whatever two s~aTs are there and you measure an angle betw8en them . It was a qU1:1.litative rather than a quantitative type investigation for the experiment . I ' m telling you , with D- 9 it was mostly qualitative throughout the whole mis s i on. We did a few quantitative things , but the number of quantitative things that w~ · quld do were very limited . White The HF Test took us one and a half orbits . McDivitt Yes . It took t wo hours and 15 minutes at least . White I t hink around 28 : 30 , we had a call up for D-9 . ## Page 217 209 McDivitt Yes . This is where we did D-9 i n drifting flight only . White Yes , and again t ha t was like taki ng the car out of the garage without gasoline . McDi vitt All it amou:~ted to was looking t hrough the window and picking out two stars that you can see and t aking a sighting between them. Jus t a qualitative check t o see what the sextant woul d do . We di d t hat . D- 9 turned out to be a qualitative , rather than a quanti tative experiment , except in a very isolated instance . We weran ' t even stabilized . White You were t rying to talk me through some of the thines , but I had the helmet off and on-- McDivit t This was when we firs t discoverad that. the light bulb in t he readout P'Jrtion :,f the sextant was burned out or something was wrong. White Right . McDivitt We couldn ' t read out t he angle . White We called down, but we nevar got a call up on t hat or any instructions. McDivi tt Well, there weren't any . Ha ha ha . Okay , then I have in my notes here , as I mentioned earlier: " 'Ed went t o bed at 20 :15 , got up at 22 : 15 and went GONA0ENllA I.. ## Page 218 210 back to bed at 23 : 15 , " That ' s all Zulu time , but I don ' t see when he finally got up for the last time . White Maybe I 've got it in here . McDivitt We had another map update in there but it's really not important . We scratchsd the Apollo Lanirnark Investigation-- White What time did yo~ have me asleep? 23 : 15 , Jim? Okay, well I obviously was up shortly t her eafter because I got on the horn and you were asleep when t hey called us up and told us we ' d. passed the U.S . space record-- McDivitt That's rig},t . White At a little past 32 hours,which is 23 :15 . That ' s 32 hours . The s pace r ecord was 32 h~ur s . McDivitt We cancelled the Apollo La1dma:rk Investiga tion , Run 3 , a t 30 hours and 10 minutes . Got t hat , Ed? White Yes . McDi v.itt We didn ' t switch to bio-med r ecorders . I made a note here early i n the flight plan on the bio- med r ecorders, "Ed slept f irst and turned No . 1 off." When I slept , we forgot to turn it back Ofl , so we had No . l off , and No . 2 on for a long t ime , ## Page 219 CO~lf.ll:lE~TlAL-. 211 for a peri od of about eight or Len hours. Then when 1 went to sl eep t he second Lime , we tur ned N) . 1 on and No . 2 of f , whi ch is the way i t s hould ha ve bPen . Bu'.; as soon as I wok8 up, we t uraed No . ? on agai n and No . 1 off, becaus e you wer e g 0i r,g t o go to bed . Now you •i idn' t go right back to sleep again so I have a note here, "We h'l ve t o t ur r. or. No . 1 as soon as he .,_,akes up . fl We did . Ran No. 1 r o' awhile with No . 2 off . We t u.med them bot h back on, and 1 eft t hem r ur1- ning f or the r emainder of the flight . Wha t we di d i s t h9,t we pi ck'=d up a cushi on of about eight hour s on each -recorder and .let them r.un th,? r es t of the flight . The D- 8 Experiment a t 2300 ho'..lrs-­ Ed w1.s a s l eep then . I t ol d t hem t hat Ed was s l eeping and coul dn' t make it . Whi t e Ri ght . I t hink I probably di d t hat later on . McDi vi tt Tha t ' s right . Remember we discuss ed t h~ t you would turn o~ thP- experiment later on when you went through the Sout h Atlant ic Anomaly? White Right . McDivit t You plotted it out on the map a nd turned it on your self . The port ion of the fli ght plan at 31 ## Page 220 212 bout's elapsed time says , "Prepare for S-6 Experiment , update D-8 , MSC 2 and 3 on . " Now- I turned MSC 2 and 3 on again , about then . We di d not do an Orbit Nav Check, Run 3, b,:.cause we dldn ' t want to use any fuel . We scrubbed Experiment D-8 and w2 ware going to turn i t on at 23 : 00 or do it at 2300 . But, I guess Ed ·v1as s till asleep , so we didn ' t do it then . At this t .i.me we were both in pretty bad shape as far as rest went , s•:> I felt it much better to get some sleep th~n to fool with the experiments . Then go i ng through-­ White Okay , this is the period of time whea you were asleep . McDivitt Yes , because I don ' t have any notes there . Go ahead . White Right . I had a very busy time shortly after I got up . I had a requirement to , ~t 00: 15 , Mc"Divitt Oh , yes . They called the update to me and I passed it on to you and then I went to sleep . White That ' s right . I turned on the MSC 2 and 3, and then I went D-8 at 02 : 15 . McDivitt 00 :15 Greenwich time , you were supposed to take some pictures of cellular clouds . No fuel all otted . White I think I took s ome pictures of clouds . CQbJ.-f.lDEN·l+Al ## Page 221 ~ot;R-E>ENT-IA.J. 213 McDivitt MSC 2 and 3 wera supposed t o go on at a GMT of 00: 30 , and yo~ were supposed to control the spacecraft to BEF for that pass . White That ' s right, and we went with BEF for that pass , for MSC - 2 and 3 Experiments . At 02:15 I was supposed to do D- 8 . McDivitt That's right. White I did D- 8 at 02 : 18, as a matter of fact, and it ' s logged in the D-8 card. McDivitt Then at 22: 35 GMT, w,~ were supposed to do S- 6- - I see that I ' ve got a scratch through it. I think that you weren't up. I was up and I tried to do it, but there weren ' t any clouds around. I wasn't pointed in the right direction , so I just scratched it out . White Yes , this is where I went back to sleep and you got up . We had a very important tape dump at 03:03 . I think I relayed that to you before I went to sleep. McDivitt Yes. White 1 must have really snoozed here . I was gone for four hours. McDivitt I'm on 36 right now. We had a tape playback. We 11.. '- C0Mft0fNTiM ## Page 222 214 ~OHFtDENTIAC were eating along in here and I can ' t tell you where we ate becaus e we ate whenever we fel t like it. White We always ate when we woke up and usually before we went to sleep. McDivitt That 's right . That I s when we were eating and that's when we had originally planned on it . That' s the way it went in the original flight plan . At this time of the mission I guess we weren' t doing much except staying alive . My impression of what we were doing was eating, sleeping, and dumping tapes. White and looking at the ground as it went by. McDivitt As a matter of fact, w1~ were still pretty well pooped out from that long per iod right there-- White Your eyes were just getting better . Your eye looked l ousy at that time, the first 24-hour point. Your left eye was as red as can be. McDivitt At about 36 hours it was still pretty bad, but from there on it improved continuously. White I noticed that whenever I slept, I got much hotter when I had my faceplate closed and my EONF+E>ENf-lM ## Page 223 €0t4FIDEN'.flAL 2 15 gloves on. Remember? I kept turning on the double fans. McDivitt Even when you didn't sleep in that configuration , you got hotter when you slept than when you were awake, which is the reverse of what I figured it would be . I figured that when you slept , we ' d want to go to one fan all the time . White Well , I slept good when I had my visor open . McDivitt Did you? The last day or so, though, we had t wo fans on every time you slept. White The last day we did. Of course, I slept the best then too as a matter of fact. After the first day, I had my faceplate open more often than I had my faceplate closed. McD:ivitt I wasn't . I had a problem that whe.v1 Pd put my visor up, I was really crunched down in the seat, because I'm quite a bit taller than you . It was more ,Jomfortable for me to keep my visor down than it wau t,c, keep it up. We had an RKV tape dump , around 36 hours , and I have an Orbit Nav Check , Run 4, here. I don't believe we did thA.t , did we, F.d , at 36 hours and 50 minutes? White I was asleep and I can't tell you . ## Page 224 216 GO t◄f-tB ENTIltt- McDivitt We didn't do any of the Orbit Nav Checks with fuel so it was just a matter if you could see the ground you did one. They called up some more S-6 information for me, but I wasn ' t to use any fuel on it . They said I was to pass Typhoon Babe at 06 : 06, point of closest approach , and there was a new storm brewing. I ' d have rny closest approach to it at 06 : 13 . Oh, yes . I also have a period that Ed slept here . White Which time was that? McDivitt Well, you got up at 08 : 15, Zebra time . That 's about 40 hours and 30 minutes elapsed time . I drifted around to where I could see Typhoon Babe, but there wasn ' t anything to take a picture of , There was just a mass of clouds down below; smooth tops and nothing worth even a frame . I got another update that said : "Over Cairo on the 26th Rev I ' d have rny closest approach at 07 13 37 . It would be 90 miles slant range on the closest approach . Don ' t use any fuel . We were just supposed to look at it. We did pick up Cairo and Alexandria both . I think you were awake at that time, weren't you? White It was the tail end of my sleep cycle . ## Page 225 ~ ENttAt- 217 McDivitt Well , you weren't awake then. White What time wa.s it, Jim? McDivitt It says 07 18 37. You should have been asleep then . I have in my notes that you slept to 08 : 15, White Well, I was like you were. I wasn ' t sleeping very good the last--quite often, I had my cover up watching out the window. You could a l ways hear everything that was going on the radio, so you knew pretty well what was going on. McDivitt Well, anyway, Cairo and Alexandria were both clear , but this was the first time we'd seen them and it took a long time to find the targets- ­ the particular target that we were looking for. We could find the Red Sea and we could . find the Mediterranean, obviously. You could see the Suez Canal . You could see the river. I had difficulty finding the town of Cairo . How about you, Fil., with Alexandria? You were looking for Alexandria . White I found that one . McDivitt You found the town all right, but finding the airfield that we were supposed to take a picture of was pretty difficult the first time. Later on eet·eNTtA L 231 in the system and this 2 per cent was, in general, about 7 pounds . That was really quite a bit of fuel. 4 percent was between 12 and 15 pounds, depending where you were on the scale. This was and awful lot of fue l to have suddenly disappear . I just wanted to comment on that . It was an interes ting thing. . We'd been dumping our ECS o 2 pressure. We'd gone to High Rate or cabin repress and dumping the stuff overboard--overpressurizing the cabin and having the cabin vent to keep the pres- sure down . Finally around this 66 hours, we'd dumped the thing down to 880 psi on the gage. This was why we didn't have to dump it so often. We'd been dumping it before around 960 psi--dump it there and bring it back to around 930 psi and let it build up, and then repeat the cycle again. White That was about every 4 hours. McDivitt Yes . We had to dump at least every 4 hours . We brought it dovm to 880 psi and this gave us a period of around 12 hours. White You know, I thought this was a very clever method of holding the cabin at a higher pressure than normal by McDonnell--putting the vent down so low that it vented in a normal mode. You ~itw:rb\ l ## Page 240 232 certainly could tell on the gage when it was going to vent . It vented right down there at about 960 . McDivitt Yes . I thought we ' d really hack that apart when we got to the systems . White Yes . All r ight . I wanted to be sure that we didn ' t forget it . McDivitt I guess we were both awake at this time . We did MSC-10 some place . Here 's where we got into a bunch of bad flight planning. Someone on the ground screwed up . White They ran our Horizon Scanner and MSC- 10 Checks right together . McDivitt We started out our MSC-10 Check and at the same time we were supposed to start powering up the platform and alining it . White What time did you have MSC-10 Experiment? McDivitt We were supposed to power up the platform at 10 :15 , Let ' s see if I got the start times here for MSC-10 . White We'd have it in the book. McDivitt Well, we didn't get a start time because MSC-10 starts when the horizon comes into view, when we could see the first light . We started the MSC-10 EONflDENTIAJ. ## Page 241 233 as a sequence of pictures every five minutes. The sequence is three pictures every five minutes, for as many passes as you can get . So you have to start this thing at sunup, or as soon as the hor­ izon becomes light. We took our first three pic­ tures . We went on through and we were supposed to start our Horizon $canner Check--. White Jim , the time we started you ' ve logged in here as 11:04 . McDivitt Okay, at 11 :04 we started our MSC- 10 Experiment . We were given instructions to start the Horizon Scanner Sunset Check at 11:54. It just so turned out that we were going along and we weren ' t out of frames of film yet for MSC- 10 . White It was still daylight. McDivitt Yes, it was st.i ll daylight, that's right, and we could still get some more good pictures, I thought. Here we had instructions to start our Horizon Scanner Sunset Check, and in looking through this thing, it looked to me like that was the only place we were going to get it; so I don't under­ stand exactly why we had to run MSC-10 and the Horizon Scanner Check simultaneously. They ENTIAl couldn ' t be run simultaneously! It looked like somebody with a little foresight on the ground could have seen this . White That was really the only bad screwup , I think, in our flight planning. It was right there . McDivitt I think so , too . So we terminated MSC- 10, al­ though we had enough pictures , I'm sure , to have completed the experiment . It would have been nice to use up all the film . There ' s no sense in carrying it and not using it . At 11 : 54 we did the Horizon Scanner Sunset Check--the plat­ form up and alined . At 12 : 15 we did the Horizon Scanner Moonset Check . At 12: 22 we did the Apollo Yaw Orientation. At 12 : 58 we did the Horizon Scanner Thruster Check. At 12 : 59 we did the Horizon Scanner Track Check. At 13 : 14 we did the Attitude Thruster Check. At 13 : 20 we were supposed to power down and at 13 : 20 were supposed to turn off the MSC No . 1 Experiment . What happened as we went through here--we got a little behind because it took a little longer to do some of these things , especially this Horizon Scanner Track Check. It was taktng so long that ~hlFIDENTl~l ## Page 243 we eliminated the last two steps in it . We did the zero bank angle and the pitch up and down. We did the zero pitch angle and the roll left and right . We did the bank to one side and the pitch up and down ,and we did the pitch up and the bank on both sides . We didn ' t do the pitch down and the bank on both sides ,and we didn't do the roll left and the pitch up and down. We were running late and at that time I didn ' t know how we were doing on electrical' power and everything, so I elected not to do t he last two portions of the check. White We had it pretty well ironed out , anyhow . McDivitt Yes . White Surprisingly broad bands , too. McDivitt The scanners seemed to be working perfectly . The attitude thruster check was just as it should have been . We powered down the platform and turned off the MSC Experiment No . 1 about two minutes late . White We powered down at 13:27. McDivitt Okay , seven minutes late . We never did take any 16 mm pho tos of the plumes . White Before you went to sleep on t his one . Ei'JTIAL 241 I elected'to make a similar pass through on the following orbit, watching the stars and making sure that I had a good small-end-forward. I found out that the first pass through was pretty good until the tail end, where I thought the stars were in the wrong position . It turned out that this is just the way they came up, and I was good for both of them except for the tail end of the first run through, I logged in two small end passes through the South Atlantic Anomaly. I also ran the D-9 Experiment and I found that by using the fuel and having the H0rizon Scan to hold when you wanted it to hold, the use of the sextant and horizon in making measurements was considerably easier. I made what I feel was a good Apollo D-9 run. I ran the D-8 Experiment. I had two times to run the D-8 Experiment. I ran it at the Greenwich Mean Time of 01:30, I was to look for Pegasus at O2:28,straight up at 268 nautical miles, and I was all hot to watch Pegasus go over and was just approaching my straight up attitude when-- McDivitt The sun shined on the window. ## Page 250 242 White No , I was called and t hey said, "Say we got a critical tape dump. We want you in a level attitude for it ." And I said , "Well, you just gave me instructions to watch Pegasus. " And they said, "No, we want the critical tape dump . " So I went right down to that attitude , and we got the dump off in time for me to go back up to the attitude prior to 02:28. I got up there about . 5 minutes prior to that time, but the sun , as Jim said , was up and was reflecting off the particles on the windshield, and I really couldn't see very much. I tried to see Pegasus , but I couldn 't see it . I turned MSC- 2 and ~ off at the appropriate times . We got instructions from Houston CAP COM to t ry a few things with the computer. We were to turn the computer off , the IGS on , the computer on at 20 minute intervals to try to r ecycle the mal l ight off. They thought that it might have been cold . €0Nft0·cNll~ ## Page 251 243 -CONfteiENTl~L McDivitt Let me step back a little bit to this computer problem . The computer stuck c.wer the States at around 75 1/2 hours or so . The computer was stuck on . If you've got to have something stick, you're better off to have it stick on , I guess, than off. Especially if you ever want it to work again . As we went out of earshot of the ground UHF radio range in the States , I asked them if that they had any instructions . They said, "Stand by. " I sort of felt that the thing that we ought to do was just leave it on for a while. We got a call from Tananarive and they said to place the computer switch to the ON position and a . a . Power Switch to the ACME . I said that ' s certainly a peculiar place to put the switch and they said these are the instructtons from Houston . White I think we had a good computer at that time . McDivitt I know darn well we had a good computer at that time . I think this is like getting your landing gear stuck up and you fool around with C-ONFIDENTD\t- ~ ## Page 252 244 it and it comes down and then just for the hell of it you pull it up again to see if it's going to come up . I don't think we should have ever turned off the computer. Unfortunate­ ly , I didn ' t have all the infonnation at my fingertips that I needed to really make a de­ cision on it. When we got to the next station, which was Hawaii , I asked them how we were doing on electrical power . They sai d that we were 160 amp- hours ahead of the curve . We had a 200 amp- hour cushion, so that meant that we had a 360 amp-hour pad on our flight pl an. In the meantime , I had checked to see what the computer- ON , IGS Power Supply-ON took . It took 5. 6 amp-hours to power this thing. We were at 76 hours on a 96- hour mission and we had about 20 hours to go . Twenty times 5. 6 is a little over 100 . So, if we had used up these 100 amp-hours , we'd still finish up with a better electrical pad than we started out with , or than we expected when we started out . So, I sort of feel that we needlessly threw the computer down the drain . After we got the ## Page 253 GNFIDENTIAt 245 thing turned off and ruined , we went ahead and turned the IGS Power Supply on , the computer on , and left it on the rest of the flight anyway . So , whoever sent those instructions accomplished it . I guess what he wanted to do was turn off the computer. He sure accomplished that . It seemed to me like it would have been more worthwhile to leave the thing on till we got a little more data out of the thing, instead of rushing to get it tur ned of f t he way they d.L<.l, I don't understand it . I don't feel that it was a wise decision . Unfortunately , I didn ' t have the electrical power consumption at my fingertips right then, or I never would have turned the thing off. McDivitt Okay, I guess we're over about 86 hours . I got up at 86 hours . That ' s one of the longest rest periods that I ' ve had . At 05 48 45 Zulu we were supposed to perform a D-9 Experiment , and I guess we did . Then I have in my notes that Ed went to sleep at 87 hours elapsed time . White And this was my five hours of very good sleep . ~ONFIDENT~A4, ## Page 254 co,~Fl0EN·l+AL It's my best and last . You must have let me sleep till when? McDivitt I don't even have when I got you up, but it was about five or six hours. I think it was around six hours . White No , it wasn't that long, was i t ? Because that would have run us a little short . You had about an hour 45 minutes or two -- McDivitt I had an hour and a half nap . I got up at three hours before retrofire . Retrofired at 97 : 45 , I went to sleep at 93 hours . White Okay. So, I got up -- McDivitt Ed got about six hours nap . White I got up about 95 :05 that time. You went to sleep about -- McDivitt No , you went to sleep at 87 hours and got up at about 92 -- a little past 92 . Whit e This is what I 1 d estimate , Jim . McDivitt A little past 92 . So , you had about a good 5 hours . I lmow that you were still sleeping at 92, because that ' s when the urine system stopped up, and you were asleep then . So, I think you got up -- I ' d guess , around 92:30 , OO~~FIE>ENTIAL... ## Page 255 I lmow I went to sleep at 93. I went to sleep in pm GMT and 15 after the hour , whatever the hour was , and I woke up again . During the time that Ed was asleep , I did two Apollo Landmark runs using Area No. 16 for the first one . This was on Basrah. It was a good run. We'll go into this a lot more in detail later on. I did the second one on Cairo . This was a good run . I went through some more computer mode checks . Every ten seconds, I changed the computer modes and turned the switches on and off, pushed the malfunction lights , hi t the Start C-omp button, turned the switches on and off, ran the IVI's and a whole bunch of other things. The computer was dead and ±twas pretty obvious that it was. At 92 hours, the urine flush system stopped up . Just prior to that Ed had urinated and we had a big bellows full. As it started going overboard, it always went overboard in squirts. White Did you have it at 92 or 95? McDivitt 92. White Okay, that was when I was asleep. CON·FIBENTIA~ ## Page 256 248 'CONFtDt:t+l~Al:-- McDivitt You were still asleep, and I think you got up around 92 : 3(), I would guess . Sometime around in there. I know that I got up three hours before retrofire and I slept about an hour and a half . You can go back and say that you got up about 92: 30 or 93 elapsed. Ed had urinated in the bladder and the bel l ows was full . As it got towards the end , i t started going out very slowly, but it did all go out . So , I turned the thing off normally. I l eft preheat on for a short time, two or three minutes , and then turned it off . After my urine dump, I had about half air and half urine in the bladder, and the bellows filled out. It just.stopped. It was pretty obvious that it wasn't going to go any farther . I turned off the OVERBOARD position and went to PREHEA:T on the other switch. I then went over to the evaporat or and dumped through the evaporator and it dumped right overboard . We used the evaporator dump system one other time during the flight . We played back the tapes and the things we were supposed to do unt il about 93 hours, I CONF-10EN"FIAl... ## Page 257 -----ceNFl0EN·;pJAL 249 believe , and that ' s when I went to sleep . I woke Ed up and I went to sleep at this time . White Actually we got our update while you were asleep the time before . We got the update for how to perform the retro . We figured that with the procedure they gave ue, if we followed it , we would get a three- sigma miss distance of 70 nautical miles. We were to use an 0AMS r etor with a manual retro . At this time , we were going to push the manuel button . They didn ' t know at this time that the TRS was working all right . They later came in and told us to use the automatic mode of time . We were to use zero- lift rolling. We were to start the terminal maneuver at the 400 000 foot marker. They told us to expect to encounter about 8 g's during the reentry . We were told the recovery area had three to four foo t waves , 18 knot winds , and good weather. I 1 ll cover this more later . White There wasn ' t much more . We got an update . I took a few more pictures , and I di d a medi cal pass. During that hour and 40 minutes there,·wasn ' t CONFl0ENTIAL ## Page 258 250 .u1.ything else . Nothing else was scheduled. We wer e down through what we felt was all the fuel we wanted to use , so about all I did was a couple of tracking tasks . McDivi tt Going back for a moment, - at 17 :19 I did an Apollo D- 6 on Yuma. Okay, I t hink that bri ngs us t o t he preretro portion of the mission. Right , Ed? White Yes, sir. I think you ' ll find t here are ~uite a few errors and omissions in what we've put on the tape right now . I t hink you have to com­ pare them both--the two tapes together--to get anyt hing. White That's like air to ground tape , also .· McDivitt That ' s right . It has to all be put together . This is jus t a piece right here. White We really started our preretro preparation about three hours prior to preretro . At this time we started stowing equipment and pre­ paring the spacecraft and ourselves for the retrofire. I think we worked for probably 30 ±o 45 minutes without making a very bi g CQ~~F-IDENTI--Ab ## Page 259 251 -eOl'ENTIAL ## Page 272 264 McDivitt Neither did I . I didn ' t hear a thing. I agree 100 per cent with Gus that you absolutely can ' t hear those aft-firing t hrusters . White My ear muffs are loose . They are always loose on my ears . So if you could hear it outside , I would have heard it. I didn ' t hear it. I heard Rate Command. McDivitt Those attitude thrusters really make a noise. White They make a big noise . It sounded to me like I could hear the thrusters firing and I was also detecting these pauses evecy so often . Several times I thought, "Oh , heck, it's stopped! " McDivitt That ' s right , Especially , when we started getting down towards the bottom. The old fuel gages were going down toward zero and the ti me was running around. It looked like it was going to be a dead heat between which went .out firs t. There was one··particularly J.ong pause ,. at about 2 minutes and 30 seconds , I thought , "There it goes ," a.nd we made a quick correction. .And when I stopped , I couldn ' t hear a thing. Nothing changed. That ' s all it was . White Okay. I retract my statement. COMF fDEN-slUa. L ## Page 273 265 McDivitt Well , not knowing exactly what I was doi ng with the hand controller, you--I was making small corrections . White That ' s the first time I'd heard that kind of a sound. McDivitt We were getting it when we wer e chasing that thing around , too--when we were chasing the booster around . White You were thrusting again . I thought this was the other one . McDivitt Yes , that ' s right . So we got through the TR-13 and TR-12 Checklis t s. ~e TR-13 and the TR- 12 Checklists really should be grouped together--the preparat ion and the OAMS retrofire . 5. 5 TR- 5 Events McDivitt Once more we started doing our checklist a little early. Since we had the t i me there was no since in wasting it and then rushing at the end. So we went through what we could in advance of T -5. The things we couldn't do or that didn't R need to be done in advance we waited for until exactly TR-5 . I guess this is where Ed got the ## Page 274 266 first clue that the TRS was ahead of the ground time . White This is an area where I particularly watch the time . This is an a.:-ea where I 'm making a time check to start the elapsed timer going in order to get our time after retrofire . I was watch­ ing it pretty close . The indication on my watch was that the TRS vi.as about a second or so early. I felt we had a good Green·..n.ch Mean Time hack . We checked it several times and I thought we had a good one. With my time refer­ ence it was approximately a second to a little better early. At this time I had about half of the checklist completed before we got to the time for it . I verified it several times . It's not a hurried time at all, from 36 down , I don't believe . There ' s no time in there when you're really rushed unless it-- McDivitt Yes . It is not hurried, provided you have everything else completed and you ' re not doing anything else but preparing for the retrofire-­ you have nothing going wrong during this period. At TR-5 the sequence lights came on a little CONFIO-EN:f~AL ## Page 275 267 bit early and that's where Ed got his first clue tr·at the TRS was ahead of the other thing. I didn ' t notice it because I wasn ' t watching my event timer that closely. Ed got his GMT sto¥ ­ watch started . Why don I t you go ahead with the electrical , Ed? White I turned the main batteries on, verified them on , and verified t hey were taking the load . They were in good shape . McDivitt This is where we turned the OAMS off and the RCS on. Let me talk about the checkout on the RCS now . We had armed the RCS prior to the TR- 36 Checklist, and checked out each ring. When I was checking the rings out , I felt that I might have a thruster out . That was because when I pitched up or down, my top left yaw thruster was firing in one ring. I felt that I might be generating a rolling moment by having one of my pitch jets out and the yaw jets were having to take out this rolling moment . I checked it in one ripg. I don't remember whi ch ring it was . I went to Direct 8lld did it again . It didn ' t seem to do it , but on the ## Page 276 268 other hand , it didn't seem to make the space­ craft roll either. Then I turned that ring off and went over and ddd it on the other ring. Identically the same thing happened . I thought I might have trouble wi th the roll -gyro . I turmid the roll gyro to SECONDARY . That didn 't seem to make any difference . We went back to PRIMARY . I remember commenting at that time that the RCS was a lot looser in control than the OAMS. It seemed to me that the OAMS held the spacecraft attitude better. It seemed like it controlled to a rate deadband that was smaller than the RCS deadband . I don't know why you're using the same gyros and the same electronics . The only thing that could be different would be the attitude drivers on the RCS might be activiating slower than they are in the OAMS. It seemed like the rates were such a--seems like there must be a lag in the whole system. It seemed like the deadband in the RCS was twice what it was in the OAMS . It operated properly. There's so much difference between looking at that ball on firing retros ~N-FIE>ENl~L ## Page 277 269 and looking out and actually seeing the nose of t he spacecraft moving around out there . There's no comparison with t he simulator. You just can't simul ate t his . When I looked down at the ball and did t he retrofire, i t was just l ike the simulator. When I was l ooking outside and actually seeing what the spacecraft was do­ ing as I cont rol led i t , it seemed like it was a lot sloppier with the RCS than it was wi th the OAMS . White We must have fired over New Mexico or Texas . McDivitt Our retrofire? White Yes . I could see the old brown sandy earth down right under us . McDivitt Yes , Guaymas gave us our countdown , so we were over northern Mexico . White That ' s the area that I thought we were over . Actually , it may even look almost a littl e like west Texas. McDivitt It could have been. Then I did TR-5 . I went to our retro attitude. We reported our TR- 5 Checklist complete . I don ' t know exactly when Guaymas came on the radio . -€0-NFf'DEN·f ~l ## Page 278 270 COt\JFtE>l:N!TtAI' 5, 6 TR- 1 Events McDivit t Yes. At TR-1 there wasn't really much that we could do in advance , but whatever we could do , we di d . There weren I t many steps . White We just waited for minus 1 minute . McDivit t All you have to do is really just prepare your­ self mentally, but at T - 1 I told Ed , "We ' re R at a minute . " , and I guess F,d already knew we were at a minute. White Yes. McDivitt F,d did it just exactly as we'd briefed it many times . You punched the SEP OAMS. We heard the bang. He followed wit h a SEP ELECTRIC , rather quickly afterward as we had planned. We heard the bang. Then we waited a short t ime as we had planned , and fired the SEP ADAPrER . Then t here was a great big bang. The tendancy is to punch those buttons 1, 2 , 3. We decided that we didn ' t want to go 1 , 2 , 3. We wanted t o go 1, 2, (pause) 3. That was exactly what we did , and there wasn I t any doubt whether the equipment adapter separated . White I had no incl ination to look around . I knew it Ee·N-FiDENTIAb ## Page 279 271 was gone . McDivitt That ' s when Ed hollered , "'l'here go the pump packages ! I see two pump packages out there . Just exactly what John Young said! " White They separate right off to the left side . Jim couldn ' t see them because of the posi tion of his head . I could see them . McDivitt That 's right . I never saw them at all . White I could clearly see the t wo pumps together on the mounting and mounted together . They were right together . And I'll back John up to hilt on tha t one. I saw t hem too . McDivitt We got the ad~pter separated with all the at­ tendent flying pump packages . Whi t e Quite a flourish , isn ' t it? McDivi tt Right . I t sure is . It was a big bang. There ' s no doubt about it . At TR- 30 , the TR- 30 Sequence Light s ceme on , and at that t:Lme Ed said , "The s aquenc e 1 ights came on about a second or a second and a half in advance. " So , I armed retro squibs , and we discussed whether or not to punch off the Auto- re t r o Button or not . If the TRS was fast, I didn't ## Page 280 272 want to p,mch it off ahead and have t he retro­ rockets go off early, but I figured t hat it· wasn't in a hurry that much. But if it c8Jlle on much earlier than that , i t was really going to make us short. So, I finally decided that we'd go ahead and ann the Auto-retro Button at about three seconds so that we weren' t going to be any more than 15 or 20 miles short as a result of the retrorockets going off early. We'd still get the auto- retrofire, signal through, so that if something went ·,:rong with the manual retrofire signal we'd still get the retrorockets fired . I felt t hat three seconds early would be better than a possible 15 or 20 second one in case we had to go through some non-nominal method of firing the retros in case the manual button didn't make it work . I told Ed to arm the auto-retrofire , a.nd he did this at about three seconds and i t fired automati­ cally at between two and one seconds, I think, in the count. White Yes . McDivitt I felt that we got a one-plus second early eo·~Ft0E~TIA1 ## Page 281 273 auto-retrofire. \ohite Ri ght . I did too . We went through the little discussion there from minus 30 down, and I knew what Jim's point was. I think I distrusted the system a tad more than Jim did, but I thought his logic was good. We had two systems work­ ing to fire the rockets. i was in full agree­ ment. McDivitt We went through and saved fuel for four days so we could do an OAMS retrofire . I felt if we're going to adopt that sort of philosophy and go through that long of a lean fuel period, then we could afford another few miles of in­ accuracy thrown in by an early retrofire if we got the redundancy that you would get from a double-firing . So , I elected to go ahead and have Ed push it . Al though it probably con­ tributed on the order of 8 to 10 miles to our miss distance, I don ' t think it really hurt us that bad. 5.7 TR- 0 Events McDivitt I had the spacecraft in the retrofire attitude, and when t he retrorockets f ired, I-- 'Ee·N Fl0 ENTtft:t:-' ## Page 282 274 White I had also pushed the man1lal b'uttG::·. on time . So , it was about a second after they actually • fired . McDivitt Excellent . The spacecraft was in the proper retro-attitude and we got a real good push from the retrorockets . There are four distinct pushes, and I never felt a pause between any one of them . Did you? Whi t e Yes, a little pause between each one. I think my cues wei:e tuned llp in a different manner than yours . Yours were working on the controls . Did you feel that you could actual­ ly see the acceleration? You weren ' t looking out the window. McDivitt I was a little bit . It looked like we were actually turned around and started back the other way . ila, ha! White I really could feel the g ' s . Nothing that was uncomfortable, but I felt each one of them and I a l so felt looking out that I could see the spacecraft sl owing down . I know i t was such a pityingly amount compared to our velocity, but I was looking down on the ground when they fired . ## Page 283 -roNE,IQENTIA::~ 275 Your view of the ground is considerable at minus 30 degrees, a~i it did seem like I could see the spacecraft actually slow down . McDivitt I don't know what the magnitude of the g's was during retrofire. We were super- sensitive , I'll tell you that . We'll get to that later. As a matter of fact, later on when I was debating about whether or not the g meter worked , I stopped and hit the reset button, and it did ·:1 come down . It came down f:r, ~ic. something less than oL-s· to zero . White I 'd say bet;.reen 2/10 of a g and 1/2 g dtiring" retrofire . McDivi";~ 'I 'd guess something about that order too . It sure seems a lot . White Your cues a=e really up,,fo r the g's. McDivitt You've been at zero e for so long, anything fe els like it ' s a lot . Mcnivi";• I was at zero rates ani in the proper attitud~. I was in Rate Command when the retrorocket s fired . I maintained the attitude very well. It was very ea$y. There ·were no deviations at all . Ed was standing by on the roll rate gyro --COl>al~IDENl lAL ## Page 284 276 CO ► lFIDEN·f~At • in case it looked like I was loosing control in yaw . He could turn off the roll rate gyro and get all the authority that I needed in yaw . As far as I could see, it never deviated more than a degree from where I was supposed to be . I don ' t think it ever got off that center bar in yaw , :ind it never got a dot- that little dot- -away from the 30 degree mark as far as I could tell . Could you see any, Ed? White I was sitting there watching it and enjoying it at that t~me tecause the attitude was stay­ ing right on. McDi vitt Yes . It was right on . We got the 6V in the right direction. N,:-w, the IVI' s didn't read out , because we didn ' t have the computer on , so we really couldn't tell . White It was as steady as a rock. You could see the decelerations and looking out the window , I couldn ' t detect any movement in attitude . I was looking right down on the ground several times during several of the retros, and I think you could detect motion fairly well . I didn't see any . C.Q t> j J; I9-EN lLA.L. ## Page 285 cer~ftDENT~Ai. 277 McDivitt I'll tell you . I was really happy after that OAMS retrofire and the retrorocket re trofire . I figured that we had exactly what we were supposed to , and I was positive we were going to come down on that cotton-picking carrier. I was really quite happy after that , because I don't think 3ven i :c.. t:'1"" simulator we ever had on0 t~.d-~· easy. White Shall we make 01lr a dmission on OAMS retro at this time , Jim? McDivitt Yes. As a matter of fact it might be appro­ priate. I'm probably one of the biggest an­ tagonists to the OAMS retrofire that there possibly is at the Manned Spacecraft ·center, because I think it's a fuel wasting ma~euver and a lot .-:,f other things . I still think it is. I ' ll still say one thing--after I fired the OAMS retrofire and I knew I was going to come down , I was a l •::>t more relaxed than I had been before I got there. I ' m going to have to tell Dr. Gilruth that , but I still think we can get by without it . White It was nice to see tt work. It was nice . CONRDENTJAL ## Page 286 278 McDivitt It was , and I was real sorry we d:idn '·t havG a computer because after those two thingn , which I thought were done certainly as good as I could possibly do them . I felt sure that ~e could have landed right on the cotton-pickin~ car rier ' s deck if we just had a computer to tell us wher e t o go . I would have liked to have tried the guidance . I worked hard eno,.1g'.l on that reentry guidance and I didn't get to use it . Whi te Jim , I think there is one thing that we left out - -the reading of the percentage of 0AMS fuel left. I think we called out --3 or 4 per cent . McDivitt That ' s right . I had 3 or . 4 pe·rcen t rema ining on the gage . We called it out and it will be on the tape . White I wrote it down ~t 3 percent . Here it is . 3 percent of the fuel left after 0AMS. McDivitt Yes , an1 it wa~ a little hard to rea1 down there and parallax was pretty bad . I estima­ ted that it was 3 per cent. White I read off the g_uanti ty on the gage and it was a little over 1100 . ## Page 287 279 fl McDivitt 1100 psi? Wh1te Yes . McDivitt I'll tell you one thing about the out-the­ window view at 30 degrees pitch-down attitude . You're really pitched down at 30 degrees . White That's another thing that I noticed. I was looking out the window, and I s~rely wasn ' t obse~ving much in the way of a horizon . I was looking at the ground . McDivitt The top · 2 inches of the window has the hori­ zon in it . So , if you really had a bad r etro and you get scr ewed up a l i ttle bi t , you coul d lose your horizon. White You could lose your horizon , but I think you've got a good enough view of the motion of the ground az1d an object on the ground. I thl.nk you could do a ver y effective job . McDivitt If I really hai to do a..~ out-the-window retro I ' m 11.)t even sure that I ' d look out and use the hori zon. I think I ' d pick a spot on the ground . White That ' s the point I was maki ng. You ' d put a grease pencil on your window. McDivitt You'd have to use both . @9NFll:)ENtL~L ## Page 288 280 Whi.te I LM.nk you'd find a spot on the ground , and. hold it. McDivitt Because the spot on the ground is going to move . Whi.te Yes, it's going to move during the fir~ . That 's exactly what you do on an attitude ball. you know . You have a horizm1 and you have a spot and then you fly tha":; :~pot . So, it sounds kind of l ike the thing I think you can do. McDivitt The retrorockets fired, as I said, in the order 1, 2, 3, 4. We got t he manual fit'e out-- button punched. Ed got that . We had said that because we're getting a countdown we were going to fire the Manual. Retrofire Button ex1L-,tly when we got to zero . We weren' t going to wait aro,md a second a f ter that so that we got t he computer and all that jazz on the line . We didn ' t have .any ,;01:iputer to get on the line . We weren't going to read out anyth:i.ng on the IVI' s or anything else. All we were concerned with was firing the retrorockets . 5, 8 Retropack Jettison McDivitt I waited 45 seconds. I started rolling over at this time. When 45 seconds crune , I had t~e CONf~DfENTIAb. ## Page 289 /4ONFl0-ENflA t- 281 retro-;;ett squib on , and I punched off tho retro- -­ White The light came on And you punched it . McDivitt That 's right . The light came on at 45 seconds and I punched it . There was a real solid bang, and I knew we separated from the retropack . No doubt there either. As we went on down , we finally sa•,r the retropack com,::- on around behind us . McDi vitt Do you have anything else on the retropack jettison? I guess not . That ' s pretty simple . 5.9 Communications McDivitt We got the com from t:~e ground . White I thought we had good communicat.tons wi t h the ground. McDivitt No problems with the communications . I was a little concerned with the communications earlier in the flight , because we wer en ' t get-• ting anything . We weren't getting retrofire times or any other i nformation . But to ~ards the end of the f light coouwmica.tio:is wer,1 8iC­ cellent. 5. 10 Update -E O NFIDENTI-Al!- ## Page 290 282 McDi vitt The update was awful , I think . As I mentioned earlier, they updated our TRS but the TRS was obviously not running with the ground . 6.0 REENTRY 6. 1 Reent:cy Par ameters Update Mc:Divitt We really didn't have a reentrs parameters up­ dl:l.te post-retro . We went intn black-out pretty quick . There wasn ' t anything to update. We were going to s t art rolling at 400 000 . Re­ gardless of anything else , we had a pre•­ program_~ed reentry . 6.2 400K White We were at 400K before you got your 3 - Minute Update . McDivitt That's right . At two minutes a~d 38 secondA we were through 400 000 feet. We got there in a hurry . I rol l ed upside down, and I flew do,m to 400 000 feet , which was to be at 2:38 , How­ ever, I thought that we ' d retrofired a little early, so I wasn ' t in any great rush to start my rolling reentry . I dela¥ed about :another 30 or 40 secondA . The only reason I delayed was because I knew there wasn't any rush to get eeMfteENl-lAJ_ ## Page 291 283 C6 ► ~Fl0ENTIA " over , because if we were going to be nnypl a ~e , we were going to be short. I j".1st wanted to get over a.nd get in a good attitude . So , I r ol led the thing upside down, got the-- White One thing---on the Post- retro Checklist , we dedded this time to use Reentry Rate Command rather than Direct. McDivitt That ' s r ight . White That ' s a deviation on our checklist . McDivitt When I got the thi ng upside dow:n, I was still in Rate Co!llllla.nd. I held the lift vec t or up, heads down , until I got down to· about 3 minutes and 15 seconds . I got my 3 minute time hack from the ground. I got my clock counting up a 3 minutes . At about 3 minutes and 15 seconds I started th0 roll . What I did was , I put in aoout 15 degrees/second , and then we turned off the roll gyro . I just left the · thing rolling. I controlled the pitch and yaw inside the rate deadba.nd , which was plus or minus 4 degrees , just a 3 you would i n Direct. I still had the rate deadba.nd t o take care of any wild pertubations t hat we got into . -€0NFl0ENllAL ## Page 292 6. 3 .04 g White We didn ' t even have a time for . 04 g's did we? McDivitt No . We d.id:a ' t h:we ::1.ny-thing like that . We started rolling reentcy at 400 000 feet, except that I didn ' t start it until ah-.ut 45 seconds after that to make sure that I had good at ti bd9 . I started the thing around the way I wanted it . Just .<.i,lxmt this tim,~ , we saw the retro adapter start floating back past us . I figured the other day that thing was small-end- forward rather than blunt-end-fo rward . White I'd sa:y it was front-end- forward too . McDivitt We saw the spherical end of the retrorockets . Remember? White Yes . All four of them . McDivitt All fo·..1r of them . We didn ' t see the nozzle . It had done a 180-degree turn small-end- forward and it was as stable a8 a rock. We could see the whip antennas sticking out to the side . White Exactly the position it should go to . That's the heaviest end, I would presume. McDivitt It would tend to trim that way too . Except that EONi;,IDENTIAL ## Page 293 CONFtDENTl;ttt- 285 I didn ' t think there would be any aerodynamics at 400 000 feet . But it was turned around 180 degrees and was perfectly stable with the whip antenna sticking out , which at that iime was up to the right . White Yes . McDivitt We were upside down. It sure was a funny look~ ing sight. White It sure was . It was really pretty. McDivitt And it was as stable as a rock and very slowly d:t'ifting behind us . As a matter of fact , for a while I thought that our opening velocities were too slow, and I thought it would just come back and hit us . But , it just stayed out there, a nd we started our rolling reentry there . We were coming on down and we were rolling around and before I got any noticeable g ' s at all--Isn' t that right--before we got any notice­ able g ' s it s t arted burning? White Okay. We saw the reddish pink layer come a­ round the spacecraft-- McDivitt Well, didn ' t we see the retropack start burning before the- - ? -CONFtDENllM ## Page 294 286 ~ 0 t>J FI l;)f NT IAi. White Whichever way we saw it , it's on the tapes , because we discussed it pretty thoroughly . McDivitt That ' s right , as we were doing it . But I sort of vaguely recall that watching the retros after us as we s]!lllrl around , it started glowing a little bit and then you could see t his big spray come off the front --shock or someth ing. I t looked like it was just melting and corning away . It just looked like a great big orange mushroom back there, and that's when it really started falling behind us. McDivitt We hadn ' t felt any g ' s at all . Had you felt any I gs? White Not that time . McDivitt I ' m sure that I hadn ' t felt any g ' s . White I was wondering why we were so light . We were looking down at Florida. We had watched Florida go by and commented on it . McDivitt Shoot , we real ly made a low altitude pass across the States . We should have probably filed a DD- 175 to get clearance . White We had to come through the control zone , you know, at Eglin. They're kind of sensitive about ## Page 295 CONf-H~ENl-lAL-- 287 lower altitudes . McDivitt ... started glowing and burning and it was as stable as a rock as long as I could see it . Did you ever see it tumbl e? White No , never did . McDivitt Okay. It was behind us and it looked like it just ate the front tight off, and I guess when we first saw it , it was on the order of 200 feet , maybe? White Yes . McDivitt And the last time I saw it , it looked like it was about 3/4 .. .. White That was about the position that I saw the booster for the first time . McDivitt I think you ' re right . I guess we could see the dome on it and all that stuff . As a matter of fact , it was a pretty good reentry shape . It looked stable as a rock . White I t stabilized right out . McDivitt So , we finally saw it drop behind us and burn up . As it finally started drawing behind us . White We started to get McDivitt The first thing I saw was the orange flame- - the - CONFl0ENTl~t- ## Page 296 288 orange or pinkish flames coming out . It looked like the flame was coming up around my side of the spacecraft like this . Was it doing that on your side , too? White Yes . It looked like it was almost coming from three points . McDivitt Okay. Probably what it was doing was corning around both sides because of the angle of attack and going out this way. But I definitely could see the orange fire come up around the l eft- hand side of the spacecraft and out in front of the window, and pretty soon I saw some green fire-- White Coming out of the top -- McDivitt Oh, is that where you saw it? I didn't. I saw the green fire down close to the left- hand side coming up over the nose inside of the red fire , and then it was all swirling around there . Then while we were coming down, we were coming down in a r oll , but with our relatively high L/D, we were in a great big roll with a big wallow. I guess this is really indicative of how much lift we had . ~FfDl:NrtA~ ## Page 297 289 White It looked to me l ike we were getting a lot of lift out of it . McDivitt It looked to me we were getting an awful lot of lift out of it. White It was really whipping around there . McDivitt And we were going around at a pretty good rate . The needle was off to the left . That ' s right . It moved out sl owly , slowly and got out t o about 2 degrees and it just held there . The spacecraft was as stable as a rock. I damped the thing a couple of times in pitch and yaw and it just stablized right on down there . I don ' t think I even t ouched the pitch again . I think I maybe touched the pitch four times all the way down and the yaw maybe six or seven times . What I was looking at was just a huge portion of the sky. I could see the ground, then I could see the sky, and I really saw a lot of the country as we came rolling by. White What surprised me is how much it was . I knew why it was doing it but I thought it was eeNFtofNllAL .. ## Page 298 290 arc was that this thing cut out. That thing was a real lifting body. You ' re really getting a lot of lift initiall y, and if you roll around there, you ' d kill it all off; and your aero­ dynamics is such that you really can't tell, because the stability is so loose right there . White You know you're going to get some lift if you have an offset CG, but you couldn't tell where it was going , McDivitt You ' re in the area where you're getting a lot of lift so i f you do a roll , you've lost that range right off the bat . We came down on this great big spiral, and here I think we ought to get into 6.4 Acceleration Profile McDivitt - - the acceleration at retrofire. I called down on the ground and told them that we had four retros . We got automatic. We got auto­ retro . We got all four in sequence . We got auto- retro . Auto- retrofire appeared to be about a second and a half early . In the acceleration profile I said, "Well, here come the g ' s, Ed . " and I felt the g ' s going up. He said yes. ## Page 299 291 White I said , "Yes . There are two of them , aren't there?" McDivitt Yes, and then we waited a while longer and-- White I said, "Gee, there ' s nothing on the g- meter. " McDivitt I said, "The g-meter must be broken " ,so that ' s why I reached up and reset it . It actually went down a little bit. So we went a little while longer , and I said, "Ed, I feel a lot of g ' s ", and he said , "So do I ." Then he said 1:We must be up between three and four. " White If felt like that. McDivitt And I said, "Yes, I think we're up about that high too ." And the g-meter was still reading zero for all pratical purposes . Pretty soon it started building up slowly . It went up to 2 , 3, 4, and I called out at 2 , and I called out at 4, and I called out at 6, and I think I called out at 7. White About the time you called out the 2, I knew we had been had. McDivitt Yes. It's just that we were super-sensitive to g's and the load pulling us into the seat was on .the order of a tenth of a g . White It ' s true . CONFIDENTIAt-' ## Page 300 292 cor~FtOENr~~ McDivitt So , we had 1/10 g and we thought· we had 3 . .And we both felt this way . The g 's went up to a­ bout 7 1/2 . They told us we would probably get 8 g ' s coming down . When we got the instrument positions back from the spacecraft , the post landing switch positions, they had the g- meter marked at 7 1/2 g ' s , and I suspect that ' s probably about as high as it went . Now , I ' m telling you this was really a piece of cake . I thought that maybe 7 1/2 g ' s aft~r being out there for so long would be tough , but I di.dn ' t even have to breathe hard to get any air , I just lay there and relaxed and enjoyed the whole thing , and I really got a big kick out of that reentry . White We chatted back and forth . We talked through the whole g- load, and I was watching outside and inside . I was looking out quite a bit of the time when things were going so smoothly, particularly the g- load . When you get to the high g's , you might as well look out, because you ' re not going to do anything about it , and I noticed no dimming in vision . Everything was as clear as a bell . Not a speck. I could see -CONfJDENTIJXt ## Page 301 _c:GNFIDENJIAL 293 everything on the instrument panel , and I could see things very clearly outside . McDivitt Things were going so smoothly on the inside that I looked out too . I enjoyed the scenery on the way down . White Once you get in that position and you get the high g ' s you ' re not going to do anything inside . McDivitt In the amplitude of the oscillations, --all the simulations show that they tend to decrease as you get to high g ' s and the f r equency picks up . So the only thing you could do is hurt things if you start screwing around with it , except we didn ' t have any oscillations anyway . It was just as stable as a rock . White I think at this point I ' d like to put something in . I ' d like to find out when they analyze the data whether the upper right-firing thrusters on my side were firing a whole magnitude more than the right - hand upward-fir ing thrusters . In fact, they very early in the pr ofile became a cherry red and just stayed red hot , even a little bit white hot all the way down . White There was no frequency to it at all . It appeared to me they were firing continually and I think L'ONFIDEN:J:IAl ## Page 302 294 maybe this might associate itself in some wa;y with something in the system prior . McDivitt I think it was prior , because we were in Reentry Rate Command and we started the roll. Then the yaw needle drifted on out and it looked to me like it never got over about 3 degrees/second . I was trying to read the 0.1 degree/second seal~ It might have gone on to 4 degrees/second with the roll rate we had in there , and the jets just kept right on firing constantly . What I had done when we started was to leave the roll gyro on , and I rolled the thing over till I got almost full deflection on the needle . Then I put the roll gyro off so I'd have 15 degrees and we wouldn 't tend to overrate the thing so t hat the Reentry Rate Command was firing all the time . What I think happened was that as we went on down, the yaw rate needle tended to drift on out . I don't know if you noticed it or not , but it tended to drift out . It started at around 2 degrees/second, and it drifted on out slowly until it got to about 4 degrees. I thought it never got out to more than 3 degrees/ second . Later on , when we started oscillating CO~ ◄ ftOENf~AL ## Page 303 CONFt-DENTiA-1. 295 around like we did, if the thing were out at 3 degrees and started banging back and forth at all , the yaw thrusters would be on constantly; and also that ' s the side that they'd be on . It would have been on the right-hand side. Are you sure that it was red that high up, or did it get red when we started getting down where we got all those oscillations? Because there I ' m sure it was firing all the time. White It was red for a long time , Jim, McDivitt Was it? I was actually watching it, waiting for one of them to bust loose, because it was really firing a lot more than I thought it was out there. Jim asked me about the frequency of it, and I could­ n't tell whether it was on or off . It was r ed all the time. The other one was hardly heated up at all. McDivitt Shoot . There wasn't any need for any kind of firing then. White It would be interesting to see if the other yaw thrusters were. McDivitt Wel l, it ' ll be interesting when they cut these things apart to see what kind of life cycle -- (!IQl'IFIDENJIAL. ## Page 304 296 White I t really had a good workout. 6.5 Spacecraft control McDivitt Spacecraft control was like a dream. A good engineering description. There weren't any oscillations. It was as stable as a rock . I don't think we need to say much more about that . It wasn' t like any failure simulation we've seen . It was the easiest thing to control, easier than any simulation I 've seen. Shoot! A baby could have done it. McDivitt We started getting oscillations around then and the Reentry Rate Command fired a few times and I d~mped it in pitch and yaw. There really wasn't any control problem to it at all, I didn ' t feel. Did you think there was? White No . I would have been watching closer if I had thought there was . 6.6 100 000 feet McDivitt The altimeter was at 96 700 feet throughout the entire flight. It started on down,and we were still at about 5 or 6 g 's when that thing started on down. It went on down to about 92 000 feet, and then the g's started off, and the altimeter started back up again. ## Page 305 297 It went all the way back to about 96 000 feet again, and then it started down again. The second time it started down, it really started down in a hurry, and I was sure that we were still at 100 000 feet. McDivitt So , I waited until the g level got about 3, which is around 80 or 90 thousand feet. I started slow­ ing the roll rate there. I wanted to get the thing to a zero roll rate by the time we got to 40 or 50 thousand feet, certainly by the time we got to 40. We started gyrating around some more, but I didn't think it was exceptional. The Reentry Rate Command started firing . As a matter of fact, I said!'H?re comes the Reentry Rate Command, " and then I was firing on top of .it so that we really weren't oscillating too much. Then we got to 40 000 feet and I put the drogue chute out, and that's where things really got exciting. 6.7 50 000 feet McDivitt I put the drogue out at 40 000 feet. We were nice and stable as we went down. We were a heck of a lot more stable than we were when we put the drogue chute out. ## Page 306 298 White That ' s right by several orders of magnitude. McDivitt When we put t he drogue chute out, we were concerned about the thing destabilizing rather than stabilizing. So I intended to put the drogue out and leave the con trol at Reentry Rate Command . This I did, and we oscillated all over the sky . We estimat ed pl us or minus 40 degrees , and I t hink we were at leas t every bit of that . White We were, and when the drogue chute came out , I was right in the sun so I couldn ' t see i t , and I didn't know whether we had one or not, You called it out , and about t he t ime you cal led it out , I coul d see it up there gyrating wildly around . McDivitt I never could tell whether the thing dereefed or not. I had a lot of goop on my window and the sun was out , and all I could see was the shape of the dr ogue up there , and it really was fluttering around . We wer e plus or minus 40 degrees to it without any doubt , and I wouldn ' t be a bit sur­ prised if we wer en ' t plus or minus 60 degrees to it . We wer e r eal ly getting tossed around . It was just jer king a l l around . White It was fast , but I don ' t t hink it was that big a GOMftB·Et'4TIAt ## Page 307 'EON·F l0ENTIM 299 magnitude. (McDivitt is making a noise to des­ cribe it.) McDivitt About like that. White I was really surprised the thing held on there, to tell you the truth. McDivitt So was I. I was expecting the drogue chute to fall off any minute. White I was, too. White It worked all right. McDivitt It held us together. White If I went through it again, I'd be perfectly happy sitting there riding through it, to tell you the truth. White The way I looked at it, it was rather interesting. I hadn't quite expected that. McDivitt Neither did I. I know that Gus said that he had a pretty wild ride and he thought the thing was destabilizing him. He had a scheme where he just turned off the propellent valves to stop the propellent flow. That meant that he had to wait about 10 or 15 seconds to get the propellent valves back open again to get the jets firing. Well, I wasn't going to do that. I thought the thing to do was to turn off the electronics COMF10cNTIAt- ## Page 308 300 OOt◄ FIDE~rtAL and see if the thing was going to become unstabl~ This is what I did . I turned off the RCS elec­ tronics . The thing was that they didn't get any worse . It didn ' t ge t any worse . I watched it. I could see enough of it to tell that we weren't becomi ng wistable. White It was unstable to a point and then it stabilized out in this oscillation . McDivitt That ' s right . It was really gyrating around . By that time we were down to 20 000 feet and I called , " 20 thousand feet . Pull down the handles" , or something to that effect . White You called out 28 . McDivitt Is that what I s aid? And then, I pulled the propellant valves, as I had planned to do, and turned the oontrol node to Rate Command rather that. Reentry , because I wanted to burn up all the fuel that I could out of those manif olds . As a matter of fact, I was interested in burning up all the fuel I could bef ore I got to the ground . White I have a question . I thought you put it in Rate Command before you turned off the valves , and it pretty well damped itself out on the €QtqftDENffM ## Page 309 301 drogue. McDivitt No, I don't think I did. White Okay. McDivitt I don' t think I did. I think I left it i n Reentry Rate Command until I turned it off and then turned off the power . I went from ACME to OFF on both rings . It didn ' t get any worse. I think what I might have done is I might have gone fr om OFF to ACME to Rate Command , to turn the propellant valves off rather than going from White We ll, I know it damped out there in the end considerably. I think it was when the Rate Command, or whatever it was, was firing, McDivitt Well , Reentry Rate command was going all the time. We were going at a heck of a lot faster rate than 4 degrees/second. Whi te Well, we cut down our oscillations considerably after you did something over there . I thought you had put it in Rate Command . McDivitt I did put it in Rate Command , but I didn 't leave the propellant on. This was why I wanted to get r id of all the propellant onboard t he spacecraft if I could. But I didn't want €0NFJDEN+1Al- ## Page 310 302 to let those things fire for a long time and maybe eat up t he drogue chute, and find ourse l ves wi thout propellant and without drogue chute , too . So , once we got the drogue chute out, I let the things fire for a while and turned the electronics off. Maybe I turned it back on and went to Rate Command , and off with the prop­ ellant valves . I ' m not really sure . White I think you had it in Rate Command for a little while - --i)robably while you were firing out the fuel. McDivitt Yes, that ' s what I did . I went to Rate Command and let all the fuel fire out, just as we had planned . So that I was sure that the rates were high enough t hat we were going to fire out the fuel without disturbing the thing on the drogue. So we fell on down . Ed got the snorkel on the vent valve about 28 to 27 thousand feet . We came on down . I watched the altimeter go through 11 ooo. . 6. 8 Main Chute Deployment McDivitt At 10 600 I punched out the main chute . I saw it go out with a lot of crap and corruption flying off the nose . It went out and came out in a reefed conditi on, and I saw and I said we had a good reefed chute . I don ' t guess you -@!ONftiJEN 1IAL ## Page 311 303 could see that too well, could you? White No, I couldn't see the chute out. I saw it finally when it deployed. McDivitt I saw the thing hanging up there just the way it was supposed to, and then the thing de reefed, came billowing out just the way it should, and I :'said, "We ' ve got a good chute". One edge of it collapsed and came back in and collapsed about a third of the chute. We've seen a lot of movies of these chutes corning out, so I wasn't really worried about the thing collapsing . It went in and came back out. 6.9 Conununications McDivitt There weren't any communications that I could tell were there? Maybe we received some trans­ missions on the drogue, but I'm not really sure. As soon as we •deployed the main chute the antenna came off. So we couldn't talk to anybody after that . White I don't think we got anythi ng on t he drogue. McDivitt I ' m not really sure that we did. White I don't think we did. McDivitt Shoot! We were getting thrown around so that we couldn't have heard anything anyway. C8t--.J·F ID-ENTIA I: ## Page 312 -cot ◄ FIE>Et~TIAl They tried to communicate with us a couple of times after we came out of the blackout and before we put the drogue out . I didn't hear exactly what he was saying. He wasn't hearing anything I was saying either as far as I could tell . He wasn ' t a cting like he heard what I was saying . White He gave us our blackout times of 5+23 and 9+21, and there really wasn't too much we could do to check these out . McDivi tt After we got the main chute deployed , I told Ed , "Quick! Take your blood pressure ." The chute came out around 7500 fee t or so , and when we finally got the thing dereefed we were floating down nice and gently . F.d s tarted taking t he blood pressure, and it seemed like it took an eternally long time . By the time we got down around 5300 feet or so , I said, " F.d , get the blood pressure done because at 5000 feet we're going to go to a two-point attitude." He fooled around and fooled around and fooled around . Finally we got down to 5000 feet and I said , "Ed, you ' ve got about three or four more seconds , and we ' re going to two- point attitude . " White It was a l ittle s l ow. I don ' t know why. ## Page 313 305 McDivitt I didn't want to trust that altimeter . Ed kept fooling around with that blood pressure without getting any air out of it, and finally I said , "Okay, Ed , we're going to go to two­ point." I guess by then he had the blood pressure completed, Whi t e I think we got a good blood pressure . McDivitt So , just like we ' d always practiced, I said, "3, 2, 1 , MARK ",and punched the single-point re lease . 6 . 10 Single -Point R~lease White We both had our heads braced up on our arms. McDivit t We had our arms up on the windshield and my head wasn't exactly on my arm. Was yours? White My head was on the arm and pressed over to the side of the spacecraft. I was well wedged in , I felt. McDivitt So was I. My head went forward a little bi t, back a little bit, then back up forward again , and it didn ' t hit anypl ace. Did yours? White No. I had my head pressed on my arm the whole time. I don't believe it left the arm very much , because I actually had it wedged from behind , too. McDivitt So , I thought going to two-point was a lot less violent than the ~ide oniihe d:t'ogue. •CO 1\1 FI i;> E~~TIAt: ## Page 314 306 Whi te I agree with you . I think we ' ve got a good operational procedure of bracing your head on your arm up against the window--a satisfactory procedure for this . 6.11 Postmain Checklist Items White We took the blood pressure on the main chute , too. I went through what I call the reinforcement items on the checklist t hat I wanted to get off right away , and t hen I sat back and pumped off another blood pr essure . About this time you were making your calls to the recovery force. McDivitt Right . I started calling the recovery forces as F,d was taking his blood pressure. We got some response from Omnibus right away .· White Good old Omnibus . McDivitt Yes. And we went right on down. We stowed the D-ring covers . We stowed the D-ring cover s between deploying the main chute and going to two-point, just as we had planned . We didn ' t want the D- ring to flop around there, and once you go to two- point it's too late to eject anyway . White I call ed Jim to unstow his D-ring at 35 000 feet and he took his out at that time. I pulled his €OtJFJE>ENflAL and tilted the thing up over the top . He said we were going blunt-end- forward, but we were actually tilted over the top . We then did a p~tch_down maneuver about 180 degrees in the water. I was surprised that we were being dragged backwards , but I got the sensation that I was going backwards and almost upside-down . White I had t he kind of feeling that we went in and touched over a little bit, and that's about all the feeling that I got. I don't believe we got dragged very much. Mc Divitt No, but I just felt that was the way that I was going. I was being pressed back in my seat like I would be if I were being dragged, and I was thrown over to the left like I would have if we had rolled over this way . White I got the left roll and I also think that I had less water in my window than you did. I had a lot of spray and stuff. Did you have solid water in your window? McDivitt I really didn't look that closely . I didn't look at the window to see what I saw there. I saw nothing but water sloshing all over the thing. We really seemed to hit hard, harder than I thought EO~◄ Flt,Et~TI.A"L ## Page 321 313 we would, but it really wasn't too hard. White To put everything in a comparison, the ride on the retro was more than I expected , the drop to a two­ point suspension was less than I expected, and the impact was not as much as I had experienced on the drogue, but more than I had expected. In other words, the biggest surprises I had in order of ~agnitude were the ride on the drogue, the impact, and I didn't think that I had much surprise at all in the two-point. I was expecting a big jolt and got not as much as I had expected . 7.2 Checklists McDivitt We'd gone over the normal Water Egress Checklist in flight before we came down. We did this in that three-hour period while we were preparing for retrofire. I read it over to E:l while he was stowing things, and we went over it in detail again as to what we would do. Also we went over the emergency egress in case we had to do that. So we had it fresh in our minds. White We turned everything off that wasn 1 t needed after landing. McDivitt Ed had the Post-Landing Checklist and he read it out to me--the things that I had to do. The only ## Page 322 314 thing that I didn ' t do was to take my helmet off and stow it . I did get my arm restraints down. I didn ' t put my drogue mortar pins in until I was getting out , and I never did put my seat pin in . It doesn ' t say on the checklist to put it in . White I put your seat pin in. McDivitt :lli put my seat pin in for me . Now , we'd got all the switches in the right positions, I think , except one . I forgot to put my FDI to the OFF position. White I think all other switches were all right . All our pyrotechnics were safed . 7. 3 Communications McDi vitt I talked on UHF. I talked with Omnibus; and I finally was talking to Inkspot 64 , the helicopter. I talked to him and I heard him, and we established excellent UHF communications . I heard Gus coming through the auto cap two times, I think--very weak , almost unintelligible . I think he was asking how we were , or if they had us yet . I kept making transmissions in the blind to him . I don ' t think he was ever getting any of them . Ed operated the HF , and what do you have to say about that? White Okay. I put the antenna out and turned the HF on , ## Page 323 315 I went through one call, a.nd then I went through a short count on the HF. I heard nothing and received nothing from anybody else . This was about 5 minutes or so after we had been on the water that we ac tually made the HF check. Maybe it wasn't even that long. As soon as I got all the switches where I wanted them, I went ahead and- McDivitt I saw you put the antennas up, and you went ahead and put in a transmission pretty quick. White Right, I didn't make another check on the HF. I hadn't been too impressed with the operation of the HF up to this time, and things were getting pretty busy. Five or 10 minutes later we had the recovery people on• I guess we're going to get to that. I heard them say we had a helicopter almost overhead, McDivitt They called just after we retrofired, I think, and before we got to blackout--called and said that they should have a helicopter over us in 5 minutes. We didn't get any onboard data . The ground information that I got was, as I said, from Gus. Then right after we hit, Omnibus said, "I got them in sight. I'm 48 miles out on TACAN radial..: ",something or otl-1.er. So, I figured we ## Page 324 316 -COt ◄ FIDE ► ffl A,b were 48 miles from the ship. Well, anyway, I was pretty sure we were 48 miles from the ship. Then I heard them calling back and forth saying the helicopters were only 15 or 20 miles away, and they were there in just a.bout nothing flat . We had a good status report on where everybody was. They were on our frequency, and I could hear them dumping their swimmers into the water and standing by and t hrowing smoke bombs out and seeing the dye markers ; and we ha.d more activity than the fourth of July. 7. 4 Systems Configuration McDivitt Okay , as we hit the water, Ed closed the inlet snorket to make sure we didn ' t get any £umes in as I punched the farachute .Jetti son. Shortly after that when we decided for sure that we wouldn't see any fumes-~ve sort of talked about it a little bit and I peeked out and I guess you peeked out . Didn't see anything but steam coming out of the thrusters and then saw the dye marker out there-- I reached up and re-opened the inlet snorkel. White That's right . McDivitt I put the recirc valve at 45 degrees. White Actual ly, shortly after we got on the water, I ## Page 325 GO~~FID9-~llA~L- 317 noticed the acrid smell that we were to have for the rest of the time we were out in the water. On the ECS system I could actually feel the relief that the pumps and the snorke1-open position were giving us . It did provide some flow. I really didn ' t think tmt the heat was oppressively hot, to tell the truth . McDivitt No, neither did I. Whi te It vJS.S uncomfortably warm--I'll put it that way-­ and very stuffy, but I wouldn't say it was over­ bearingly hot. It wasn't as hot as I thought it was going to be in the spacecraft. McDivitt I thought the worst thing about the whole thing was the smell. Whatever was burning later was the heat shield, I guess, because I went out and smelled the spacecraft later on when I was onboard· the carrier, and it smelled the same way. This terribly nauseating acrid smell was still all over the spacecraft, and it seemed to be worse at the heat shield. So I assume that's what we were smelling inside, White How was the control, Jim? McDivitt Spacecraft control in the water is lousy! I couldn't take out the motions. The rates were terribl e •co1qflf)fN·l~A-L- ## Page 326 318 •COltl ## Page 327 319 Anyhow, we had an extra one on, and it was stowed very neatly under a great deal of trash on the: right- hand outside stowage box; and I felt that we could more readily use the time of switching back and forth . So we switched the a eromedical adapter back and forth, and with the microdot con­ nector it was a pretty easy operational procedure. I don't think we missed any radio calls, and I think we got probably more blood pressures there than one every 15 minutes. McDivitt Yes, we would probably get one every 5 or 6 minutes. White We were back on the carrier in 45 minutes, and I'm sure we had two or three blood pressures there on the water . McDivitt You even got the lightweight head-set on. White That 's right. I very dutifully put the lightweight headset on with my helmet off. I felt better with my helmet off, and I think you felt better with your helmet off. McDivitt I felt a lot better with my helmet on and my visor closed, because I didn't like the smell of that stench there. White I was so hot over there . I felt better with it off. J3OMf10ENllAL ## Page 328 320 (O~~FIDEt ◄ TIAL McDivitt We did a lot of work when we first landed. We were fiddling all over and getting things out of boxes and stuff like that. We probably did more concentrated manual labor in those first 5 minutes after we got on the water than we had done at any other time during the flight except trying to get the hatch closed . White I think at this time I was completely drenched with s weat . I said it wasn't hot earlier, but with t he combination of the suits and the fairly warm climate that we were in, I was sweating pretty heavy . I looked over at Jim , and he was pr~tty sweaty · too , I think . 7, 5 Spacecraft Status McDivitt We didn't have any RCS fumes . We didn't see any RCS colored smoke , which is supposed to be red and purple or yellow or something like that . We didn't see any fumes at all. I saw a little steam. White I saw steam. McDivitt I saw a little steam coming out of the RCS thrusters , and I was sure that there wasn't any RCS propellant in those manifolds, because at the rate we were gyrating around with that tight deadband on Rate Command , if we hadn't burned all that fuel up by COt'4FIDEt~TIAL ## Page 329 r<4FIDEN I (Al .• McDivi tt We both t ook our gloves off to get the t hings out of the spacecraft that we wanted . I left my he lme t on and Ed left hi s helmet off . When we got ready to leave , we dec ided that we would put our gloves back on , take our helmets off, put our neck dams on , inflate our May We s ts , and t hen get out . That ' s what we did . The sea condi t ion was just like they sa id it was- - t hree to four feet . Three t o four feet in that thing is like 2000 foo t waves to an aircra f t car rier . We were bobbi ng around but we had a lot of experience bobbing around before, so it wasn ' t t hat bad . I might add that the egress training in the Gulf of Mexico really made me fe el real confident when I was out there in that water all by myself . White When we get to that training , I ' m really going to give some gold stars out . -COt\JFIDE~ilAL ## Page 333 eeNFIDEt~'fl·At- 325 McDivitt Yes . 7.6 Post-La nding Act ivities • McDivitt As I mentioned, we stirred around the cockpit and got out a bunch of l.i ttle bi tty things that we needed. We did a lot of work but we were doing all right. We got awfully hot . I guess we really can't say much about the post-landing activities . It went long as we expected it to , just the way we want it to. Ed , do you have anything? White I think we've covered it. 7,7 Comfort McDivitt I was hot . I think Ed was hot. We were both perspiring a lot. I think we could have lived in it for a lot longer than we did. Don ' t you? White Yes. Did we cover the point where they called and asked what kind of rescue we wanted? McDivitt No, I didn't. Why don't you? I was just plugging in the b,io-med connector and I heard them call you. White We could either have a heliocopter pickup in about 20 minutes or we could have a pickup by the carrier in the spacecraft in about an hour EO~FIDENfht\b. ## Page 334 326 ~O 1\1 FIDEl~TIM and 40 minutes . To me it was very clear . McDivitt It took Ed a long time to decide -- about two or three milliseconds . White That ' s right . I felt that I knew my buddy well enough and made the decision that we ' d take the heliocopter pickup . I saw that he was actually on the radio at the time and he rogered the decision . So we waited for the heliocopter pickup . 7 , 8 Recovery Force Personnel McDivitt We had good communications with the recovery forces . They were on our frequency . We heard all the transmissions that were going back and forth . Shoot , we probabl y knew more about the recovery than anybody else around . They got the flotation collar in the water in a hurry and came over and put it right on . I saw this thing around the spacecraft and I saw it start ,- inflating. I was really elated when I saw that t hing pumping up . White I had the f i rst contact with the real live man. McDivitt That ' s right . He looked in Ed ' s window to see if we were alive , I guess . C0~4FIDEt\JTIAt ## Page 335 327 White Very good sight . The best sight , boy , was seeing that yellow thing around the spacecraft . • I guess I knew we were going to be able to file out pretty quick . 7.9 Egress McDivitt As I menti oned ear lier, we had decided to go out with our gloves back on and our neck dams on. I stood up in rny seat , disconnected our survival landing gear (rny other hoses were disconnected so that I could stand up), inflated both of the May Wests, snapped them together in the front , and I just jumped right over into the life raft. I landed right on my can, just like I had planned it. It was so good to get out of there . F,d got out . He jumped in too. White When I got out I actually leaped in before I inflated rny May West and I think either you or-- McDivitt I told you. As a matter of fact, when we talked it over in the spacecraft about getting out , F,d said, "Aren't you going to inflate your May West?" And I sa~d, "Okay', and then he got out without inflating his. White I was so happy to see that raft I jumped right -CONFID.W IJAL. ## Page 336 328 €0t4PIDcl~T1Al over the side . 7 , 10 Survival Gear • McDivitt We didn' t use any of our survival gear . We di dn ' t pull it out . We just left i t exactly where it was . I disconnected the l anyard so we wouldn' t inadvertly pull it out . 7 ,11 Crew Pickup McDivitt As soon a s F.d got into the life raft a heliocop t er come over toward us and I mo t ioned for Ed to get i nto t he sling and go on up . He didn ' t want to . He wanted to be the last man up and I wasn' t going to leave my sinking ship . Whi t e He wasn ' t getting up with t he captain going first so he went up last . McDivitt No . Ed got int o the sling and got a nice pickup . I got a Gulf of Mexico pickup . He dragged me out of t he water , bumped me up agains t t he heat shie l d and t he spacecraft, but it was a good pickup t hough . Shoot , I was so happy to be out there in that nice cold salt water blowing in my face , I was dipping my hands in it and slinging it over my head . Whi te Di d you notice the stability of that heliocopter? COt~FIBEP.~+JAL ## Page 337 329 I never knew they were so stable . McDivitt Yes . He must have had a good stabilization • system . They got us picked up safe and sound, ## Page 338 • • ## Page 339 ... • ## Page 340 ... J t I ' --- Extraction note: this is machine-extracted PDF text (`pdftotext -layout`) published as a reading/search aid. OCR and direct text can contain recognition errors; the official WAR.gov scan remains authoritative. Hinweis: Dies ist maschinell extrahierter PDF-Text (`pdftotext -layout`) als Lese- und Suchhilfe. OCR- und Direkttext können Erkennungsfehler enthalten; maßgeblich bleibt der offizielle WAR.gov-Scan.