# NASA-UAP-D017, Preliminary Gemini 4 Crew Debriefing, Part II, 1965 ## Page 1 • Authority: 65 NW 91526 To ur tfFj~f r{ft~E - - -- - -- -- - - " - = = -- - - - ~ By authority of-E---'-:---'--'-=--::....-~-=-__,___.c.....:::=---1 l Cha nged bY--..£:::%:.:~~!l"~~==-- PRELIMINARY GT-4 FLIGHT CREW DEBRIEFING TRANSCRIPT PART II Prepared By Spacecraft Operations Branch Flight Crew Support Division June 18 , 1965 This material contains information affecting the national defense of the United States within the meaning of the Espionage Laws , Title 18. U. S. c. Section 793 and 794 , the transmission or revela­ tion of which in any manner to an unauthorized person is prohibited by law. Group 4: Downgrade at 3 year intervals I Declassified after 12 years NOTICE: This document may be exempt from public disclosure under the Freedom of Infor­ mation Act (5 U.S.C. 552). Requests for its re­ lease to persons outside the U.S. Government should be handled under the provisions of NASA Policy Direct:ve 1382.2. ## Page 2 • • I ## Page 3 PREFACE This preliminary transcript was made from voice tape -recording3 of the GT-4 flight crew debriefing conducted aboard the recovery ship, the USS Wasp, on June~' 1965, and concluded at the Manned Spacecraft Center on June 12, 1965. Although all the material contained in this transcript has been edited , the urgent need for the preliminary transcript by mission analysis personnel precluded a thorough editorial review prior to its publication. Errors in this transcript will be corrected as soon as possible and an official transcript will be published at a later date. Thia document contains a transcript of the second part of the total debriefing. A preliminary transcript of the first part was published on June 16 , 1965 , and it contains the crew ' s description of the mission from an operational standpoint. ## Page 4 _No embedded text extracted._ ## Page 5 itit 4Fl8E!I ◄ • I Jlt'&' TABLE OF CONTENTS Paragraph Page number 8 . 0 SYSTEMS OPERATION 8. 1 Pla tfo:r,n ................................................ . 1 8. 2 O..AMS ....... ............ .........• ...... ...............• . 5 8. 3 RCS ................................................ , ... 17 8 .4 Environmental Control System •••·················••••···22 8.5 CoDlDlunications ........................................ . 68 8. 6 Electrical System ...................................... 82 8.7 Computer ............................................... 87 8.8 Crew Station .......................................... . 93 8.9 Bio-Medicat ........................................... 134 9.0 OPERATIONAL CHEDKS 9 . 1 Apollo Landmark Identification (D- 6) .................. 144 9 . 2 Apollo Yaw Orientation •••·•··•·•••·•··••·•••···•·•·•••168 9 . 3 One Attitude Thruster Fai l ure Check ... ......... ....... 171 9.4 Horizon Scanner Track Check •·•••·•• ••·• · •• · •••• ·•·•••• 172 9. 5 Horizon Scanner Check ....................... ...... ~ ... 173 9 . 6 HF Transmission Reception Check ....................... 181 9·. 7 Orbit Navigation Check ................................ 182 9.8 Rela tive Humidity Test ................................ 185 9.9 Zodiacal Light Check .................................. 186 10.0 VISUAL SIGHTINGS 10.1 Cotllltdo\.lll .................•.•........................ . 188 10. 2 Powered Flight . ................... ..... ..... ... ... . .. . 188 10 . 3 Orbital Flight . ............................... ........ 191 10 .4 Reentry .................... . ......................... . 213 11 . 0 EXPERIMENTS 11 . 1 Two-Color Earth-Limb Photography (MSC-10) ............. 217 11 . 2 Synoptic Terrain and Weather Photography (S- 5 and S- 6) . 219 11. 3 Simple Navigation with t he Sextant .... ......... ....... 219 11.4 Electrostatic Charge (MSC- 1) .. .. ......... .....·........ 229 11.5 Proton- Electron Spectrometer and Tri-Axis Flus-Ga.te Magnetometer (MSC- 2 and MSC-3) ........................ 229 11 . 6 Radiation ( D-8) ........... ... ......................... 230 11 . 7 Inflight Exerciser (M-3) . ........ .. . . .. ... ... ......... 230 11 .8 Inflight Phonocardiogram (M-4) . . ...................... 232 11 . 9 Extravehicular Activity . ... ... ...... .. .......... ...... 232 11 . 10 Miscellaneous ................. . ....................... 232 ## Page 6 12 . 0 PRE-MISSION PLANNING 12.1 Mi ssion Plan ( Trajectory) ....... .......... ...... .. .... 234 12 . 2 Flight Plan ..................... ... .. .. ............... 234 12 . 3 Spac ecraft Changes ............. ... . . .................. 239 12 . 4 Mission Rule s ........... ..... ... . ....... . . . .... . ...... 240 12. 5 Experiments ........................................... 241 12 . 6 Training Activities ................. .... . . ............ 24 5 13. 0 MISSION CONTROL 13.1 GO/NO GO ' s ............. .. .............. .... ........... 249 13 . 2 PLA and CLA Updates ...................... . ............ 249 13. 3 Consumable s ............... ... ............... .. ........ 249 13.4 Flight Plan Changes ....................... .. .......... 250 13. 5 Systems ............................................... 254 14 .0 TRAINING 14 .1 Gemini Mission Simulator ..... . . .. ................ .. .. . 255 14. 2 LTV Simulation .................. . ...... . ........ .... .. 260 14.3 Centrifuge ...................... .. .......... . ... ...... 261 14 .4 Translation and Docking Trainer ...... .. ............ ... 262 14. 5 Planetarium ..................................... .. . ... 26 3 14. 6 Systems Briefings ................................ .. ... 266 14. 7 Flight Expe rimen ts ............ ... .............. ... .... 267 14 . 8 Spacec raft Sys t ems Te s t .. . ...... ... ... . . .. .... ... .. ... 273 14 . 9 Egress Training ........................ .. ..... : .... . .. 274 14. 10 Parachute Training ................... . . ... ............ 275 14 . 11 Launch Simulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .............. . 276 14 .1 2 Network Simulation . .... . ............ . . .. . . . . . . . . . ..... 277 14. 13 Zero "G" Flight ........ . .......... ... . .. . .. . ... . ...... 278 14. 14 Flight Plan Traini ng .................... . ............. 279 ## Page 7 8.0 SYSTEMS OPERATION 8. 1 Platform McDivitt Actually , the first portion of any alinement is to cage the thing. The case of caging the thing is much more important than the alinement itself. In the daytime I felt that I could cage the plat­ form to a reference with an error plus or minus about 3 or 4 degrees in all axes . Did you think we could do that wel l? White Only in the daytime. McDivitt The yaw was a little problem. It took longer to get it, but if you kept after it for awhil e , I felt that you could get down to just a few degrees. White Within a couple of degrees . McDivitt The big thing is that you have to stop your yaw rates, and then sit there and look outside for awhile and see which way you're going, straight ahead or sideways . If you are going sideways you rotate around for awhil e and stop the rate and then look out a gain. Ri ght? I felt you could get the thing ca ged quite well. We. didn ' t do it BEF at all, did we? We never did cage in BEF. ## Page 8 --, 2 White I ' m not sure. McDivitt The caging of the thing with small- end-forward in the daytime was r elative ly easy . At night I don't think it would be quite tha t simple . I think what you would have to do at night time is to point the spacecraft down at the ground pretty much so you can see the track ac ross the ground, I could see which way the land was moving under me . I felt--although I never did this --that if I could do that and then roll around to where I had no bank angl e , and fac e in my yaw directi on, either small-end or blunt-end- forward , stop t he ro l l t her e and pitch up to the horizon I could cage there withi n plus or minus 10 degrees for sure . It was much less accurate at night, I fe lt, than in the daytime . White You aren' t kidding! We both felt that on those dark nights when you really couldn ' t see anything on the ground, pure star reference for yaw was pretty rough . McDivitt Pure s tar reference for yaw was almost impossible to use. That was the only place where that thing we decided not to take with us--the view of the stars through the window--might have been of some ## Page 9 3 use to us. We knew the stars along our track but you couldn't see enough of them. The quickest way to get the yaw reference was to look down at the ground. Once we got the platform caged, aline­ ment was quite simple . All you had to do was just hold the needles at zero and the platform alined itself. Of course you had to have the scanners on , The modes--the SEF and the EEF wer e identically the same except the spacecraft is pointing in different directions . You tended to null the needles by using pulses and just hold the needles very close to null and the platform alined itself through the horizon scanners . Orbit Rate was a satisfactory mode, I thought. As a matter of fact, it was very good. White I liked that Orbit Rate, McDivitt Yes, because we finally had a reference where we didn't have to look out and s ee the ground . It 's like having the old altitude indicator back in an airplane . The only thing was, we had the wrong orbit rate in the spacecraft because it was s e t for an orbit rate t hat was to take care of, I think, a 60 nautical mile circular orbit. This was to take care of the short period of time between ~~ SQ -lii4Q"itsll-lM.- . ## Page 10 4 going to Orbit Rate at T- 5 and firing the retros at TR. We wanted to have exactly the right rate in there so when we did our closed-loop reentry we wouldn ' t have an error. As I said , I had the most accurate platform in the world with nothing to do with it . I think the displays were adequate and the controls were adequate . After t he first couple of revs I really didn ' t have any confidence at all in the platform. I had done nothing to establish any confidence in it . I really didn't get the chance to get the thing alined, and I real ly didn ' t have the view out the window to check it with. We were hurrying and scurring through there . We finally shut the thing down before I really got a chance to use it very much . When we powered it up there on the third day and we saw that thing coming around there• -and cage properly, we compared the out- the- window attitudes and that old a ttitude reference was right there. That's when I got some confidence in the platform. White This is where we lost a couple of bets . McDivitt That ' s right . We lost a couple of beers on that platform . At retrofire I had a lot of confidence in the platform , but the first two and a half to ## Page 11 5 three days I really didn't have anything with which to establish any confidence. It was just an unknown. White Jim did the majority of the work in this area and I think his comments reflect my opinion also . 8.2 OAMS McDivitt On the pad we did the thruster check that we wanted to. We went around one whole cycle and got nothing. We went around another whole cycle and got nothing until we got to the l ast one. We were going yaw left pitch-down, yaw right pitch-up, yaw left pitch- down, yaw right pitch­ up . When we got to that second pitch-up, I heard the thrusters fire for the first time . · White You can hear them. It was very distinct. McDivitt That's right. And then we went around and yawed left and they fired again. We -waited 20 seconds and fired a yaw left again, and they fired again . These were the bottom manifold jets. We said, "Okay, we're ready to go.", and that was the end of it. So, it -was a pretty straightforward check. The inflight checks--I got my operational checks on the OAMS systems while chasing the booster around. I had Direct, Pulse, and Rate Command in Le !~FllffiPMxMii t a J ## Page 12 6 there as I chased it around, and those were the only modes I intended to use right then . Later on, I checked out the Reentry Rate Command and I checked the Rate Command before we thrusted . It did seem to be operating fine . Why don ' t you go through the next part , Eli? White All right . We 're going to get into the source temperature and pressure , the regulated pressure , and the prope llant quantity . Let ' s take the temperature first . The temperature of our OAMS was 75 degrees all the way down the line . The i nit ial indications on the pressures were approxi­ mately 2800 psi for the source and 320 psi for the regulated pressure . McDivitt The quantity gage operated all right except that, as I mentioned earlier , the thing seemed to wander up and down somewhere between 2 and 4 percent , depending upon where you were in the mission . You ' d read it one time and it would be 60, and you'd read it a little while later and it would be 62, and you 'd r ead it a little while l ater and it 'd be back about 60 . The greatest variation in that thing that ever occurred was when I went to sleep one time with it reading 60 and woke up and ## Page 13 7 it was reading 56. Another hour or two after that it had climbed slowly back up to 60 again. I had a long time to look at it in the same position. When we ended the cha.sing-around at the end of the first hour, we were down to 70 percent indicated and we never got below 50 percent in four days. White I'll tell you, the position it seemed to stay for days and days was 59 to 60 percent. We fired in Pulse Mode for a long time with the gage at that position, and all of a sudden that one time it dropped down to about 55 percent . McDivitt But then it came back up to 60. White I guess it did , didn ' t it? The temperatures all stayed fairly constant. If I recall .right, they dropped down to around 70 degrees. It seemed to me they continually decreased throughout the flight. I noticed this particularly in the RCS, but I guess we'll get to that later. The propellart quantity though , I think we mentioned earlier , ended up on our gaging at about 3 percent at the end . We got a little bit of ground information on the 0AMS propellant. I felt a little suspicious of the gage when it kept staying there at 59 to 60 ## Page 14 8 percent for so long. McDivitt We were pretty miserly with that OAMS fuel . We set out to save the fuel and we sure did it . White I think that in future missions , if they permit the crew to use the Puls e Mode in a saving-manner they could do a lot more with the mission--if you could use Pulse Mode instead of just free-drifting around. In other words , line yourself up so you can make some decent observations. McDivitt Shoot! We were in Horizon Scan Mode when we got the last data, and I don ' t think we used any more fue l than we were when we were in free drift. White That ' s right. We certainly got more out of the orbit than we did when we were just drifting free. McDivitt I 'll tell you one record that we ought to hold . We've looked at the earth from more different angles than anybody else in the world . Well, maybe not . I guess the Russians did , but we sure got a lot of different views of that earth as we rotated around. White I thi nk the ground information that they called up on the status of our OAMS wasn't as much as they could have called up to us, but I 'm really satis­ fied that our OAMS was staying pretty constant . ## Page 15 9 McDivitt So did I. The way I felt was that I knew that we had to be as miserly with the fuel as we possibly could, so we got as much out of as little fuel as possible . There wasn ' t going to be anything to change that velocity. We just went along and I really didn't care how they were plotting that fuel on the ground. I knew that we were starting to get ahead of the schedule, because I was plotting it roughly onboard the spacecraft . I could see we were ~p above the line that we needed to remain above to handle our OAMS retrofir~. White Actually , we followed the profile rather closely, We leveled off there at first, and then when we started using it , we we~c right down the profile, McDivitt We were a little below the line and we just held the same fuel level until we walked out across it and got up on top of i+ Then, we went on down above it. White I think the controls and the switches were all satisfactory. McDivitt I think so too. The attitude controller worked fine and dandy. We didn't have any trouble with it. The stick forces weren't too high. We didn't get a chance to use it in any other mode besides ## Page 16 10 Pulse . It seemed to wor k all right in Pulse. I don't really have any comments to make on the atti ­ tude controller . White As a matter of fact, I didn't ~se any Rate Command . McDivitt Didn't you really? White We didn't use the Rate Command . I got to use Direct a couple of times . I used Pulse a lot . Everytime you 'd go to sleep, I ' d rea lly have a bal] McDivitt I could tell that by the wiggling. White No . That was real ly great--flying that spacecraft . McDivitt That ' s right, and I think Pulse is the mode . You ca.n do a lot with it . With a little bit of planning you could get to the attitude--if you start out 5 or 6 minutes ahead of time. That's what we were doing. At 10 minutes before I was supposed to be at a certain atti tude I ' d start, and one or two little pulses and you'd--boop, boop, boop, boop-- th€ bad thing was if you were in an attitude where you couldn ' t see the horizon and didn ' t know where you were. You would give it a couple of pulses and nothing would happen, and you ' d have to give it a couple of more pulses. It ' d t ake a long time sometimes before you would get to where you could see . As a matter of fact, if at 5 minutes be fore @i~FfDENTI>4ct ## Page 17 11 we were supposed to be at a certain attitude we weren't approaching it, I 'd start pulsing a little harder. White You'd hear a series of about five quick pulses. NcDivitt It was a very economical control mode. The ma.ne·,..;ver controller worked the way it was supposed to. White What about the deadband? Did you think the dead­ bands and breakouts were all satisfactory? McDivitt Yes, just like the one we used in the simulator. You've got a lot of slop in it when you're making gross maneuvers because you're not fixing your elbow and manipulating around tmt point. You're fixing your shoulder and your whole arm, and it's just like shoveling coal--you've got about that much finesse to it . I don't think there's much you can say about it. The controls weren't too gross and they weren't too minor. The whole thing was adequate. We did have an inflight mal­ function, or irregularity. We were in Horizon Scanner Mode one time and Fd wanted to yaw around. He started to yaw and the thing rolled. The Horizon Scanner Mode fired the roll thrusters to level it back off-- ## Page 18 12 White I couldn ' t get the yaw . We had a circui t breaker off. McDivitt Finally , after you did that a couple of times I looked up and saw we had knocked a circuit breaker off. That was one thing that we didn't cover in EVA that I should have mentioned . Ed was a real hazar d to the switch positions in that he was all over with his feet, arms , and hands - - . White I don't think I threw any though . Did I? Come on now. You ' re not guilty until you ' re convic ted . McDivi tt I don ' t know . You kept putting your foot on the HF Reentry Antenna Switch and stepping on it . Ha . Ha . Ha . McDivitt As for the a tt i tude control modes --I mentioned the Rate Command in OAMS seemed to be tighter than the Rate Command i n RCS , a l though t hey use the same electroni cs, the same gyros , and the i,,rhole thing . It might ha.ve just been my imagination, but I felt that the Rate Command system in RCS was a lot looser than it was in OAMS . The Reentry Rate Command operated just the way it should . It had a 4 degree dea dband , and handled the spacecra ft very well during reentry . Direct had a lot more a uthor ity than I thought it would, but it was ## Page 19 ~IDE►~llM. 13 pretty straightforward. I think Pulse was the best mode on the spacecraft for the orbit phase . We were able to save all kinds of fuel, it worked fine, and it was just about what the doctor ordered . We didn't use the Horizon Scan Mode during about the first three days of flight, except for the second orbit when I think I \\18.S in Horizon Sca.n so that I could have the freedom to help Ed prepare for his EVA. The last day we used the Horizon Sca.n Mode, and I found it to be an excellent mode . There was only one case when it broke lock and didn ' t recover. Wasn't that it, F.d.? White You've got it in the book . McDiYitt We've got in the book and we'll check on that . The Ho~izon Scan Mode worked essentially for 24 hours without any problem ~and I think it' s an excellent control mode, It seemed to be very economical on fuel . We were doing a lot of yawing around and right at sunrise a.nd sunset it seemed to get a l ittle nervous , especially if we had the horizon scanner pointed within about plus or minus 45 degrees of the sun. The moon didn ' t seem to affect it at all. I noticed that, occa­ sionally, we would ~et some thruster blips with the sun n&Q·tslfiO EtslltAIA · ## Page 20 14 :i Ob JFIDE1'4 Tf,t(ilf r pointed toward the hori zon scanner although we never got an unlock light . We wouldn ' t get an unlock light , but we 'd ~et a bunch of maybe four or five thruster blips right there. White Particularly at sunrise . McDivitt It would hold . I thought the Ho rizon Scan-- Whi te It was definitely getting some spurious signals through but not enough to break it out all the way . McDivitt I thought the Horizon Scan Mode was an excel l ent attitude-hold mode. White Did you notice the water boiler venting, Jim? McDivitt Yes, I did. We kept yawing around to the left . I believe it was left. I did notice the fact that we were yawing , but not very much . We were yawing a t rates that we r e extremely low and it just took a pulse every once in a while to handle the thing. As a matter of fact, when we were chasing the booster around a lot a t the beginning, I never even noticed. It was when we were i n the Pulse Con­ trol Mode for a period of time,when we didn ' t do much thrusting in yaw, that I noticed we did start drifting off in yaw . So I did notice the water boiler venting. ## Page 21 15 • White I didn't think you noticed it earlier when we were working. McDivitt Well, I did notice it a little bit in that first orbit, but it wasn't distracting at all. It would just drift off a little bit and I'd whop it and it would be back . At SEX:;0 + 30, I used the trans­ lation thrusters to damp the booster-spacecraft rates . One of them was a little higher than the other, although they were both down in the order of a half of a degree/second. I did fire one thruster one time or possibly two times to damp the rate. I don't know if it was pitch or yaw . You know, you are working in spacecraft pitch and booster yaw and spacecraft yaw and booster pitch. I was getting my coordinate system transformed around in my mind, going from booster coordinate system to the spacecraft . I don't remember whether it was yaw or pitch, but I did thrust once or twice. By the way , I could hear those thrusters fire. At SEC0 + 30 I said, "Thrusting, " and I started thrusting. "Separate" , and Fd punched the SPACE.CRAFT SEPARATE. We were in Direct and I thrusted straight ahead for about 5 seconds. Then I went back into Rate Command. Separati on was ## Page 22 16 just smooth--we didn ' t come off with a rotational rate . White I think one of the things you mi ght commant on , Jim , is that you fired most of those thrusters during that initial time . McDivitt I ' m sure I fired the upward-firing thrust ers a number of times . That isn ' t any more difficult to control than t he other one . Actually you can fire these thrusters whether you are in Rate Command, Direct or even in Puls e . When you fire them, you get a rate and you just damp t he rate out with the a ttitude controller . When you are firing the translation thrusters , th0 things t hat you r ea lly hear are not the trans lation thrusters, but the attitude thrusters . Those translation thrusters are really tough to hear , but the a tti­ tude thrusters a re very easy to hear . I doh ' t understand why. They must be mounted differently because their location isn't that much different. I think I fired the aft-firing thrust ers a couple of times and they didn ' t make any more noise than the f orward-firing thrusters, that I could tell . The up and down and left and right ones were just as easy to fire as t he other ones . Our OAMS retro ## Page 23 • 17 was 127 feet/second which, incidently, happened to come out exactly 2 minutes and 40 seconds. I suspect that we selected OAMS retrofire on the basis of time, rather than on the basis of t::,.V. White Very convenient , wasn't it? McDivitt Very convenient. It -was obvious there is no more difficulty in timing 2 minutes 40 seconds during our OAMS retrofire than it is during any other thing. We had no trouble with it . I was convinced that when we got through with it, that was really the proper conversion factor between t::,.V and t::,. T. We had exactly 127 feet/second, and we sure had the time nailed down. 8.3 RCS McDivitt The operational checks that we did on the RCS occurred at about TR minus an hour. When I checked the system out it seemed like I had a lot less authority and a lot sloppier Rate Command than I had in OAMS . The operational check consisted of pitching up and down , yawing left and right, rolling lef+ and right on each ring in Rate Command and Direct. Direct worked as I expected it to. In Rate Coremand, however, as I pitched up and down I noticed that my top left yaw thrus ter was doing ## Page 24 18 a lot of firing , too. I started out checking the Rate Command , so I thought I might possibly have one bad pitch thruster that was causing a rolling moment that was bei ng counteracted by the yaw-roll jets. When I did it in Direct, however , it wasn' t doing that . It wasn't rolling either , so I felt that it must just be a very tight deadband that was trying to hold us in there . So , the operational checks were all right . The only thing we had to monitor on the system was the temperature and the pressure of the propellant . It seemed to hold pretty well . White I have some comments on that. I kept a running log of them as we went along . The tempera ture started out at 75 degrees and 3000 pounds . It held that way pretty well until about the 65th hour , when the temperature gradually went down. The temperature decreased to a point where we started getting the RCS heater lights that we noted earlier. We got about eight series of RCS heater lights . It took about 5 minutes to extinguish the light . It was t he A-ring,then the B- ring, and then the A-ring. I t s eemed to alternate each time back and forth and it came on for about 15 to 20 minute periods of ## Page 25 19 time . It started right after a night cycle . It seemed rather natural to me that there wasn't really something wrong, but that we actually had a cold RCS thing out there and it did need some heat . After heat was applied it did appear to go away. I decided to go ahead and set up a slow roll rate in the daytime, and I kept that roll rate in for several orbits. Whether this actually helped to get the light off or not, I don 't know. We didn't get anymore lights after this time . I think there ought to be one other comment on the RCS , and that is the temperatures and the pressures stayed up pretty well except when we actuated the system. The pressures then went down further than we had expected them to go . They went down to 2400 to 2500 p~i. This was a little lower than I expected to see. McDivitt I think the pressures in the RCS A and B dropped by about 100 pounds throughout the four-day period. They were slightly over 3000 pounds and they got down to slightly under 3000. White The lowest temperatures I noted were in the neigh­ borhood of about 63 to 64 degrees. They started out at 75 degrees. ## Page 26 20 McDivitt Let me ask you a question? White Yes. McDivitt When you turned on the RCS heaters , did you turn on the heater s on both r ings , or did you turn on the RCS Heater Swi tch and then turn off the cir cui t breaker on the ot her ring? White I turned the heaters on and then I checked to see which ring it was that was ac tually heat ing up by using the circuit breakers . The first time I went ahead and left them on and then the other ring came on . I fel t that one of them was about as cold as the other, so I left the heaters on both rings throughout the heating cycles . McDivitt Good. White They were in perfect sequence--A and B, A and B, and about 15 minutes apart . The regulari ty was surprising. The temperatures at the time when these lights came on were indicating about 63 or 64 degrees and it seemed like it would come up a little bit, and then come right back down and pop back on again. I felt it was not an actual temperature problem . McDiv.itt I used Rate Command, Reentry Rate Command and Pulse c ontrol modes. I didn ' t use Direct . They a ll ## Page 27 '-OtslF-tD--E~.l lA:L:;;. 21 operated as I thought they should. I've already mentioned I thought Rate Command was a little sloppier in RCS than it was in OAMS . It certainly did a fine job of holding the retro attitude during retrofire. Retrofire attitude control was excellent. We didn ' t deviate more than about a degree from the attitude we were supposed to hold, and I had plenty of authority there . From my standpoint it couldn ' t have been any better. I was really happy about it. I used the Reentry Rate Command with roll rate gyro off, so that I had essentially Direct in roll and Reentry Rate Command in pitch and yaw axes. It had the typical 4 degree deadband that it was supposed to have. It did do rate damping as it was supposed to. It performed just the way it should. Fd, you want to cover that heater-lights thing again? I think you've already got that thing pretty much in detail. White I have the precise times at which the lights came on. It started at about the 64th or 65th elapsed time hour . At 06:47, the first light, in the A-ring, came on . At 08:23 the A- ring light came on again . That was the last time . During that period of time the A and the B-rings cycled on and off inter- MWfiO,ftSl;QAJ• ## Page 28 22 mittently . McDivi t t During descent , we turned the power off to see if t he drogue chute was unstable . It wasn ' t . We turned the power back on and the propellant valves of f and burned up a l l of t he fuel i n the manif olds . We had no fumes after impact . 8.4 Environment a l Control ~ystem McDivi tt I thought the suit mobility was as good in the s pacecraft as it is anywhere else . I think these sui ts a re pretty good suits . I didn' t f i nd any trouble with them whatsoever i~ the spacecraft that I wasn ' t a lready awar e of . The pressure held up good . I did a pressure check on the suit . It bled down about 0. 2 or 0 . 3 psi in about 30 s econds , which real l y wasn ' t too bad . The temperature was a lways good. It ran between about 50 and 55 degr e es diring the entire flight except when we really worked hard . I don ' t think it ever got up over 60 . Do you , Ed? White No. McDivitt We had reasonably good temperature contro l . Whit e The ca bin temperature got up pretty high one time and then it came back down . McDivitt Yes , on about the first orbit . _ _ w , f _ . . , ..... I ' ## Page 29 23 White That's r ght . It got up to about 90. McDivitt 100, it was. We turned the cabin heat exchanger on for just a short time and it went right back on down to 80 degrees. White It stayed in the area of 82 to 83 degrees the whole flight. McDivitt The humidity in the suit must have been pretty dry because rrry foot dried out. I didn't take any wet­ bulb readings inside the suit. The CO stayed at 2 zero all the time. It never did go up except when we'd go to o High Rate, when it would bound off 2 the top peg and fall back down again. The comfort and suit controls were pretty reasonable. The o 2 demand regulator seemed to work all right . My umbilicals were short. My fingertip lights were lousy. Before _launch I only had one that worked. On rrry right-hand glove one of the bulbs obviously didn't work. One of them did work. On rrry left­ hand glove the switch on the batteries would only turn the lights on if it was in one exact position, vh.ich wasn't full throw in either direction. So I found out I had only one fingertip light that worked. However, during the flight I didn't use my' fingertip lights except one time when I used · ## Page 30 24 them for a flashlight. I had my gl oves off and I reached over and got my gloves and turned the fingertip lights on and shined the gloves on some­ thing . I didn't use them a lot . I do want to comment on one thing , though , since we ' re talking about the suits here . I launched without the plug that goes in the blood pressure port in the suit . I don ' t feel we should launch these things with no plug to plug up the blood pressure port in the suit , especially when we ' re going EVA . I think that was a mistake . The only pressure points I had in the suit were in the helmet . Those were just above my ears where I tended to move my head back and forth within the helmet. I finally rubbed up a ll the hair so that it was going in the wrong direction . When you press against hair for a long time in the wrong direction it becomes very uncom­ forta ble. At about the end of 2 3/4 days I took my helmet off for a couple of hours, and it felt a lot better. The only problem is that when you have your helmet off there is no place to stow it. We had the foot wells full of gear , so when I had the he lmet off I just let it float around on my lap , and over in Ed' s l ap . There wasn ' t any place to ## Page 31 25 put it. The micro-meteroid blanket that I had strapped under my right leg wasn't a detriment. As a matter of fact since we had no place to stow it , I just left it strapped to my leg until reentry. Then, I felt that if we had to get out in the water I didn't want to have any straps hanging off me that I didn't need. So, I took it off and threw it on the floor a long with Ed's sleeves . I don't have anymore comments on my suit . White I wore the ENA suit . I think the mobility of the suit was about what I had expected. Actually, I think the mobility in some respects was a little better, and in some respects it was a little less than I had expected. I wasn't able to get into the right-hand aft food box as well as I had thought I was going to be able to in zero g. In fact, the position that I had figured out to use, which was leaning forward and reaching in backwards with my left arm , didn ' t work out well at all. I had to actually turn around 90 degrees in the seat and reach in with my right arm. This worked out all right. I was able to get hold of things in the box. The surprise that I got though , was that I could get into the right- hand aft refuse box much ## Page 32 26 easier than I had thought I ' d ever be able to . It turned out t ra t I was able to get into that box ea sier while in orbit, by far, t han-- McDivitt It ' s a rubber covered box. White It's a rubber covered box on the right hand side . I think that box does have the capability of s tow­ ing refuse in it and stowi ng some things prior to l aunch in it , too . White Did you try that box during flight , Jim? McDivitt Yes , I did. I didn ' t find it easy to get into . I thought the things we had stowed in it wer e real good things--items that we didn ' t need at all in flight and possibly might not need-- White I used all four defecation bags that I h~d on my side . I used them up during flight . In fact , you used one of them . McDivitt That ' s right , we did have a bag of those defe ca­ tion bags out . It just happened to be over on my side where you could get to it. White You were asleep. I had to get them or wake you up . I pres sure- checked rey suit . I checked it at 8 . 5 and it bled down several tenths of a psi . I was satisfied with the pr es sure-holding of rey suit . ## Page 33 27 There was one thing though with the suit that I wasn't too happy with. I was hot all the time in the suit. It got so that after a while I got used to the normal temperature as being warm. I could incr ease the temperature , which seemed rather strange to both Jim and me, by putting out zey gloves and closing zey faceplate . I could go to sleep. At that time zey temperature would go up considerably inside the suit . It seemed like I coul d stay in there only an hour or an hour and 15 minutes and rest before I had to either open up the faceplate or do something else. So, the temperature got uncomfortably warm in about an hour or an hour and fifteen minutes with the face­ plate closed, the sleeves on and the gloves on . The humidity in the suit, I thought , was quite dry. I had quite a tendency for zey lips to crack and nzy- nose to get very dry . In fact, I noticed zey nose was itching considerably. This was an indicator to me every time I would go to sleep. I would wake up with zey nose itching and feeling quite hot and uncomfortable. }zy- lips got to the point where I thought they were going to crack, ## Page 34 28 and I was trying to be very careful and keep them from cracking and getting anymore uncomfortabl e than they were . Jim mentioned the CO sensors 2 stayed on zero, which I was happy to see . I think one thing that I was fairly happy about was that the suit , as bulky as it was , wasn ' t depres­ singly uncomfortable. I felt that I did have a pretty heavy suit on most of the time , and I was a little bit constrained in my mobility. The i dea to have the detachable sleeves that I could take off after the EVA work was , I felt, a very good decision. I felt much more comfortable , and I had a much higher degree of mobility around with my arms in the spacecraft. It was not as tiring to move around as it had been when I was inside the heavy sleeves . So , I was quite happy to take them off. We took them off, I believe, shortly after my first sleep. I slept with t hem on the first time, and then we took them off . I think they were quite easy to take off. As a matter of fact, I think if you went EVA at a later time you could take those sleeves onboard , and if they were made just a little aasier to slip on and off over the wrist, you could take @e 14 rte Et<4,t,\ t ## Page 35 29 them on and off in flight if you wanted to. McDivitt I don ' t know. I'd hesitate to recommend putting them on in flight . It might get pretty tricky. I think if you put them on in flight , you'd want to put them over all the harness, rather than i.mder the harness. White That ' s exactly what I was going to sey. I think if you took the life preservers off , you could actually make the sleeves big enough so that you could slip them on and velcro them across the back over the harness. This might be for the type of operation of throwing equipment in and out . I think in the future , though , a suit as heavy as this might not be required. The controls and the switches in the suit , I felt , were satis­ factory. There wasn ' t anything that I couldn ' t get at in the spacecraft . It was easier under weightless conditions for me to operate certain controls. In fact, I think I was able to get down and unscrew the bellows in the gun hose as well and maybe a little easier than you could, Jim . At least initially, I was able to get down there . Of course you weren ' t really particularly trying to do it at that time. @8 ~ •••i-EM-liaJ.;; ## Page 36 30 McDivitt I suspect I probably could have gotten down there as easy or easier than you if I had really gotten around to trying. White I don ' t remember , but , anyhow, I was surprised with the ease which I had in getting down . McDivitt We were trying to dump the pressure in the bellow before we went EVA with it . White Right . The demand regulator was satisfactory. Ivzy­ umbilical,I thought,was very easy to use and disconnect . I was quite happy to have the micro­ dot in there. One comment on the micro-dot--the first time we exercised the micro- dots on our suit , they were pretty hard to operate . Mine got progressively easier to use each time I used it . The fingertip lights that I had were better than Jim ' s . I ha:l lights with Lexan tops on them . All my lights worked, and r felt that their operation was quite satisfactory. We had decided to put my lights between the first and second joints for several reasons . We thought the EVA gloves would be easier to don and there'd be less tendency to break them. I think, though, the position of the lights was still a little too far forward if it was intended to put them back between ## Page 37 31 the first and second joints, because the lights were resting right on top of my first joint . I think if I had worn my gloves anymore, I would have gotten a very sore first knuckle . If you are going to move them back, I think they should definitely be moved back behind the first knuckle. McDivitt Where were they getting you, .fili? White Right on the top of the knuckle . McDivitt You think they ought to be back? White If they are going to be anywhere, they ought to be back here, and I'm not too sure that is necessary. In fact, I think the best place is behind the fingertip and in front of the first joint . McDivitt But, with the pl astic covers over the gloves. White With the plastic cover on the glove , and I think we've got the right position for the lights . I don't think they should be back behind the first knuckle . I think they should be in front of that first knuckle and behind the fingertip, That's a good place for them . That's where we've been using them in the past. I think thf' Le::mn cover on the light bulb is a darn good idea , McDivitt Yes, I think so.,. too . Shoot! I checked my lights before launch and found out that I already had one ## Page 38 32 of them out on my right hand. I wasn ' t too happy about it . White I was a li ttle disappointed. I think the only discrepancy I found in my suit was that I had no blood pressure plug either. A point that I was pretty happy with was that I had no pressure points from my suit at all on my body . I had one set of pressure points from my helmet pressing down on the front forward part of my head. I lmew why this was . I 'd had Joe Schmitt adjust my cables so that I could pull my helmet down to a maximum amount for the EVA work. I felt that I just bought this discomfort by having my cables adjusted in this manner. It was pretty uncomfortable though . I checked out the use of the emergency bottles on the EVA equipment and they worked as they were supposed to . I was able to regulate the flow. Incidently , before I went out the reading on the EVA bottles was full-scale, 3400 pounds . I was happy to see that . Al l in all, I was quite happy with the suit . I think it was a very well designed suit and it met the requirements that were levied upon it . It was a heavy suit and a big suit to wear for four days, but I felt the auit wasn ' t as € ~~f-~ L ## Page 39 33 bad as I had expected it was going to be. I have one more comment. I'd like to comment on the inner liner. We decided to go with the inner liner. in and I felt this was a good decision . The inside of the suit was comfortable , and I didn ' t get any pressure points . I think one reason why neither Jim nor I got any particular pressure points from the suit was that we had worn these suits a heck of a lot of time . I had over 50 hours on my flight suit. I don't know how many hours Jim had on his. ## Page 40 34 McDivitt Actually Ed had just finished talking about his inner liner . I 1 d like to comment about the inner liner too . I thought about it when he was talking about his . I think that was one of the reall y wi se decisions •- to go with that inner l iner . I felt that it offered a lot more comfort than wearing that rubber suit up against my body, or up against my underwear . I sort of felt that I was really quite comfortable in this suit . I didn ' t find my mobility limited by my inner l iner at all , and I had made sure that it fit . I think that has a l ot to do with it. White I worked the suit once for about a four-'hour period with just the rubber ins i de . I did no- tice it sticking to me, and I didn ' t feel as com­ fortable . After I got inside the suit with pres­ sure on my body , the suit felt pretty darn good. I had the knees cut out of my suits . The knees are still too short . Having been in it for four days , I know the dimensions are wrong . The di­ mension from my knee down to my foot is not long enough . I t ' s not just the inner line~ but the f¥18~4AL 1 ·~ ## Page 41 35 link net in itself just isn't long enough. McDivitt You wouldn ' t say you had a pressure point though? White No, it was just a constant pull on there all the time. McDivitt Did it bother you very much during the flight? White Yes, it bothered me a little bit . McDivit-'- So you really did have sort of a pressure point then? Yes, to some extent in that area . I had had that one so much before. It had been so extreme in some cases that it really didn't bother me too much . White Both of us should mention something about the visors . McDivitt I thought you ought to mention something about your visor problem, your EVA visor or the other one. White Well, I have briefed the visor on the EVA pretty well. The one that I will mention now is the visor that I had on my regular helmet . I thought that the vision through it was quite good . I noticed no distortion at all through it, but I did immediately put a couple big scratches on it ## Page 42 in the beginning when I was unstowing equipment . I continued to scratch it throughout the mission. When I finished , the visor was considerably scratched up as you would pr obably notice if you looked at my suit . I don ' t know what there is to do about this other than to accept a scratchy visor . McDivitt If you ' ve got the visors down in front of your face, you don ' t tend to scratch it up as much . I think it was really worn out because you started opening up your visor and leaving it up over your head a lot earlier than I did. At about the two and a half or three day mark , I looked at your visor and it was really a mess . I took the helmet off and cleaned the visor because it was dirty on the inside and the outside . I looked at my visor and had very few marks on it . I had a few l ittle scratches , but very minor . Then I started putting my vi sor up more and mor e be- cause t hey wanted us to stay open . Because I ' m a lot taller than you are, I really started beat­ i ng mine up . In the last day, I think I caught up with you and maybe even surpassed you in the ## Page 43 37 amount of marks on it . I'll say another thing . I'm sure glad we didn ' t go in for those Lexan visors that they wanted us to fly with, cause the distortion woul d have driven me batty in about the first six hours . White I think you must insist on perfect l y optically clear visors . McDivitt That ' s right . You 've got to have good optics . White I took my helmet off about three times , and I didn ' t leave it off very long. McDivitt I took mine off about two times . I took it off one time for an hour because my hair right above my ears was really bothering me . I didn ' t bother getting a light- weight headset out , and when any­ body called me , I had the thing sitting in my l ap and I could hear it . I took one of the • ~ . ~ and pulled it back and I hollered into the mike, Ha , ha. ! 1 till I could hear it . I s~id , "I ' ve got my hel met off . Unless you 've got something im­ portant to tell me , don't bother me ." .Ha , ~a! And he said, "Okay . " It was one of those passes , you know , where you only talk to one guy for about an hour . Then I took it off one other time for about a half hour to rub my ears . I was quite s€0►~ ~t8l!lttfif1Aif:r: J ## Page 44 comfortable with my helmet on for two days. White Do you want to know something that ' s kind of strange? I was more comfortable with my helmet on than off. I n fact, I kind of got used to those pressure points on the top of my head with the helmet on . When I took the helmet off and moved my head around , I felt a little dizzy from not having these restraints. I didn ' t feel as comfort able as I did with my helmet on. The times I had my helmet off were when I was running D-9. I ran the D-9 Experiment several times with my helmet off so I'd have better use of my sextant . I took it off one other time near the end when they indicated they would like to have every- thing off . I didn ' t feel particularly comforta­ ble with my helmet off any more. I got so us ed to having that thing on that I put it on so I could talk better with the stations . They were calling me from time to time , and I thought it would be a little better. Before I forget, I think the portable headset is really a lousy design . McDivitt I concur. I think it ought to be thrown out . - ## Page 45 39 White I've seen the ones they've got in the MCC and they're good plain old headsets. I don't see any reason why we can't get one that stays on your head and stays in your ear . You put this thing on and it pops off about two minutes later . It's not built to stay on my size head and I noticed it didn't stay on Jim's very well eit~er . I think the portable headset idea is a good idea, but we ought to have a good headset for it . Okay. As we mentioned earlier the cabi n pressure relieved at about 5. 5 and held that way during launch . It went back down to 4.9 or 4.8 and this is where it stayed for the re­ mainder of the mission. I think that they prob­ ably overshot their zeal to correct the cabin pressure that John and Gus had had on GT-3 and put ours down so that it was actually relieving lower and sealing lower than it would have been desirable. I was expecting it to seal up around 5.5 or 5.7 like it was advertised. McDivitt I checked my suit gage against the cabin pres­ sure g-age and my suit €8,ge read higher than: the cabin pressure gage by about .3 of a pound. ## Page 46 40 White Yes, mine was right on it though . McDivitt I know . You checked your suit gage against the cabin pressure and yours read just about on it, didn ' t it? Was it a tenth of a pound higher or was it right on it? White Right on . McDivitt Okay . So mine was reading a little higher, indicating to me that possibly the cabin pres­ sure was higher . But since Ed's read with it, I don ' t know where we were . White Well, the pr essure at which it relieved at went right into the problem of the temperature- pres ­ sure relief in the cryogenic oxygen system so t hat those two problems kind of lashed together . The venting in the o system was set at around 2 970 . McDivitt 967, I think the poop sheet said. White Well , it was about 967 or 970 . We had the pos­ sibility of losing oxygen in a steady manner out of the spacecraft if we let the pressure rise up above- -well , the ground felt 960 , and I concurred with that figure . So throughout the flight we had to keep venting our o system 2 ## Page 47 41 down so the pressure woul d remai n down below 960 . They initially told us to vent it to keep it at 930 to 960 . Then they told us to vent it on down to about 890. From then on, we vented it down in the neighborhood of between 890 and 93, depending upon who was asleep and who wasn't asleep . It sure seemed to be an unsatisfactory solution to two problems--one of the cabin hold­ ing at a higher pressure than they wanted it to on GT- 3 and also the problem of the o system 2 venting outside of the pressure gage . In the oxygen system I think the solution to putting the venting down at 967 was a poor solution to the problem of having a poorly designed ga ge . I think the gage was agai n poorly designed and it should be designed to read about 1200 pounds. Rel ief should be up in that area . McDivitt I f they really went ahead and jacked down the relief pressure, to get it on the gage, I think that is one heck of an approach to an engineer­ ing problem. White I think that ' s a gross thing to do and if they did that deliberatel y, I thi nk they deserve a ## Page 48 42 very black star for that one. McDivitt They need their heads examined t White I guess we beat that one around pretty well, didn 't we? McDivitt Yes~ The way that we were venting the cabin was by going to o High Rate and venting the 2 oxygen out through the cabin vent or going to cabin repress and using up the oxygen through the cabin and through the cabin vent valve that way. White I was quite satisfied with the cabin temperature . It started out and got pretty hot at one time early in the flight and went up to 100 as you noted,and then it went back down into the 80 's. I think it actually dropped into the 70's a time or two. McDivitt That ' s right. It was in the 70's most of the time . White Right. McDivitt Let's get the data book , The dry bulb tempera­ ture was 80; 80, the first time we tood it. Then it was 79, 79, 79. Then it was 75, 75, 75, and then they stayed between 75 and 77,I OQ\il I i ~ L ## Page 49 think, .the rest of the flight . No, here it is down as low as 72 . So it got down to around 72 late in the flight, and here we are with a whole bunch of 70's to 73's and a couple of 76 1 s. So I guess that 75 was the average temperature throughout the whole flight. White I think our cabin temperature gage was reflect­ ing a little higher temperature than these. McDivitt No, let's see . It was down around 75. White It went down to 74 at one time, I remember. McDivitt Yes, I think 75 was a good average cabin temp­ erature for the whole flight. White I thought this was a pretty satisfactory cabin temperature. The suit temperatures were also down. They stayed down from about 52 to 54 most of the· flight. I thought that was a pretty satisfactory temperature there. I believe that there was a difference in suit temperatures be­ tween Jim and me because I was continually hollering about being hot. I think that temp­ erature-wise Jim was relatively comfortable . McDivitt I was vecy comfortable, and as a matter of fact, when I went to sleep, I tended to get just a ## Page 50 44 little bit cool , especially if I had urinated all over myself. White I don ' t remember one time during the flight during which I was cool in the suit . I think I was hot most of the time in the suit . I got used to i t after a while. The only time that it was not satisfactory, as far as I was con­ cerned, was when I was trying to sleep. The humidity data that we got doesn't go along with what everybody was expecting. McDivitt No, not by a l ong shot . White No, not at all . Our l i tt le gage seemed like it was working properly. We didn ' t have any visible moisture at any time at any pl ace in the spacecraft . It seemed to be indicating down around 62 to 63 percent relative humidity which was a big surprise to myself. With this type of data , I began going open faceplate and open gloves fairly early in the flight, about a day or a day and a half, and continued in this manner just about throughout the flight . We used the wrist dams quite a bit of the time . But I had my faceplate open with my wrist dams ' CiO t ◄ F10E._ffd +b ## Page 51 on a great deal of time also. I think you had your faceplate closed a little more than I did . There at the end we were both going to an open-faceplate and open- gloves all the way . ' McDivitt Yes, we were especially going open-faceplate at the end just to see if we could jack up the humidity. I actually preferred to have my faceplate closed, as opposed to having it open. I went ahead and left it open trying to get the humidity up . We never really did get it up over 60 perc ent. That seemed to be where it was going to stay. White We were happy to see that the CO sensor 2 gage stayed down low the whole flight . It would pop up any time we turned the o High · 2 Rate on and go up to a pretty high reading, and then settle back down to zero. I didn't notice any particular discomfort versus day versus night . McDivitt No, as a matter of fact, I didn't either. We took some temperature readings on the cabin window frame and they varied by about 6 or 8 , 10 degrees at the very most . ## Page 52 White Yes, I don ' t think there was any discomfort associated with the day-night cycle. We didn't use the cabin fan as we planned during the flight. We did neglect to turn it on initially ., during the preparation for retro. We noticed that we weren ' t cooling off in the cabin as much as we would have liked to . So, we turned the fan on and immediately the temperature dropped down about 10 degrees,if I remember right . McDivitt Yes , that cabin heat exchanger and that cabin fan really do the job. White It really cooled it off. McDivitt Early in the flight when we got the tempera­ ture up to 100, we turned the fan on and the temperature went down to below 80 in about 20 minutes, or so. It really did the trick . White The cabin pressure relief valve was venting just a hair abouve 5.4. We checked this out very many times. Every time we filled the cabin up with o High Rate, it vented,or if 2 we used the repress l•ever the cabin would vent . ## Page 53 '3@>rNfff) EttlIM:· 47 McDivitt Here we had an environmental control system that was supposed to protect us . We found out that the darn thing was overpressurizing. f The first couple of times, to keep the ECS o 2 bottle from venting, we vented the cabin it­ self . I found myself sitting in there vent­ ing this thing with my gloves off and my face plate open. It began to dawn on me that the pressure went down inside the cabin at a tre­ mendous rate. If this thing ever stuck open and I had my gloves off and my faceplate open, I would be a dead man . So we made it a proce­ dure to suit up when we were going to dump this thing . This meant that every four hours we had to put our gloves on and put our face­ plates down and lock them and get all suited up just in case this vent valve didn ' t reseat. Frankly, as much of an inconvenience as it turned out to be, I think that was a wise maneuver. I would never suggest that anyone vent that cabin again without being fully suit­ ed. I thi nk there is such a risk involved that you would be fool- hearty to do it . For ## Page 54 48 GO~ ifli itl..l,tct 0 that reason I think that we ought to make an effort to get the ECS o tank vent and the 2 ECS o tank pressure gage compatible and at 2 a l ot higher pressure than they are. This ' suiting up and unsuiting every four hours is for the birds. White I thoroughly agree with you, Jim. There are two things I want to know. I want to know if they deliberately lowered the venting pressure for the o system down to 967 to solve the 2 problem on GT-3. I would also like to know if they deliberately lowered the cabin venting down to 5.4 . I'd like to know the answer to those two questions. I think the combination of those two situations make what I feel is an unsatisfactory situation in our flight. It occupied far more time-- McDivitt That's right, we were screwing around with that ECS o . That's something we never had 2 touched. It was a eage that we should have monitored, instead of a thing that we manipu­ lated all the time. White Right, Okay, the cabin pressure regulator. ## Page 55 49 I didn't have any comment on that. McDivitt Neither did I. It seemed to be doing a good job . White I felt the cabin vent valve was set lower than I had thought it was going to be . I thought it was supposed to be set up around 5.7. I'd like to know if it was cha.l'lged in­ tentionally. McDivitt The manual vent valve worked fine. When we wanted to vent the cabin, it vented. White The cabin repressurization valve worked fine . I was very happy to see how well it worked also with my chest pack. Any comment on that? McDivitt No, I don ' t think so . I don't think the cabin repressurized or overpressurized when we were trying to vent it. Since you were repres­ surizing it and venting it at the same time, I think the vent valve actually overcame the repressurization,which is a good thing if you're trying to vent it, and it is not a good thing if you're trying to keep it from venting. Going back a little farther to my other state­ ment, in case that vent valve sticks open ## Page 56 50 and you are not suited,I don't think you're goi ng to have time to get suited . I t takes me too long to put those gloves on. White Okay, the cabin air inlet valve worked fine . We vented the cabin with it when we went EVA. It apparently worked all right when we used it down on the water. I rave no further com­ ment on that. McDivitt Neither do I. It seemed to work fine . White The cabin air recirculation valve worked as it was supposed to . McDivitt As advertised . White Okay , that primary o system gets another 2 black star. I think this is the area that I want to know the answer to , for sure . I want to know whether that was deliberately set down into the range of the gage to solve the complaint on Gemini 3. I think that if this was the case, this is a prime example of poor engineering. As far as monitoring the system though, as long as their reading was down be­ low 960 the system worked pretty well. I felt fairly confident that the pressure wae- ## Page 57 51 McDivitt That ' s right . The way that the thing was set up , we could sure monitor it because we knew it was going to vent without being on the gage . I think they compromised the whole system so we could monitor it . White As a matter of fact, we monitored it very thoroughly and spent about 100 times as much time on t his SJs t em as we should have . John Young ' s been complaining about this point, and I think that it ' s a very poor thing . They ought to dig up the money and put a gage in there that will do the job . Very strong point . The quantity measuring system,I thought, was all right. McDivitt I thought it was pretty good . I thought it was excellent as a matter of fact . It was a very readable gage ,. It had tremendous scal e on it, but, shoot, you could read the thing to a percent . I don't know why it was a:ny more readable than the other ones, but I thought it was pretty good. White The flow rates--I don't have a:ny particular comment on that . I thought the flow rate on N4sl-f.1Dfl~T1Aw ## Page 58 52 .. that repress valve into my suit was satisfactory to keep me in a pressurized state and keep me venti lated enough under normal operations . Under tough operations though, the flow rate's too low and you really heat up. McDivitt Yes, I think since it was an open loop system, you had to keep from dumping all the oxygen overboard, and had to go high enough to keep it from dying from the heat. I think it was a compromise system. White I thought it was well set up, I have no com­ plaints there . Primary o temperature--I didn't 2 have any comment on that. McDivitt No, neither did I. White The manual heater--I think that you used the manual heater twice during EVA . McDivitt Twice during EVA for about five to six minutes each time . It responded all right , but it didn't go overboard, It got the temperature right back up there, and I shut the thing off again. I\!0 ~~FIDE~iilA L ## Page 59 53 • White We were able to turn the automatic part of it off quite early in the flight , particularly since this was the problem we were having . We were getting-- McDivitt That was something I wondered about . You know , the t hing is marked , and we were always instructed that when the thing got down below 38 percent we didn ' t need the heaters any more . We shut the heaters off at 42 percent . White Right . McDivitt 0bviously,the guy that told us to shut the heaters off at 40 percent knew what he was talking about because we never needed them again . White I think, again , I am very suspicious of McDonnell on the fix on that gage, and on setting that pressure on 970 , and I'm going to get to the bottom of it . McDivitt Yes , but I think, though,that the pressure would have still built up even if we had the relief set at 1050 or so. It would have still built up . White It might have built up and stabili zed, • ## Page 60 54 because it ' s a cryogenic system and it could have stabilized out around 1000 or 1050. McDivitt But on the other hand it could have continued to build right on up . White Su.re it could . McDivitt But I sort of suspect that the--well, I don't know. It's different from this other problem where we were told that the thing didn't require heaters below 38 percent , and we found out that it really didn ' t require 'them below 42 percent . White We turned them off at 42 percent . McDivitt Right . White The secondary o system--I thought those performed 2 admirably. In_fact, they had more oxygen in them than I thought they could hold. Jim ' s was up to around 5500 pounds shortly after launch . It re­ mained up there and drizzled out about 100 pounds throughout the flight . 1'1cDivitt Actually they increased by 100 psi each right after launch . White Right at the first mode of flight . Then they drizzled back down and stayed at 5400, I think, right on down through the flight . The lowest ## Page 61 55 mine got was about 5250 maybe . McDivitt Did you notice by chance what they were at land­ ing? White No, I didn ' t check them . McDivitt Neither did I. White That was the last thing I had on my mind , to tell the truth. I thought the quantity measuring was fine . It was a little questionable, that we might have overpressurized on your system, but I guess they had plenty of margin in that respect . The secondary o flow rates were satisf actory as far 2 as I was concerned. McDivitt I think so . I was amazed that secondary o flow 2 was such that I really didn ' t get too hot in i t . White Yes, I was not as uncomfortable as I had been at other times. McDivitt You know, after awhile· you hit yourself in the head so long that it finally stops hurting. White It ' s like that big heavy suit, after awhile you begin to feel good . I know the average guy on the street probably wouldn't like the flow rate, but it didn't seem to be too bad. It wasn ' t too objectionable . ## Page 62 56 White I think we jumped into something else . We were in secondary o system and we weren ' t on flow 2 rate. The only time we had the flow rate on that was during reentry. The flow rate there was sat­ isfactory . The pressure obviously was satisfac­ tory, but we didn't check it at the end . The control--r.de put an extra detent on that control. I think the control was a positive one and we were able to keep it in the detents where we wanted it . I had no p~oblem there. McDivitt Right, I think that the way it's rigged up now is excellent. We designed it . It had better be, ha., ha! White Right . Okay, the CO partial pressure. The gage 2 has been discussed prior to this time.It stayed down satisfactorily. McDivitt Yes, it never got off zero. White Okay, the coolant- the radiator operation config- uration--I don't have the times in front of me right now that we went onto the radiator, but I think it was about 40 minutes. McDivitt 40 minutes. White We went on the radiator about 40 minutes and we ## Page 63 never had to come off it again . We didn ' t get any abnormal operation of the radiator at any time . One time they called up to me and mentioned some­ thing about the radiator and the coolant loop and I didn ' t get any clarification . I lost contact at that time , and I thought just maybe that I had a failure of some type in my primary cooling system . So just for caution sake I turned on the secondary coolant pump and waited till I got con­ tact with them again. They asked me why I had the secondary pump on , and I said , "I thought maybe I had a problem in the primary system ." They asked me why I thought that and I said , "I thought they were telling me something about it when I lost contact with them . I did it just to be sure ." But that was the only time that I thought we even might have had a problem in it , and I turned it off . We used double coolant loop early in the mission,and after we turned the secondary system off we did not use it a.gain until the teentry . Prior to the reentry , we turned it on . McDivitt That's right . That coolant system real ly worked. White Okay , here is one at which we'll get at them-- ## Page 64 58 the water management system. I think you have a few thousand words you'd like to say about launch. I think you actually already hit on most of them, anyhow . McDivitt Man, I sure do. The l'brmal mode , Drink Mode, and Flush Mode . We got the water management thing kind of goofed up. Let's just take the drinking thing first. The drinking nozzle was attached to the management panel by a hose and the hose looked like it was made out of rotten rubber . The first time I tried to drink out of it , I stuck the thing into my mouth-- White The first bad moment of the f l ight . McDivitt --I pushed the button in and no water came out , ~d I almost had a heart attack. I said to Ed , "Ed, this is going to be the shortest four day flight in history. " Ha, ha! White Jim said, "Guess what? · The water doesn ' t work." McDivitt Ha, j{.a ! But you ' d already had a drink out of it , though , hadn ' t you? White No , I hadn ' t . McDivitt Oh , hadn ' t you? White You handed it to me. ## Page 65 eeJmrDEMffM 59 McDivitt Oh, so I handed it over to him and then he took a drink out of it and didn ' t have any problem at all . What happened was the hose was wound in the helix . It came out to the gun in a straight line . When I drank out of it on my side this thing always crimped like it was an old rotten piece of rubber that had been bent over in that position many times before. It looked like something that came out of a 1890 steamboat or something, instead of a-- White It looks like your old oxygen mask hose. McDivitt That's right. It looks like my old rotten oxygen mask hose . So I think that we ought to get at least a decent piece of hose in there. The next thing is the water gun that you drink from. You push the button in and a little spigot would come out and the wat er would start running out of it . This worked great. You could always get the wa­ ter to come out when you didn 't have your hose bent. It got worse and worse and worse and worse and worse . As far as returning it towards the end of the flight , I almost drowned a couple of times because I ' d get that thing out and I couldn't ## Page 66 60 @ONFl0Et'4Tl=At get it back in. I finally ended up actually using two hands to operate the water gun so that I could get the button back out. White The button definitely did get more friction in it as the flight progressed. McDivitt It seemed like it was all scored up and it kept getting worse and worse and worse as the flight went on. This could have been a major disaster too. If we had that gun squirting water inside the spacecraft , you'd have had water all over the place. I'll be the first to say that we made a real effort to keep the water out of the space­ craft. We wanted to get four days out of the flight. I felt one of the major probierns would be the humidity in the spacecraft . As it turned out, it wasn't a problem. We didn't know it right off the bat and we were really concerned about the water. The last thing I wanted to do was to have an open water nozzle running into the spacecraft . So I think that takes care of that . I think the whole water management panel ought to be clarified before we fly GT-5. We were arguing about what position the waste .Mmagement Switch was going to be in during the countdown to launch. I think this i d w@f'f Fto•Ef'IT trA L ## Page 67 61 certainly not the time to be deciding what the heck the position these switches were going to be in. We were always briefed that this thing would be in OFF. We were going through the switch positions and they'd ask me to check in the count at. about T-45 minutes or so. White And I couldn ' t see that one . McDivitt You couldn ' t see that one and you asked me to look down at it . I saw the thing was in EVAPORATOR, so I question the STC. He checked around and they had a big flap about what position it was supposed to be in. Pretty soon we got a call back and he said if I could get unstrapped and reach the thing, I ought to turn it over to OVERBOARD. • We thought it should have been in OFF. They had it in EVAPOR­ ATOR so we finally decided we ought to go to OVER­ BOARD to keep the thing venting. I was already strapped in the spacecraft . I undid my shoulder harness and reached around in the spacecraft and flipped a little valve over to OVERBOARD where it should be and then got strapped. White You sure they didn ' t have you put it OFF? McDivitt No, we went to OVERBOARD . ## Page 68 62 White I remember they argued. I thought they had it on EVAPORATOR firs t. McDivitt It went from EVAPORATOR-- White That seems like the least likely of any position to put it in . McDivitt That ' s right. We went from EVAPORATOR over to OVERBOARD. So I think a comment that I ' d like to make right now about the whole water management panel is that it's a simple thing. It's got three !mobs and each !mob ' s only got three or four positions . We had the ECS engineers at McDonnell give us a briefing on this simple water management panel. We had about seven guys there with seven different versions of how it was de­ signed, how it operated, and what the different positions we were supposed to be in. They got us so screwed up that when we left ther e we didn ' t have any idea in the world whatit was supposed to do. White I think those designers didn ' t either. McDivitt They didn ' t either and it was pretty obvious that they didn ' t . We went through a lot of discussion with that water management panel. Finally I think ## Page 69 that the four of us got it pretty well squared away. Then just before launch we found out down at the Cape that because they had gotten those switches in the wrong position we pumped 32 pounds of water out of the adapter , used up all the pressurant for the water system, and pumped all the water into the lithium hydroxide canj.,3ter. If it hadn't been for one last minute check in the data, we would have lost the lithium hydrox­ ide canister full of water and nothing to drink with. So we would have had about an hour flight, if we had gone that long. I think that before we fly another flight we ought to have all the people at McDonnell and NASA, who are · respons-ible for this thing get it squared away and figure out just where the heck they want these switch posi­ tions.and get them there. If there are a lot of switch positions on that panel that aren't useful anymore, we should just go ahead and block them off. We decided between the four of us that there were--I don't even know what they call those switches-- White Condensate Valve and Water Valve. .. ## Page 70 McDivitt --and the Water Valve should be put in NORMAL NORMAL.and left there. That was ~xa.ctly what we did and we knew how to work the waste management valve. We didn't screw it up, but I ' m not sure that if with a little trying, we couldn't have . We never had to use the Evaporator Fill Mode . The Flush Mode,or the waste ·management portion of the thing,had a couple of different positions . In the normal OVERBOARD position and in using the Preheat and Flush switch over on the side , we managed to dump a large number of urine dumps through this. We dumped both our launch- day urine bags which were full. I probably urinated eight or ten times and you probably about five or six t i mes. White About five times . McDivitt About five times . So we had a lot of dumps through this thing. At 92 hours it stopped work­ ing . Ed had filled up the bellows pretty well just before this. I was the man in charge of dumping urines, it seemed like . White The Urine Dumper!!! McDivitt I was the only one who could reach the knobs and swit ches . It ~ nerally went down in spurts. ~8-M f'IDt=P,.ff IrA L ## Page 71 65 About haliwny through the dump , it started slowing down . Then it just went in very slowly the last two or three inches . Then I urinated in the thing and had a bellows full of a mixture of air and urine . It started dumping . It looked like it went down about halfway and then it stopped . I wouldn't be a bit surprised if it wasn't the air going out of it. It w.ent very slowly for ju.st a short time and then it stopped completely . Nothing else would go out of it . S~ I turned off the Flush Switch and I went from OVERBOARD to EVAPORATOR,and it flushed through the evaporator . We had one more urine dump through the evaporator and this worked all right . Well, I ' m sure glad that we had those two ways of work­ ing it . All the way through the flight after I ' d dumped the urine through this thing, I kept say­ 1 ing :w-ell , McDonnell finally designed this thing so it works after about 30 or 40 attempts and redesigns :' But I guess I was over-optimistic be­ cause it did drop out just before the flight . It finally got to work for 88 hours . We didn't use the E~aporator Film Mode . Okay, Ed, why don't ## Page 72 66 you take over. I extended my wrath . White I just had a feeling you wanted to say something about that, Jim. ~, ha! McDivitt After having messed around with that thing for 96 hours trying to make it work . White I think you expressed my feeling too . McDivitt Did I leave anything out? Whit e No , no . I had the same feelings . I thought you might have had them a little stronger since you were the one who discovered the water gun was not working. McDivitt I ' m really serious about that simple panel being able to screw up the whole flight. If we don ' t get that thing figured out we ought to stop fly­ ing space missions . Whi te One of the worst moments of the prelaunch down there was when I found out they had that two gallons of water in the system somewhere and didn ' t know where it was. McDivitt That's right . White The humidity sensor--I thought if the readings are right, it worked very well and pr oved the point that the humidity in the spacecraft is ## Page 73 67 relatively low•, and that the water problem is not quite the problem we had it cracked up to be . I ' ll make a comment on the sponge material on the s ide of the spacecraft at this point ,since we ' re talking about humidity . I didn ' t think the sponge material was a very good idea to begin with but once it was in there and we flew with it, I think it was-- McDivitt It was a real bad mistake! Ha, h9. ! White No, I thought it was all right in there . The only thing wrong with it was what they had it treated with for fire - proofing. I thought that part of it was unpardonable . There is no excuse whatso­ ever for having those ammonia vapors and the hy­ drogen sulfate ~or whatever those other things were that we had permeating around the spacecraft. McDivitt We smelled bad enough, but it was no contest when it came to comparing ourselves with the spacecraft . It smelled worse . White If there was any moisture it grabbed it all. I don't really think there was any moisture for it to grab . McDivitt I don 1 t think so either, Ed. I kept feeling that ## Page 74 68 r1ecr, thing and it was dry as could be . White There was no moisture that I could notice . 'lhe sponge stuff on the side wasn ' t objectionable to me but the odor that obviously came from it was very , very objectionable . The readings we obtained I thought, were easy to take. The stow­ age of the unit was not a problem. It was easily stowed in the spacecraft while we were using it . 8 , 5 Communicati ons White Okay, I have a few comments on the communications which we ought to go on to . We ' ll take them in sequence . McDivitt Okay, why don ' t you go along I'll express my com­ ments . White I think the interphones worked pretty wel l . I noticed one thing, though, as we progressed along. lf'he volume requirement on both my side and on Jim ' s side needed to be increased all the time to get - McDivitt No , Ed . I launched with all my volumes full up . White Is that right? Anyhow in my interphone , I pro­ gressively raised it as the f l ight went on . McDivitt Yes , I started off with mine almost all the way up . On the UHF it was absolutel y all the way up , C04 4~t!li 1t6 L ## Page 75 69 and I flew with it almost the whole flight . White I don't think it was all the way up. The one thing though --I think the interphone operation and quality were quite good . McDivitt Yes, I thought so too . White We were ready to communicate back and forth. It was just the way I would liked to have done it . I thought it was very good. The UH performance at the countdown was satisfactory and just after we got into orbit we felt that we had a bit of a communication loss. We switched to UHF No. 2. Later during the flight we used both UHF sets and didn't have any difference in performance from either one . During the recovery you were using the UHF primarily. I think you had as much com­ munication as you could expect. McDivitt That ' s right. I think so too. I do think, though , that we had a very bad UHF situation in the first eight or nine orbits. It was really lousy. As a matter of fact, I was getting concerned that maybe we were going to have to land because we were going to run out of communications . White You were actually working more on this problem b ## Page 76 70 than I was. You were communicating during the FNA work and also after I went to sleep. I heard you working on the Communications Check and that's when you went to the reentry antenna. McDivitt That's right, when we ran through these checks, it finally became apparent to everyone that the reentry antenna was doing a better job than the adapter .a ntenna. And then later on, I switched back to the a dapter antenna for some reason which I can't remember right now. We ran a couple of more checks and it seemed to be-- White I know what we did. We ran an HF check , Jim, and we switched back to the a~apter so we could use the HF antenna back there . We got just as good U1IF transmissions at this time as we did on the r.eentry a.ntenna . McDivitt When they checked them out again, they said they still thought the stub antenna was better. So, we went back to :reentry antenna . White We used r .eentry just about 95 percent of the flight. McDivitt That's right. In the last 55 orbits it was great. In the first eight it was lousy. I was really ## Page 77 71 concerned about having to come down because we didn't have any radios . White One thing that I'd like to say is, I would give a good gold star to the controllers down there. I thought their voice procedures were excellent and their methods for giving us information were all good . I had no comment , whatsoever, other than I thought it was all very good . McJ)ivitt That's right. White I had no objection . I thought there was no time in the flight in which we got a cluttered voice from anybody . Yes, I think that is pretty good when you have that many people working the loop. McDivitt I think so too . White Okay, the voice tape recorder- -let me vent my wrath on this one. McDivitt Get ' em Ed, get 'em! White Right . This is another thing that should be fixed before the next flight. I think we're going to end up being very, very sorry. We're going to end up losing valuable data from time to time . This will be due to no reason other than a voice tape recorder which is poO'r on all accounts. ## Page 78 72 EiOt •rt"Ef ◄ lt/.L: McDivitt We ' ve already lost some very va l uable data from this flight. We could have taped t he entire EVA and brought those communications back down. As it was, we couldn ' t tape them becaus e we had to put the thing in UHF so that we c oul d transmit to the ground . We los t all of t he bless ed stuff going to the ground anyway . White There are certain systems in here that I think are very poorly designed . I think t his is about the poorest of them all . It ' s l ocated in such a position that you can not see the opeation light when it is on. The light is in an area where you normally would put things . Things get put on top of it so that if you look down there, you can't see the light . The light is such a small insignificant thing when it comes on. Unless you conscious l y bend your head down and l ook down below your right elbow, you can not see whet her the light is on or not. The switch is set so t hat you have to go in either RECORD , Ul!F , HF, or INTERCOM and you can not be in RECORD while you're on UHF or INTERCOM. This is a very unsatisfa c t ory method of having a tape recorder. The tape r e corder ## Page 79 73 should be set up so that it can record conversa­ tions on normal UHF , HF , and INTERCOM type opera­ tions . As Jim pointed out , in our flight alone I think we l ost sets of valuab l e information. During launch we weren ' t able to tape anything onboard . We weren't able to tape the work during EVA . We could have taped some of the work duri ng t he rendezvous part of the flight , I don ' t be­ lieve we taped i t though . The w~y it's set up you wouldn't l eave i t on i n t hat manner . We both had requirements to communicate over UHF . This was our normal mode of operation . If we have a tape recorder , it shoul d have a separate switch . If t here is an hour limitation on the tape, there should be a light that oomes on and is easily visi­ ble on the front somewhere. MoDivitt That's right . It ought to go right on the VCC . White That's right . That ' s really where the light be­ longs . I think that it woul d be desirable and important to have a voice t ape of what ' s going on throughout the flight . I wouldn't have any ob­ jection to having a tape recorder with the capa­ bility of recording more than the one hour at a CO t 4fl"Et tTI.Q:t ## Page 80 74 time that we have now. I'd like to see us record­ ing a great deal of the flight . It'd be nice to have a switch to turn it off from time to time if you did want to discuss something that you didn ' t want to go on tape . McDivitt I don't think we ought to put the whole flight on tape . If we flew a week-long flight, it would take a week to go through the tape. You wouldn't want long periods of nothing on there . I think the way we wanted to operate it this time would have been all right, if we could have just opera­ ted it that way. There were certain periods where we put a tape on and ra.n it all the way through. Well, that was the tape that covered a certain experiment or something. White On our D-9 Experiment, we used it. McDivitt Yes , that's where we used a whole tape on it . Then there were periods that were questionable when you were s l eeping and I wasn I t doing anything, or I was sleeping and you weren't doing anything . White If you carried adequate tapes, and you had adequate warning when the thi ng went on and off, you would not have the same situation we had on the D-9 ## Page 81 75 Experiment . You could have the tape stop in the middle of the experiment and be lying on your back looking out with the sextant. You haven't got any idea in the world the tape's run out on you . McDivitt Right. White I think that it's a ve-ry, vezy unsatisfactory sys­ tem . It ranks right up along with the top ones, and we ' ve already hit on some of them already. The digital command system I · thought worked very well. I thought the light in there gave U$ a good indication of several things. It gave us an indication of when the station was about to come on and communicate with us. We used this as a clue to turn on our UHF to warm our transmitter up so we would be ready when the transmission came up. I think updates from the ground came up in a ve-ry orderly fashion. I don't have any objec­ tion about that or any further comments . Do you? McDivitt Ed, I thought it was very good. White Handled in a very good manner. McDivitt I think so. White The only update that I have an objection to is ## Page 82 76 blBO.E~IJA:~ reading the way I wanted it. Ha, ha! The squib batteries--our electrical briefing I thought, · wa.s very good. Everything behaved just the way they told me . The squib batteries star ted out pretty high, around 27 or 28 volts , and they progressively decreased in voltage as we went through the mission . The main batteries--every time I checked them they always checked out at about 9 • as far as the amps were concerned . The adapter batteries--I was glad we'd had the brief­ ing on them because I realized that knees on the adapter batteries were in operation during the launch when we got a high reading on the left stack ammeter up around 27 or 28 amps, and we had a reading of around,I believe,14 amps on the right one. I didn't alarm Jim with this information because it was still below my cut-off point of about 30 amps or so. I felt that it was due to the knees in the adapter batteries causing unequal loadings of the main batteries with respect to the adapter batteries. McDivitt Hold it . I want to make some comments about the electrical system and the power as we used it . ## Page 91 85 When we powered down , we turned of.f the a . c. power, t he QA.MS power, t he ACME": biag power, the rate gyros, the horizon scanner, the IMU, the computer, both FDI ' s , and the attitude indicator lights. We operated with as little in the way of cockpit lighting as we possibly could. It got less and less and less as the flight progressed. In earlier orbits we had a l l the lights on in the cockpit- the over, the middle light , and the two side lights . Then £or the night time passes, as the flight progressed, we got around to using the red lights . We finally got around to making the night-side passes generally with one r ed light on or one white light on, as we got more confidence in the spacecraft . I think we save quite a bit o{ power that way. They were surprised that we were 160 amp-hours ahead , and I don ' t think that we got that way by accident. White I ' ve got a comment to make on that. We were both watching the loadings and I could read them a littl e better over there. We started out operat­ ing arourd 14, maybe a l i ttle better . The reading on the combi ned amp-hours s l owly decreased down ## Page 92 86 and near the end of the mission, we were down to 12 or 13 amp-hours on unpowered down configuration. That was as low as I saw it go, down around 12 . McDivitt Another thing that we did was that when we wer en't actually planning on transmitting on one of the radios, we were always putting the mode control switch to INTERCOM, which would then cut the trans­ mitter off the line. You could actually see the ammeter go down a little bit. So I think that by really powering down the spacecraft and getting all the non-essential items off the line , we helped ourselves a lot. We got this 160 amp- hour cushion because we really worked at it, not because it just happened like that. White This takes a little diligence. McDivitt Yes , not because it was a miscalculation on the guys who were planning the flight, but just the fact that we really worked at keeping the lights off , keeping the radios off, and keeping those little bitty things down. You know, you only have to save two amps per hour . We ran on a single suit fan almost the entire flight, except when Ed was getting warm when he was sleeping we ha d to ## Page 93 87 go to two suit fans. White Right. When it got so uncomfortable that I couldn't sleep, we would go over. We really did­ n 't do that too much . McDivitt No , we didn't . We made a real effort to keep the electrical load down. I think that it sort of showed up there towards the end of the mission when we really had enough spare power to run the IGS through the last day--uselessly of course , but at leas t we ran it. 8 . 7 Computer McDivitt In the launch we had the computer in ASCENT . F.d was reading out the errors during launch. I read ou~ the rates which didn ' t require an;y information from the computer. White I was readi~out the lack of errors most of the time. McDivitt Lack of errors, right. Why don't you discuss the error status. White I think we discussed it earlier and I'll just go briefly through it. We didn't have any error s that I feel would be worth repeating during Stage I. At guidance initiate we got a ful}-scale-down indi­ cation. This indication I had been told ## Page 94 88 fairly routine, and it appeared routine ' to me too as it began to steer into zero and steered right on into zero . As we approached iSEXJO the error started to increase a little bit and in­ creased out to a little less than a degree in pitch-down on the error needle . Aside from that, we didn ' t have ,,as far as I can see, any other error that was worth talking about during launch. McDivitt Okay, at SECO + 20 the IVI ' s counted up as we separated,rolled around, and did all the maneuvers we were supposed to. The IVI's acted as they should . When I got turned around and was faced toward the spacecraft,I was in a hurry to get all these things done . I started thrusting and I went from Ascent to Catch-Up, and then hit the Start Comp button.~ I lost a couple of feet/second here , but this was sort of insignificant at the time. The IVI's counted up in the Catch-Up Mode and they operated properly throuehout the rest of the chase­ phase of the mission. We were getting the kind of information that we needed right there early in the flight . Ed had 52 punched in and it read out at 30 feet/second, I think he said earlier . ## Page 95 89 White Yes , I picked that up later on because I wasn't even concerned with it since we had a good orbit. McDivitt Once we had a good orbit that kind of information wasn't that important. White Do you want the IVI readings at this time? McDivitt Yes, you might just as well read them out. White The IVI readings at the time we decided to read them --at zero, zero, zero on the attitude indi­ cator~- 20 forward, right 11, down 5. McDivitt The attitudes weren't really what they should have been, because we had a good insertion and we had to go right then and we had to get turned around and get at that booster. I didn't fool around with getting the spacecraft at.exactly the right attitude to read out the IVI's. I thought that was of a :~;:i.demic interest . It would be great for post-flight analysis but it wasn ' t going to help the flight at all. So I didn ' t do justice to those things. I'm sure that we can go back and resurrect this thing to find out exact ly what it was. It wasn't very meaningful at the time . The orbit maneuvers consisted of really just chasing the booster around and reading up the IVI ' s as they came out. We received all our updates difi)~~FIDE~~llAuw- ## Page 96 90 properly. We got the computer on and got it loaded . The DCS updates were going in and they were gett Lng V fJ dfication on the ground. One time I remember we didn't g6t the DCS light . As a matter of fact, they sent the load up again and we sti.l.l iid.n ' t get the DCS light. They verified on the ground that it was going in . White Well, the funny thing 'we.S when the computer wasn ' t on we got a DCS light. McDivitt The DCS lights come on when they get set up for the TX and send out a :r.ealbtime command,too. White Well, mRybe the TX when they sent up-· They kept telling us that they got a good load in it and I had no light. I really didn ' t quite bel ieve them . McDivitt Neither did I. As a matter- of fact, we had it verified at the next station. White Okay. McDivitt And that ' s where the onboard computer thing ends . I might go through what happened to the thing . We were over the .States and h!;',,d the onboa rd computer on for getting a new load in it. I got just about over Florida . He said, okay, I could turn the ## Page 97 tffiFIDEr-4TIAL 91 computer off. I turned the switches off and nothing happened . The comp l i ght stayed on and I don ' t even think the ·malfunction light came on , did it? No, it didn't. So I said, "Well, that 's interesting that the darn thing doesn't go off. " So we flicked the IGS power of~ and back on quickl y and told them on the grotmd that it didn't look l ike I could get the computer to go off and stay off. White I think you told them you thought you had a failure in the switch . McDivitt Yes, I told them it looded to me like I probably had a failure i n the ON-OFF Switch or the ON- OFF switchiqsfunction. And they said okay . So I said, "What do you want me to do here?" I knew we could a l ways t urn it off by t urning the IGS off, but I wasn ' t too keen on that , So they said, "Stand by. We' re going to have the experts check it. " So we flew on out of communication with them. I think they talked to me over Bermuda too, but nothing of much importance. They said to stand by they were still checking it. Then we got ove.c Tananarive and I got this message to turn the GQt◄ FIDE~~TIAk ## Page 98 92 switch to the ON position but to turn tie a . 0. power to ACME,which was going to power down the computer whether we wanted it to or not . It was a voice relay station but we weren't getting the voine relayed. We were just getting a message sent up from somebody on the g~ound. I ' m quite sure we didn't have any controllers at Tananarive . I don't r eally know who was talking to me . Probably SOUlf-! COM TECH , So • not being able to discuss the thi.ng with them and not knowing what the status of my total electrical p,wer was at the tim., , I went ahead and t·..1.r.ned them off. The comp light or the malfunction light came on and then it sort got dim H,nd wen-f: 1)ut. Then I sort of figured that •s the end of the ACPU. So we put the thing back on over Carnarvon and back off again and it woul dn't come on. It was dead,of course . So that's the life story of the computer. Then we played a lot of games afterward trying to ml'l.kc~ .. a dead man come back to lifA. I have nothing else on the computer. I sure wished I'd have had it though. f'~t 1F1DfJM+IAit ## Page 99 93 8.8 Crew Station McDivitt Controls and displays- . -okay, I' 11 talk about that. The s,equential Telelights all operated properly,--came on in the proper colors, and punched off and everythi.ng. The event timer operated properly. The IVI operated properly. The flight director indicator operated properly. I would like to discuss the GLV fuel and oxidizer pressure gages here for a minute . We got about a $25 million vehicle,! think,that depends almost entirely on a launch. We've got an onboard manual ietection system ,or something like that . White Malfunction detection system. McDivitt Malfunction detection system . An integral part of the malfunction detection system, are the fuel and oxidizer pressure gages for both the first and second stages . This is one of the abort criteriaI On the scal e of these gages down below the glass is a beautiful, beantiful set of lines and numbers and hash marks ,tha.t are wrong. They updated the GLV information and found out that these things were in error by quite a bit. No~ to take and fix these gages would have taken a couple thousand bucks. I don't know exactly how much or how ## Page 100 94 long, but it would have taken a few dollars. In­ stead we decided it would be simpler and cheaper and a lot quicker to go ahead and paste some paper decals over the top of the glass . The parallax with these things is horrendous . The decal s were pasted on over t he top of the glass in such a manner that they completely obscure the inside-the- glass readings.They also obscure the center needles which are not only the clue to what the taz1k pressures are but a clue to whether you have any APS power, which is also critical . When you cut these things back so that you can see the inside needles , you see the inside gage too . I think this nickel-dime fix to ·our multi... ·!. million doll ar vehicle is ridiculous. I think that we ought to get those inside gages painted the way that they ' re supposed to be painted. I think we ought to end this Mickey Mouse gage routine right now and get going on GT-5 ' s fuel and oxidizer gages for both stages . It's ridicu­ lous the way they are right now. The a .l timeter worked as advertised. I mentioned that it went down and back up again at around 100,000 feet . ## Page 101 95 The rate of aescent seemed to be all right. The accelerometer was okay. The switches and circuit breaker panels--! had no comment. We knocked a couple of switches and circuit breakers off dur­ ing the course of the flight. We always caught them and got them back on quickly , or maybe we didn't get them back on quickly. We got them back on quickly enough because nobody ever said much to us about it. They commented one time . Two times,I think, they asked us if we turned some­ thing on or off. White I remember that . One was over on my side. McDivitt Was one the A pump on the s econdary loop or the E pump on the secondary loop,or did you turn that on? White No. I think one of them was up there, and I for­ get how we got it on. McDivitt Maybe we just bumped it. Yes, there was another one over on your right-hand side and there were a couple of them in the center circuit breaker ~ panel. One time I know I bumped one on the left­ hand side circuit breaker panel. I thought it was the-electronic timer. It was one right above ~ ►~FlDWTlAIJ ## Page 102 96 that. I almost had a heart attack when I saw that thing go down because it would have messed up the whole time reference system . I thought the switches and circuit breaker panels were very good . I have no complaint about it. I think that's a well designed cockpit. The mirrors were fine and the swizzle stick was a real life saver . I can't reach the circuit breakers and switches over on the right-hand side unless I use the swizzle stick. I had to do a lot of switching when Ed was sleeping. This swizzle stick was the real answer. White I 've been always telling you to get some long arms . H~, ha! I didn ' t use the swizzle stick very much . McDivitt Yes, but you don't have to reach over and get those switches all on the left-hand side . White I found the swizzle stick was quite useful for unstowing items out, of the center stowage box. McDivitt That ' s right . White It was really good there. I used that every time when I unstowed. McDivitt It ' s a good piece of equipment . Okay , lighting- do .you want to ~ ~ ting, Ed? GiQ.f >.~tfit~ ## Page 103 97 White Okay, I think that the lighting to me was sur­ prisingly good. I think that at one time there was a press to put two white lights on either side on the instrument panel. I think the lights on the instrument panel should remain just as they are. I think we used the red light much more than we used the white light. There was quite a bit of time when you had to do a lot of out-the­ window operation at night and you wanted to have some reference inside. The red light doesn't seem to destroy your night ~eference at all. So I think the instrument lights, the two on either side above the panel, are satisfactory. I also thought the del etion of the red light in the cabin light and the substitution of a bright white light was certainly good. There were several times when I wanted to get a reading on something right away and I didn't want to fool around with dim lighting. I would switch on the big bright light and I was almost always able to get good readings. Now when the sun was really bright in you face, there was a period of time in which your eyes had to adjust to the instrument panel before you .e@t'4FIDEMTIAL ## Page 104 98 could make the readings . I think you could put spot lights in there and not get by that prob­ lem. McDivitt That's exactly what I was go ing to say . Lights aren't going to solve that problem . White No, it's just plain bright outside. When you look back in, even though you have your lights on , it's fairly dark inside . I personally wasn ' t troubled by this very many times during the flight . Were you , Jim? McDivitt No, I wasn ' t. White I didn't feel that was too bad . S~ actually, I felt that the lighting , although not abundant , was adequate. I think the actual light ing of the instruments would certainly be nicer if we had individual instruments lit up. Oh, ene thing -­ several times I would like to have had a flash­ Eght in there, something where I could direct a real beam of light. The little side light& I thought, were close to being useless . I didn' t use my little side light, the auxiliary light , very much at all. McDivitt As a matter of fact , I didn ' t either . White Very seldom . I think that if we're going to have •Gl>J~LOiMIWs. ## Page 105 99 a little auxiliary light like thatl it ought to be a light-- McDivitt It ought to be a big auxiliary light ! Ba, Pa! White a directed beam. This goes right back to something that we forgot to point out in water management. I think we ought to point it out right now loud and clear. I think that we have to have a system in which we can gage the water outflow. I think the medical people feel fairly strong about this also. I know that I restrained from drinking because I didn't want to drink all the water out of there prior to the end of the four days. I got a feeling Jim was doing the same thing. McDivitt That's right. I was doing exactly the same thing. White I didn't drink abundantly at any time during the flight except perhaps right before the r3entry. I felt I was taking quite a bit of moisture with my reconstituted food. I felt that if I overdid it t he first part of the fligh~, we wouldn't get through the last part, because water is so critical. McDivitt That's right. We've got a number of expendp.~les like OAMS, and we've got a couple of gages for ## Page 106 100 t◄ p=rr,aq l¥A l the propellants . We ' ve got the EGS oxygen . We ' ve got quantity gages for that . We ' ve got electrical power and we ' ve got .ways of measuring that from the ammeter . We've got food and we can a l ways count that . But when we get down to water, which is just as critical as all these other things in flyir.g_ long duration missions, t here ' s not a single way in the world we can measure how much we've gotten or how muchi. we ' ve drunk . I think it ' s imperative that we get some method of measuring this t hing before we try to fly another long du­ ration flight. White The white light on the little utility light was not satisfactory. We tried to look to see if we could find out what we had in the cabin bottle- ­ McDivitt Water tank . White And that wasn ' t satisfactory. I think we ought , , to have some t ype of a metering system which would enable us to actually determine the water that we 've utilized and in some way koow that we ' re getting it out of t he adapter . I don ' t know . We need to look into the whole water metering system, which is non- existent, and see ic!o~{Bt some kind of system. FNilAt ## Page 107 101 McDivitt You lmow even if we can ' t get something that they can pipe into the spacecraft, at the very least we ought to TM the pressura.nt pressure down to the ~ound and back up again , or something, and get , some sort of calibration curve-- White So that we'd lmow what we have remaining in the a .dapter. McDivitt We could at least call the people down at the ground and say, "How much water do we have left?" White That ' s right. And I think we ought to be able to tell what our bottle has inside of it in the spacecraft . McDivitt Yes, I 1:h:ink they're really two separate things . I think first of all you 've got to know the total water that you've got left and the r ate that it's going down. I think the second thing that Ed's pointing out is that we don't even have a:n:y way of telling what the water supply is in the spacecraft. The first clue that you get that you're out of water is you just run out of water. White The lighting on the water management panel I think is just about non-existent. You can see it in the daytime. If you know the position of the ## Page 108 102 switches and lmow where they're supposed to be, you can make sure they ' re located properly and on the proper indication, but I can 't read anything down in that area at night. The lighting is very poor in that area. McDivitt One thing that I'd like to comment on here a little bit is that ~ amber light that I insisted that they put on the Preheat-Flush switch over back of the water management panel . I felt it came in real handy. Two times during the course of the flight I left the Preheat switch on after I flushed it for short periods of time to make sure we didn't have any ice left in the lines . I did it on every occas ion, but two times the thing that called my attention to the fact that I still had the thing on , was the fact I could see that orange light-amber light-shining up be­ tween the food box and the front of the spacecraft . I could tell that I had another light on in the back. White And so I think the left panel, center panel , right panel, pedestal, and console are not lit abundantly, but are lit what I ' d call adequately and perhaps ## Page 109 a little marginal in some cases . I had no diffi­ culty in reading the des i gnations on the switch­ breaker panels. I think they were lighted ade­ quately also. I'm not going to say they're lighted well , because I don ' t think the lighting is real good in the spacecraft. The water management panel isn ' t lighted properl y . I 'm not sure we reall y have to have it l i ghted too well . The utility lights, I t hink,as they are now.,are very close to being useless . It's like taking a match and trying to use it to find your way around . It doesn ' t provide enough light . From time to time I would have liked to have had a light which had a little stronger output of light available,~ so that I coul d-- I several times wanted to look behind my seat for things at night and I ' d like to look down into the area in the water management panel light. McDivitt Yes , I think probably the wattage on those bulbs should go up an order of magnitude to make them effective. White You use it so seldom that it wouldn ' t be a big power use. You ' d only use it when you needed it , ## Page 110 104 It wouldn't be something you ' d use very often. McDivitt I'll tell you what it all is,though. When you want it, you want something that you can see . You just can ' t see with those things at all . White I don ' t particularly understand what the interior and exterior lights mean . Do you? McDivitt I think the exterior lighting is probably the lighting that could probably be used for docking . We didn't have any exterior lights. White I thought the intensity control of the lights was an absolute necessity and I think it was satis­ factory. I think the fingertip lights are quite useful , and were commented on already. They should have the Lexan covers, and we've also commented that they should be located between the finger­ tip and the first joint. The onboard data--now here we come to a very useful piece of equipment. Ha , ha! I believe I made a considerate effort three times to update that thing, and I never got up with it any one of those times . McDivitt We had three positions on our flight plan strip. We had launch,the first five minutes-- ·t'he next time I tried to get it was 23 hours. The next ## Page 111 105 position was 88. :Ha, ha ' White And neither time did I catch up really where we were . I turned and turned and turned and then got distracted into something else . McDivitt Quite frankly , the only things I, ever saw in that flight plan roller were the 23- hour and the 88- hour times and I never even read what it said . White I didn't quite agree with-- McDivitt 84 it was, I'm sorry. It wasn ' t 88, it was 84 . And Ed wrote something on here. He wrote my parachute-deploy time . White I wrote your times during l'.eentry on there . McDivitt It would have been much more useful if there hadn ' t been anything on it at all. White Yes , we put a few times up there-- McDivitt I couldn't read those things, which were the only numbers that I really was interested in at all . White 40CK 2+ 38 • Ghute 12+ 33 . The only two that I thought you really needed were those two. I put them on there. I diat t thoroughly believe Gus when he said you ought to take the thing out, throw it away, and leave a hole in the instrument panel . But I ' m inclined to agree with him r ight ## Page 112 106 Now. You ought to take it out, throw it away , and leave a hole in the instrument panel . But honestly, what I do think ought to go up t here , is a good digital clock readout . McDivitt I don ' t think an analog clock in that position would do you any good though. White They both have a high degree of parallax . McDivitt Yes, the parallax would make it usel ess . I think if it goes in there it ought to be digital . White Yes, a one- second clock. McDivitt I ' m not really sure that we're going to get a digital clock in because of the complexity and the weight and all that jazz. White Let ' s talk about the clocks right now , Jim. McDivitt Okay, let ' s talk about the clocks . White I ' ll hit mine and then you hit yours and then there should be a conclusion that we could come to . McDivitt Very good . White I think the clock on my side is unsatisfactory. I wouldn ' t recommend flying it on another flight . It's difficult to read . There are two hands going aroun~ keeping track of minute~ and some- t~ ou read the wro~ minute hand. The one Q ~,FtDEf>ffl~~- ## Page 113 107 that ' s keeping your hack-¼t's easy to mistake for your minute hand. The way the face is marked it ' s difficult to read the minutes out . The hours interfere with each other. The whole readability of the clock is unsatisfactory and the readability of the hands is unsatisfactory. SQ I think the clock is out in all counts as far as I ' m concerned. I kept watching Jim's clock over there and I think I could get a better Greenwich Mean Time off of his clock than I could on mine on my side of the instrument panel. McDivitt Hey, let me comment on mine . I thought the reada­ bility of t hat Accutron 24-hour clock was excellent. The accuracy of it was lousy. It lost four or or f ive seconds every day or more . I reset it about every 24 hours. My Omega wrist wat ch that I had set on GMT never lost a second, except I forgot to wind it one day, and it ran down . It stopped. Ha, ha! White I was guilty of the same thing. McDivitt But the Accutron clock on my side of the instru­ ment panel, that they put on as sort of an afterthought, was indeed a fine clock as far as ## Page 114 108 ~ee, ◄ rrAL readability. It didn ' t have any chronometer func­ tion to it at all . It had strictly a second, minute , and hour hand on it. It told you GMI' and it didn't tell you anything else. It told you GMI' in a way you could read it . You could read out the minutes, you could read out the hours, and you could read out the seconds. I really didn't have any trouble with it at all . It had a nice thin second hand which I find to ~e much more useful than those great big blunt t hings with huge arrows on the end of them. I hat e to lose the chronometer feature on that right-hand side, but I do think that the readability of this thing ,as far as the GMI' is concerned, is so much superior to that other clock that it isn ' t even comparable. White I'm not sure that the chronometer function on that side is really too important . McDivitt • Don' t you? White No, I would be perfectly happy to go ahead and take that ,out and put a good clock on there in Greenwi ch Mean Time. Now I 've got some further comments on-- ## Page 115 CO f\J FIDEf\lTlAL 109 McDivitt I guess what you end up with is two clocks that aren ' t any good . Either one of them aren ' t any good . You ' d rather end up with one clock that was good. White Yes , the way it ' s combined together right now , it ' s really not too good. I hacked your OAMS burn on my watch . I work with two clocks on my left arm and it worked out r eal well for me. I had elapsed time on one and I had Greenwich Mean Time on the other . I used the elapsed timer as the one on which I made my hacks . So I feel we got adequate backup. If one poops out , you can use the other one to make your time on. So, I think we should have a good clock to keep track of the time in the spacecraft on the instrument panel . Now , I'd like to get back on the clocks again. I think that elapsed time is the only kind of time that we ought to have in the spacecraft . I think that we ought to have a good method of keeping track of elapsed time. I think probably a ten-hour clock that keeps track of each ten-hour incement that you pasa to a high degree of accu­ racy, is the kind of clock that we need. I don't ## Page 116 110 0Gb liUailJJlAL know what we're going to do about wrist watches. Maybe they 'll design us a ten- hour wrist watch that we can wear. I don't see any reason why they can't . They can design twelve-hour ones just as easily. We 're going to go to this in Apollo. We should face up to it and go ahead and spend the money to get ourselves a proper t iming piece of equipment and get our ranges and stuff operating on elapsed time. In long flights this is the kind of thing that ' s going to be of interest . It was confusing to me, to tell you the truth , to operate on Greenwich Mean Time and elapsed time through-­ out the flight. I was constantly adding and sub­ tracting. They'd call us up Greenwich Mean Times and I'd want to convert them to what I was using on my flight plan. I found this a gr eat incon­ venience. McDivitt I concur with what Ed said. I ran the whole flight plan using elapsed time except for the times where they called a specific GMT time to perform a function . I did it off of a twelve- hour face wrist watch. I added up all my twelve -hour incements and came to whatever I wanted. If I ## Page 117 111 had something like 83 hours and 15 minutes , I had to figure out that that was six times around the clock and another 11 hours and another 15 minutes . Obviously,not the best way in the world to do it , but the only way that was practical from the standpoint of the flight plan . White Well, to tell you the truth , Jim, I feel strong enough about that elapsed time that I would be happy to go with that type of a system of timing, and just go ahead on elapsed t i me all the way and use twelve-hour incements. They would call up your time and elapsed time and use your own clock to keep track of it . I felt it was simple enough also to do it in this manner . But I feel that this is ini'erior to having a good elapsed timer and ten- hour digital incements. McDivitt I tell you I hate to see us get involved in some!.. thing where you 've gpt a clock thats so difficult to read,where you've got to add up twelves and-­ White Now you're on the other side of the fence now! McDivitt No, I think that we ought to do things like retro- fire time a.~d that' s ort of thing in a standard time that you can use-:.. something like GMT . ## Page 118 112 g?t 1~18 Et fFt,-,L White Well, you really need- -elapsed time. If we had elapsed time- - McDivitt If we had a good elapsed timer onboard the space­ craft, I would say that there ' s no doubt about it . Elapsed time. White I think we ought to start working on it right now . McDivitt Elapsed time is the way we should go . I don ' t t hink that with the timing systems we 've got available for the Gemini that we want to go to elapsed time for the whole mission . White Trying to get our data back from this f l ight is going to be a horrible mess because of those two timing systems . McDivi tt I know it . I agree. Before we lai.mched , we knew that we wanted to run it in elapsed time , and there wasn ' t any doub't about it . White I think maybe if we make the point str ong enough maybe they ' l l get busy on it . McDivitt You ' re right . l,,J,e'll get going on it . Whi te Okay , why don ' t you take the checklist cards , Jim? McDivitt The checklist cards . We had two complete sets of car ds that were broken up into t wo groups . We Qt@ tffl4f11D8JWA L ## Page 119 C9fde II and M)de III aborts, EVA, the suit check and all the things that we were going to use in the first five orbits of the flight on one set of cards. We had another set of cards from Pre-Retro Checklist down to the post landing and emergency egress . The cards included all the plots that were needed to do all the retrofire and to make corrections to take care of all the non- nominal things that might happen to us during the retrofire . We also had in this group of cards a card that we used to con­ tain the final retro information such as with OAMS or without OAMS burns , time to reverse bank, and all the other things that we had. It was a format , something that cou1d be easily held in our hands and was actually used during the launch, during insertion, and during reentry . We actually had these cards out so we could check them off. White I thought the only thing we would have out during these t wo critical busy periods of time were these two easy- to-hold , easy-to-operate, hand-held card checklists. The rest of the stuff was all stowed away . c:@ ► H•I1.>6hlil4'.L ## Page 120 114 McDivitt We got every checklist that was required to make the spacecraft run on these two sets of cards, which together were about 3/4 of an i nch thick . White I feel that we had a real workab l e solution to the problem. These things were the same size as those carried on GT- 3 . They were much more ex­ panded than what GT- 3 •had. We had the whole how-to-operate the spacecraft routine on these cards. McDivitt The preparation and availability of them-- is this from a training standpoint . That i s later in the brief. McDivitt Well , anyway, we actually received our cards at about 8:00 the night before the launch . White That ' s the thing that I was hollering about the loudest not to have happen and it happened . I understand why it happened, but-- McDivitt We had so many changes in the flight plan and nobody was working on turning this stuff out . Our time was so filled with over- all t rai ning and the change in flight plan that we just didn ' t have time to go--, We did not have time to go through the checklist over and over. When we did 00-lstEtDEtJIJA L ## Page 121 115 go through them it took too long to get the thing back to us . Dick Benson came down to the Cape and did an absolute marvelous job, I think , in getting these things turned out . White I think he did, too . I think we all owe him a real vote of confidence. McDivitt That's right. He did an outstanding job . White I think the biggest confidence builder that you had, Jim , was when we started getting. these books . McDivitt That ' s right. Shoot, I was worried about us get­ ting ready for the flight because I didn ' t think we would be able to get all this stuff together. 'Finally he showed up and really went through it 9 but it doesn ' t change the fact that these check­ list cards and data books didn ' t arrive until 8: 00 the night before the flight . We had a few changes that had to be made . I guess I went to bed about 9: 30 . Dick Benson and Martin Miller were still in our conference room making changes to our books. So a lot of t hese things we didn ' t see until we flipped them out in flight . I think our data books, as we had them laid out, couldn ' t have been better. Well, I shouldn't say that; ## Page 122 116 there is always room for improvement . White Yes, I think we could organize them a little better for utility and use . We had so many changes in so,..many things that got put in at the end. It got so that they were put in in a bit of a helter-skelter manner, but certainly they were easy to find . McDivitt Well, I don ' t know. I was really q_uite pleased with the outcome. I think that the general ar­ rangement of one data book and two-- .whabever we ought to call those other books-- White What did we call those other books? McDivitt Two Experiments and Spacecraft Procedures and Flight Plan - 3o uks-- White Two procedures and one data . McDivitt Yes , two procedures books and one data book . One thing I would have changed -- I would have expanded the flight plan and made maybe two or three times as many pages as we did . We could have written a l l the notes right in it and had enough room to make it intelligible. Because it turns out , tha:t!s where we really kept all of our notes . White Yes . McDivitt Right on the flight plan. • 8t-tftfl~E ►•ffi l-A L♦ ## Page 123 117 White About the way they had it initially was pretty good. Maybe that ' s a little more than we need, but-- McDivitt No, I don't think it is, Ed. I think that is the way it should be. White This is a whole hour on one page . McDivit t Really? White Yes . So later on, you see, they went from one hour dovm to six hours on a page . Maybe if they cut that in half and made two or three hours on a page--this is probably about the-- McDivitt Two hours on a page for our flight would have made 50 single sheets or 25 double pages . That would not have been bad . White That probably would have been just about the · right length . McDivitt We'd have gotten a lot more out of our notes, I think, because we found ourselves scribbling in places where it was pretty hard to determine where you were . White The requirement to mak~ ·changes i-n the bo0k after the flight goes· on is ab5o;tut-ely nil . So , I thi nk ## Page 124 118 that rings should be replaced with something that doesn't come undone . My rings came undone sev­ eral times during the flight and luckily only one at a time came undone. It would have been a real mess if a:ny of these books would have come apar~ because it would have destroyed numerical sequence. So , I think something other than rings ought to be used . . McDivitt I tell you one thing I found.- -that size boo.k and that concept that we had, I think , was really good . White That was just the right size. McDivitt It ' s just the right size. Their sheets are big enough where you can write a.lot on them . White They ' re easy to handle . McDivitt They ' re small enough so they ' re easy to handle . They ' re easy to stow . They fit into the flight suit. When we launched, I had both flight sets of data cards in my right lower pocket and the big data book and my procedures book in my left- hand lower pocket. I had all the checklists right on my spacesuit.. White I had one procedure book and both my cards. McDivitt And both your cards . So that between. the two of ~PIDE~4TIA1 ## Page 125 119 us we had all the data books right on the flight sui~ which was just right where we wanted them. Whit e Another thing we did - -we hand carried this equip­ ment down to the spacecraft to be sure it was there on l aunch . McDivitt The maps , overlays, and star charts we should lump all together along with all the other junk that we carried in the data case . White Let's start with the star charts. That's easy. I thought the star chart was satisfactory. I think you used the one with less stars on it than I had . McDivitt Yes . White I used my own one that J fly with all the time and I was quite happy with it . I think t l.is is exactly what you need and I don't believe you need to overla~ two times around, but that wasn't for the chart . McDivitt Yes, and really the flight chart, the one that was actually designed for the spacecraft, was de­ signed ,30 that this swiveling out the window dis ­ play fit on it . It was a certain size to take care of that and had a lot of dead space out on the ## Page 126 120 C~'4fFIDE~~TIAl edges . I would have rather seen the stars ex­ panded more so that we could tell it. We used two polar plots of stars that were put out for the Apollo thing that we picked up on our training. We actually f l ew with one of the training things. I took one out of my brief case. White Those weren't put out by Apollo. Those were put out at Ollvie cam1;!ra. , and the fixed 200 m:n l ens on the Contarex. We sta=t;;d o,1t with a time of closest approach and a time we should have been able to see the target . The only kind of identification assist that we had at this time was a piece cut out of a WAC Chart , that showed El Paso International~and the world chart with a gigantic scale on it . This made it a little bit difficult from an acquisition standpoi~t . cet•Fto[ ► 4TIA.L- ## Page 155 149 But later on we f ound that these same t wo types of information- -the world map and the small WAC Char t --were a.dequo.t e for other types of target s. The WAC Chart showed of course the range of mountains just west of El Paso and the White Sands and the Rio Grande River . We came across Southern California, and I could see the Salton Sea. I didn ' t track them , but I looked out the front and I could see the mountains of New Mexico and Arizona. .And I saw a bunch of white places down below us , any o~e of which co~ld iave been the White Sands . I f I could have really picked out the White Sands by themselves. and unf ortunately they were off the WAC Chart · that I had , I think the contact would have been good enough for me too pick up El Paso . As it was , the only features I had that would have been of great importance were the river , which was the Rio Grande River-:--'3.rld at that point was not very noteworthy-- and the mountain range , ._ which from the al titude of arou..~d 90 miles or more couldn ' t be picked up . I think that this type of a topographical or geographical feature , like a valley or a mountain ,,is not adequate ## Page 156 150 Ei0HFIBE~TIAL for this kind of task. You need a contrast in color as you get from the White Sands to the surrounding d,9sert . The best of all is a water­ land interface or border. As we came across the United States, I think we picked up El Paso just as we were over i t , but we weren ' t pointed down at the town. We were still pointed well out in advance . The only clue that we were over El Paso was that I could see the Gulf Coast . I knew that when I saw the Gulf Coast we were probably too far al ong to pick up El Paso . Rather than just scrub the run , we went ahead and made a run on a pair of sand spits with a channel between them in the vicinity of Corpus Christi . We picked up a target well in advance , and as I started tr-JLag t o line up on the target , I found out that the gunsight had a light intensity and the gunsight was inadequate for a daytime tracking task; because as you pointed the sight down and had a background of clouds , you just absolutely could not see the sight . I didn ' t have any idea in thA world where it was p,-, i.nting. When you put it on the dark land, it seemed to be adequate , but I think we .......,' ## Page 157 149 But later on we found that the se same two types of information- -the world map and the small WAC Chart--were adeque:r.e for other types of targets . The WAC Chart showed of course the range of mountains just west of El Paso and the White Sands and the Rio Grande River . We came across Southern California, and I could see the Salton Sea. I didn ' t track them , but I looked out the front and I could see the mountains of New Mexico and Arizona. .And I saw a bunch of white places down below us, any one of which co~ld ~ave been the White Sands . I f I could have really picked out the White Sands by themselves, and unfortunately they were o!'f the WAC Chart • that I had , I think the contact would have been good enough for me too pick up El Paso . As it was , the only features I had that would have been of great importance were the river , w'nich was the Rio Grande River-:-9lld at that point was not very noteworthy-- and the mountain range , \ which from the altitude of arou..~d 90 miles or more couldn ' t be picked up . I think that this type of a topographical or geographical feature , like a valley or a mountain ,,is not adequate ## Page 158 150 for this kind of task . You need a contrast in color as you get from the White Sands to the surrounding d~sert . The best of all is a water­ land interface or border. As we came across the United States , I think we picked up El Paso just as we were over i.t , but we weren't pointed down at the town. We were still pointed well out in advance . The only clue t hat we were o·,er El Paso was that I could see the Gulf Coast. I lmew that when I saw the Gulf Coast we were probably too far along to pick up El Paso. Rather than just scrub the run, we went ahead :::ind made a run on a pair of sand spits with a channel between them in the vicinity of Corpus Christi. We picked up a target we ll in advance, and as I started t:q.L:lg to line up on the target, I found out that the g-~nsight had a light intensity and the gunsight was inadequate for a daytime tracking task; because as you pointed the sight down and h9.d a backgroan.d of clouds, you just absolutely could not see the sight . I didn ' t have any i dea in the world where it was p,-·i.nting, When you put it on the dark land, it seemed to be adequate, but I think we @8t Wt0et.s1I.IAJ: ## Page 159 151 can increase the intensity of the gunsight by q·..1ite a bit . During the night time you can turn it down and t he brightness is just abo-1t what you need . We made this ru~ on this pair of sand spits , and t he t racking t ask was q,.j t,~ easy . Now , I just happened to pick something that was obvious t o me and tracked on this and picked it up ;"11ile we got on at abo~lt 30 degrees, u.nt il I got to the vertical ,. and then I tcacked it out to about 45 degrees past the vectical. This was-a' t a real tracking task, in that I didn ' t select a target before I got there . But, I just stuck with whatever target I happened t o be pointing at and ran the tracking task . I think we learned something from this pass in that we want to be very careful about picking out targets in the mi ddle of an area where there aren ' t any good water- lmd borders ; there aren' t any good contrasting colors . There wasn ' t a really prominent feature that I could start from, that worked down to the city and eventually to the airport . So , I think that on this parti­ cular pass , although we didn ' t get any pictures of our intended ta~get , we learned quite a bit CC!t'(f.fii&E ►4"E h,e ## Page 160 152 from it . I don't believe I ha.ire any other comment on that pass. Do yoa? White No . I was quite surprised when we missed El Paso . Remember we thoaght , "Boy, this is one we I re g01ng • t o nai· 1 . fl McDivitt Anrl the f unny part of all this is that we had both flown in a~d out of El Paso International Airport no less than a hundred times . We w,~re pretty well assured of where we ware going and what it looked like . But we didn ' t find it early eno-:.1gh . We progressed too far before I r eal l y saw the toi,m , s.nd Ewen then I didn ' t see the airfield , because I wasn ' t sure I was over the right tovn U!1.til I was over i t . And then , it was too late to lo:->k q,t the airfield . White I think that the point that you ' re making is going to be well brought up in what I'm going to say next . McDivitt Okay. Why don ' t yo'.1 - - you made the next pass, I think, on Tel -Aviv. White The next pass was Run No. 6, Target 15 . The information I got was adequate to lJcate i t. It turned out that this target had the essentials t hat Ji;n was l ooking for and mentioned on his last ## Page 161 pass I had a nice body of water . Th8 Dead Sea was a good l~cation, and actually the city itself was located at the end of the Mediterranean, so I felt that landmark-wise I had a pretty good tar get to track. I came in and the first target I picked up was Jaffa, and I was on it so well t hat I decided to go ahen.d and track Jaffa. At f irst I had thought it was Tel- Aviv, and 1.1. few seconds later I relized tha-'; it wa.s the city 10 o:r. 20 mileo north of 'l'el- Aviv. The reaso:i. I picked it up so easily is because there was a little spi ~ of l i:i.nd t~1at jutted out into the water and it sat right in this little natural basin . I looked down and I saw Jaffa and I a0tually saw the 1 ittl,~ round cir,:ul :1.r• airport in Jaffa , I also saw Tel- Aviv , and I saw the airport that I was really looking for, but I decided I 'd go aheaci. and track Jaff a and tak~ a few pictures of Jaffa as we went over. You ha1re to real i ze that I wasn ' t using a gunsight on my side , and I was also con t ~olling the sp(v:..,,-~raf t and firing the camera at the same time• So the tracking i.:;; probabl y a lit tle rougher than it would. be f rom the left-h,m d side . en IW't 0f·MT1~~ ## Page 162 154 But I did get a good indication of the cap9.bili.ty to tt'ack a target anci to pick a target up , and I think tha~ I was quite surprised 4t the ease at which you could track . I also concurt'ed with Ji:n 1 s conclusion that a goo,l prominent landmar.k primer, preferabl;f a body of W9.ter somewhere to nail do·,m your target, is the most desirablA f eature . I also feel that an important thing that the next crew going up could do would be to spend a lot of t.ime on jnst pla.Ln map study fr the 30 degrees north to 30 degrees sou.th, and try to p·L•::k up the prominent f ,~:1t:.2res to permit them to become quickly adjusted to what they can see and what they can I t see d·own below. I think that a 1-i.;;tle concentrated map study prior to the flight woulci help a lot with the D- 6. Also a concentrated study on the targets themselves wo·..lld be quite beneficial . This is s~rmething that we really never got to do. The original 243 ~argets were too voluminous even to ~onsider time to atudy each one, and when we got the final 19 targets, it was pretty late in the flight to be working on ::xi exp-::riment that wasn ' t even on our flight. Even C1"Jt~FIDEl>~ TIA 1 ~ ## Page 163 155 with the limited knowledge t~at we had of the targ0·I; ·.3 I felt that acquisiti.on and tracking of the targf,b'1 w· ,::J a lot ,,>::i,:,:j_.~r than I had tho-.i.ght I it was going to be . I guess thats all. McDi·.ri t t The next target that we had was Ywna Tnternatinna1 Airpo:d . Here again we had a tar.get that ·,1::i.::; not a very prol'.linent lal'ld.nri.rk . The time of closest apprJach and acquisitio·:1 time and the aiming 1.1ngles were adequate . It gave m,1 a good idea of what I should be looking f,:n- a,..'1d 1,hen I should be looking. I used the same maps again ; I used the cutout of a WAC Chart plus a great big world c~'lart . 'I1here was qui t0 a discontinuity in the s0ul ~ of these two maps , I I but I m not really sure that we co·..1ldn t have done t:'le job wlth just those two . I think tnat what we probably needed was a world map that showed a little more detail and a WAC Chart that showed a little bit more area. What we prob 1bly coul::l. ha"e used most of all was a 0 phot,:>grap1', rif ~~'le ar =1a . As I came in across the Califoraia coast. I )icked np the Salton Sea and El Centro , just below the Sal ton Sea, and then I mew that, Yuma was on the Colorado (!l@)NflDEl'JTLll ## Page 164 156 River, which should ::>e a few miles to the east of the Salton Sea. There was a nice big bend in the ColoraJr> River . Unfortunately , the Colorado , although it is a reasonably good sized body of water - ..i'€ just plain do(-)Sn ' t show up that w-all. It was a little difficult to see , but I finallJ pi~ked it up . I saw the bend in the river. The river doesn ' t actually go through the town of YumA., so I started looking for Yuma, and I d:id w:1nder aro~d a little bit before I finallJ found the town. Then I was unable to find the airfield within the tow~1 . When I was just a::>out d .'..::ectly over the a.i.rfi8ld , I picked it up. Here is where I think the photog::-aph wo~;ld have been a lot of help , because the mH.p t.h:it I had just showed a yellow bl,)b indicating the city with a circle to indic ~.te where the airfield ws.13 . It sho,1ed the airfield to be to the s,>t! ~h :Jf the town . What I was looking at was a 1 ,rge group of buildings , the to,..,.,, :_i.;self . Then as I went to the south , I saw even more buildings and I wasn ' t sure whether the airfield was south of tha: built-up area. As it turned arco~~FIDE~TIAt ## Page 165 157 out , it was south of the main built-up area that actuall y had another large group of buil dings south of it . I did pick up the airport itself at just about 5 degrees before the nadir , and I tracked over to the targe t, probably just at the nadir and just shortly past . I had the 16 mm movie camera going with the telescopic lens on it . I had t he gunsight on bright . I used Pul se Control Mode . I got right on the target and I managed to fly the spacecraft in such a manner that the gunsight never deviated from the target by more than a half a degree , I feel, if it deviated that much . I think it was considerably less than that . But there wasn ' t any great difficulty in the tracking task , and I managed to control in all three axes and hold the target just about wher e I wanted it . Here again we had a problem with the contrasting target; the water-land mass was quite some distance away. In this case, how f ar is it from El Centro to Yuma? White I don I t know, Jim. McDivitt 150 miles? White Yes . ## Page 166 158 McDivitt It was a reasonable distance, probably something on the order of 150 miles or m~be only 100 miles, but the problem was that between Yuma and El Centro there weren ' t any identifing masses that led you toward Yuma. And I had not up till this time looked down to try to find where the Yuma airport was,because we ' d been saving fuel . So , this was the first time that I'd seen Yuma airfield from orbit . As I get into the next target, I think you'll see what I'm leading up to . Having a first look at a target like this, be i ng able to identify the city , but then essentially wasting time before I found the airfield within the city, I think, cost some valauable time and consequently cost some good pictures; because the best picture is going to be that picture which is taken exactly over the airfield . White That wouldn ' t happen again though , would it? McDivitt No , White You ' d probabl y have it pretty wel l nailed . McDivitt No , it woul dn ' t . So ,the next target I had was Cairo -- Cairo Int ernational Airport . Now , we'd been over Cairo quite a few times before (MJ(1tf'F10'8'1Tli\ l ## Page 167 this , and I had l ooked down to find Cairo. I think we had had an Apollo Landmark or D- 6 type of thing ,where we were supposed to loolc down and just acquire the target, but not actually track it or take any pictures. When we did come by, we coul d actually look down and find the city of Cairo the first time we came by. Later I found the Cairo Airfiel d , and Ed and I were discussing Cairo Airfield and Alexandria Airfield. We both had one in sight . When I picked up the Cairo Airfield(I was told to pick up the Cairo Airfield),it had all the ingredients that I think is necessary. I had seen it beforE . I knew where it was with respect to the local landmark . The local l andmarks were the Mediterranean on one side , the Red Sea on the other side , the Suez Canal connecting these two l arge bodies of water , and a river leading f rom near the Suez Canal over toward the city and the airfiel d . Then. knowing the position of the airfield with respect to these landmarks ,since I 1 d al ready seen it , I came in over North Af rica along the Mediterranean Coast with no pl atf orm on , just in Pulse Mode, no ## Page 168 160 attitude reference , found the Mediterranean on my left , pointed the spacecraft on ahead , determined the direction I was going, picked up the Red Sea, picked up the Suez Canal between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, and followed the river in. I started this quite a distance out . I knew just about where the airfield was , but it wasn't coming into view . Finally,at about 20 degrees before the vertical the airfield finally came into view . I tracked on the airfield about 10 degrees before the nadir . I was tracking the area in which I believed the airfield to be , so that I had already had the pitch rate set up that I required of my spacecraft . As I got on the target I still had to track in multiple axes , but I already had t he rates built up , and I tracked f rom about 10 to 20 degrees before the nadir to 45 degrees past. I think this will probably be the best tracking exper i ment that I did. Later on, I had another one . Later on I had another tracking task against Basra in Iraw on the Pers i an Gulf. Here again,we had the ingredients that were necessary to pick up the target . We had a l arge eel fF tBE~~TIAL 1 ## Page 169 Cf3JS(FIOE~J 161 body of water , a river leading up to a lake, and then the airfield sticking out in a very prominent way. Now I ' d never seen the Basra Airfield before ·I t r ied to take thi s picture . But the landmarks near it were suffici ent so that finding the locat i on of it was not difficult. There wer en ' t any towns around . It was pretty obvious from the bodies of water where I should look for the airfield~and I picked it up also 20 degrees before I got to the nadir and was on it by the time I got to the nadir . I tracked it from there out to about 45 degrees past . Once again I had a reasonably good t r acking task. I t hink that on the tracking tasks on Yuma, Cairo, and Basr a, I managed to keep the t arget within the center half- degree cirl e of the sight . I used the 16 mm movie camera with the 75 mm telephoto l ens on each one of these cases . Did you have any other targets , Ed? White No . McDivitt I don' t believe you di d . I think the big thing here is that you ' ve got to be able to have a landmark that stands out long before you get to the target . You have to have a lot of contrast . ## Page 170 162 White Or some real technique or type of familiarity with the target . I think if you were really familiar with the area you might pick up things that we don't pick up now , but we could with a little more map study and study over above . McDivi t t That 's right. I think t hat the first thing, though , that you need to help you find the target is a really contrasting thing. Now the next thing is that you've got to be familiar with the target, as Ed said. Now if you have never been there on t he ground and don't know what it looks like from there, I think what you need are a few passes over the target to study it from the air, and look for it from the air,and try to pinpoint in your mind the local terrai n features and local contrasting features that will help lead you to the airfield . Because , it looks to me like it ' s easiest to find a target when you're exactly over it . White Boy , you ' re right . There ' s a point when you pass over the top where everything really is clear . McDivitt The big thing is either a lot of target study on ## Page 171 COt~F~DE~fflA l _ the ground or a previous pass across the target so that when you go across it, you not only lmow the general area thRt you're supposed to point into, but the exact spot where that target is and some identifying f eatures that wil l lead you to this target. So with the initial things like a lot of contrast to get you in the area and then a lot of detail gathered either from target study or from a previous pass across the target,I think that you could go ahead and find it . Once on the target the tracking task in the Pulse Mode is not difficult at all . I think you can track within just tenths of degree s of the target without too much difficulty whatsoever, in multiple axes . And I found that without having the platform up every., tracking task I did was in multiple axes , and although you're going through some very peculiar maneuvers, it ' s very instinctive to track up and down, left and right, using the gunsight,without any regard to what your attitude with respect to the local horizontal is. In air- to-ground gunnery you sometimes find that you ' ve got to pick your attitudes up from the -CO~~FIDf~~ ## Page 172 ~DEt~TIAL ~ ground. They sort of tend to be a constraint on what you can do, but that ' s not the case in this kind of a task . White The t hiug that really amazed me, Jim>is the first time I saw an airfield from up there . First time I saw one, I saw it directly from overhead. I was amazed at the clarity I could see of f ield . Although,of course,I saw no airplanes sitting on it , I fel t t hat I was seeing down to a resolution of 50 f eet or better with my own eye when there was a contrast of some type available to me . In general, I thought the clarity of things that you saw was far better than it is from just flying at 40 000 feet. Things a re mu9h smaller . bu+ they ·a.re much clearer to me . Also,,at night things are much clearer. And over one town we passed in Australia the lights were very , very clear down there to me . I think that with some type of an optical aid we can see a great deal . I think that with cameras with higher power and more capability ,we can take pictures of a lot more down below. I think t hat the only picture I 1 ve seen so far that I thought would be nice ## Page 173 165 from a tourist standpoint is the one I took of t he Cape , which everybody seems so excited about right now. That ' s one that was taken wi th the sun on the window and at roughly a 30-degree angl·e down from the hori zontal , which indicates you're shooting through a lot more atmosphere than necessary. The clarity was quite surprising, even to me . You can count t he launch pads and see sizes of buil dings . Because of the oblique angle , you can actually measure the sizes of t hese bui ldings . I think we ' ve got a tremendous amount of photographic potential from in space . I think that Jim and I ment i oned a little bit earler that t he area capacity inside the spacecraft limits the capability to carry a good size telescope or a very big piece of camera equipment . I think that coupled with t he EVA capabilit y t hat we have , we can carry some equipment back in the adapter- -some nice sizable cameras and telescopes--and build mounts on the outside of the spacecraft . We can go EVA , pick these pi eces of equipment up , bring t hem out , and mount them on the sides of the spacecraft so t hat we can take a series of ## Page 174 166 pictures and use really good, big, higher- powered telescopes for observati ons. If we do mount them out there , of course, we should mount themsomewhere so that if we had a failure of some kind and had to come right in, or weren't able to open up the hatch again , we could separate them by some type of pyro. But I think that is the one way we can combine our EVA operations wi th the desire to bring up big pieces of equipment and operate them with our spacecraft . McDivitt I agree. I think that the possibilities of viewing things on the ground from space are practically unlimited, and I was quite surprised at the ease with which you can control the spacecraft and take pictures and I was surprised at pictures you get . We ' ve got an awful lot of work t hat we can do in this area. I think the technique of acquiring these individual targets needs a lot of work. I feel that the best way to do it, if you're going to be limited to one pass over the site, is to use a photograph of it made from some previous time. I feel that the need for a large landmark nearby, especially a water landmark, is pretty great . I thought ## Page 175 167 that the information that we got from the ground · of what time we would be over the target and what time it would be 30 degrees below the horizontal were excellent pieces of information, It certainly contributed a lot to finding the target , I .think there ' s an awful lot of work that we can do in this particular area. You have anything else , there , Ell? White No . Oh , this is one thing that I have been bubbling about the l ast week or so , wanting to tell somebody, and haven't been able to tell anybody . I couldn't,of course,tell it in the press conference. I really didn ' t want to talk too much about it at the meeting we had before with everybody, but I think this is one area in which a trememdous amount of capability exists,and I think we ' d be very foolish if we don ' t work further to exploit it, Mc-Divitt I concur. ## Page 176 168 9.2 Apollo Yaw Orientation White Okay, I 'll probably go into this a little bit, and then we can go over the data on it. This was a fairly simple test. All we did was start at a zero­ zero reference and establish rates of 3 degrees/ second simultaneously in all axes. We had a sec­ ondary objective, to see when we established these rates and put them in three axes simultaneously if we got a scanner i gnor light. And I 'll clear that one up real y quick . We put them in at t wo different times and neither time di d we get a scanner ignore light . We di d this at night the first time , didn't we? That was really the only time we did it. McDivitt Jus t the night one. That's right . White That's right. We did i t once at night . I estab­ lished the rates in t hree axes and allowed them to bui l d up for about 30 seconds . Then , I told Jim to go ahead and take control of the spacecraft , and using visual references to move to a retrofire at­ titude . McDivitt I did this in Pulse Mode, I believe , because we were trying to save fuel. I think I did it in Direct, but I did not do it in Rate Command . I did it in Direct . The first thi ng I did was t ry to find t he horizon so I would have some reference point to fifffD Er>,TIA'l r ## Page 177 169 start from. This was quite easy. I just had to wait for the spacecraft to move so that I could see the horizon in any position, and t hen I went for it . The yaw reference, though , wasn ' t present when I got to the horizon, so I ended up level on the horizon upside-down, but without a yaw reference. I pitched on down well below the horizon so that I could look down at the ground. Watching the clouds go by, or whatever was down below me , I could pick up the direction of my motion . So , I rolled around such that I was pointing down at the ground , probably 45 degrees plus or minus 20 degrees . I rolled aroumd until my head came up, and all I had to do then was pitch back to the horizon to get to the 30 degree nose-down attitude for retrofire. This took 2 minutes and 20 seconds . Now I did this trying to save fuel. I could have done it much quicker if fuel wasn ' t a constraint . Also, I think I learned something f r om this in that I made a mistake by going first to the horizon. I should have pitched down until I was pointed straight down to the ground, picked up my yaw as quickly as I could in this ## Page 178 170 posit ion , rolled around so that I could just pitch straight up , and end up at the horizon blunt­ end- forward, heads up,and wings leveJ. I think I could ' ve gotten it down to about a minute a.nd 20 seconds. I felt that I wasted a minute doing this . White You were taking it slow. McDivitt Okay, now, 1 1 11 go through t he Apollo Yaw Orientation debriefing here . The contro l mode, as we said , was Direct when Ed put me into the condition. I used the Direct Mode , I believe . I damped out the rate without any difficulty at all . The orientation, I ' ve already gone through . What I should have done was to go nose-down . What I did do was that I came to the horizon first , tried to find a yaw reference and couldn ' t, then went down to the ground. I should have gone straight down to the ground . The time , as I mentioned , took 2 minutes and 20 seconds. I f eel that I could have done it in a minute and 20 seconds. We did not get the scanner ignore light due to acceleration , but we did get the scanner ignore light when we finally ## Page 179 171 got to a position where we were outside the attitude constraint of the scanners. White There were a couple of things . As far as the initial rates were concerned, they were 3 1/2 degrees/second roll - right, 3 degreed pitch-down/ second, and 2 degrees yaw- right/second . The final orientation that Jim came to was such that his pitch was on, his roll was on, and his yaw was off by 18 degrees. We found early in the flight that a yaw reference at night on the stars, particularly on a dark night , was very difficult. McDivitt Yes . I still thought that the quickest yaw re­ ference was to go to the ground . White As far as the day check , we decided that the night was by far the tougher case, adn it didn't seem to be too diff icult. So , we thought that since the day was so easy we wouldn't even go ahead and do it. The orientation by day was a quite easy t ~,ing. 9. 3 One Attitude 1'hruster Failure Check McDivitt Okay. We'll just go right through the debriefing here . It was not difficult to establish the rate as long as we had the roll jets in the other axes . We could damp out the ## Page 180 172 rates . We used the Direct Control Mode . It ' s just pret ty straightforward . It ' s identical to the simulator . We didn ' t learn anything new from this check except tha t the s imulator was indeed correct . Do you have anything to add ? White No . Tha t it was pretty straightforward . 9.4 Horizon Scanner Track Check McDivitt Hori zon Scanner Track Check is next . The horizon scanner ignore light came on as expected except t he attitude band ~hrough which the horizon scanner operated was considerably broader than we had e xpected . The scanner ignore light went off again at the proper attitud8 , considering the f ac t that the scanner ignore c ircui t keeps the scanner ignore light on 7 seconds after the scanner has relocked . So , we always had the scanner ignore light go out at a different attitude than where it came on because of the fixed rates we were using. We went through the zero bank angle ,pitch-up and pitch- down . We went through the zero pitch,bank-left and bank­ r ight . We then got to the r0E -..,i th pi tch,i.ng. Here , I only banked to t he right and pitched up and down . I didn ' t bank t o the left and pitch- up ## Page 181 173 and down . We did the pitch with rolling, and here I pitched up and rolled left and right, but we did not do the pitch-down , rolling left and right because of a fuel limitation and a time limitation . We had another experiment that had to be done . We had to get the platform off and we had a limited amount of time to accomplish this . I sort of felt that the check was very well accomplished at this time , The data is in the data book . I saw no need to waste time doing the other two maneuvers , especially since we were so limited on time and fuel , Did you have any­ thing to add to that, Ed? White No . I think that the remark that the data is in the book is adequate . 9, 5 Horizon Scanner Check McDivitt The first one is the sun . I think the best wasy to do it is to have Ed read out the comments that we wrote in the data book as we did this . We started with the blunt- end into the sun. White We started blunt - end into the sun and we got · the scanner ignor e light momentaril y as the sun ## Page 182 174 hit the scanner head . McDivitt It went right out again . It went out in 7 seconds like it was supposed to? White Hight . It was just a momentary light and 7 seconds later it was off again . Going back around to the 180.degree position , we didn ' t get the scanner l ight again . Again in here, we got a scanner ignore light when we were faced right into the sun with the nose , and it went out again and came on once more,and then stayed out . McDivitt So , sequentially, we started with the blunt- end in­ to the sun and started a yaw to the left . As soon as we came around into the sun we got the scanner ignore light , and it went out a short time later. We came around right into the sun, and at this time the scanner ignore light came on , went out, and came back on again . Is that correct? White Yes , and then finally stayed out . McDivitt And stayed out . Then we yawed back around till 1-,e were blunt -end to the sun again, and yawed back into the sun ,and back around blunt- end to the sun again , and we did not get any more ## Page 183 175 scanner ignore lights . The next step is the Hoon Scanner Check. We did this with the moonset and , Ed , you might add the time that we did the Sun Scanner Check. White The Sun Scanner Check was at Greenwich Mean Time of 11 : 50 , We ' 11 have to correlate that lat er·. McDivitt I think that we were supposed to be in the blunt- end to the sun configuration at 11 : 54 and star+-· ~b c-.re, but I 'm not really sure about tha t . Okay, the moon check was performed just about like t he sun check. We started blunt- end to the moon and made t wo cycles . Blunt- end t o small-end and back to blunt- end , and small-end back to blunt end . Ed , go ahead and read the data. White Okay. On the moonset , we started with the moon quite high , so we had a good moon. We started at 12 : 17 . We had no scanner ignore lights for the fir st 180 degrees and,actually,throughout the next cycle we had no llll'llocks or any lights for two cycles . McDivitt So this was completely normal. McDiv:i:tt The Thrusters Check No . ; --we turned the spacecraft , since the thruster f iring wouldn't influence the orbit except to change it ## Page 184 176 OO~~FIDEt-4TIAL slightly, and we went ahead and fired t he forward - firing t hrus ters for 1 second . We didn ' t get any change in our scanner ignore light configuration . It was out and it stayed out during the entire thruster check. So I guess that it operated all right . We 'll summarize all of our scanner comments at thi s time . White You want me to read some of these? McDivitt Yes . Why don ' t you read off some of the comments you have in there . White They ' re in your writing. You might read the first page and I ' ll read the second, since they I re in mine . McDivitt We went to Horizon Scan Mode of control for about the last day of flight , and left it in that mode just about until we retrofired . I 'd like to read out s ome of the comments that I made here as we lost the scanner, when we got the scanner ignore light . At 16 : 03 Greenwich Time , or atout 72 hours e lapsed time , I turned on the Horizon Scan Mod e in about a 27degree nose down attitude with a pitch up rate of about 2 degrees/ second . The Hori zon Scanner Mode added pulses GO~~FIDE~~TIAt ## Page 185 177 to the pitch up rate and increased my r a tes to something considerably above that , but then as we came up into the Horizon Scanner Mode dead.band , it started pulsing rapidly and ki l led off this rather l arge pitch rate and held the spa cecraft right in this attitude . S~ we had a very good acquisition of the mode from a somewhat undesirable condi t ion . At the first sunset the scanners were pointed right at the sun but did not break lock. We did not get any scanner ignore lights at this time . Later on, at 17 : 04, about an hour later at sunrise , the scanner ignore l ight came on with the space­ craft pointed in such a manner that the small end of the spacecraft was pointed about 45 degrees to the right of a line drawn directly between the spacecraft and the sun. So tha t., essential ly, the sun was shining on the horizon scanners at about a 45- degrell angl e . The scanner ignore lights stayed on for 10 or 15 seconds, and then went out . There were no false pulses from the jets at all . At 7: 55, just at sunse t , again in about the same position, I was 45 degrees to the right of a l ine drawn between the spacecraft and J..Gt.qf:IDEt~JIAL ## Page 186 178 the sun . The scanner broke lock. We started pulsing down for two or three pulses , then stopped , but the scanner ignore light stayed on longer than 7 seconds and then it went out . We pulsed up one or two times to start recovering from these initial two or three pulses that started us down , and then the l i ght came on again . It was only off for about 2 or 3 seconds, just a very short time . We were at about 30 degrees pi tch down at this time . We then started pulsing pit ch-down rapidly with the scanner ignore light on. We pitched down and did a 360-degree maneuver in pitch; we started just about horizontal, pitched down till we were looking at the ground , continued pitching down with respect to the spacecraft until we were horizontal , upside down, now faceing the opposite direction than we ' d started , and continued pitching down with r espect to the spacecraft . The small end ended up stra ight up and we continued pitching down again until we started coming back back down to the horizon . I did not at any time during this maneuver attempt to control the spacecraft . The pitch- down ## Page 187 179 thrusters continued to fire throughout t he maneuver at interval s like there was indeed a signal coming from the Horizon Scan Mode . As the spacecraft started back down toward the horizon , I thought sure that the horizon scanner would catch the horizon , because a t this time the sun was no longer right on the horizon . However , we developed a slight amount of roll during the l ast 120 to 150 degrees of pitch, and as we went down through the horizon , we were out of limits in roll and Horizon Scan did not pick up the horizon . I then took over the spacecraft and maneuvered back to a position from which the Horizon Scan Mode could r ea cquire and -put it in t his condit ion . It s t ayed locked on . Ed has a few notes here . We ' ll have him read his . White About the only notes that I ma.de on .the scanner was tha t at sunset and sunrise it had a tendency to break lock. I have a note her€ that at 22: 22, at sunset with the sun right on the scanner, i . e . 90 degrees to the spacecraft , the scanner broke lock three different times . At 22 : 58 , a t sunrise , the scanner put in spurious inputs but was abl e t o control and didn ' t lose lock. ## Page 188 180 Sunrise seemed to be the time at which t he scanner had the largest tendency to br eak lock , and if it didn ' t break lock, it would at l east put in spuri ous inputs which were obviously not required other than due to the confusion factor that the sunrise was causing on the scanner. Again, I have one at 11 : 58 , at sunrise , the scanner 60 degrees to the sun , broke lock once and pul sed quite a few t imes extr aneously , but caught itself and continued to track . I think on the whole that the scanner worked real well . McDivitt So do I . As a matter of fact , I bel ieve in the last 20 or 24 hours, however long we had the Horizon Scan Mode on , that we only real l y lost control of the spacecraft that one time, where we did the pitching maneuver I've already discussed . I think in every other instance , a lthough it pulsed needlessly two or three times at sunset if the scanner was pointed toward the sun, it never really lost lock and it certainly never l ost control . The light would come on every now and then , but it would --. McDivitt But , I don ' t thi nk that the light came on more than three or four times in t hose l as t 24 hours . C8NFtDE~~TIAl ## Page 189 181 White No. They sure didn't McDivitt And even though t he light wasn't on , it seemed like we would get an extraneous puls e every once in awhile at sunrise or sunset . But I thought that the Horizon Scan Mode worked very well. It certainly proved to me that it was an excellent attitude-hold mode, or pilot-rel ief mode . 9 .6 HF Transmission Reception Check McDivitt I think that I 'd like to start out with No. 3 in this case . We received an update to start and stop our checks and had no difficulty doing this . I think that the transmission and recep­ tion , No. 1 and No . 2 under this major heading, are covered in our data book and I 'd like to have Fd summarize them at this time. White We ran a one day and one night-long test on it in which we attempted to have all stations contact us. The data in the book . I think the data will point out that the HF is a rather unsatisfactory mode of reception. It was difficult for us to evaluate our transmission that ' l l have to be done from the data from the stations. But as far as reception was ## Page 190 182 60~~FIDE~~TIAL concerned, we got a little bit during the night and just about nothing during the day . We ran also a sunrise and sunset check and we made the long counts as indicated, and listened for any return on all our HF tests from Thule and Elmendorf . We could hear Elmendorf qalling us , but they were at one time barely readable , and most of the time you could hear somebody trying to call, but they were very broken and difficult to read . More detailed data is in the Flight Da ta Book. 9. 7 Orbit Navigation Check McDivitt Following the format in the debrief ing guide, I think that the maps and overlays that we had were excellent . I f elt that the concept was a very good concept. It gave us a good check on where we were throughout the flight as far as accurate times went. We used a t times the other track charts tha t were printed before the flight . We found that these were off some fair amount , although they furnished good information also . Once we had the time error that we could apply to times listed on t he map , we found that we were able to use t hese quite well also. I think t hat the map and t he overlays tha t we used in our ## Page 191 Orbit Navigation Checks was a very good scheme . The control mode we used was Pulse, and the timing was just the GMT timing we had in the spacecraft. I ' d like to have Ed discuss a little of the technique now. White Actually we had a form in our book that we had made up to make these tests, but I think it became apparent to both of us as we came along that this is a fairly simple thing to do . If you want to just try to update your map without having an update from the ground, it was quite simple to point the spacecraft straight down to the earth and get a point which you could recognize on the ground., and actually plot this right out on your orbit map . I think we could probably make checks in this manner and update our map almost as well as we could by having a longitude and time called up from the ground . I ' d like to make a comment right now that I thought the little map that we had with the orbit plot on it was very useful, but it was weak in one respect ; I was always wanting more detail on what I was seeing doWlll there . We,fortunately,carried a map with about two to ## Page 192 184 three times the detail of the section cut out of a Mercator Chart , which I found very useful . By prop­ erly folding a map , I think I would prefer to have a map of even higher detail with me. It didn't seem to me to be a drawback to have a large map in the cockpit, as long as you kept it gelded down in the proper manner. Do you have any comments on that? McDivitt Well , I agree with lli . I thought that this was a relatively simple task. I felt it would have been much eas ier to do if we had the platform up so we could point the spacecraft down using inertial ref­ erence and using the platform, but it wasn't diffi­ cult to do it just visually. It only took a short time to plot up a couple of points and run back and determine your own ascending node . White You kn.ow, another thing that I found very interesting was when they called up plot points and they' d give you 30 degrees right , down 45 degrees . Even without the platform, those meant a lot to me . I could visualize very easily where I was going, whether I was small- end-forward or blunt end forward. I could visualize quite well, without a platform , 30 degrees down and yaw 30 degrees over, looking for a point . It seemed I could check points nearly as well wi th COt'4FIDE~~TIAL ## Page 193 co~~FIDEl'JTIAL 185 or without the platform. It wasn't hard to orient. McDivitt I think that's probably true . I do think that this is a good scheme . I ' d like t o see us continue it on future spacecraft . White Yes. I ' d t ake it again if I had 11\Y druthers . What do you fe el about a bigger map? McDivitt I think for this kind of thing , this Crbit Navi­ gation C.1eck, the map and the over.1ay we hud were about the right size , but when we got around to looking for things on the ground , I t hought the maps and charts we had were pretty inadequate . I ' d like to see us get something with more detail on i t , just the way Ed says , and I think we will cover this in better detail when we get over to the Apollo Landmark thing. 9. 8 Relative Humidity Test McDivitt Another operational check that I 1 d like to discuss at this time is the Relative Humidity Test tha t we did during the flight . All data is in the data book, but the t hing t hat I ' d like to say most of all is that the relative humidity was consider­ ably l ess than anyone had ever expected . The cabin temperature was less than anyone had ever expected, and although we were instructed to CO~~FIDE~~TIAL ## Page 194 measure the cabin wall temperature with a thermistor tha t was on the end of our r elative humidity gage , I found that this was pretty difficult to do since they ' d covered the entire inside of the spacecraft with the sponge rubber.. We couldn 't find a good place where there was just bare metal . I took some measurements on t he inside of the left- hand side food box. I took one or t wo readings off of the metal frame that went around the window . Those are the only t wo places I was r eally able to contact spacecraft metal. Do you have anything e lse tha t you want to add to that , Ed? White No, t he data is pretty well lai d out in the data book . I don ' t think there is anything else . It did surprise me, and it was a very pleasant sur­ prise because I was interested in taking my gloves off and putting my visor up. .I sure did as soon as I found out i t wasn ' t ·going to get wet. 9, 9 Zodiacal Light Check McDivitt I ' d like to have Ed describe this . White Okay. We did this one on the fourth day at 22:42 Zebra , and i t was one on which procedures were called up, What they wanted to do was find out if the thrusters firing could cause any inter- ## Page 195 187 ference on some z odiacal l ight photography that was planned on later fl ights. The first test was to pitch straight down toward the earth, open the shutter on the Contarex camera ind actuate the pitch- up with the shutter open. Then we'd take another picture and actuall y open the shutter again and activate the pitch-down thrusters, to see if these two thrusters would cause some type of light interf erence to the photography. On the pitch-down part of the phase, we waited till the moon had set, and as we were pointed down toward the earth, we came upon an area fa±rly ~i ear of clouds. But,unfortunately,there were a few soattered lights from homes or cities down bel ow us , which might have caused some interference. I don ' t think so . They were very , very scattered . The pitch-down test was sa tisfactory. The next one was the one in which we were actually level with the horizon. Again , Jim opened the shutter, I actuated a pitch- up, and closed the shutter. He opened it again , I actuated a pitch-down thruster , - ·• . j . and he closed the shutter. It was a pretty simple test . We took four pictures. ## Page 196 188 ~◄ FIDEt'~TIAL 10.0 VISUAL SIGHTINGS 10.1 Countdown McDivitt During the countdown the visual sighting I had was a multitude of wasps sitting on the Rand R section and crawling all over the windows. Aside from that , the sky was clear and I didn ' t see anything else except the gantry going up and down . White That ' s about it . It appeared to me the wasps were somewhat confused. They felt that the RCS nozzle was a very large beehive for them. 10.2 Powered Flight McDivitt The first topic is lift-aff . At lift-off I was looking at the instruments and didn 1 t -see a thing. I think Ed 1 s got something here. White From the lifk-!£--I cou1d actually feel when we lifted off -- the vibrations decreased a great dea1 McDivitt What about visual sightings? 1 White 1 11 get to that. As we started to move, I felt I could see the relative motion. We had a clear blue sky above us; there werentt any clouds , but I could see the motion in the sky. I could also, as soon as the roll program started , EO~~FIDE~~TIAt ## Page 197 189 definitely see the rotation of the booster and spacecraft combination. As we continued on up, I was watching within the spacecraft and outside, also. I could see the pitch program initiated . I could hear Jim call it out, and I could actually see it on my instruments and also see it out the window . BECO's the next topic. McDivitt Why don't you go through that . I think I just looked out one time to see the horizon for just a second . Why don ' t you go through the rest of those there and read them off? White Okay, at BECO I was looking in also . I was waiting for the staging and I had my attention inside , and I didn ' t see the big sheet ·of •• flame that John and Gus described coming from around the separation of the first stage. So, there wasn't anything other than the. normal feel­ ing of the separation. As far as :'visual aight­ ingt- were concerned, I didn ' t see anything else at staging. As we started to nose over, I saw the horizon coming up and I called that out to Jim . McDivitt I think that might have been ~hen I looked out, I but Im not really sure I could see anything at COt-4FIDE~◄ TIAL ## Page 198 190 the time. White I had to say something. It is quite an impressive view when you 're up there --the very the first time you look out and you see it. I looked out and all I could see was the horizon and the blue down below us. You probably couldn't, because as I think of it now, we were on the side . I could see the horizon and you couldn 't. All you could see was the sky. McDivitt Right . White So I could see a little of both. I could see the clouds , the water , and the whole smear. The first time I saw that out the window I called that out to Jim, and it was quite an exciting view. White Engine No . 2 ignition-- I didn't see anything that had to do with lighting the second engine off. The horizon view, I just discussed . At SECO, there was a lot of debris going by. McDivitt That was at spacecraft sep, wasn't it , rather than SEGO? White You1',re right. You ' re absolutely right. At SEGO, I didn't see anything other than that the acceleration profile went down to zero. At COl'JrlDE~~TlAL ## Page 199 191' spacecraft separation I think Jim and I both noticed a lot of stuff coming by the spacecraft. McDivitt Right . White Just plain debris was all it was . Just pieces of whi te junk came by. McDivitt Probably little bitty pieces of the adapter there. White In fact , when I got out and looked later on at the spacecraft separation plane , there were pieces of the same kind of white stuff still back there attached jaggedly to the adapter section. Fairing jettison - - I couldn't see that . Did you see anything on the fairing jettison? McDivitt When I jettisoned the fairings , I saw the I horizon scanner fairing go whipping off, but I couldn't l ! ok at it and the nose fairing both. S~ I only saw the one go, but there were some more pieces flying all over the place , and they went just as soon as I punched the .Fairing­ Jettison Bit ton. 10,3 Orbital Flight White Boy! We've been talking about these things for t he last ten days . The f irst one is geographical. ## Page 200 EO~~FIDEl>-JT.IA L... McDivitt Yes. Geographical. We could see wakes of ships. We could see roads. We could see towns . Although I never saw any individual houses , I could see an industrial area with what looked like oil tanks and a few other things . We could see canals very well. We could see the Suez canal very well from the air. I don't think I ever saw an individual ship. I never saw any individual cars or airplanes, but you could see runways very well. But the thing that you could see best of all were long lines. I'm sure that if you had a road that was 50 f eet wide , or however wide you make roads, and it was long, you could see it . Whereas, if you had the same thing and it was just a square down there,I doubt very seriously that you could see it unless you were looking for it,specifically. White I think perhaps also there is the contrast between the colors . The things that I saw with very high clarity were runways. As you looked d~un at the runways you caught a high contrast between the green or the brown, or whatever the color that it was laid out in. You could see it very clearly. I was impressed by how clear you could ## Page 201 J 193 see things . They were small; there ' s no question that things don ' t get any bigger when you ' re looking down at them, but in my opinion things were much clearer. I could see with a higher detail than I could when I fly over in a normal airplane,as far as the object itself being clearly defined. I also noticed this at night when I looked down on it . In the clear stretches the city lights were much finer defined than the lights are in a city when you're flying over at 40 000 feet. Things are small but have a much higher definition. I think it would be interesting to find out in-mu- photographs the degree of resolution that you have . I feel that the resolution , if you have the proper contrast, would go down to 50 feet or below. McDivitt Yes . I ' d agree with you there . Geographically, there were just so many things that we could see. I think that we took pictures of most of the things that we thought would be interesting. White I ' m dying to look at those pictures. McDivitt Me , too! White I agree with Jim that if you look at a city, __ particularly if you look a t a city in a desert ~~◄ FJD.E~JTIAL--...,... ~ ## Page 202 194 area where the houses are brown and the surrounding terrain is bro~m, everything' s kind of small and it all blends together . Unless there was some type of contrast between them , it ' s pretty darned hard to pick up a city right out in the middle of the desert. We had trouble when we came to El Paso in finding it, and Cairo blended right in with McDivitt -- blended right in with everything. You could see the air}!urt at Cairo--I ' m not sure if I ever did really see the city. White I think I could . When I was looking in that area at Jaffa, as soon as I saw that airfield out there and was concentrating on looking at it , I saw more detail. McDivitt Yes. The thing of it all is that ,geographically , you have to have a real large feature to be able to see it very far out in front of you , like the Red Sea. Now when I was trying to find Cairo one 1;ime, I looked out I was having trouble finding the Red Sea. Pretty soon I found the Red Sea about 30 degrees below the horizon or maybe a lit tle more. As I got closer, of course , the Red Sea stood out very well. As we get closer iK FIDE~~TlAL ## Page 203 195 and closer and closer, these things really star t standing out, but when you ' re looking from up around 125 or 150 miles , and you 're out 60 degrees , you ' re a long way from your target . It ' s just that you can ' t see that far through all that atmosphere, I guess . White I think one more comment on the geographical is that I think we ' re r eall y going to see some things down there when we get some type of magnification. McDivitt Yes , a telescope is what you really need . White If you can get some kind of telescope to help , I think we can really see something. I wonder if there isn ' t some way that, while we know we can't carry some things inside the spacecraft , we can work with something outside the spacecraft- - camera equipment or some kind of optical equipment. that we might be able to have mounted on the out­ side . We can store it somewhere and mount it on the outside after we get up there --mount a te l escope right through , with the eyepiece on the inside . McDivitt Boy that would be great ! Wouldn't it? White And then when it comes time to come in, you just punch the thing off and forget about it . But ## Page 204 196 while you ' re up there you ' ve got this thing with the long eyepiece. I think we can do this with EVA. Stow the thing back in the adapter , go back and get it mounted up , get back in, and you ' ve got yourself just about as long a telescope as you ' d want to put up there . Same way with cameras . I think you can take cameras up . We can take some of these big cameras that we ' ve been wanting to use.. We can have a sighting device so that we can mount this thing on the outside of the spacecraft after we get up there , and then point it with a pointing device at the ground and get some of these pictures that we ' ve been wanting to take . I think we've got some possibilities there. McDivitt Okay. Celestial . I think in the nighttime you can see the stars without any difficulty. In the daytime you just can ' t see the stars if there ' s any sunlight whatsoever on the window, or if the nose of the spacecraft is in the sunlight, or if the horizon is in the sunl ight , or if some of the earth is in the window. I think all these things tend to limit your night vision. They crea te c_Q ~~FID£:hlIIAL ## Page 205 197 an optical barrier , practically, between you and the stars . The difference between the day sky up in orbit and the day sky here is, as far as we were concerned, was practically nil, because those just weren ' t any stars visible. It didn't have anything to do with the atmosphere; it just had to do with t he optics of our window and the nose being shiny. We couldn't see any more stars in orbit than we could here in the daylight, but it wasn' t because of the atmosphere up there. It was just because we had that coating on the window tha t reflected the sunlight,and because the nose reflected sunlight into the windows , and t he same thing with the horizon or the ground . When it was lit up, it reflected light into the windows. Actually , you had to get that window in total darkness almost before you were able to see anything. White Pull the shades. McDivitt Pull the shades . And then when you did that , you were able to see some stars. On a few occasions when I got the spacecraft into this particular attitude, I was able to see some stars in the ## Page 206 198 daylight. How about you, Ed? Were you able to see any stars? White Yes. I called them out a few times. You did have to maneuver just , as ca refully-- McDivitt That ' s right . You had to be just exactly in the right spot. White Let ' s go into the magnitude of the stars . We had set ourselves with the Corona Australis as a kind of calibrator for us , and this was composed primarily of fifth order stars. That was very clear, and I could see without a:ny difficulty s tars of lower ma gnitude than that. I could see , without question , stars to the seventh magnitude . McDivitt And that ' s exactly the same magnitude I would guess . You could probably see th~m down to a magnitude of seven. White Now, another thing , though , was that the sky wasn ' t any more f ull of stars to me there than it is when I ' m flying at about 40 000 feet on a real da r k night . McDivitt No, as a matter of f act , it didn't really seem to be as full of stars . co~~FIDE~ffiAL ## Page 207 199 White No . On the night when we were flying with that eclipse of the moon , I saw more stars than I ' ve ever seen in the sky. McDivitt Yes, and as a matter of fact, I wouldn ' t doubt that we could go out here and fly tonight and see seventh order stars. White I bet we could see lower than that . McDivitt That ' s right . What I ' m leading up to say is that I don ' t think we could see as many stars i n orbit as we could flying around in an airplane at 40 or 45 000 feet . White That ' s exactly my conclusion a.J:so . You could see down to the seventh order stars. McDivitt Yes , and I think the reason for this is the coating on the windows, don't you? White I think so. I felt like there was just a little shield of what I was really seeing. McDivitt If we ' d just gotten that coating off , we'd have been in great shape . White I also noticed a tremendous difference if I turned those lights off in the cockpit . It was just like turning those stars on on the outside , and I don ' t think we should take those red lights out . C¼MftDE~~TIAb ## Page 208 200 €Ot'4FIDE~~TIAL McDivitt No . I don't think so either. You know , the thing that did look brighter to me was that planet right over by the sun . When the sun set, that planet would really stand out. White I noticed another thing on the planete, I didn't notice--which one is in Leo now? McDivitt I don ' t know. White It ' s Mars. Mars is around Leo now, and it didn ' t look as orange . To me it looked roughly the same color as Venus did, and remember I remarked on that up there, which is a very interesting thing now . I presumed that the color should stay the same. McDivitt I didn't notice any difference between it up there and here on the gTOund. White It didn't have to me the characteristic orange color that it has when I look at it from down here . It looks more like a regular old-- McDivitt A regular old star , huh? White No, it looked likr the planets, and remember I remarked on that. McDivitt I think you did, now that you mention it. White And we probably went on doing somethi.n g else and forgot about it. Let ' s talk about the air glow. co~,FIDE ►~TIAY ## Page 209 201 McDivitt Why don ' t I discuss t hat thing that I saw those two times at night . White Yes , I saw it too , so you weren ' t seeing things . McDivitt This phenomenon occurred in the dark and I think it \./a.S near Austra.l.ia., each t.iine, but I 1m not really sure. We ' ve got it recorded on the voice tape,so we can go back to the voice tape and see where it was. They were just paral l el r unning lines of lights radiating from the earth up toward us but at a distance away, and i t sort of looked like a curtain. All of these lights rays seemed to be sor t of parallel t o each other. They looked a lot like the Aurora Borealis, except that they were down below us and they were coming up toward us . The first one we saw was considerably brighter than t he second one and i t was sort of wiggly. It probably had five or six curves in it, at least, and I thought it went like this a couple of times, and was bent up around like this . White How about in the air glow layer? McDivitt Was it in the air glow layer? No . I don't think it was in the air glow layer. It looked like it was down underneath -- it looked like it Cilt-lFIDEt;JIAL . ## Page 210 202 was right over land and was considerably closer to us than the horizon was . It was, maybe, half- way between us and the horizon . I got the impression that it was a lot closer to us and it was definitely not in the airglow layer. Both times I had this impression . It l ooked like it was coming up out of some clouds . I could see the clouds down on the ground, and I had the impression that this was coming out of them , but it only got to an altitude of maybe half of ours. That would be up to 50 or 60 miles . This is the impression I got . I took some pictures of it too, didn't I? White I had the feeling that the first time you took it you had the wrong setting. You had about 250· at an f11. I don 't know what you did the second time. McDivitt I don't remember, either. McDivitt This thing was in motion, too . It wasn ' t a stationary thing. It continued to move the way the lights on neon signs do. It was wiggling back and forth . White When it came around over toward my side it was .,to me, closer to the horizon, and it looked more ~FIDE~~TIAL sun shining on them . White They picked the sun up . McDivitt They picked the sun up and reflected the rays . They r eflec t ed t hem just as bright as stars, I thought . White Didn ' t they ! Well, you know the thing that was most interesting to me was the time I called you and said the sky was full of stars , and you said it wasn't , the sky. We were pointing down at the earth. That was my first exposure to having your window in t he daylight and mine in the dark . At this time we had a l l the fuel particles from the fuel from the boosters spewing out all over, and my whole view out t he win­ dow was j ust completely full of these reflecting particles . They looked kind of like one of the s t ar fi elds we had past off on us as star fields . It looked kind of like a star field, but it looked kind of unreal , too . That's exactly what it was . McDivitt One of the prettiest things was when. we had a urine dump at eunset,because we just had mil lions and millions and millions of these fireflies or part icles outside . When you put them all out like that with the sun shining on them,as we 'd mentioned earlier · with the black background, it just l ooked marvelous. As a matter of fact, we took some movies of them·,. E..-0 RFIDE~~TIAE 1 ## Page 213 205 and I think we might have taken some stills , but I'm not sure . White I hope it came out. McDivitt Yes , it was r eally spectacular ! So we could just about make our own stars when we wanted to . Is that all on celestial? White That ' s all I can think of , Jim. McDivitt I couldn't see the zodiacal lights . I couldn't see the r~genschein and I could not see the burst of zodj acal lights that you get just as the sun sets. Go ahead , Ed . White Okay. I saw one during the las t few sunrises . I watched the sun very carefully. trom the time it first started to come up till it finally popped up , I was looking all the time for that shoot of light that 's supposed to come up just before the sun pops up . Well , I could never see that . All I could see was the glow as it came up and a very rapid ris e as the sun did come up . There 's something that I did see that was quit e interes ting t o me . Several minutes before the sun came up there would be a shaft of light that would shoot up , and I watched it on two ## Page 214 206 cer~FI different occasions. It was during your last sleep. I was taking a few final movies and I was watching for this very phenomenan. It was the first time I saw it . It would be a little shaft of white illumination and it was a long time be­ fore the sun came up. I don't know whether that's what they were seeing before or not . But when the sun itself actually came up, I didn't get much of a big ball of light--just some big, bright lights coming up from behind the earth . McDivitt That's all I was getting. I didn't see this other thing. White I saw quite a few shooting stars. McDivitt Oh, yes. White They seemed to fall and burn up considerably below our altitude. They looked a half or a third as high as we were when they were actually being consumed and being burned up. I never saw one above us , did you? McDivitt No . Okay cloud coverage-- White There was a lot of it. McDivitt There was lots of it. There were a lot of times when there wasn't any. I don't guess there's much we can sal about this . co~~IDE~~TJAL _J ## Page 215 207 White I think we took some good pictures of the clouds. McDivitt Yes. Well, throughout the four days we had cloud coverage over things we wanted to take pictures of. Other times we didn't have any at all. It was a variable thing, and w.e just got a lot of good cloud pictures, I hope. Horizons. Well, at night there was a definite dark horizon, which I assume is the earth 's horizon. And then there ' s a dim band, and then above that there's a br ight band that is much narrower than the dim band, and above that it is clear, and then nothing. I guess there are really three horizons. There's the top of what I think is the earth. There's a top of the dim band, and then there ' s a top of the bright band. In the daylight you don't see these dim and bright bands. I t's just a gradual decreasing in intensity of light. It starts out with a very light blue at the horizon and just gradually goes out to the dark blue, and it finally just goes t o black. Right at sundown,if you're pointing 90 degrees to wher e the sun is, you can see t he light blue of the day sky coming ## Page 216 208 GQ ► •fiJDEN l -JA k~ down. lt' s much, much higher than the air glow that you see at night . McDivitt If you're looking over at the daylight side, it looks l i ke the light tl..:ie , goes up probably three times as high as the air glow does. What do you think about that? White Let me go into my impressions of the air glow in the evening. I saw the same thing you did, of course , and it looked like to me that the dark part was roughly t wo or three times as thick as the lighter air glow layer below it. We were both impressed with the phenomenon of the apparent rise in the air glow as you go from the daylight to the dark, and as soon as you get out in full daylight, the earth 's layer is all gone. But as you transition between the daylight and the dark, you see the layer start out and narrow down to what you see as you get into the dark side as the air glow layer . And when you initially get into the dark area, the air glow seems to disappear for a moment, and then the air glow layer pops out when you get into full dark, , very clearly. ## Page 217 209 McDi vitt I agree. Okay. Do you have anything else? White That horizon isn't very good on the daylight side, either. McDivitt No, the horizon isn't very good on the daylight side. White The horizon's not very good anywhere, really. We ' ll go more into that on D-9. McDivitt You could see the lights of the attitude thrusters, and it didn't seem to make any difference which ones you were firing at night. They weren't blinding by any stretch of the imagination. White They looked like lightening maybe. Little flashes ·. McDivitt The attitude thrusters lit up the sky a little but not a great amount. They weren't blinding either. Not much to say about that. Okay. I want you to discuss '· adapter separation that you saw . White Okay . On the adapter separation, Jim and I agreed to separate the electric and the OAMS, and then pause between the adapter separation so that we could dwell a little bit on the separation and absorb as much as we could about it. When it did separate, we got a very clean feeling of separation between the t wo and a very definite feeling that the adapter and the spacecraft had separated . There wasn ' t much question in my mind. Was there much in yours, Jim? ~ ..i-O~~FIDE~fftAt • ## Page 218 210 CQ~◄ FIDEt~TIAL McDivitt No, not at all. White There were a few pieces that came around from it, but not as much as there was at spacecraft separ­ ation after insertion . Did you see anything? McDivitt No . I didn ' t see anything off the adapter . White All right . McDivitt The equipment adapter. I just saw it off of the retro adapter. White Why don't you go to retrofire then? McDivitt Okay. White Do you have anything else on the adapter s epar ation? McDivitt No , I don't think so. White I was impressed with the cleanness in the feel , and I didn ' t even want to look around . I just happened to be looking over at Jim ' s window at that time , and , as I said, I could see pieces go around , and I could especially see pieces to this side. What I saw looked like a mount with two round things on it . I had been briefed on this thing by John Young and he said it looked like two pump packages . So, I said it looked l i ke two pump packages , too . Looked like just what I expected it to . And there was lots of debris around it as it whistled. ## Page 219 211 off to the side , and then it went out of my view. McDivitt Okay. On retrofire there weren't any sightings to observe . Did you see anything outside, F.d? Did you see any flames or anything like '. that? White No, I didn't. McDivitt I don't think there was much there. The retro pack jettison- -we didn't see it jettison, but shortly after that we had rolled upside down and we were flying in, and I saw the retro adapter floating around on the left side. It had turned around so that it was small­ end-forward rather than blunt-end-forward. You could see the whip antenna sticking out the side, the four retrorockets, cross-beams, and the plumbing around the edges . It was quite a sight. It drifted out behind us until it got out a couple or 300 feet. It started glowing a little on the leading edge. It started fading farther and farther behind us as we reentered. It finally went from a dull glow to a bright one, and finally you could see the leading edge of it eroding away. Finally, it vre.s just a ball of flame back there. White I thought that was quite a sight, too. It kind of set the modus for our reentry, of observing ## Page 220 212 very interesting things all the way down , including ourselves . McDivitt We didn't observe anything in particular that happened at 400 000 feet. The ionization· was where we really started picking up the fire. White I think we kind of timed that with what you were talking about the retro adapter up there . You said , "Hey , look at it starting to burn.: 11 , and about that time we were starting to throw a sheath around us to . McDivitt That 's right. It looked l ike to me that it went from pink to orange and then went out to a reddish-orange, and then in the mids t of the reddish-orange you could see little tongues of green occasionally. It was quite pretty. White I think another thing about it too is that there wasn't as much of it as I thought there would be . I can 't say that I was disappointed in not seeing more fire, but when I first heard about John ·Glenn's reentry, I envisioned more fire coming out . In this case you might call it just a sheath. McDivitt That's right . There wasn' t a big blaze , by a C0~51FIDE~JIAL ## Page 221 213 long shot. White It was almost like a veil of silk. There was no flame . 10 .4 Reentry McDivitt Well , in -:reentry we r olled . We didn't have any trouble in seeing the· horizon as we went around, but we were rolling all the way down . We did see ourselves crossing the ground, since wE'.l were heads-up a fair amount . We could look out and could see anything we wanted to see. I saw the Gulf Coast , and then out a cross Florida. White A little bit of dizziness was associated' with the rolling reentry as far as the visual-- McDivitt Yes . It wasn't really dizziness . It was just t he fac t that you could tell that you were going around in a circle at a relatively high rate . It didn't bother us. It's just t hat you could feel it . The spacecraft didn't oscillate very much during reentry. Anything else there , Ed? White No. McDivitt When we deployed the dr ogue, it really made the ride interesting. I couldn't see the drogue very well . Ed could see it probably better than GO"' FI DEf'~TIAb... ## Page 222 214 I could . At this time I didn't !mow where the sun was. We oscillated back and forth on the drogue probably as much as plus or minus 40 degrees. I never did see the drogue dereef. I couldn't see up to the top to see if it was reefed or not . McDivitt I don ' t think there's much else about what we could see on the drogue. Can you think of anything? White I could see it up there whipping back and forth , and I was sure hoping that it was going to hold on and not pull the front end of the spacecraft off, the way we were oscillating. McDivitt At Rand R-separate I saw parts of stuff out in front . My window was pretty well clouded over, and I couldn ' t see that well . I did see something separate , and I did see the chute start off. It wen t all t he way up. At main chute deploy I saw it come out in a reefed condition, I checked the chute and I didn ' t see any panels missing. I checked t he little circle in t he middle in the parachute , and it seemed to be in fine shape. I was expecting that we had a good chute . It ## Page 223 215 finally just dereefed and we had an excellent chute. It popped out and came back in . About a quarter of it along the edge folded back in and then popped back out again and we had a beautiful chute. Do you have anything else on the main chute? White No. I couldn't see it until it started to de­ reef. From the dereef on, I could see the chute and was very happy to see it. McDivitt During our descent to landing I could see the Rand R can with both the drogue and the ~ilot chutes attached to it. ,floating off to one side. After we landed, I noticed that there was steam coming out of the RCS thrusters. This steam didn't last very long. I could see the sea dye marker in the water. I could see the parachute in the water . White I think you also ought to indicate that the windows steamed up quite a bit. I could see out a little better than you. You couldn't even see '50 •• feet out in front of you on your side. McDivitt No, I sure couldn't. • There was a hole down ## Page 224 216 at the bottom of the window that I could see through. F.d wasn't having too much trouble seeing through his. It was real nice to see the heli­ copter and the swimmer. White Both the windows were pretty foggy, though . EO~~FIDE~~flAI!" ## Page 225 EO ►~FI DEISJ TIA L 217 11 • 0 EXPERIMENTS 11.1 Two-Color Earth--L.imb Photography (MSC-10) White This is one in which we had our first example of poor flight planning. They scheduled our MSC-10 experiment so that it actually confl i cted with some Horizon Scan Tests that we had to make. And since our Horizon Scan tests were being made in conjunction with the platform, which was only going to be up for a limited period of time , we had to interfere on the tail end of MSC-10 to go ahead and start working on the Horizon Scanner Check. Anyhow, we went ahead on the MSC-10,starting at 11 :04, and went through eight series of pictures. This was the time that we had trouble with the event indicator. McDivitt Didn't we have ten series? I t hought we had ten . White I 've only got ei ght indicated here. Oh, yes, wait a minute; it says 10 1/2 runs. I only have eight recorded here, and a final one ·being run at 11 : 57 , We should have 9 1/2 runs. McDivitt Yes. White We should have 9 1/2 runs, and only nine were ## Page 226 218 GO~~ FIDE~~ TfAL required. We should have it all . On the firs t three runs the event indicator wasn't used, be­ cause I was having trouble with the Hasselblad shutter working properly in conjunction with the event indicator . About 11 : 19, I got the event indicator working all right, and the rest of them were run pretty well. The early runs were taken pretty much in night conditions . I doubt if much will come out on that one . The .next one, at 11:09 ,was taken with the sun right on the horizon , right into the camera, so I doubt if that one will be too much more than a big washed-out mess . The rest of them were all taken with the horizon in the proper position and utilizing the ring sight. The last part of the experiment was interrupted by the Horizon Scanner Tes ts . In other words, we didn't get to the sunset . I think actually the sunset would have been one more series of pictures . McDivitt I would think so . White Okay. I guess that's all for MSC-10 . McDivitt Okay . White Do you have any comments on that? ## Page 227 cQ ~~ Fl DDtTIAt 219 McDivitt No, I don't have any comments. I think we logged the time and the weather along the route, such as it was, and we got all that into the book. 11. 2 ~ ! i c Terrain and Weather Photography (S-5 and S-6) McDivitt I think we had a lot of unusual and significant subject matter, and it's all in the pictures. We had one camera that wouldn't wind the film too easily, but other equipment operated fine. We didn't get the data reviewed properly--too late. White And we used the voice recorder as often as we could record. I don't believe we have all of this S-5 and S-6 photography recorded. I think ss we go over them, tho"Ugh; .the ones we didn't record will be pretty obvious . McDivitt Yee, I think that those two experiments are really in the photographs. The Hasselblad camera operated fine except we had one magazine that didn't wind up too well, but it never did jam up completely. I guess that sort of covers it. Wouldn't you say, Ed? White I would too. All the data that we got for it is recorded in our data book. Let's see Simple Navigation with the Sextant. Ha.! D-9. 11.3 Simple Navigation with the Sextant McDivitt I ~ we might as well cover it. .-,~~fJOa~TIAb ## Page 228 220 White Well , in the Air Force portion of it , we can start right off by saying that the stars they wanted Ui to run the operation on--I think , Series No . 4-- McDivitt No , that was the last one . They gave us Series 1 to start wi.th. White --which was the daylight . The daylight operations didn't prove feasible at all . We couldn ' t see the stars and if we could have , we didn ' t have a good horizon to r un them on . So it became apparent to us that that run was los t right in the beginning,when we first came out of the darkness and lost a ll the s t ars . We also got t he big picture t hat t he sext ant was not going to be too easy to use . It was going to be impossible to use without using some fuel , and it was going to be dam hard to use when we used just pulses of fuel . We needed some kind of stabiliza­ tion . At least I thought so . McDivitt We might say that the lightbulb in the cormter readout for the angle was burned out . White That burned out within t wo seconds a fter we got up there , I think . ## Page 229 COt'4FfDEt~TIAL { 221 McDivitt Did it ever light? White First time I turned it on it lit and it went "flit" , and then the light just went bzzz-bzzz. McDivitt I didn't know it ever lit. White It lit and then the light went out. McDivitt Okay. So we lost the lightbulb in the angle readout, which made all the rest of the measure­ ments very difficult. And the Air Force portion in daylight was completely unusable. You couldn't see the stars and the horizon at any time. In the night portion,we initially had great large angles between the stars and the horizon, and we found that about 25 degrees was the maximum star-horizon angle that we could handle. Would you concur with that, lli.? White Sure do. McDivitt As we mentioned when we were talking about the horizon and the air glow. We really had three horizons. We had the true earth horizon. We had the top of the dim air glow layer, and we had the top of the bright air glow layer. I think that I always used the top of the bright air glow layer, except where I specifically called out in our ## Page 230 222 notes. Ed tended to use different types of horizons, dependent upon the type of filter he had on. Why don't you discuss that a little bit~ White I tended to feel that the bottom of the bright air glow layer gave me a little finer defined horizon for a no-filter operation . When I put the blue filter on, though, I didn ' t have much horizon at all. When I put the green filter on, it gave me, as far as the top of the air glow is concerned, a better horizon to measure to. I thought that the horizon was certainly not a very defined point to measure to, and I think accuracy would be lost in trying to measure to a horizon like this . It 's just pl ain hard to take a fuzzy old horizon and try to make an accurate measure to it . That 's exactly the kind of horizon that you've got at night . McDivitt I concur. There must have been at least a couple of minutes of fuzziness in that horizon , and I don't think that you would ever expect to measure to the horizon within a couple of minutes. Do you? White No. You'd have to calibrate yourself down pretty COt~FIDE~~TIAL ## Page 231 GOt'4 FI t, Et'4TI 223 close to measure. You know it would be just pure luck if you kept measuring properly to it. McDivitt Yes, the thing of it all is that even if Ed got himself calibrated so that he would always measure the same angle between the star and the horizor--it wouldn't be consistent between One person and another. I'm not really sure how you would ever go about measuring to this horizon with any accuracy at all unless you had some way that you could-instead of attenuating the light­ build it up in some way and then filter out one particular line that happened to be an extremely sharp line . The horizon I like to measure to best was the top of t he dense air glow layer with no filter. The next horizon I liked was the top of the dense air glow layer with the green filter. I liked least of all the blue filter , because it just completely eliminated the horizon . White Yes, I don ' t think the difference between. the clear and the green was enough to argue over a preference between . I thought maybe I had a clearer one in the green, but I tended to take far more measurements with the clear one, so • Cetctf lDE~~TIAL -.s..~ ## Page 232 224 perhaps they are so closely matched that it really didn't make too much,.- difference . McDivitt Yes, I did most of mine with the clear one. White For the runs in the Air Force portion , I found out that the stars had too big of an angle between the star and the horizon. To actually follow the format, for the runs as given , turned out to be too difficult . We did make runs on stars and horizons if we took the time on it and took the measurements . It seemed like the angle was fairly well limited between 20 and 25 degrees. This was due to the limited maneuver capability impos ed upon us and the lack of having enough window space . If you get behind the sextant, behind the window, and try to make a measurement, you might be able to theoretically measure something out to 50 to 60 degrees . Theoretically , this may be possible, but you must can ' t get yourself up above the console circuit breaker panel or down into the foot well area, which would be required to make measure­ ments of this magnitude. There were definite ## Page 233 Cet-«:IDE~~TIAL~ 225 limitations on hitting the side of the spacecraft and trying to make a sighting and losing the object out of the upper window as you cranked the periscope down to bring the star down to the horizon. McDivitt In trying to accomplish the Air Force portion of the experiment, we found ourselves completely unable to do the daylight star-horizon measurement. So, to get some insight into the operational use of the sextant, we took a great number of star to horizon measurements at night. They are in the book in quite a bit of detail. As we mentioned earlier, the helmet was an impediment to use with the sextant, so on occasion we had to take the helmet off. The greatest angle that we ca~ld normally get was about 25 degrees between the horizon and the stars, but on occasion we got up to 30 degrees. This meant a certain alinement of the spacecraft was necessary so that you could get the largest piece of glass between the star and the horizon and still get the ## Page 234 226 sextant in there . We found out that to do the star to horizon measurement, you had to be right - side-up. If you tried to do it upside down , the filter blanked out the star and not the horizon . I think that there are a great number of measurements in here, but I do feel that the Air Force portion of the D- 9 Experiment was more qualitative than quantita tive . Maybe I ought to talk about the Apollo portion. We made one Apollo run where we used two stars . I held the spacecraft fixed to within about plus or minus 2 degrees, and Eld took a great number of measurements . Ed made a great number of measurements between two stars . And we got our 30 runs on one pair of star s that were quite close together . Then we started out with about another 20 sight­ ings on another pair of stars that were further apa rt . White They. were all in Scorpi . I think they were about 12 degrees on the first one and about 22 degrees on the second one . There were Antares and S0 orpi i n the second s er ies , and it was ## Page 235 227 Scorpi and the third star up in Scorpio in the fi first series. McDivitt Again , we found that the angle that we had selected to operate between was too large, and we ran our first group of stars in about 12 1/2 degrees, and for the second pair we tried to pick stars that were farther apart so t hat we could get a better feel for l arger angles. This pair of stars was a little over 21 degrees apart. We were too optimistic about the angle between stars that we could see by looking through the spacecraft window. What do you think about the voice r ecorder usage during this experiment, F.d.? White I don't know why we had to do i t . McDivitt No, we actually hand-recorde most of t he infor­ mation here . The one t hing that certainly delayed the experiment was the loss of the lightbulb within the readout. We changed the batteries and bulbs from the cross-hairs and never could get ## Page 236 228 i 0t~FIDE~~TIAL :J this particular light to come b~ck on. White Did you ev8r flgure out why we needed to hand­ r ecord all these things-why we had to record them on the recorder--the times and all that jazz? McDivitt No, we h~d to r ecord the angles some place and we h.ad to correlate it to a time . White Well, it says to prepare sextant and photo-event indicator for meas,.1rem<'!•1ts . What do t hey mean by photo- event indicator? McDivitt The photo-event indicator was to get the exact time . Remember , when you were doing star to horizon measur~me~ts you had to have-- White No , but this is just for the star. I don't understand the photo-cvant indicator. I think that just clobbers up our data. McDivitt That ' s right. Yes, that Wlisn't applicable at all. It didn't make any difference wha~ time it was at all . White In fact, when I made a second run on this while you were asleep one time, I didn't put the photo­ event indicator on. McDivitt No , there wasn't any need to put the pho~o-event indicatoc- on this. ## Page 237 229 11 , 4 Electr ostatie Char ge (MSC-1) McDivitt I think what we could say here is that we turned MSC-1 on and off when it said in the flight plan and when directed by the people on the ground. 11 , 5 Proton- Electron Spectrometer and Tri- Axis Flus-Gate Magnetometer (MSC- 2 and MSC-3 ) McDivitt We turned off MSC-2 and -3 according to real ­ time flight planning from the ground and when­ ever the fligh t plan in t he air called for it. White We had one time when I ran a double small-end­ forward set of runs through the Anomaly. The f i rst time , I fel t that the heading had not been accurate enough for the small-end-forward requirement. We were doing it without the platform on the stars , and the first time through I wasn ' t satisfied with it . S~ I called down to the ground and told them that I wasn ' t satisfied with the run and that I ' d make a repeat run the next time. This I did , and I left the equipment on throughout both runs and for an hour after that. So, we effectively have two small-end rtms through the South Atlanti c Anomaly. ## Page 238 230 COt~FIDE~~TIAL McDivitt Okay. We didn ' t have any operational problems with it . Did we use the voice recorder with it? White Yes , I guess we did . It should all be recorded on the voice recorder. If not , we've got backup times in the book. Our voice recorder was our prime means , and our book was just a backup. McDivitt Right . 11 , 6 Radiation (D-8) McDivitt I think one time you were sleeping, and you didn ' t get it that pass, but you got it the second pass , didn't you? White Well , we got them logged when we did it . They can go back and get it . McDivitt Right . Ther e were no operational problems. We did use-the voice recorder to record the infor­ mation. 11.7 Inflight Exerciser (M-3 ) McDivitt We didn't have any stowage problems with it bes ides those is associated with all the other equipment. 'rhe outside thin rubber layer broke on the exerciser about the end of the f irst day. White Yes . I've got a comment or two. · McDivitt Go ahead , Ed , CO I>~ FI DE~~TIAb ## Page 239 231 White I had the feeling that my capacity and my desire to do strenuous physical exercise decreased during the flight. Actually,it kind of decreased to a point and stayed at that point for the whole flight. Shortly after I got up there , I really didn't have any big desire to do a great deal of physical exercise. I did do the exercises as indicated, and I did about eight extra series of exercises with the exerciser, but I noticed a definite lack of interest in doing heavy physical exercise. McDivitt I concur with what Ed said, although I'm not really sure this came about because of the small amount of sleep that we bad or just .:w -a.n effect of the zero- g thing. I did use the M-3 exerciser to do other exercises. I used it to exercise my arms , not oql.y in the manner that was de.mon@trated but by holding on to one end and pul ling the other end with the other band. I used it to exercise my legs also. White I did a few other exercises , just with the exerciser. I yanked around a little bit on it, as Jim indicated. But , I also did some exercises in which I pressed pretty bard up against the G€>-MFIDE~~TIAL 1 ~ ## Page 240 232 COt'iiflDE~~flAL front end of the spacecraft; I tried to tense my legs and tense my stomach and arms , and I tried to exercise in this condition . I probably did that a lot more than I did anything with the exerciser. 11 . 8 Inflight Phonocardiogram (M-4) McDivitt To the best of my knowledge we didn't have any equipment problems. About the end of the second day my sensors started itching a little. I don't know if it was my phonoca rdiogram or my other sensors . 11 . 9 Extravehicular Activity McDivitt Extravehicular activities have been covered in great detail earlier in the debriefing, I don't think we have to go over that again. 11, 1 OMiscellaneous McDivitt In the external observations I did observe three satellites , but I think that these were covered in detail earlier, and I don't believe we need to go over that again here. White I think that we'll comment again (we've commented on this point before) that the tape recorder is the most important piece of equipment that we have onboard the spacecraft to record our ob- COf',FIDeNTIAL ## Page 241 233 servations , times , and other information concern­ ing the experiments . I think the one we have onboard wi th the light located down underneath the pilot's right elbow is entirely unsatisfactory. I feel t hat we lost some information on our flight due to the light 9oming on and not being observed. We were going ahead with information for the tape, but were losing it in this manner. I think we ought to correct this deficiency prior to the next flight. McDivitt I concur heartily. ## Page 242 234 CO f'J F. IDE f'J +IA L 12.0 PRE-MISSION PLANNING 12 . 1 filssion Plan (Trajectory) McDivitt It is pretty difficult to debrief this pre-:-mission planning because we had so many pre-mission plans that we couldn't keep track of them all. I think that we started too late on the mission planning for GT-4 , because everyone was concent:r:ating on GT-3 . Then in the two and a half months that we had to do the mission plans , we changed it about three or four times , drastically. We nqt only changed the trajectory, but we changed the altitudes of insertion; a t one time we were shooting for a 87- 145 orbit and then a 87-161, and then we changed it from 90 degree launch azimuth to a 72 deg:cee launch azimuth. We changed how we were going to handle the decay of the orbit . All in all, I think our mission plan changed just too often . 12.2 Flight Plan McDivitt Same with the flight plan. We kept changing it around and changing it around and changing it around. It was r eal ly unfortunate . Up until about ten days before the flight we were really prepared for about two different flights, and finally we got COt>~FFDEt-~TIAl ## Page 243 235 the flight plan nailed down. I think our r.light, though, was somewhat different than other flights in that we did have some real major changes about two and a half months prior to the flight . Con­ sequently, we had to expect these things . So,I think I'd be the first to admit that I lived with these changes, because I had a great desire to do the mission that we set out to do. White We both kind of got to the point where we knew that we had a mission to do, and we knew it was going to be tough as far ae getting a good flight plan was concerned , a.nd we were just trying to get the the best we could and go. McDivitt That's right. I think that the situation that we finally ended up in was that we tried to have a very good launch and first couple of orbits and a good last orbit or two. All the stuff in the middle, we knew we were going to have to handle re&l-ti.me. I finally found myself forced into the situation where I couldn't even worry about the middle fl~ght plan. We had to lay it out in general and expect a great number of changes. This is exactly what we did. We handled it in real-time. I'm not suggesting that we do tnis ~for future flights, £or €0f'~FIDE~~TIAL ## Page 244 I really hate to see us go right on down until the last minute before •·we get this information prepared . I think it ' s too bad , but I think on our flight a l ot of this just couldn ' t be helped because of the drastic changes in the flight plan in the last two and a half months. White I don't fee l we ' ve got a big beef coming to any­ body. I lmow a lot of people were working pretty ha.rd . McDivitt That ' s right. There were a few things on our checklist that could have been done earlier , but I think the total miss ion plan ,as such ,was modi fied at a late date to change the objectives by a great amount . We in the crew agreed with the change . It almost doubled the amount of work that we had to do in those last couple of months, but I think that by accepting it and trying to make the thing work , we were abl e to overcome the pr oblem , and it -wa~ indeed a major problem. A situation that I hoped wouldn ' t occur and did occur on our flight concerned the checklist, the data books , the pro­ cedure books, the map for the orbit navigation and our charts and graphs . We didn't receive the check­ list and the pr ocedure and data books for our flight i::ut IFl □-ti -- ## Page 288 280 fr llliE. have a good launch and first few orbits, a good retro-preparation , and a good retro and r eentry , with the center of the mission being taken care of by doing the experiment or doing the operationa l check by itself without regard to what went before or what went after. I think this is the kind of training you really need on these long duration flights. Anything else there , Ed? White No. I concur heartily. I think that practicing it piecemeal is the only way you can do it . McDivitt You have any concluding comments? White I think we've been ma.king conclusions all day long. I t hink to try to conclude them all , we'd never get them . ## Page 289 _No embedded text extracted._ ## Page 290 f --- 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.