This document is a preliminary transcript (Part I) derived from voice recordings of the Gemini 4 flight crew debriefing taken aboard the recovery ship,…
Full Document Text
Text extracted directly from the source PDF. Text extraction via abigailhaddad/ufo-releases; original file at war.gov.
Read the full text (200,000 characters)
--- PAGE 1 ---
DECLASSIFIED
Authority:
NW 91526
82
CLASSIF!CAT:ON CHANGE
o_ _ __
I By authority of--~4,...L.11.1-...___.~~L--L-....t.-e=---1
hanged by U~1:i:.~1 LDate 1973
38
42,
/0 0
/ /4-
PRELIMINARY
GT- 4 FLIGHT CREW DEBRIEFING TRANSCRIPI'
PART I
Prepared By
Spacecraft Operat ions Branch
Flight Crew Support Division
June 16 , 1965
This material contains information affecting the
national defense of the United States within the
meaning of the Espionage Laws , Title 18 . U. S . C
Section 793 and 794 , the transmission or revel a
tion of which in any manner to an unaut horized
person is prohi bi ted by law .
f Group 4: Downgr ade at 3 year intervals
I Declassified after 12 years
NOTICE: This document may be exempt from
public disclosure under the Freedom of lnfor•
rnation Act (5 U.S.C. 552). Requests for Its ra•
lec1~e to persons outside the U. S. Government
should be handled under the provisions of
NASA Polley Cir-ecti11e 1382.2,
--- PAGE 2 ---
--- PAGE 3 ---
COI\JFIDENTIAt
PREFACE
This preliminary transcript was made from voice tape recordings
of the GT-4 flight crew debriefing conducted aboard the recovery ship,
the USS Wasp , on June 9, 1965 .
Although all the material contained in this transcript has been
edited, the urgent need for the preliminary transcript by mission
analysis personnel precluded a thorough editorial review prior to its
publication. Errors in this transcript will be corrected as soon as
possible and an official transcript will be published at a later date.
This document contains a transcript of the first part of the
debriefing, during which the crew described the mission generally
from an operational viewpoint . A preliminary transcript of the re
mainder of the debriefing will be published by June 23, 1965. It
will cover systems operations, operational checks, visual sightings,
experiments , pre-mission planning, mission control, and training.
--- PAGE 4 ---
--- PAGE 5 ---
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Paragraph Page Number
1. 0 COUNTDOWN
1 . 1 Crew Insertion . ... ................... . . . .. . 1
1. 2 Cornmlll1ications . . . . . ............... .. ... . .. .. 2
1. 3 Crew Participation and Countdown .... .............. -..6
1.4 Comfor t . ....................... . .7
1. 5 Environmental Control System .................... ' ..... . ,9
1. 6 Sounds ...... . .... 11
1 . 7 Vibrations .. . . ... 13
1. 8 Visual .. . ....... .. . . ... 13
1.9 Crew Station Controls and Displays .1 5
2. 0 POWERED FLIGHT
2. 1 Lift- Off Cues ....................... 17
2. 2 Roll Program
2. 3 Pitch Program ... . ..... 19
2. 4 Aerodynamics .... . 20 • • M • •
2. 5 Environmental Control System . .... "" ............... 20
2. 6 Maximum g ....... . ....... 21
2. 7 Windshear ...... . . . ...... 21
2. 8 DCS Update ........................ • • • • • • • M. • 22
2. 9 Engine 1 Operation ..... . 22
2. 10 Engine 2 Status .. . .23
2.11 Accel eration g's .. . . ........ 2 3
2. 12 BECO ........ . ...... . . ........ 24
2. 13 Staging . . . ...... . .. .................... 25
2. 14 Engine 2 Ignition . .. 25
2. 15 RGS Initiate .... . ... 26
2. 16 GO/NO GO . ............. . ... .... ...... .... . .. 28
2.17 Systems Status ........ . ' .... . ..... 28
2 . 18 Acceleration ................... . . .. .. 31
2.19 SECO. ....... . ...................... . .... 31
2. 20 Steering ....................................... . . . .... 32
3.0 INSERTION
3.1 Post- S.EDO •... 34
3.2 SECO + 20 Seconds ................ .. 35
3.3 Insertion Activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
ORBITAL FLIGHT
4. 1 Sta ti on- Keeping ....... .... .. ......... . .......... ... 50
4.2 Extravehicular Activities ............ . . ......... - .. 87
--- PAGE 6 ---
--- PAGE 7 ---
Ot her Orbital Opera tions ..... ~86
Preretro Preparations ... ......... ..... 250
5 .0 REI'ROFIRE
5.1 T - 36 Events ... . . . ............ 259
5. 2 ~ - 22 Events .. . . ... 260
5. 3 :5:i- 13 Events ... 260
5.4 :5:i- 12 Event s ... . .. 26 1
5. 5 !R- 5 Events .. . ........ . . ... 265
5. 6 ~R: 1 ~eennttss • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • .... 270
5. 7 iir.: 0 .c, v •••••••••••••••••••• .... 273
5 . 8 Ret r opack Jettison ........... . . ... 280
5. 9 Communicat i ons ... . ........... . .••• 281
6. 0 REENTRY
6. 1 Reentr y Parameter Update .•••• 282
6. 2 400 K .................. . . .... 282
6. 3 0. 4 g ................ . . . .. 284
6.4 Accelera tion Profile ..... 290
6. 5 Spacec raft Contr ol ........ . .... 296
6. 6 100 000 Feet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ....... . ...... 296
6. 7 50 000 Feet ............. . .. •.. 299
6. 8 Main Chute Deployment . . . ...... 302
6. 9 CommUJ1ications . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . .... 303
6.1 0 Singl e- Point Rel ease .... . ........... . .... 305
6. 11 Pos t main Checkli st Items ......... ·• ....... 306
1.0 LANDI NG AND REDOVERY
7.1 Impact ...... . ... 310
7. 2 Checklists .. 313
7. 3 Communi ca tions ... ... 314
7.4 Systems Configuration ..................... 316
7. 5 Spacecraft Sta tus ...... . .... . . ............ 320
7.6 Post- Landing Activiti es ..... . . ............... 325
7. 7 C·omfort ............... . . .. . .. .... ... 325
7. 8 Recovery For ce Personnel .. 326
7.9 Egress ......... . .. . . . 327
7. 10 Survival Gea r ..... . ...• 328
7. 11 Crew Pi ckup ......... . . ....... 328
--- PAGE 8 ---
--- PAGE 9 ---
CO ►~FIDE►~TIAb.
1.0 COUNTDOWN
1.1 Crew Insertion
White The only problem during insertion was that I
fogged up again in my suit before we got the fans
on. I think I'm just going to always fog up in
that suit of mine. We turned the fans on quick,
but with the visors closed it doesn't go out.
McDivitt We did have a problem with crew insertion on the
Wet Mock and I think we had that probably pretty
well taken care of. They put us on the suit
loops and didn't turn the fans on. Normally you
wait for a clearance from the 1:t>acecraft Test
Conductor before you throw any switches. Well,
after we almost "died" of carbon dioxide poison
ing during this +,est~ we got this matter
clarified. As soon as we got in the spacecraft
and one of us was on the suit loop, we would go
ahead and cut the switches on to put us on two
fans. We did this during insertion in the Wet
Mock. It really went well.
White We really went for a long time in Wet Mock. I
was beginning to wonder if I was going to have to
open my visor. I was really uncomfortable.
COt74 FIDEt~TIAsb-
--- PAGE 10 ---
2
McDivitt But everything worked out okay on this one .
White Yes.
McDivitt The timing was excellent , I thought . I didn't
think we had any prob l em at all .
White No. I don ' t believe they missed a stroke on the
insertion.
1 . 2 Communications
White I think the communications were pretty well
worked out, Jim?
McDivitt Right . One thing, the last three minutes or four
minutes, we got a little confused about who was
talking to who . I was getting the Spacecraft
Test CJnductor , the Booster Test CJnductor and
the CAP COM at the same time .
White We got a split count , too, on lif't--off.
McDivitt The f irst three or four minutes I was hearing the
B)os ter Tast C?nductor . I heard what was going
on on his loop , and I was listening to him get
checks in f r om all of the guys . I really wasn ' t
getting a clue a s to what was going on . I was
supposed to be getting the booster clues from the
test conductor . I was supposed to find out when
the engines were going to gimbal and when they
-€9·NFl9E~TIA;t
--- PAGE 11 ---
COl>J~IDENIIA~ 3
were going to open the prevalves and stuff. I
wasn't getting it from him . We were getting a
lot of other information that made a lot of sense
to the Booster Test C :>nductor, but not an awful
lot to us . There were cal l - outs l ikeVSequence
05003 complete." Well, thi s just didn' t mean any
thing to us . On top of this we had the Spacecraft
~es t Conductor calling out the times , and super
imposed on all of this was Al Shephard , the Cape
CAP COM , calling out events that he was reading
off that went on at certain specified times . He
called out','Stage 1 prevalves Vand we could hear the
fue l gushing downstairs and the whole booster
rumbling. He called out ','Stage 2 prevalves','and
you could hear the same thing all over again. I
thought t hat was a lot more meaningful than the
test conductor comments.
White I think that was wrong, the way they were doing it .
I think we weren't supposed to be on any loop
except CAP COM at that time .
McDivitt Well, I think what happened was that we got this
thing over-coordinated. Al was going to give us
all this information, but then as a result of
GT-3, (Gus and Jolm said they didn ' t get enough
-t:ON FI0 Er\JTl~L
--- PAGE 12 ---
4 r<3 e I<i Flt Et>I TI Rt
information about the boosters) they put this in
formation on the test conductor ' s loop too . We
ha.d too many guys talking . I think if just CAP
COM talked from thr ee minutes on down we would
be all right .
White This is the way I thought it was going to happen,
and then from three minutes on down it really got
busy with the yak , yak, yak of everybody talking .
McDivitt I don't lmow whether we got off the Booster ~st
C)nductor's loop or not, but at final countdown ,
Al gave me 2 minutes , 1 1/2, 1, 30 , 20 , 10 , 9 ,
8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 , 1 . I got a similar count
from the Spacecraft Test C~nductor but it turned
01 ·. t that they were a second out of sequence on
the countdown and Al was giving me 10 and our
Spacecraft Test Conductor was giving me 9. So it
went ten- nine , nine - eight, eight - seven . They
were at the same t ime . All I knew was that we
were getting close to engine ignition and then it
started . So , we got a little over-communicated
there . I think t hey kept us adequately informed
on the hold . As a matter of fact , I ' d say we got
over- informed there at the end . We had too many
guys keeping us informed and I t hink the pendulum
<Ol<:JFIDel'4TIAl
--- PAGE 13 ---
5
swung from the GT-3 flight where nobody got in
formed of anything over to our flight where we
got i nformed by three different people about the
same event .
White On our flight, too, we were really more
aware of t he problem than those people were. We
could sit right here and see the gantry come
down and stop, that was r eally the only problem
they had in the whole count .
McDivitt I don't think radio discipline is a problem, Each
guy was disciplined on his own channel . They were
conducting their tests on their own channel . But
we were lis tening to three different communica
tors at the same time. We should have had only
one . I think probably what we will need to do is
to get to about T-3, and then just cut in the
CAP COM.
White That was the way it wa.s planned to be, I thought .
That's the way Al planned it.
McDivitt That's correct. I think, because there had been
some lack of information on GT-3, that it some
how had been written into the SEDR so that we
were also on the Booster Test Conductor 's MOPS,
so that we were also getting his countdown. I
COrq--pf0f:Nfl1tt
--- PAGE 14 ---
6
think CAP COM, 'alone, would have been sufficient .
One further comment , I had to turn my ·11HF volume
all the way up to hear anybody . I was at max .
There we were sitting right on the pad , talking
to a gu:y two miles away, and there I was with the
volume full up . It didn ' t give me much confi
dence as to reception I was going to get when I
was 200 miles away , or three or four or five
hundred miles away . I thought that the volume
control on the radio was inadequate.
White We were wondering what we were going to have when
we got up a hundred miles .
McDi vitt That's right. At max volume we didn't have enough
and at minimum volume it didn't shut it off. We
will cover this later.
1.3 Crew Participation and Countdown
McDivitt I think it was just about right . I don' t think
we were over worked and I think we had enough to
do to keep us busy.
White Actually, all we really made was a check of
switches . There wasn ' t really too much else .
Having the back-up crew run that midcount was the
the right solution. I wouldn't have wanted to
participate in anymore of t he countdown than I
-COt<JFtDEt'4flJ<l
--- PAGE 15 ---
€O ► 4FIDE ► ~TI/>,~ 7
did.
McDivitt That's an excellent point. The flight crew's
participation should be the final count, not the
midcount and precount. It doesn't tire the prime
crew out doing a lot of chores that they don't
really have to do. I think this is a good pro
cedure.
1.4 Comfor t
White Initially, the first 20 or 30 minutes, I was
squirming around and I felt a little uncomfor
table. But after I had been in for 30 or 40
minutes I didn't feel there was a real restric
tion on staying for several more hours. I would
have been very disappointed if they had said,
"Well you have been in there long enough and we
will work on this gantry and try it again tomor
row." I would have been happy to stay there
several more hours while they fixed the gantry
instead of pulling me out.
After an hour and 40 minutes,which is the end of
the normal countdown,I didn't feel uncomfortable.
We sat in the simulator and were a lot more un
comfortable than this. I didn't feel uncomfor
table. I had a chance to take a couple of little
CO ► 4FIDE~~TIA~
--- PAGE 16 ---
8
COl'IFIDE~4TIAt
naps . I noticed Jim was napping too .
McDivitt Yes . I concur with F.d, although I don't want
to get carried overboard. We shouldn't scrub
due to crew fatigue .
White I think it is up to the crew. If the crew is un
comfortable they should come down. But I don't
think he should say, "Okay, two hours and 30
minutes . You cut this off. ", because it is an
operational procedure.
McDivitt When I first got assigned to the crew I always
fe l t one of the toughest things to do would be
laying back for an hour and 40 minutes or so
prior to launch . The time we spent in the simu
lator laying on our back, I thought to be a very
uncomfortable position. As we went through all
the training and testing at McDonald , and again
at the Cape , ;ny back got more callouses on it.
I got used to laying with my feet over my head .
At launch time I wasn't a bit tired from laying
on my back .
White This is brought out in one of our last simulations ,
where we ran the whole four hour simulation and
we forgot to have them tilt us up to 30 degrees.
We just got used to running that way,
COl"I P"te E~~Tl,\l
--- PAGE 17 ---
€Otr4FIDEttftAl 9
McDivi tt That ' s right, I just don't think we should
scrub the flight because of fatigue.I don ' t think we
should do that. We weren ' t approaching this point.
White We had a long way to go.
1 . 5 Environmental Control System
McDivitt I think we ought to get this water management
panel squared away and everybody figure out what
we are supposed to do with those switches. I
don ' t think we should be arguing about where the
switches are supposed to be on the launch pad. If
I hadn't asked somebody where the waste manage
ment switches should be we would have probably
launched with it in · EVAPORATOR. I knew that
i t wasn't supposed to be in the evaporator . At
one of the ten thousand briefings we got on it, we
were told it shouldn't be there . We ought to get·
this kind of stuff squared away before launch day.
Thirty minutes before lift-off we were arguing
about where that switch was supposed to be.
White I wasn't confident that they knew where they
wanted that switch to be.
McDivitt Well, I didn ' t think we should have it in the eva
porator. So, I think that water panel could have
cost as much as a wee~s slip on our launch because
coNFIDENTIAt-
--- PAGE 18 ---
10
€01'1FIE>Et<ITtAt
they didn't know where to put those valves and
it's only got three valves on it . It ought to be
made much simpli er than it is . I think they
should get that squared away before the next
flight. F,d and I knew where we wanted it. We
wanted it off and the other two switches in
NORMAL and leave it alone . That's what we flew
with . That's the way it ough t to be fixed .
White We can get canned , though, for not flying with it
in the right position by the checklist . It
didn't say that on the checklist Every check
list we got was different .
McDivitt That ' s right! Fach one was different . Fi nally
we decided we were going to do it as w.e did and
left it thr ough out the whol e flight . Evel;'y
thing worked fine . We had ECS briefings by a
mul titude of peoples from MAC including the
guys who designed it. Everyone of them dis
agreed , It probably started out to be one of the
simplest things in the whole spacecraft . By the
time they got t hrough confus ing us with it, I
got the feeling nobody knew what was s_i,,.pposed to
happen to it . I consider this the most danger
ous of all.
'€ 0 l<I F' IE> Et-q ftAt
--- PAGE 19 ---
11
White I was convinced of that, too, after the mix-up
in putting all the water in the lithium hydroxide
tan.ks.
McDivitt There would have been about a 30 minute four-day
mission.
McDivitt The people that built the thing don't know how
it is supposed to go . They had better decide
this and let us know. I felt that George Roe at
the Cape knew what was going on except the Cape
personnel got the valves in the wrong position and
almost lost the lithium hydroxide canister full
of water with no water in the tanks. I ' m not
pointing a finger at George Roe • I think he' ·s
pret.ty knowledgeable about the system.. Maybe
somebody just wasn't following directions. But
somebody ought to find out about the water
management system and make it clear to everybody
how it is supposed to be operated.
1.6 Sounds
McDivitt You can hear the prevalve~ both first and second
s tages. The prevalves and the fluid gushing are
very loud noises comparable to the engine gim--
baling. I wasn't really aware that they were ~
going to be that loud.
C-0t~FIDf~qflAb
--- PAGE 20 ---
12 'COI\IFIDE~◄ llAl
White I got that feeling when I read Gus and John ' s
debriefing .
McDivitt Did you? I didn't . I got the impression that it
was going to be a much quieter noise .
White Well, the whole noise level of the engine girnbal
ing was louder than I thought it was going to
be. It surprised me .
McDivitt Yes . Engine gimbaling was much louder than I
heard before . We heard this during Wet Mock and
during precount and at midcount. You can hear
those engines gimbal around; they really shake t he
spacecraft . But, I really wasn't prepared for
the big noise that the prevalves make, and such
a long noise as that fuel gushed down to the
bottom. I guess that was what it was.
I didn't like t he sounds and vibrations we got
when they raised and lowered the gantry.
White It shook the whole spacecraft .
McDivitt It shook the whole spacecraft--did you notice how
it never came up straight? The spacecraft was
supposed to line up kind of like this and then
wham! I had visions of them knocking us off and
laying us flat on the ground before we were
launched ,
co~,Fl0Et'4TIAI:
--- PAGE 21 ---
cor:,-~FIDEl'~TIA I 13
1 , 7 Vibrations
White Those are closely associated with the sounds.
McDivitt Yes . I think that the engine gimbaling makes a
tremendous vibration in the spacecraft and pre
valves on opening and make a tremendous vibration.
The gantry going back and forth vibrated the
spacecraft. I don ' t think there is anything else ,
do you?
White No.
1,8 Visual
White Well, you can sure see the gantry lower and the
whi te room disappear. That is about all you can
see besides the sky.
McDivitt That's pretty impressive. That's when I sort of
got excited,when the gantry went down. That ' s a
new realm.
White I thought they were going to launch me.
McDivitt You're sitting there by yourself then, instead
of all those people milling around.
I do want to make one other comment on this visual
thing . We did Wet Mock about one or two o'clock
in the afternoon. The sun was shining right in
the window, almost straight down, such that the
sun came across my visor from about just at the
GOt~FIDEMTIM
--- PAGE 22 ---
14 t:Ol-<IFIDEt'4T IAt
bridge of my nose on down . I had a tremendous
amount of reflection inside the helmet, and I had
a great amount of difficulty seeing the instru-
ment panel . As a matter of fact, I'm not sure I
could have seen the instrument panel at all .
~ose first few seconds there are extremely cri
tical on launch. You have to be able to see those
tank pressure sages . We ought to keep this in
mind for those late afternoon launches .
White That is a problem , but the g loads are so small
at this time you could a l most forget ab1ut look
ing up .
McDivitt Did I fly like this for awhile during l aunch?
White I don't think so but you could have, The g load is
so small.
McDivitt I'm not sure whether I did or not.
White "'his is what we had to do during Wet Mock. We
had to put our hand up and cover the window to
look down at our instruments to see them ,
McDivitt I 'm not sure I didn ' t launch that way .
White I wouldn't be surprised if you did .
McDivitt I don't think I launched that way, but as we
tilted over and we got in the sun, I think I put
my hand up for awhile .
COMftDEl'1 I IAI.
--- PAGE 23 ---
15
White Well, if the g's are so low that--
McDivitt When sun gets in your face you can't see the in
strument panels because they are just too dark .
White The sun gets in your eyes. The point that Jim
was making is towards a late-in-the-day launch,
which we might have later in the program , there
might be a bit of a problem of seeing the instru
ments during launch. Unless they put something
up, which I really don't think you want to d~ You
are just going to have to put your arms up and
shield the sun out and concent~ate on your in
struments or you won't see them . They are just
gone.
There is probably a point even in an early morn
ing trajectory as you start to pitch over where
the sun will come right in your window and you
won't be able to see your instruments unless you
shield your eyes.
1,9 Crew Station Controls and Display
White I found the switches all where they were supposed
to be and the cockpit all set up.
McDivitt So did I, except the comment I made on the water
management system. They didn't have the control
where it was supposed to be. At least, they had
--- PAGE 24 ---
16
~CNFIOEt~TIAt
it in the place where everybody was arguing about
whether or not it should be ,
White I certainly appreciated the work the backup crew
did getting the cockpit all set up fo r us . Every
thing was ready to go when we stepped in. That ' s
the way it should be.
COl<:tll10E~4TIA L
--- PAGE 25 ---
€Ot◄ Fl9ENllAl 17
2.0 POWER FLIGHT
2.1 Lift- Off Cues
McDivitt CAP COM gave lift-off, about as good a cue as you
can get .
White Wasn 't any question either. Boy, you could feel
the first little motions of the booster as it
went up . It was really great!
McDivitt I think you could feel the acceleration at re
lease. There wasn't a doubt in my mind that we
were loose.
White That 's right. I don't know if I could feel the
bolts or hear them .
McDivitt As a matter of fact, it seemed to steady out a
little bit. The vibrations seemed to decrease
a little. Pretty impressive!
Not much vibration at lift-off. Very low.
White Very low. I got vibrations later on , though,
didn't you?
McDivitt Yes .
Noise. There wasn't much noise, was there?
White No. There was less than I had expected.
McDivitt Noise wasn't a cue to lift-off. Noise was there
--- PAGE 26 ---
18
if you were bolted down all day long. I don't
think the noise changed a bi t at lift- off.
White You could see the visual cues out the window .
You were watching your gages, Jim .
McDivitt Were t here clouds out there?
White No, but I could see it in the clear blue sky.
McDivitt Could you?
White Yes . I could see the motion.
McDivitt Okay . Wel l, I couldn't.
White I was looking out ,
McDivitt I saw a little cloud go by and then I didn ' t see
any more clouds at all,
White It was beautiful!
McDivitt The event timer s t a rted just like it should, Of
course , that 's the best display inside the space
craft for lift-off. The event timer starts , and
it did,
White We got both clocks started with the t ime hack. I
had a watch hack on lift-off and the ... handle
going. I knew when the engine ignited , within
half a second accuracy. Three seconds later I
was waiting for the lift-off and it came right at
three seconds ,
McDivitt We could tell ignition , too . We could hear the
'€0 ► ~FIDEJ>1TJAL
--- PAGE 27 ---
19
things go.
White I agree with you. I knew we weren ' t going to hold
it when that lift-off went.
2·. 2 Ro ll Program
McDivitt Roll program came in at ten seconds just like it
was supposed to. I t was smooth, and it was just
the way it was planned, on at ten seconds and went
out at twenty seconds. Could you see it roll
out the window?
White You can see everything out the window, I think.
McDivitt You can probably tell by the way the sun rays are
moving, can't you?
White Yes, by change in lighting. The right seat has
a better view. You have to wa tch the guages so
closely.
McDivitt I didn ' t even look out the window.
White I know you didn't.
2. 3 Pitch Program
McDivitt Pitch program started just like it was supposed
to, at twenty three seconds. Pitched over the
proper amount, the pitch needles looked like
they were hanging in there all the way.
White You could see the booster pitch definitely, and
that was mainly due to a change in the lighting.
--- PAGE 28 ---
20 co~~FIDE~~TIAt:
2 ,4 Aerodynamics
McDivitt We were getting aerodynamic noise, which built up
to max q . We got some pretty good vibrations at
max q .
White That's where I had the most vibrations . It was
just shaking like this .
McDivitt It was vibrating and noisy.
White That was the loudest noise we received the whole
flight.
McDivitt Right after max q it got very qui et .
White This is where I had the most vibrations . There
were more than I expected.
McDivitt Yes, me too. You can ' t simulate this in a simula
tor . You get more vibrations than you do noise .
The only thing they have in the simulator is
noise, they don't have vibrations . It was pretty
loud and the spacecraft was actually shaking
around a lot. It was really vibrating.
White Yes, it was . More than I expected .
McDivitt The whole thing was really going at it . Almost
like a F-80 or a T-33 at a.bout 0.8 Mach.
Whi te Very good analogy .
2. 5 Environmental Control System
White The cabin started venting shortly after lift-off
~O~◄ FltJEf<tftAL
--- PAGE 29 ---
21
and continued so until about 40 seconds and sta
bilized out at 5. 5 and I made my call in. I
think I might have called i n on RECORD .
McDivitt You did.
White I switched and made the final call at about 1: 10,
I realized I called on REDORD and switched over,
McDivitt How high did it go? Did it go to 5.5?
White 5. 5 and it stayed right there . And then I
noticed later on it progressively leaked off until
it got to 4.9 where it st ayed. The suit? There
really isn ' t anything to say about the suit.
McDivitt No, I don' t have anything to say about the suit .
It oi:erated like it was supposed to .
2.6 Maximum....q
McDivitt The noise built up gradually until we got to max
q , then it just dropped off.
White The deterioration of the noise was almost instan-
taneous.
McDivitt Very quick, It wasn ' t instantaneous , but it was
very quick.
White In fact, it startled me when we separated .
2 . 7 Windehea.r
McDivitt I didn't notice anything on the rate needles that
had anything to do with the windshea.r I couldn't
--- PAGE 30 ---
22 eot~FIDE~~"f1At
pick out windshear • on them. How about you , Ed?
White No .
McDivitt Did you see any attitudes?
White No .
McDivitt No big divergences from windshea r .
2. 8 DC~ Updates
White We got both of our ros updates right on time-
H'45 a.nd 2 : 25 ,
McDivitt No comment . Ed is in charge of ros updates .
White I ' m the button pusher. I do everything about
pushing the buttons .
McDivitt I can do this with this little stick.
White You can do it unless I have my knee over it .
2. 9 Engin,®. 1 Operation
McDivitt They operated the way they were supposed to as
far as I could tell . The tank pressures stayed
up fi~ on both Engine 1 and Engine 2. There
was never any doubt in my mind that they were
going to stay up there . There weren't any of
those things like we saw in those simulations
where they came on down pretty low on the gages
when they were supposed to be at 18 or 15. There
wasn't anything like that . They just stayed on
up there .
€0t'1Flf7ENf 1Al
--- PAGE 31 ---
23
White Just where they were supposed to be.
McDivitt Yes. I followed them a couple of times and said
they were staying up fine. They were way up.
There wasn't any problem there,
2.10 Engine 2 Status
McDivitt Second stage pressure stayed right on up there
very high. Just the way they were supposed to.
There wasn't any problem there, They didn't
decay all during the first stage.
2.11 Acceleration g's
McDivitt They weren't bad and I don't know where they went
to on the g meter.
White Just like riding in an old saddle.
McDivitt That's right. It's very comfortable . Steady on-
set .
White Not very long. Gee, we were below--
McDivitt Wait a second. This might be a good place to
cover the pogo. I felt the pogo just prior to
staging, from about 2:15 on to 2:30 . I could
feel pogo.
White How much were you getting?
McDivitt Very little, I could just feel it pull like this.
Did you feel it at all?
--- PAGE 32 ---
24 - COt~FIDEt ◄ TIM
White No .
McDivitt I could feel it . It wasn't uncomfortable enough
where I had to l ift my head or anything. I
wasn't thinking about a pogo at all . It wasn't
like I was trying to sit there and think about it.
But as we were going along I could feel this vi
bration. And then it just crossed my mind, well
t here is pogo, and then we went on to staging.
But it wasn ' t bad at all . The amplitude must
have been--
White You were paying more attention to your clocks
while I was watching the system ,gages and I
wasn't really aware of the times that were going
on. I had my eyes- -
McDivitt It came around 2: 15 or so and lasted to about 2:30.
Maybe it was 2: 10 or 2:05 , but it wasn't bad .
White We had one area that I will get into later that I
haven't told you about and that I didn't like.
McDivitt Oh . So , I think we hit the pogo and the g ,.s .
2.12 BEX;O
McDivitt Engine shut down properly. The lights came on.
Engine~- 2 light went out and the Engine 1 lights
went out. Just the way it was supposed to at
B~O and staging. Two Stage 1 lights ON , Stage 2
EOt<I flf)Et ◄ Tl1'c b
--- PAGE 33 ---
COt ◄FIB~1'1llAl 25
light OFF, Stage 1 lights OFF.
White At that time I realized that we were going to
feel the pyros and stuf'f--feel the separation. It
was a very distinct feeling when we sepa r a ted . Of
course, we immediately dropped in the thrust .
There wasn't any question,we had a good separation,
in my mind . This is just the way it was for all
of our separations. Ev-erytime we separated, it
was very clear that was what had happened.
McDivitt Oh, yes, there wasn't a:ny doubt about it when
that first stage shut off--Voom!
2. 13 Staging
McDivitt Staging was just as it should have been.
2. 14 Engine 2 I gnition
McDivitt Engine 2 started right on up. Like I mentioned
earlier~the light went out and the tank pressure
went down just a tad, but it stayed way up there,
about two or three times as high as was necessary
for staging. It never really did decrease. It
stayed up around 45 or 50 psi, and we need 20 for
staging, so--
White I couldn ' t hear anything.
McDivitt Didn't you hear the engine?
White No. I was listening but it still was quiet.
€Ot~FIDENllAL --
--- PAGE 34 ---
26 'COl'4FIDEl'ff IA-t
McDivitt I didn't really get much of a cue out of it at all,
except the lights went out and I could feel a
li t tle bit of acceleration.
Whit e The acceleration decreased. Another thing I
didn't get--I got absolutely no pitch-up associ-·
ated with the--the way the centrifuge does you at
the end of an acceleration. I think that is
associated with the cab on--
McDivitt Yes . I think that's the way they rotate t hose
gimbals when you come on down. If they rotate
them a certain way you can get that pitching-up-
White A very safe forward-type deceleration.
McDivi tt I think that pitching up on the centrifuge is not
a malfunction. It ' s just the programing that's
hooked into the gimbals during the stop program.
You've got to get them all going the same way so
that you keep the vectors through you . During
l aunch the vector is right t hrough you. It 's not
varying around , but in the shut-down on the cen
trifuge those darn gimbals aren't a lways syn
chronized together . They get shifted back there
and it gives you that peculiar sensation.
2 . 15 RGS Initiate
McDivitt Well, I was really watching closely but my rate
--- PAGE 35 ---
needles just barely changed . We mus t not have
had any errors at a l l .
White Yes , I got a full error.
McDivit t Did you have a full error?
White Yes, my pitch err or went al l the way down , and
then it just steered slowly right back up . Re
member you--
McDivitt You did call and tell me you had a saturated-
Di d you call saturated , or did you say we had a
bi g one?
White I called it saturated, I believe .
McDivitt That ' s right .
White I called a saturated error and then I called you
that it was steering back to zer o .
McDivitt Yes . I remember that you did ca ll that .
White That ' s the way they showed this on the plot , t ha t
i t would saturate there , am very quickly it
s eemed to gradually steer right back up .
McDivitt The steering rates that went in were on the order
of less than half a degree/second .
White They were very low.
McDivitt Very , very low because I was on high scale .
The needle just barely devia ted at all at RGS
GO~JFIDEN"flAl
--- PAGE 36 ---
28
initiate.
White It was beautiful steering.
McDivitt Nominal, nominal, nominal, except like that
saturation on the error needle, but we have been
briefed on that.
White That ' s right . That ' s something to be expecterui
McDivitt When did it saturate?
White Right at staging. No, right at guidance initiate .
McDivi tt Oh , okay. It saturated right there .
White Right there at guidance initiate, which is what
you ' d except.
2. 16 GO/ NO GO
McDivitt They said they were GO and I said we were GO .
There wasn't much problem. Ed and I had been
checking ba ck and forth on the systems . I knew
they were all right .
2, 17 Systems Sta tus
White The systems were all pretty good . There was only
one I didn ' t like and that was the stack readings
on the main ammeters . One was reading about 28
and the other was reading about 14 , But I felt
that this was a ssociated with bringing the batter
ies on. I went through and checked everything.
Everything was readi ng properly. The control bus
--- PAGE 37 ---
and main bus were all reading all right. I felt
it was just a misbalance of loading. I talked to
somebody previous to this time and it was
explained to me that this could happen this way.
I felt perhaps it was in the adapter batteries-
would feed through on one of the stacks causing
one of them to take more than the other.
McDivitt Yes. You could have gotten into the knee of an
adapter--
White This is what I had figured- - that a couple of my
adapter aatteries were unbalanced, causing this
to occur. I also had seen this on the simulator
quite a few times.
McDivitt When did the unbalance start? When we got in
they were-• As soon as we were on internal
power?
White Right. And I didn't feel this was the time to
talk about it. It was still under 30 amps, which
was my point. So I didn't bring it up.
McDivitt You didn't want to worry me?
White I didn't want to worry you and I didn't want any
body on the ground to start hollering about it .
McDivitt You should have written me a note.
White I did feel that this was exactly what it was--
~Q~~ftE)EN:rJAL-
--- PAGE 38 ---
30
that it was adapter batteries. That was the only
abnormal type of indication we had in the systems.
They were all real good .
Well, we had good communications with the ground
during powered flight.
McDivitt We had pretty good communications. I called the
"Roll Program", and nobody answered me . I said,
"Well , to heck with it, maybe they just aren't
ge t;ti.ng through." Then I was just starting to
call Roll Program complete when Gus called and
said,"Did you get the Roll Program?" Now that was
the only transmission I made that wasn't acknow
ledged.
White Yes, I heard you calling, too.
McDivitt So , if they lost communications it must have been
right at the 10-seconds t i me , and it should have
been for l ess than 10 seconds. It couldn't have
been for more than 20 seconds. I heard the count
down to lift-off and I heard Gus call and ask me
if I had the Roll Program started . This was a
little bit less t han 20 seconds-- around 18 or 19
seconds. That is the only period of time I
didn' t hear anybody I should have hea rd . So , if
we lost communications, that was where it was.
--- PAGE 39 ---
31
2.18 Acceleration
McDivitt Well we got up to 7 1/2 g 's. The acc eleration
wasn ' t bad at all. I guess when you are really
interested in what you are doing like on the boost
or reentry, those g 's don't mean anything. I
don't like to ride the centrifuge . 7 1/2 g 's is
7 1/2 g 's on the centrifuge, but on the booster-
White My vision was crystal clear .
McDivitt Me, too . I wasn't even breathing hard . I wasn ' t
huffing or :pui'fing or anything . I was just laying
<there relaxed .
White Particularly on this one, The acceleration burn
during powered flight and insertion was very light .
2 . 19 SECO
McDivitt SECO occurred as it should have on my clock. Ed
thought it ~s about--what did you say it was?
White I thought it was a second or so early and it
concerned me because that meant we were going to
have to burn. So I was quite expecting to hear
a big 6V come up from the ground. There is no
question on that SECO either. It shuts off and
you get that linear straight deceleration.
McDivitt The thing that surprised me was that we weren ' t
talking about it at all. We were just going as
, CONFID·EN"TtAt
--- PAGE 40 ---
32
straight as an arrow when that thing shut off .
White There weren't any oscillations or roll .
2 . 20 Steering
McDivitt I was ge tting a sinusoidal oscill ation on my rate
needles , and I don ' t know now whether it was
pitch and yaw . I cal l ed it out a t the time , to
you a:nyway, Eli .
White Right . And my attitude arrows were- -
McDivitt Your a ttitude arrows were right on? Okay. But I
was getting an oscillation, very small, about
plus or minus a quarter degree in rates . Not so
that the needle was ac tuall y moving back and for th
across the dots. It was pretty obvious that it
was . Now, I sort of felt that I coul d feel that
movement a li tt l e bi t, like this , but not annoy
ingly and certainly the stabilization was holding
i t close enough. But it wasn ' t that the rate
needles were just constantly oscillating back and
forth. It seems to me it was in pitch but I'm not
really sure . A booster pitch,
Whi te The attitude error needles were the only deviation we
had at any time . Yaw was just about nominal all
the time. We had the pitch deviation at guidance
initiate. It went to full scale and steered right
• COt~Ft0ENflAL
--- PAGE 41 ---
33
back in, and also right at the end we had, in
pitch, a little bit of a pitch-down needle indi
cation which increased to no more than about a
degree at booster shutdown.
McDivitt You got about a degree,then,on shut down?
White Just about a degree.
McDivitt Yes. I kept glancing over to see how you were
doing, They were always right near the center for
me.
White Yeah. Right near the end they trailed do,.m just
a little bit. I 'd be interested to see what the
ground thought on t his.
McDivitt Yes. You'll have to go over and look. I'm sure
they have them.
€6Nft[:)ENTI.AL
--- PAGE 42 ---
34
3.0 INSERTION
3,1 Post- SECO
McDivitt Yes . There was a Post-SECO. In the period be
tween SEX:!O and SECO + 20 seconds, I unstowed the
maneuver controller. I don ' t know where our
attitudes were . They were the same as they were
a t SEX::O , and it was about 20 degrees pitch-down,
wasn ' t it? The rates during this period were on
the order of less than a half a degree/s econd.
We really had a period of from SECO to SECO + 30 .
So, duri ng this time I actually fired the trans
lations thrusters at least two times in one axis
to kill off the rate in t hat axis, and I think it
was probably the booster yaw or spacecraft pitch
where I act ually fired the U,rusters once or
twice to bring the rates back . It might have
been the other way around. But, we didn't jetti
son the fairings then . I did unstow the maneuver
controller and the att itude was the booster burn
out attitude and the rates were very low, less
than a half a degr ee/second .
White I think we mentioned prior to this
time the feeling that we came off a little half-
(Q~~IQFNTIAL
--- PAGE 43 ---
35
cocked off the second stage.
3. 2 SECO + 20 Seconds
McDivitt We were going to $ay on the booster until SECO +
30 instead of SECO + 20 . At 20 seconds the IVI ' s
started displaying and I read them off as 20 for
ward, 11 right, and 5 down.
White Right ,
McDi vitt This was when we were still in the 90 degree bank
position. Is that correct? Or was it after I
had rolled right-side-up?
White It was after you had rolled right-side- up.
McDivitt Okay. Well, then the IVI's displayed when we were
still on our side. It seems to me they were
about 25 feet/second forward , and some other
numbers, but anyway they were low enough where I
felt we were certainly in orbit. At least the
IGS was telling us we were in orbit. During this
time, as I said earlier, I tried to damp the
spacecraft rates, the spacecraft booster rates
which were quite low. I checked to see that the
OAMS Power Switch was in ATTITUDE and MANEUVER ,
and to see that Eli had switched over to DIRECT.
I told him I was going to do some thrusting but
I wasn't going to separate yet, so that when he
€ 0 ~~ FfDENT.I.Al
--- PAGE 44 ---
~EIDENJl»,t
heard the thrusters go off he wouldn't push the
SPACECRAFT SEP. Then we did separate the space
craft with the ·exact routine we practiced in the
simulator. I said, "Thrusting, separate", and you
punched the SEPARATE button and I guess you went
to Rate Command. I thrusted straight ahead for
about five seconds . This is where I think we
came off crooked. This is the part Ed was men
tioning before. We didn't seem to come off
straight ahead. We seemed to be getting some
sort of an oscillation that got us going in a dif
ferent direction than what we had going on the
booster.
White It seemed,, like one side of the separation plane
came off with more force than the other.
McDivitt Yes. That's what it seemed like to me.
White It separated at a bit of an angle.
McDivitt That's right. We didn't separate fore and aft;
we separated with a lot of rotation to this side.
White Yes.
McDivitt Air-ground communications were all right. We were
talking to them and they were talking to us . I
never had any problem there .
White Shortly thereafter they called up and told us we
i C&MFfEiEM IIAL
--- PAGE 45 ---
CO~ ◄ FIDEt><tTIAL 37
had a 153 by 57 orbit. So, they were talking to
us . I don't think I ought to read off this stuff
now, but they gave us the 2-1 data and all the
nominal data we were supposed to get. It came out
fine.
McDivitt Say again what the IVI's were while we rolled
right-side-up.
White Right . At the position we decided on taking our
IVI readings, which was heads up in a zero-zero
attitude, you read off the IVI's to me as 20 for
ward, 11 right, and 5 down.
McDivitt Okay. Then I didn't bother nulling the pitch -·
needle because we were reall y pressed for time to
get around.
White No velocity correction was called up to us and
since we had no velocity correction , and we were
fairly busy at this time, I didn't even read out
the 52 or 70. I wasn't particularly interested
in them. It ' s a funny thing though--52 was
punched in and had: been read out and it showed 30.
It had been punched in so it read out, you see, as
soon as something came in the quantity. So, I
did have a readout. I read out 30. I remember
looking at that.
--- PAGE 46 ---
38 ~O ► ~flDENTI~
3. 3 Insertion Activities
McDivitt I thrusted and got off the booster. Then I went
ahead for just a short time, and then I started
to turn around right away. During the turn-around,
I j ettisoned the fairings. They went off with a
bang. I could see the fairing over the horizon
scanner go, but I never did see the fairing off
the nose go . I just assumed that it went. We
were already in just a mass of debris up there,
because when we se:p3,rated from the booster there
was stuff all over.
White All over. It really flew by to the side of the
spacecraft.
McDivitt Yes. It was all over the place. As we . were
turning around it looked like we were going
through a snow storm. There was stuff all over.
Finally we got turned around, in about a minute
and a half, and we could see the booster there.
I White There ' s one thing I would certainly like to see
I somebody do--I'd have give my right arm to have
had a camera when I turned around and saw tbe
booster. I ' d like to see somebody carry a camera
in a semi-•stowed position so he could immediately
get it out and come around and take pictures of
•CO ►~FIDE~~TIAL
--- PAGE 47 ---
39
the booster. Either the camera, or better yet a
16 mm camera with a normal lens on it . Just tuck
it to the side of your leg. If I had thought
about it I think this is what I would have done-
just connected the camera, tucked it by my leg,
and taken pictures of the booster at this time .
McDivitt I think, Ed, this is probably one of those philo
sophical things. On the first orbit you've got to
save to prepare to come back in case you have a
bad spacecraft. You 've got to be ready to reen
ter during the first orbit . Tuis is the kind of
bind we found ourselves in up there. During the
first orbit we really had a lot to get ready for
halfway through the second orbit, but on the other
hand we had to be in good enough shape so we could
reenter it at 2-1. Now, we didn't have anything
to go wrong so there wasn't any problem, but I
think when you first get into orbit you're in a
problem. This kind of a thing, I think, is a
problem you may have later on. You've got to be
ready to eject at lift-off plus one second, and
you don't want to be sitting there holding a
camera or something like that. Both your hands
are busy. But like you said we could stow it
~ONFtDf1'tliAt
--- PAGE 48 ---
40
3omewhere.
White I think you could . You could stow it beside you
in the seat . I think we over- emphasize the neces
sity , particularly for ejection, of having to have
everything stowed when you are only ejecting up to
12 000 feet and at very slow speeds. We certainly
have a heck of a lot more working against us in
our airplanes we ' re flying around .
McDivitt That's right . I agree with you . I ' m just saying
this philosophy of being completely prepared to
reenter during that first orbit is in conflict
with doing this kind of stuff in the first orbit,
too.
White We ought to get some of this, though. I think we
are missing things . I would have really--
McDivitt Yes, I think so. We could have really had some
beautiful pictures of that booster when we were
close to it.
White I also want to comment a little bit on the booster
itsel f . I looked as closely as I could at the
nozzle skirt and the aft end of the booster , and
I saw no damage whatsoever.
McDivitt No, neither did I from our vantage point .
White As far as I could see the nozzle skirt was com-
,C O I>~ 11;) El>fftAL
--- PAGE 49 ---
41
pletely intact. There was nothing wrong .
McDivitt Okay. Let ' s try to follow this insertion activi
ties list here . I jettisoned the fairings , as I
said , as soon as I started turning around . Then
Ed went through the checklist for us . After I
fired the fairings I turned off the BIA Switch and
the retro rockets when he called. I was probably
doing this before Ed called, wasn ' t I?
White We did things just like we had been doing them on
the simulator . We don't just take a checklist
and run down it item for item because there ' re
things you have to be doing , and it just doesn ' t
go in a sequence like that . I realized this was
the way it was going to go, and I actually took a
pencil and checked items off. If you did an item
I checked it off, and if you didn't I left it un
checked and we got it later. You just can ' t ex-
pect to run down the checklist item for item because
you ' re not ready to unstow your life vest or to
get up out of your seat belt. You don 't do that
for some time . I think the logic on the check-
list we have here is a very good sequence--.
McDivitt We reviewed that checklist 50 times. That's
00 tq ftf)ENftA-t-
--- PAGE 50 ---
42
cor<tFIDENTIAt
probably the fiftieth checklist we ' ve got there ,
and I don ' t think i t could have been arranged any
better for the two of us .
White I knew Jim wasn't going to undo his seat belt har
ness and I knew I was going to have to because I
had to do certain things that he didn ' t have to .
The point that I ' m making is that the checklist
doesn ' t have to be accomplished item for item ,
completely done in numerical sequence .
McDivitt Okay . I thi nk we ' ll revert back to the exact
subject of 3,3 now . Safetying the switches . I
saftied the swi t ches-- the BIA Squib Switch and
the four Retro Rocket Squibs Switches. I tested
the sequential l i ghts, but at a later time because
I was involved in turning the spacecraft around.
But X did test them . As far as stowage , I stowed
my left arm restraint and my D- ring , but I did
not put my saf ety pin in.
White I went through and put my arm rest down , put my
safety pin in . That was one of the first things
I did .
McDivitt I might comment that I never did put my safety pin
in . I never put the safety pin in the D- ring . I
felt the D- ring cover was adequate , and it was .
co ► ~fiilQ lil)l:rlsA<JL
--- PAGE 51 ---
43
White I know , you never have been particularl y too hot
on that .
McDi vitt Noo
White Then I went ahead and disconnected myself. I had
a lot of things I had to squirm around and do. I
left my life vest on as we had planned to do , then
take them off leisurely at a different time. I did
not find any reason to put the drogue pins in. I
don't think they are satisfactory in any way . I
don ' t think the pin itself i s sati sfactory , and I
don ' t think the location or type of holes are
satisfactory . I will elaborate on them a little
further. We have had aircraft around for a long
time and we have learned a lot about saf ety pins .
We have come up with some pretty good designs on
safety pins. We have a design on our drogue pin
right now which is no more than the very first
type of safety pin that I saw on an aircraft. I
think that we are past the point where we should
be starting right out at the beginning. We ought
to put a properly designed safety pin in there
that you can insert a little easier into the holes .
I ' m not going to try to design the pin but I think
that it should have some type of shaft on it that
r€0NFll}ENftl(L -
--- PAGE 52 ---
44 -E OI'~FI DE~ITIAL
you can use to stabilize the pin when you insert
it. And when I s ay the holes through which you
insert t he pins are unsatisfactory, I ' m referring
to holes through a cylindr i cal shaft that is
hollow inside so t hat you not only have t o find
the hole to put it in on one side , but you have
to work it around and find the hole that it goes
t hrough on the other side. I don ' t believe that's
satisfactory . I don't think the opening into the
hole is supposed to be beveled and they weren ' t
beveled on my seat and they weren't beveled on
Jim ' s seat , either. I t hink a beveled hole is a
hole that is bigger on the outside than it is on
the inside. I don' t believe there is much dif
ference between the outside and the inside of the
holes for the drogue pins. I had a difficult
time putting my own in. I put Jim's pins in . It
took me awhile, but I put them in. I never did
get one of mine in satisfactorily at this time ,
so I think we should do something better with
the drogue pins. In addition I couldn ' t even see
the hole.
McDivitt You had an easier time putting my pin in t han you
had putt ing your own pin in.
GO~~FIDEl>ITIAL
--- PAGE 53 ---
.-CQ~qfl9tNTIAL 45
White That' s correct . I could put yours in fairly easy.
McDivitt That's right . I think that when you turn towards
the center of the spacecraft , you end up with more
room than if you turned to the outside . You can ' t
see a thing if you are turning toward the outside .
White This is probably covered later, but my hose lengths
were not long enough to permit me to turn all the
way around , I knew this when we went through
We ight and Balance . I knew my hoses were not
long enough but it was too late , as far as I was
concerned, t o change them at that ti~ . But, I
couldn't see the holes on my side to insert the
drogue pin. I couldn ' t see the holes for your
drogue pin either, but I could get a better view
of them over there so I knew approximately where
t o put the pin , I think in all respects the drogue
pins are not satisfactory. You just can't see
them ; the pins are incorrect, the holes are in
correct, and I think we can certainly do better
with them .
McDivitt I think what Ed is saying is that it 's lousy.
White That's right. In two letter words, it stinks !
This is the way the batteries were reading out
when I checked them at insertion. And this is what
CO ► 4FIDE~~rft"AI:
--- PAGE 54 ---
€O ►~FIDEt4Tl~L
I had suspected they were doing when we launched-
why we had unbal anced stack readings . 1-A read
6 amps, 1-B read 10 , 1-C read 11. This accounts
for your high reading on Stack 1. 2-A was 6,
2-B was 6, , and 2-C was 6 . . Ttis was the way
they were reading. I ran through a check on them
when we were actually in the booster phase. So
that is why I felt the reading wasn ' t bad. They
were both reading about 23 1/2 or 24 volts . They
looked pretty good.
I got my 2-1 update. I got the t:N of 167, 6T of
3+35, and GMT to retro command of 14 48 34. I have
the other times too. The time to 400 000 was 2+18,
as read up to me and the time to reverse bank
angle was 8+47. This is what we wrote down .
This is one time I remember now when I was a little
irritated, because they gave times to us in a
manner in which I hadn ' t wanted them to e They
were supposed to give elapsed time but they gave
it to us in GMT time for our retro. We had asked
them to give it to us in elapsed, They came right
back up and gave it to us both ways. I remember
writing it down twice, on the elapsed time of
01 32 35. I can see why they did it because it
--- PAGE 55 ---
CONFtf>E~ftAi. 47
was two minutes past one hour 30 minutes, and I
guess they weren't sure exactly what we wanted.
So they gave it to us in GMT and elapsed time
also . But that is the information we received,
as far as our 2-1 area was concerned.
McDivitt I think Ed had better cover unstowage. I didn't
unstow anything. I was just trying to stick with
the booster at that time.
White The first thing I got into was my right-hand
stowage compartment and I unstowed the blood
pressure bulb. Then I started into the center
section to get at the camera . The first thing I
wanted to get out was the Hasselblad and the 16 mm.
I was dying to get a picture of that booster. So ,
I unstowed the Hasselblad and got a good back on
it and the 16 mm camera. I didn't unstow the
urine nozzle as the flight plan had called. We
both had decided we were going to use our launch
day urine bags as long as we could, and we had
hoped to use them right through the ENA. As it
turned out, we did. That was about all I unstowed
at this time. I unstowed the cameras, the blood
pressure bulb and also got out the film cartridges
and the tape cartridges. I put them on the side
CONFIDENTIAb
--- PAGE 56 ---
48 COt'4FI0EN-l+M.
of the foot well , where I planned to keep them,
so that we could keep a good tape cartridge
available.
--- PAGE 57 ---
---G0N F-40 ENTIA L_, 49
4. 0 ORBITAL FLIGHT
McDivitt I think that the orbital flight should be broken
down into some very distinct sequences . I think
there are really three of these . The first one
is about the first three or four orbi ts where we
were trying to stay with the booster, where we di d
the FNA and where we finally got back in. The
time that we finally got the spacecraft depressur
ized ends one phase of the mission. The next
phase or sequence of the things that come along
is really the second phase . This is the middle
50 orbits or so , where we did the experiments and
where we did the flight plan in a highly modified
manner . We did the flight plan we started out to
do . And the last phase or series of sequences
wa s the ~et ro- prepa ration , r etrofire and the
reentry . The retro- preparation was actually
another distinct phase of the mission . I think
that we ought to divide it up into those three
phases-- the station-keeping and FNA as Stage 1 ,
general orbit as Stage 2, and retro- preparation
and reentry as Stage 3. So I think we should
CONFID ~~:rt Al
--- PAGE 58 ---
50 ~-IE>ENTIA L-
start in the orbital flight with the station
keeping on the booster. I think that we should
just pluck that thing out and follow it through in
its entirety , and then come back and pick up these
things like the thrusters , Control :fode Checks ,
Com Checks , and those things .
4 . 1 Station-Keeping
McDivitt The station-keeping with the booster--Well, as I
said earlier on the insertion phase , I started
turning around as soon as I completed the forward
thrusting. I jettisoned the nose fairings after
about 30 or 40 degrees of yaw. I rolled right
side-up and then I started yawing around to the
left. We saw all kinds of debris floating around
and we finally saw the booster back behind us. It
was already in a peculiar attitude. As Ed men
tioned , when we separated from the booster, it
didn·• t really feel like we came off straight ahead .
It seemed like we got knocked off to the side of
the thing. The spacecraft-booster combination
sort of bent in half at the separation plane . We
yawed on around and saw the booster , and I thought
it was around 400 feet back. Eli thought it was
a little closer.
-€0·N FIDE~L
--- PAGE 59 ---
£.ONfll)ENTIAf 51
White I would estimate it at between 200 and 250 feet.
McDivitt Okay. We were in pretty good shape right then
and I applied about five or six seconds of
thrusting that should have come out around 5~
feet/second . I was in a hurry trying to get our
separation velocity stopped, so I was thrusting.
I had it in Rate Command . I pointed the space
craft at the booster and started thrusting, and
by the time I got the computer in the Catch- Up
Mode and the Start Comp button on, I had already
thrusted ' 2 or 3 -~ feet/second out and I
counted up another · 3 feet/second on the IVI's .
It looked like we were probably stopped, although
I couldn't tell tlBt quickly. I knew I had as
much f::.V in there as I had at separation, and
possibly a little more, because I tried to hold
the separation f::.V down to no more than •5
feet/second. We watched it for just a short time
and then it was obvious that we hadn't stopped our
separation velocity--our relative velocity--so we
were still separating. So , I applied about ano-
ther •• 3 or • 4 feet/second, which should have
more than overcome the : 4 or · 5 feet/second
I put in initially . It looked like we had stopped
.CO NFlD-E-~ IlAL
--- PAGE 60 ---
52
then . Our relative velocity looked like it went
to zero . Here, I thought, we were out around
500 or 600 feet. F.d thought we were: probably in
closer than that.
White Yes . I thought we were in a little clos er.
McDivi tt I put in a tota l of around· 9 feet/second in
the first minute and a half after we turned
around .
White I think we commented together on the speed with
which the booster was going away ~om us . Right
off the bat it looked like it wa.s- -it surprised
me that it actually looked like it separated ·rrom
us as fast as it really--
McDivitt It looked like it had a lot more velocity than
the 4 or 5 J feet/second I added at t he
separation. It looked to me , as an off- the- top- of:.
my- head-guess , that something in the spacecra ft
separation thing had really built up a lot of
relative velocity between the booster and the
spacecraft . I don't know why or how. Al so , it
looked like we weren ' t inplane anymore . It was
actual l y out-of- plane so that we had an out - of
plane rela tive velocity that I took out . I
pointed at the booster because , obviously , if
--EONffOfNTt~t.
--- PAGE 61 ---
€0NftDEM11:At~ 53
you're separating away from something, whichever
way you ' re going, if you point at the thing and
if you t hrust in that direction you are to take
out your relative velocity in all planes . So , it
looked like the thing was off to the left or to the
south of our orbital track by a couple hundred
feet and it was going down rapidly . Losing
altitude. After I thrusted this second time, I
knew I had more than enough velocity, much more
than I needed to kill off the 5 feet/second
we'd added . I watched it and it looked like it
wasn ' t going away from us anymore. It looked like
our relative velocities had stopped. I wanted to ··
---
get the platform alined somewhat in case we did
have to come down in the 2~1. We really hadn't
had much chance to check over the spacecraft yet.
So I quickly went to as close to zero-zero- zero
as I could get . I used the zero yaw and the zero
roll off the ball and I went to a pitch at t i tude
that looked like it was about zero and tried to
get the ball to aline to zero-zero- zero . At that
time the booster was mostly behind us--mostly
back toward the Cape from us--back behind us with
respect to our velocity back there . It iwas in the
--- PAGE 62 ---
54
<coN FU)1:l'tllA.b-
window and I could see it. Well, I started
alining the platform and left it there for a
couple of minutes . The booster started falling
again, descending below us . It actually went
out of my view in the window. At the time
though our relative velocities were quite small,
--
so I felt I could let it go for another 30 seconds
or a minute and not have it g e ~ ~ r away__!rom
..= -------
me . It looked like it was coming toward me again ,
but going below. So , I allowed myself about
another minute and I pi tched down and looked for
it. It appeared that during that minute it had
gone a lot farther down than I had expected it to
go .
White Yes , I was surprised . Remember that it looked like
the orbit was sure something different than we
predicted .
McDivitt Yes. It looked to me like the booster and the
spacecraft weren't in anything that even resem
bled the same orbit , at the rate it was descending.
I don ' t know what the range rate was at that time.
It looked like it was a lot more than a foot/
second , though . I don ' t know what it was . I
quickly pitched back up to zero-zero-zero and
C.ONF~DE~:r.lAL
--- PAGE 63 ---
55
s t ayed there for about another ten or fifteen
seconds and went to Orbit Rate, I knew I didn ' t
have a good alinement on the platform but I knew
I couldn ' t stay there any longer and have the
booster anywhere nea r us . So , I flipped around
and pitched right straight down and here 's where
the problems s t arted, To get down to the booster
in a long rendezvous type maneuver, what I should
have done was to jus t stay horizontal and fir e
retrograde and t ake some total velocity out of the
spacecraft . But , when you do this the booster
continues to pull away from you for a whi l e , and
then eventually you are going to drop down below
it . Then you are going to be in a l ower-al titude
orbit and you are going to pick up and catchup
with the boos ter . Well, with the sta tion- keeping
we had to do and the fact that the darkness was
only a matter of another few minutes--
White Boy it was fas t !
McDivi tt It wasn ' t any time a t all . I didn ' t have time to
play a rendezvous game with it , I had to over
come this relative velocity we had with sort of
brute force , s o I thrus ted right a t the booster
again. I got going down and I used about 5
"CO t'-' FIO~NT+Al.
--- PAGE 64 ---
56
feet/second there . Here ' s where the numbers ge t
a little vague . I thrusted down at it and I
watched it go for awhile . I thought sure we 'd
start closing on it again . We weren't closing,
so I thrusted down on it again . I must have done
this probably three or four times. I can't say
exact l y.
White I don ' t remember, precisely, how many times you
thri1sted . I was keeping my eyes on the booster .
McDivi tt And i t was a lot t ougher to see when it was down
with the ground as a background, I t hought, than
with the sky as a background . During this period
of t i me its rotational velocity picked up con
siderably, and during this time Fd checked it and
got eight seconds for a complete revolution.
White A complete revolution . Yes. This was an estimate .
\ McDivi tt This meant that in the first three minutes after
we were in orbit the thing had gone up to a rota
I tional rate of 40 to 50 degrees/second . I t seemed
to stabilize at that rate . Its rotational rates
stabilized but I don ' t believe its rotational
mode ever stabilized. It didn't rotate in a plane
as I thought a loµg body like that would rotate .
It seemed to oscillate in just a random tumbling
-CE7~1DENTIAL
--- PAGE 65 ---
57
fashion . It was all over. It looked to me like i t
was rotating in three axes in a completely unpro
grarnmed manner . It might have been that the roll
nozzle was flopping around and the fuel was turn
ing it around in different directions. And as a
matter of fact, at this time we should go back and
draw a picture of what the fuel looked like and
what was coming out of the no zzle. The booster
was tumbling and you could see the fuel squirting
out of the roll nozzle in a big fan like this. I
had the impression that if the booster were per
fectly stationary, the fuel would have been comi ng
out of the nozzle in a great big cone the way you
would expect it to, but because the booster was
tumbling so rapidly it was coming out in a long ,
twisted- - l ike a horn of plenty. It was very ob
vious ; you could see it, and ther e wssn ' t any doubt
about the fact that there was a lot of fuel coming
out . Whether this was contributing some thrust to
it or not I don't know .
White I want to comment on something that was quite an
experience for me. When I called out to you, I
was looking down at what I thought , since it was
pitch black, was the sky. I could see little
cet-4PIDfNT~AL
--- PAGE 66 ---
58 ~Ptt>fNT-l;4h
sparkles everywhere . And it looked like almost
a starlit sky, but it just didn't quite look
right to me ; it looked like an artificial star-
lit sky . It looked like some of these star dis
plays they have created for us . And I looked
over at Jim and asked him if he was seeing this
and about the same time I noticed that he had
nothing but dayl ight out his window. This was
the first time that I had the daylight- dark
experience of one guy looking into pitch black
night and the other guy looking into a complete
daylight window over there . Jim remarked rather
disgustedly to me, "We are pointed straight at the
ground!" About the same time I realized I was
looking out at the fire flies everybody had s een,
but probably in a much more profuse quantity than
had ever been seen before , because we were getting
a ll this fuel that was vaporizing into many , many
particles from the booster and a little bit of a
contribution from the spacecraft also .
McDivitt And we were thrusting, too . I ' m sure we had all
that junk on it from our launch.
White That ' s right . And the whole area out in front of
my view was just entirely taken up with these
CONFIOENft-AL
--- PAGE 67 ---
little pa r t icles , and this was at sunset . As the
flight progressed, each time we had a particle or
a group of particles such as a urine dump r ight
at sunset or sunrise, the sun would pick these
particles up and they would act just like litt l e
magnifying glasses and make very bright spots.
This is exactly what happened . Did you ever s ee
that then? I think you were more in the daylight
side .
McDivitt No . I was on the daylight side . I didn't see
what you were talking about.
White It was really something. The whole sky within my
view was covered with these little particles-
thousands of them . There was obviously a great
deal of that stuff in the air all around .
McDivitt As soon as we got turned around I could see trat t he
lights were flashing on the booster, and Ed saw
them , too. It was pretty apparent . I cal l ed out
r i ght away to the gruund that the lights were
working . I don't know if they understood what I
was talking about or not. I also called out
shortly after we came off the booster and we saw
it,that it didn't look like we were going to be
able to touch it .. because of the high rotational
--- PAGE 68 ---
60 CO·N·F~DENTIM
rates that we already had . We were into darkness
by the time that we got turned around, and I had
thrusted just two or three times at the booster .
We were still quite far above it--I would guess
now on the order of 2000 feet or more and it was
still dropping away from us rapidly; I had already
used about 25 or 30 feet/second to get toward the
booster. I knew I had to catch it during the
night time because when we came out of the dark
ness on the next pass, we had to be next to it ,
because we were supposed to take some photos of it
around that time . So I thrusted some more right
at the booster trying to just overcome orbital
mechanics with brute force . It was too l ate to
start playing fancy games with the orbital mechan
ics . Finally, I got us down to what I considered
a good position , and this was prior to Carnarvon,
I believe . Remember when we finally got it on
the horizon?
White It looked like it had finally stopped .
McDivitt The relative velocity had finally stopped. And
let me now make a general comment about what I
thought of the lights on it . We had two lights on
the booster that flashed and they were diametrically
CO~Fl0E~TtAL
--- PAGE 69 ---
€01~FtDcNfJA~ 61
opposed on the center of the booster . And when
the booster was in such a manner that I could see
both of the lights, I could tell relative rates
and I had an idea of how far away I was . Did you
find this to be true too, Ed , or not?
White Well , I can ' t honestly say I was looking at it
with that feeling .
McDivitt Okay . Well , what I am saying is that it was
difficult--
White I want to hear what you are going to say. I 'm
not sure what you ' re saying yet ,
McDivitt It was difficult to tell how far I was away from
it , at best , but when I had the booster in such a
position that I could see both lights at the same
time , I could tell by the distance between the
lights whether I was close or far .
White Okay . I agree with that .
McDivitt And when I could see these lights flashing over a
period of time , I could tell whether the distance
between them was getting larger or smaller so that
I knew i f I was closing or not . Unfortunately ,
becaus e the booster was tumbling in this scre,ry
manner, I couldn't maneuver around ~he booster
because it was tumbling so fast ; I was just trying
CONFtDENftt\L
--- PAGE 70 ---
62
to get close to it and not even maneuver--not to
pick specific positions . All I wanted to do was
just get close enough so I wouldn ' t lose it. When
I could see these two lights, I had a pretty good
impression of whether I was closing or opening;
for a long part of the early part of the mission
in the night time it looked like we were holding
our own, and then we finally started closing with
it . I finally worked it down where we were at
the same level , All this time I had been above
the booster. I worked dovm until I was at the same
altitude with it ; at least it was on the horizon .
I felt that by then I had gotten the thing under
control and we stood a pretty good chance of still
coming out on the daylight side with the booster.
I can't tell you what the range was . It looked
to me like I had worked the range back dovm (it
had been opening up as · we went into darkness)--
to 2000 or 3000 feet again--probably around 2000
feet . It might even have been as low as 1000 feet .
It could have been lower than that . At one time I
got the impression that we were quite close to it .
White Yes . You were wondering whether you should retro
grade away from it .
6ONFt01:M"flAL
--- PAGE 71 ---
McDivitt It looked to me like we could have gotten as close
as 200 feet . It was extremely difficult to tell
how close we were. What's your guees , Ed? Just
pick a number.
White I wouldn't say that close . I 'd say you ' re more in
the ball park in the neighborhood of 700 to 1000
feet.
McDivitt Okay.
White You could be magnitudes off.
McDivi tt Before we got to Carnarvon, I remember , we were in
reasonably good shape , because I had finally
gotten down to the booster. I felt if I could
just keep it down near the booster we would be all
right . Then it looked to me l ike we were closing
rather rapidly. So I thought we were going to get
next to it and then we were going to be all right.
'I'he reason I felt this was because I could see the
two lights . It must have been rotating in such a
manner that I could see the two lights . Almost
every fifth or tenth time they blinked I could see
them . I could see two of them . So I knew by the
distance that we were in quite close and everything
looked pretty good then . And then for a long ,
long, long period of time after that I never
--- PAGE 72 ---
saw two lights again . I don ' t lmow if you did or
not . I kept looking and there was a single light
and a single light and a single light, and I
didn't lmow where I was with respect to the boos
ter . And then I started getting the impression
without really seeing the double lights , I guess,
that it was going away very rapidly . Maybe I did
see two lights and I just don ' t remember it now.
White My impression was that the light was getting
fainter .
McDivitt I think that must have been it . I think that
must have been it. But all of a sudden I got the
impression that it was leaving me at a rapid rate .
I It wasn't that easy to see . During the few times
that the booster was up against the sky back-
I ground it was easy to see , but when it was down
against a ground background, it was very difficult
to see . I think it was just before we got to Car
narvon that I felt we were in good shape . And then
as we passed Carna rvon , I remember calling I could
see the lights of the city. Well, during this
period of time all of a sudden I thought it was
starting to pull away again. So I started
thrusting at it again . And I never really got the
~itAL
--- PAGE 73 ---
EONftE>ENllAL.. 65
double blink of the lights for a l ong , long, long
time. And finally I thought I could see them
blinking again, and they were a lmost a single
light this time since they were so far away. And
this occurred over a very short period of time .
TRn minutes? Five minutes?
White Yes .
McEivitt Is that right? Whatever you think, Ed .
White Yes . I fully agree wit} you.
McDivitt So then I said to Ed, "I ~hink we are losing it ."
So I started thrusting a t it again. All of a
sudden it was apparent that the thing wasn't as
close as it had been. So we started thrusting
at it .
White In fact, that was one time you said we had lost it,
didn't you?
McDivitt I said I think we have lost it . I had it in
sight. I didn't saj that I had lost sight of it.
White I thought you meant you had lost sight of it.
McDivitt No. I still had it all the time.
White But it wasn't getting any bigger.
McDivitt I didn't have e:n:y idea in the world where we were .
And I still couldn't really tell. Finally , we
could see the sky starting to get a little gray
~NflDENTb\L
--- PAGE 74 ---
66 GOt\fPID Etft+A L
and I thought at least we were going to get to see
where t he t hing was. And all of a sudden the
booster came out just like that, and you could
see it . The lights disappeared and there was the
booster. It was ·2 or 3 miles away, I'll bet .
White You asked me there and I estimated 1 1/2 miles .
McDivitt So , it had gotten that far away in such a short
time, and it was down . I think what really gave
me the clue that we were losing it again was that
I had it on the horizon and it had sta~ted going
down below us .
White Right . It looked like it was about 30 degrees
below --
McDivitt It started going down again . And I could see it
was coming down below the horizon , so I knew that
I wasn't right with it . But I wasn't really sure
how far away I was so I did thrust a couple of
times--a foot/second or so--to make sure I always
had a closing velocity with it . And finally I
got the thing down . It was down so that when it
came out it wasn't directly below me ; it was out
in front of me and down again . And like Eli said,
I guess it was down about 30 degrees .
White That's what I ' d estimate .
--- PAGE 75 ---
67
C-Ol<fFJ0ENT1Ai.
McDivitt When it came out of the night and we saw it out ('"
there in the daylight- -
White Right . I ' d estimate 30 degrees down.
McDivitt It was above the horizon, just barel y . Or was it
above the horizon?
White No, it was below the horizon .
I ' d say it wasn't more than ten or twelve degrees
below the earth horizon , but below our local hori
zon . It was in the neighborhood of 30 degrees .
If you looked out level to what you would call
level--but you lmow the horizon tilts away from
you , so - - .
McDivitt So here again we were faced wi tr. the same kind of
problem- -to cater. up with the booster. _What I
should have done was to retrofire right then to
drop down , get a lower orbit, and come back up .
But we had to get to the booster right then or we
weren ' t going to get to it, becauae we had the
mission to take p~otographs of it across the
States . So I thought if I could close with it at
10 or 15 feet/second we could at least overcome
our problem. So I aimed behind it , so to speak,
and down , and I thrusted that way trying to get
enough closing velocity down and another one that
-E9NFJDE~llA~
--- PAGE 76 ---
68
eo~~FtOENllAL
would bring us up to it at the same time; but most
of the thrusting I did was down . Then we just
didn't gain on it . I s tarted thrusting retro
grade with my top thruster, but I was thrusting
more back and downward. I just absolutely could
not get down to the booster. It kept pulling
away and pulling away until by the time we got
to Hawaii .
White You were putting a lot of 6V i n there and we just
weren't doing anything . We just weren't making
any headway.
McDivitt It continued to pull away from us and it was
falling farther and farther below us until
finally--
White You put in about 40 feet/second to do something
with it and it hadn ' t changed a speck .
McDivitt By the time we got to Hawaii I told them I thought
we were having difficulty doing it . k:J.yway, I
had decided by that time that if we were going to
do the mission at all, the only thing we could do
would be to leave the booster. The fuel was
down to around 75 per cent on my 'gage and the
gage kept going up and down, so it wasn't a
heck of a lot of help . I had burned around 85 or
eor<IFIDE~~Tl:t\L
--- PAGE 77 ---
90 feet/second . I had numbers in all three of the
windows, and of course since I was changing atti
tudes and thrusting in different directions those
numbers were going all over the place . So I made
up my mind then that i t looked like a hopeless task
and that we had better stop this stuff or we were
going to lose all the fue l for the whole mission.
We probably wouldn't be able to catch it, and we
wouldn't be able to do what we were going to do .
I think the only thing we could have done to save
the whole thing would nave been for us just to go
forward on t he local horizontal and retrograde a
large amount on the order of 20 to 30 feet/second,
fall down below the thing and catch it .an orbit
or so later and actually perform rendezvous with
it . But because the flight plan was such that we
had to get all the EVA done in the first three
orbits , and because Chris and I had talked this
over and decided the EVA was the more important
of the two things , I felt t hat the best thing to
do woul d be to abandon trying to catch up with
the booster.
White Let me interject something else , too . See if you
had the same feeling . I had the feeling that the
~QNFIDENT.IAL
--- PAGE 78 ---
70
booster orbit had changed so much with respect to
our orbit that if we really went down after it, it
might jeopardize our lifetime .
McDivitt Honestly , I was concerned about that too , because,
remember , I called and asked what the heck our
orbit was right then . The booster looked like it
was going down at such a rapid rate . By the time
we got to the States I would guess it was 5
miles below us at least.
White My impression was even more . I thought maybe it
wasn't more a t the time but it was going more . I
felt that if we really got back with tbe booster we
might have a pretty good orbit , but we would be
down in the neighborhood of 130 and this wasn ' t
the altitude we wanted to be, . ,for. the six- day
lifetime that we wanted.
McDivitt The other thing tha t bothered me was that we were
going toward perigee where we should have been
coming back together . And we weren't. We were
pulling away so fast that it wasn't even funny .
Frankly , I just couldn't figure out what kind of
orbit the booster was in. It looked to me like ,
if we were having trouble , the place where we
should have been the farthest from it was at Car-
C.O f)J FID E~tt IA L
--- PAGE 79 ---
eo,~FtDENTIA'l 71
narvon . Apogee should have been far t hest apart .
Our perigee should have been closest together .
It was almos t opposite . We were with it at
Carnarvon , but we wer e way far away from it and
getting f arther away from it as we crossed the
United States , or Mexico, or wherever we came. I
wasn' t looking out at the scenery; I was looking
a t the booster . It.was extremely difficul t to
t rack across the water and as we got to t he land
it was almost an impossibility to track it , Here
the distance i s extremely difficult to judge . It
It could have been anywhere from 5 to 15 miles
directly below us a t this time . If I had a range
rate I could have told where I was all the time
and with range rate I would have been able to
rendezvous with it from a mile . I could have
done the things I lmew had to be done , rather than
try to do it .forcefully . I sort of feel the big
prob lem was that we were so optimistic for those
first three orbits that it is almost unbelievable .
It became apparent when we tried to do the EVA
that we couldn ' t do it in the t ime allotted. But
anyway,I had dec ided by the time we had gone by
Hawaii, or wherever it was a fter we had been in the
C-eNFIDE-NTIAl
--- PAGE 80 ---
72
daylight for ten minutes or so, that i t was hope
less, and I told that t o F.d . I told him I
thought we had lost the booster for good . I
don ' t mean I didn ' t s ee i t but t hat we weren ' t
goi ng to get back down to it . He a greed with me .
White Yes.
McDivitt I think I could have gotten to the booster i n a
dignified , normal , slow , easy manner if we di dn ' t
have the constraint on us of being next to the
booster in the first daylight pass over the States,
and taking pictures , prepare for the EVA , and be r eady
to emerge from the spacecr aft an hour after we
came out of t he daylight on our first pass , which
was about two hours i nto the flight . I just fe lt
that if I had had more time, I could have gone
ahead and done some of this without using brute
force to overcome the difference between the
booster and myself. I could have gone into a
l ower orbit and chased it t hat way . I could have
just gone horizontal and r etrofired and f a llen
away from the thing initially and caught back up
with it l a ter on , but it was getting so far a way
from us to start with that to purpose ly put your-
self fart her a way from it so that you could catch
eor'4FIDEMT+AL
--- PAGE 81 ---
JeG~-1DENT-IA~ 13
up l a ter on was not the thing to do. We had to be
all done at a certain time. We had to be with the
booster when we came back into daylight. That was
it ; that was the thing . We had to be with the
boos t er , because we had to take those pictures .
Then we had to be with the booster again an hour
and a half after that so that we could do the EVA
right next to it . And with those kinds of time
constraints you don ' t have time to perform a ren
dezvous . You've got to get with it right then, but
we just couldn't get with it right then .
\
White You know another thing too ; I'm darned glad we
didn ' t use any 10 feet/second initially to sepa
rate with. I think we could have used something
in the terms of 1 or ·2, feet/second and that
would have been fine. Don"-' t you?
McDivitt I cut it short . I only burned about 5 seconds,
and I stopped.
White You have been doing that in all your simulations
so I knew you were going to do that . You can even
cut it less . It was amazing to me the sepa r a tion
you get i mmediatel y.
McDivitt I t almost seemed like we had a posigrade rocket
on the spa cecraft and a retrograde rocket on the
GQ;NFt0ENllA~
\
--- PAGE 82 ---
74 C.Qt~FIDEtfflAt'
booster, the way we separa ted . Well, anyway , we
told Guaymas that we had to ge t resolution i mme
diately if they wanted us to continue to chase the
booster because we had used a lot of fuel and we
weren ' t getting any closer and it was still
pulling away from us . If they wanted to go for i t
they had to make up their minds and we would
really go after it . But I didn ' t think it was
wise . They confimed this and said,'Knock it off!'
For cloeing rates at rendezvous, I t hink you could
handle 20 , 30 , 40 feet/second if you are coming
at it , not if you are gomg away from it . You
see we never got a chance to do a rendezvous . We
never rendezvoused with it . The best thing we
ever did was to get close enough to it where I
could at least say I was at the same a l titude with·
it for a change . It was the fi r st t ime I had
gotten back to tee same altitude since we left it
at insertion . Yoo just can't equate it. You
don't do an optical rendezvous with the booster
below you . You try to put it above you so you
have the stars and the sky background. It was
below us . You couldn't do any line· of· sight
nulling because there wasn't anything to null the
--- PAGE 83 ---
H)EN=ttAL 75
line of -sight w:ith . On the other hand I found
that if the sun was on the window you couldn't see
beyond the nose of the spacecraft . This satellite
that I saw over around Ha¼~ii--I saw the thing
and we were closing on it. We might have had a
better rendezvous with it than with our own booster .
We were closing on it and I was concerned enough
that I checked to see where the a . c. Fower Switch
was to see if I had maneuver capability at the
time : The •• sun came across the window and I
lost it just like that . It might have been 5·
miles out. I don't knov•. It might have been then.
It might have been 50 miles out, but I had the im
pression in the 30 or 40 s econds I saw it that it
was quite close because I could make out the shape
of it. Shoot! The sun came across the window and
that was the last thing I saw out the window. I
never saw another thing out the window until we
were gone and until the sun finally came off the
window. So, if you are doing an optical r endez
vous and you've got the sun on the window, I don't
know what you'd do.
White And if you have as dirty windows as we had-- our
windows had a white film of material on the
GeNFIDENTIAt....
--- PAGE 84 ---
76 CO t#iDEN Tl,c\ I,,..
outside , which made it very difficult to see out
when the sun's rays reflected on these particles
that were on the outside of the windshield .
McDivitt To just summarize this thing , I think that we
came off the booster with a fully unknown relative
velocity which was much greater than what we
anticipated, and it didn't seem to be an inplane
relative velocity. It didn ' t seem to be an inplane
local horizontal relative velocity. It was out-of
plane and it looked like the booster headed down ,
with respect to us because i t started separating
from us so rapidly , I t a l so had less total velo-
city. I think that this was the first sur-
prise . It started tumbling and immediately the
rates built up in just a· very few minutes to
something very high-- 40 to 50 degrees/second--
but it never got any higher , at least the best we
could tell . When we last saw it over Mexico or
over southern United Sta tes it was still tumbling
at about the same rate , I guess around 40 or 50
degrees/second. I felt tret I got down to it all
right and I was in reasonably good shape prior to
Carnarvon, and from that time on until we came out
of the darkness I lost it , And I think I lost it
--- PAGE 85 ---
£0N·~ll;)ENTIAl- 77
because looking at a single light at night doesn't
give you any depth perception at all. You just
don't know where the booster is . I think that
summarizes it . Ed, you want to add anything? You
weren't watching it as much as I was , but you saw
enough of it to know exactly what was going on.
White Well, you see I wasn't able to put the pieces
quite together because I was either looking out,
and I couldn't see when you were thrusting, or I
was looking in and watching you when you were
thrusting and listening and not looking out . I
tried to interJect my thoughts as we went along
and I agree with what you said. I don't believe
I want to add anything else.
McDivitt Now that we've covered the tracking and the los ing
of the booster, I think we ought to go back to the
very beginning a t insertion and we will go through
the checks that we went through as we proceeded
along and the things t hat F,d and I were both doing
aside from tracking the booster, the things that we
were either doing to prepare to come back in at
area 2-1 or t o stay in orbit and proceed with
the FNA as we had planned, In looking over the
fl i ght plan that we had and the briefing guide on
1tONf'IDENTIAt
--- PAGE 86 ---
78
page six,I have already covered the things on
platform alinement. I did not have time to aline
the platform. I tried to get it to somewhere near
the local horizontal so that in case we had to do
a retrofire I ' d be able to do the Etrofire . I
brought the spacecraft up to a pitch attitude that
I hoped was zero,but I never got the spacecraft
alined to see that it was zero. So we really went
into this thing without my ever having seen a zero
pitch a ttitude on the spacecraft . Obviously
I didn ' t get a chance to see the 30 degree pitch
down on the retrofire attitude. I didn't really
have time to look out the window and do a single
thing that would have prepared us to reenter at
2- 1 because we were so busy keeping track of--
\ White You know another thing I ' d say also is that we
I
were eternally optimistic. We felt we were going
~ to aline the platform and watch the booster at the
same time .
r:IcDivitt As a matter of fact, while I was trying to get the
alinement it became apparent to me that I could not
aline it. I even thrusted vertically--
--- PAGE 87 ---
79
McDivitt I was in a horizontal position and I thrusted
down using my top thrusters , so that I would
try to keep the booster in my view. Thrusting,
chasing the booster , and alining the platform
all at the same time-- those are the kinds of
things you have to do . So, I never did get the
platform alined . I did not have time . I got
it somewhere near local horizontal . If I was
within pl us or minus 5 degrees in the axis , I
think I did a reasonably gooi job , The
Thruster Control Mode Checks that took place at
15 minutes I didn't do as such . I would just
thr ow it into a different mode and thrust . I
just did it with a catch~as~atch-can . I did
check out the different modes .
White Everything seemed to be working . You weren ' t
getting My thrusters that weren ' t f iring, and
your modes all seemed to me to be working
pr operly .
McDivitt It looked pretty good.
White I had one comment on the Co~munic a tions System
Check . Remember we lost good communications
with No . 1 UHF and we switched to No . 2 and
seemed to have good communications with it
--- PAGE 88 ---
80
from th~~1 on? Now this wasn ' t representative
that we lost UHF No . 1 beca1lse w0 used bo:h of
the sets at different tiJWS throughout the
mj_ssion later 0:1 . But at this particula:-:- time ,
UHP 1 didn ' t give us good reception 13:1d we
swi t<~hed .
McDivltt I thought comm t"li :-:at.i::ms through the fi1•-it :liv
of the flight wi;re atrocious . They were
terrible . Finally we switcht~d to th•) .-~~en~ry
St ub Antenna and that seemed to fix L!w p:>oblern.
I
Didn t you thL1k so? But you know we went back
to reentry a n tenna, over Carna:::-vo:i one tine .
WH got just as good r~cept i ::>:1 o.ff of i t that
ti.me as we di.d any other ti-:ne .
White I remember when you were rnak i.ne- yo·.1r
Cornmuni catio:J.s Check. That wa.1 ·.-.r1hm I was
ai:;leep. You were ,;h ecki :,1g the two and you
end<id up with the r eentry antenna .
McDivitt Yes , later on in the flight , as I said, at the
end o.f the fi r. st d9-Y or :30.
Wh ite We seemed t o get better communications .
McDtvitt
fact , I W'.:iS a little concerned that the
comm..m icati.ons w1;re so lousy th~t W'; might h1we
ce~~FIDEl~T~L
--- PAGE 89 ---
81
to come back in, because we were really losing
communic ~tions . We were trying HF and all kinds
of things . Information just wasn't getting
up to us .
White That was after EVA.
McDivitt Right . Communications just weren ' t getting 11p
to us .
White I figured we didn't have any communications
with the ground during EVA.
McDivitt No, we didn ' t . Our VOX blocked t hem out .
Wh ite I know i t .
McDivitt But the Communications Systems Check that was
supposed to be performed at 15 minutes--
we sort of already acc omplished the thing,
because we 'd used UHF No . 1 and No . 2.
White I made the check with them.
McDivitt Did you make the check? -- that ' s right you made
the check but we didn ' t use the HF because we
weren't going to put the antenna out until after
EVA. We didn ' t do anything with the urine
bags except keep them right where they were .
White At this time we didn't pressure check both
suits , because we did this later .
McDivitt We didn ' t aline the platform , as I mentioned.
C:0NFt0ENlt~ L
--- PAGE 90 ---
82 GQ ~<IFIDEl>JT IA.L
The Control Mode Check was a catch- as- catch
can . You did unstow, the equip~ent that we
were supposed to unstow . The bl ood pres sure
bulb, the Hasselblad camera and its packs , a11d
a 16 mm camera. During this time when I was
chasing the booster , I did manage to get to
reach back behind my seat and pull out the
bracket for the 16 mm c amera. You tracked the
booster while I smoothed the thi.ng ou t .
White That I s right .
McDivitt We didn ' t get out the urine nozz l e . How about
the utility cord? Did you get out that fancy
utility 0ord , the three- axis utility cord?
White Yes, I knew where i t was. I didn't give it to
you beca~se you didn ' t need it .
McDivitt No , I didn ' t need it . That ' s right . As Ed
said, we did not pressure check our suits a t 30
minutes like we were supposed to .
McDivitt There ' s this little thing here that says meas11re
all LV~ . All I did was put the co~puter in
Catch- Up, hit the Start Comp button, and just
l et the numbers fall where t hey would . At the
time that we stopped chasing the booster around ,
I had about 60 f eet/ second in one window,
C-O~ ◄ Ftf}EMTIAL
--- PAGE 91 ---
03
-€0Nf-U)ENT1Al
30 in another , and 30 in another. I never really
ea..11e to a posi tio:1. to try to ni1ll all these
things out to see what the total 6V was . I
was putting in the thrust with mostly the aft
thrusters and the down-firing top thruster.
I don't think I used the left and right thruster,
at all. I don 1 t think I used the bottom
thurster at all . There was no difficulty
controlling a~y of them . I used the forward
firing thrusters once or twice to try to slow
dow:i, to take out total velocity.
McDivitt Then there was the Accelero~eter Bias Check
which was another one of those things. I don't
l
know hon I let it get into the flight plan .
White We both joked about that one , huh , Mac? We
were really going to get an Accelerometer
Check when we were trying to track the booster.
McDivitt I was putting 1 6V ' s on the IVI 1 s at a rate of a
foot per minute at least. We ended up with over
a foot per minute, I think , over that period
I 1
of time . We couldn t have checked anybody s
accelerometer bias, so I just didn't even fool
around with it . We were supposed- to take a
blood pressure. Did you take that blood
~ F.10ENTIAL
--- PAGE 92 ---
84
OONFIDEN I I.A:L
pressure , Ed?
White Yes .
McDivitt You did ta!<e the blood pressure .
White I think I did. I had it out . I don ' t know
whether they asked for it or not .
McDivitt Okay.
White I don 1 t remember on that .
McDivitt Okey . We got the ~antity Read off . I guess
we got a t.ime hack so:newhere in there .
White They called up I believe. I remember them calling
the Quantity Read- Off, and I t urned it 0?~'.
McD.ivitt That's right.
McDivitt Then it says at one hour we were supposed to
W1stow and assemble the maneuvering unit in its
16 m:n mount. I don ' t think we had that stuff
out by then , did we?
White No .
McDivitt You see , this whole flight plan was based on me
being able to track the booster witho~t using
any thrust , a~d essentially having the space
craft stationary near the booster, without
any maneuvering at all , where the station
keeping was a matter of just looking out at the
thing and co:1.trolling your attitude with pulse .
--- PAGE 93 ---
85
We thought that if the booster was stationar~
we could get in close to it . We could
essentially fly a formation by it with mo~e
a:titude co:1trol than translation control ,
which l eft me then free to help F.d assemble al l
this stuff for the EV~. Well , it turned out that
I didn ' t dare take my eyes off the booster for
half a second . So all tne things that we were
supposed to do together up until the t ime we
f inally said goodby to the booster , Ed had to
accomplish himB11lf . I was completely unable to
help him. The only thing I ma.~aged to do was
to unstow the 16 lllDl camera bracket and put the
16 mm camera on.
White I ~ouldn ' t quite get at that one .
McDivitt No . I could nardly get to it . So we w~re
probably behind at t he hour mark. Right?
White Yes .
McDivitt Not by an awful lo ~.
White I knew we had a probl em with the booster , and I
was more concerned with our problem with the
booster t han getting the gun and stuff o:it
then . I f elt that they w~re both tied together
and onc e w~ l ost t he booster we didn ' t have a
EONFIDEN:f.lAt"
--- PAGE 94 ---
86
sweat time-wise on making o:1r EVA. So , I was
trying to be of what assistance I could to Jim
on watching the booster during these first ...
critical periods.
McDivHt Yes. It wasn ' t unappreciated because this
booster was becoming a speck on the horizon , and
if you blinked your eyes you co:1ld very well lose
thn dar.r1 thi "lg .
W"nite When wa were out that seconi day, I think you
said one tiine you did. lose it for a minute.
McDivi t t Tha~' s right .
W!1ite I was lucky enough to still be seeing it , un~il
yo .i started picking it up again .
0
McDivitt That ' s r.·I.ght . So, I'm saying it really took
t ~o pairs of eyes constantly looking at that
booster to keep it in sight. It's juAt one of
those thingH that just took so much time thkt
we hadn ' t planned on. It was almost unbelievable .
McDivitt In o:.ir flight plan from an ho:.ir to at1 hour and
twenty minutes we don't really show a'.1.ything.
Although, here again , we were busy with the
booster. So, when we got l:l.1'.'0und to closing with
the boost~r , there wasn't any closing. We
finally got clearance over the United States to stop
L
--- PAGE 95 ---
~Ot~R0ENrtAf~ s1
fooling with the booster . I think this was ·.t.n
extremely wise dP.cisioo .
McDivltt I got to Guaymas and I said the booster was
pull ing aw,zy from us . We ' d already used abo~t
100 6.V to stay with it , and I r ecommended
that w~ just give up on it . We had to get a
dee ision imm, idiatel y because I couldn ' t stay
0
with it and 11ot use f\1el at the same t Lme . They
came back from Texas. I talked to Guaymas and
got their confirmation from Texas , which was
only a "Tlatter o.f a couple of m'i.nutes , saying
leave the booster . Th9.t was about the only
thing tney could 3ay .
Wnite And this was the time I went aft er the gun .
McDivitt Okay . At th9.t time we reve.rted fror:i station
keeping , which we were both attempting to do
to EVA preparation, which we both had to do .
I
Thats when Ed went after the gun, and we
st8J'.'ted our ...,c,.;pa::at.i.0.11. We wc-::-do ' t .rea1 ly
far bt-~h..:.nd llt this time . All WH had to do was
get the gun out and get the m!'l.neuvering unit .
The cameras we·c(: already out . You had the
Zeiss too , didn ' t yo~?
-E0NFIDENTJAL
--- PAGE 96 ---
88
White Yes . The Zeiss came out with the Hasselblq,d ,
from that S3Jlle package as the movie ca:nera.
And the storagf~ certainly wan :i l ::>t easier .
What do you think?
McDiv"a t t Tbat ' s right .
White Particularly getti~g it out that center thing.
You can just zip :hem o:.it of there with no
probl 1Jra ;lt all.
McD:ivi tt So, a~ about 1 : 30 we started to assHmble the
gun . If you look at the checklist, yo:.i see
that we probably gcit the gun assembled :Ln
nothbg na.t .
White It 1 s no problt:im to assemble the gun .
McDivitt We started our eg:-ess preparations essentially
on time . As a mattHr df fact , I think we evtm
got star ted a little earlier.
White Then, we weren ' t worrying abo-;.1t anythi11g else .
McDivltt Then , we w:ren I t worrying abo·J."!; staying with
the booster. We probably started it abo~t 1:35
or 1: 40 . Over the States we started our ~gress
preparat io~. We went to our .Jther checklist .
White You were o,•er Ascension , calling off the check
list.
McDivitt I sta::ted reading the checklist off to Ed and
COl>IFJBEN+iN.
--- PAGE 97 ---
EO·MFIDENTIA't:- 89
we w1:nt through it . He unntowed evet'ything.
Why don ' t you tell them what you did there, Ed?
I just read the checklist off to you , and you
went a.head and riid i.t.
White Okey . I had to get bar.k .i.11":o the r"ight -h.md
box, and I un:=i tow0d the item:, there . The
first time I went back in there , I took the
firs t items out, and I did :1 ot unstow the full
II
box . I rem,~mher I told you, It I s all comi.r1g
out , Jim. I ' m gol11g to bring them all out on
the 19.11yard. " Remember?
McDivitt Right .
White We'd tak~ them o~f piece by piece if we n eed it .
At that tim,1 I pill lfld the wh0l,'! lanyard out and
the cockpit was full of little bags . I was qu.ite
happy that they had prevailed upon me to put
a lanyard on all th is equipment . I had thought
at one time that it woulri be mvt'd des iri-:l,bl ~ not
to p,1t a lanya.rcl on . We 'd been wo:::-k.ing a lot
in our sim11lations without the lanyard and it
seemed pretty easy . But looking at it now, I
highly recom..n~nd that eve r-ybody k,-lep that stuff
on a l anyard .
McDiv.i.tt We would have r eally had a mess if we ' d had all
-€0NFl0ENflAt· --
--- PAGE 98 ---
90
those thitJ.gs floating ar.ound . It was bad
eno~gh as it was .
Wnito Yes , eight or ten of those little bags , and I
was glad they were all tied Jn to Jne string.
I could con trol them in t hat manner . They were
quite simple to U'lsn3.p . I thought the snap
attachmP-nt made it p:::-etty easy to UtJ.stow , and
selectively pick o~t the items that I wa~ ted .
I unstowed the pouches that I needed, and then
we g,)t ready to tak~ the long um'J il ical out . I
h'ld a little difficulty . It toJk m~ about
three trys to get it out . It ' s f airly big
package to come through a small hole . It was a
good thing th~t we had tak~n the Velcro off of
the batch , beoause t here was no tendency for
any th i. ng to hang up as w,~ remewed it . On the
third try I got it out .
McDivltt I thought yo~ did an extremely good jJb getting
the bag ou~. You got it out a l ot quicker than
TC'ai.nec in Houston or in the simlll ator at the
Cape .
Whi t e You didn ' t know it . It took m.1 th:::-ee tr.rs .
McDivitt Wall , maybe it did , but it sure l:,okH i like it
1
CQtqffDfNTtAtl
--- PAGE 99 ---
C~Ptl)E~TIAL 91
camP. out a lot eaf-Jier. I thought you got it out
in a big hurry . I didn ' t notice that it took
yo:J. three trys . I saw you stat't, and then jllst
a f-Jhort t.i.m,1 la7-er, it was out .
White Well , it d:id come out pretty easy , and I think
the storage was .satisfactory , bllt I ' d
certainly reco1nm,1ricl thA.t noth.i "lg b ~) on ';ht1
outside to k~ep it from coming vllt. It's a
real tough--
McDivltt Yes , we need the velcro off of there . We ' re
pretty wd 1 sure of tha-~ .
White The reGt of the ::iquipm•:111';- the " y" con:1ectors ,
the bag thA.t contained the "y" connectors , and
the attachments for the chest pack , I handed
to yot1 . I thi'lk you wi;c~ k:➔ep.L ,1g tra,)k of most
of those things 1mtil the time I needed them .
McDivitt Yes , I was .
Waite The storage of the ventilation module froc:i the
fioor came off pr~tty easily. That ' s when 1
started goi!'lg ahead ;md putting it all on . You
read the checklist off to me. I had gone
ahead. and done a few things anyhow . As you
read them off I checkP.d them off to be sllre
that I had done them all . I think we h-':l.d
4€0NflDENTIAb
--- PAGE 100 ---
92 cor ◄ FIE>f~IAL
everything out without m~ch problem at all . I
think it took •ls longer actually to p1lt it
all together. .
McDivitt That ' s right . It d id . We started going
through the checklist here and putting the
things on and W'3 started getting more and more
rushed . We were supposed to s tar. t the E[,rress
Preparation Checklist at abo:it 1:44 . We
probsbly sta::-ted it at about 1: 35 or so . We
started it about 10 minutes early, roughly ,
maybe five to 10 min1tes early. We were
supposed to be ready to start the depressu r.a7,a
tion at 2: 30 over Carnarvvn .
White I think I could h.3,ve gone through ari:i l1ook2d
ev8.rything all up , but I felt that we should
go -:hc:-ough fairly close to the p~ocedure w1; had
set up on the checklist.
McDivitt That I s r igh t .
White I think this slowed us down .
McDivitt Well , we set tht, procedure up so tha~ when we
finished wlth it, it would be right . I think
this helter- sk8lter thing that we were being
forced into was for the birds. So an Ne g0t
farther al:mg , it beca;n,~ .:i.ppar,mt to nt, that
eot~Ftl:>ENll-AL
--- PAGE 101 ---
~ I DEN f ~kl111 93
the thing to do wo~ld be to stop .
White Right .
McDivltt Go aht-,acl with the assembly of the stuff . Why
d-:m 1 t you cor.1:nP.n~ on that?
White I I ve co;::rnt'.!nted in my Self Debr: ~efing aboc1t th,?
equipment and the assembly of it . I thought
thec-e was no d-i.fficul ty at all in conrn-,cti 1g
the "y" connectord, the hoses, anj the chest
pack . I thought the connection of th•e chest
pack to 11\Y harness was a good o~e . With the
velcro I could m•, we it in and -:)Ut wheneve.c I
waa~ed to s:) th at I could mak~ '!\}' connec tiorrn
on the i,il,?t side of the ECS hoses . It w.mt
along pretty smoothl y , as a matter of fact . I
think as we progressed along in it though , we
I
felt tha~; we hA.Cl r3ve.cythi'.'.lg d,me . I didn t
rea.11.y feel that; w: hail 13verything done 1,n a
thorough manner . And I think yo'J. had that sarnr~
feel i.ng.
McDivlH That ' s right . Wnen W8 got to Kan:) or Tana1.,;1.r·Lve
- ~I th::nk it was TananR:-'l. ve --I cal'led whoe ver
I was talking to and sai<l that we were :rLl.Ilfl.i.ng
late and I thought that we would probably not
do the EVA on thi.s particular .cev . I krtew thn,t
• CONFIDENl~At
--- PAGE 102 ---
94
l:,okl~d to 1:1,? l i.kc~ we had ,il 1. the stuff hookr.d
I
up , but Wf; hl3.dn t really had a chance to check
it . I also noticed , Ed , that you W':re gr~tting
this whol ~ thing off . So I tol d them over
Tananar.ive- -I believe it was Tan~n~rive- -that
dP.pressurize at the ne xt station . We went on
ahead and it looked to me like yo~ were all
hooked up and 9.bo11 t ready to g';) except for. <me
thing.
Wh::.t':l W,~ for.got tht1 thi~rm.-.11 glOV':~ . I d i.i not have
my ther.,n.-tl. gloves on .
McDivitt You did not have the the::-m.,l gloves oa , which
is aor t of insigaif icant , but we hadn ' t really
sure that l t wa.~ l.n t"le ri.gh":; sp-:,t .
Wh ite w,~ l l , we talked a~d yo:.1 said , "~9.t d,:, you
think? " We talked it over:- and I had the same
feeling . I though":: it sur.e wo~lld oe sm,1.r t if we
had abo11t W rni'lntes to just; sit her~ r,➔ al still
€eNft0EN=J:l-AL
--- PAGE 103 ---
CONFIDE~il~l- 95
befoce we go out .
McDivitt I think w~ w·are in a situation w~ere it would
probably hava gone all right . We hr-ui cor:ipl,3ted
hai rlo:w as far as the check.i.'lg w~nt , and I
juat di:in 1 t feel th'3.t we were i11 the right
shape . Ed didn't think we were , and besides , I
I
could see Bd. He coul,ln t see himself . ~d
look'.-!d a.wf.1lly hot , s.rvl h;? l:iokt~d like he wa:1
0
getting a little pooped out from playl ng c1..-:-01md
with that big suit . I tho~ght that the best
thing for his sake , e.nd I kn~w h~~ ·t1oul<'l.n ' t
ad.mi-'.; i. t , wa~, to l13t him r~st up for anot'1er
o.cb i. t .
White I agree that was the best judgment .
McDivitt So , when w~ go-t to ~arnarvon--I g,1ess i t was
Carnarvon--I cal led them A. 'ld sa.:i.n r,m wc-Jra not
goi:1g !;o co □c out on tha:': or':>:. t .
Whit9 It wa,, Carr1arv0n . It was just before we
McDivitt So , we postponed it until the next orbit . As a
matter of fact , after that w~ j1rnt sat ther::! .
We d idri I t dn a thi-ig for abor.1: 10 mi.nutes . I
let Ed cool off a li.ttle bit . We were on two-
EON~l(;)ENTIAL
--- PAGE 104 ---
96
fa'1 o;>eration ,q,-: the time. We j·.1st sat there
and we were cooled o.! 'f . We went ~o,x1.d for
White Okey . The.n as w~ wr:n '; back around , I asked yo,J.
to go thro:;.gh the checklist ag-'3.in , a "'.ln. ·,m wen';
through item by item this time .
McDivltt
bi.11-:k to the beg-Lrming checkl i.st , the EgL·ess
Prepa':.'ati:>n Checklist . We started at the
top 0111; , and we dU. every step on it again .
We verified e ve ry s tep to make s1u·e ,rn hr-tdn ' t
left an;rthi--ig out .
WhL te We actually went in ~d check8d t hi s time .
Another thi ng ,m ha<ii'i' t r eally positively
check9d was the posi tio11 of all the locks on all
of the hose i.n~e ts and o•J. t.l ,~ ts . This time ·,,e
ac t ually chi,ck~d .<J.11 those lock~d . Al 1 of them
W<:'t'e locked in , but it was a good t hing to do,
I believe .
McDivitt You want to rnakA sure . We di:i d o ou:r Suit
h-tegi.'ity Check hefor,~ we started a ll this stuff .
Wo.ite That ' s rigbt . We started before we actually went
to the unstowing of the stuff from the right-
hand a f t fo od bo:x. We went to the S:1i t
GOr~Fl0EN-ltAL
--- PAGE 105 ---
eo~+F-10-EN.TJAL 97
It1 ~2gt'-i. ty Check .
McD:ivitt Well , I don ' t know 'tihere it is , but we did it
when we were s 111)posed to d·::> it .
McDivitt We did the .&lit I ntegrity heck befo:ce we
started the .Egt•e ss Pr~paration 0he.-;klist .
That ' s when ·,.e did it , over the States .
White I think we d-Ld thA.t just about the t .ime you
decided to give up on the booster . We di1 the
Suit In~egTi.t;y Check . Both suits checkHd ::>ut
all right . I t we nt up to 8.5 and it leaked
do~ to about 8 . 3 Qr som,,thing l i.kH that .
McDivitt Same thing with mine . It went up to 8. 5 and
laak1--?d down ju:1t a little bit . Not enough
to ~e concerned about .
White No . Oh , one thing that we d id do on that extra
orbit that w~ went around -- I discon_~ected the
.0epress 0ystem 1ind we Wf.: mt back nn the--
McDi vitt Oh , yes . We never e ·.ren got on the .;·_e press
system, di.d we?
White Yes , I be lieve w•~ were , but then we turned it
off . We w~re already to depressurize and then
wcj wimt back on the spacecraft ECS system, full,
and ~ent through and reverified the whole
checklist again . The onl y thi 1gs that I would
(;6)N.f-lDENTIM
•
--- PAGE 106 ---
98
I
say we h~dn t done to ffi3" sati.sfacti.,_.,n t"le fi.r;;t
time ,1as t:J check the inlet an<l 011tlet positions
o f the locks , and I didn ' t have my tho?rmal
gloves on . It turnAd out I didn ' t need them .
McDivitt Also , d 1r.i11g this pe.clod of timr-i 1 R..l i.ned. tht,
pL1tfor1n, ;.rh.i.ch war. ~onpl ~ tely in .i. s:i1 i.nP.d . It
w:.:1s probably alined within a c-:iuple d,=1g1.-ees ,
but as we went a-r.ou:'1d in Orbit Rate it g0t
farthP.C' anrt farther 0;1-'; of tol?r-:in.~e . So , I
m:uvv~d ·to a 1 .i.1e the pl-:i.tfo.rra. Here agllin , I
m.i..ght com,1.mt on the fan t that ou:::- in i ti,9.l
flight plan was so optimistic that it was
almoat unbelievable . The both o~ ua wurk~d full
time :>n doing r 10 tn; 'lg ex•)ept pc,~par.ine for EVA,
aJ1.11 we dldn ' t quite gHt thA job done . I ca11 ' t
believe that we could ·'lA.ve poss ibly flown
f o:-mation w:i. th the booster and taken pictures
of it and all the other thi 'lgs t:i.at we had
and even comH close to compl-? ting it .
White Well , the way we wo11ld h'3.ve had to do it, would
have been witho11t a checklist . I would h~va had
to just go ahead :.md ~1:>ok c~verything •... p . I
think tl'J could 111-w-3 do,w it satisfact)rily l-i
C~~ftDEN-l+AL
--- PAGE 107 ---
EONfl0ENTIAL 99
this manner , but it wouldn ' t have been the way
we would have wanted it .
McDivitt Yes, that ' s right . I don't think that ' s the
way it should be done . It was just too bad
that we had a time limit on it , but when we did
get rid of the booster, or the booster no
longer became a part of the flight plan , then the
time limit vanished. We found out that we
really needed that extra orbit, or probably could
have used another 20 minutes.
White Yes. We went back. And I remember as we came
over Carnarvon, we had about a 15 minute chat
back and forth- kind of a rest period . We
were all hooked up at that time , and that ' s the
time we went on the ~epress flow, ready for the
depressurization . I think they gave us a GO
then for our EVA.
McDivitt That ' s right . We depressurized the cabin and
got down to 2 psi to check our blood pressure .
We tried to put our blood pressure plugs in
the blood pressure plug port and found out that
we didn't have any blood pressure plugs on
e ither- suits . This was quite a surpri se . An
unpleasant one , I might add . Well , we dec i ded
--- PAGE 108 ---
100
that from our past experience and our
knowledge of the suit that even if we did
spring a leak in the blood pressure cuff the
size hole that we had in the suit would not be
catastrophic , and we decided to go ahead with
the EVA.
White It was within the·capability of the syst em we
were using.
McDivitt At Carnarvon we not onl y got the go- ahead to
start t he depressurazation , we also got the go-
ahead to open up the hatch , the go- ahead that
we weren ' t supposed to get until Hawaii . So ,
- - .______
we went ahead and did that .
White Yes . I ' m kind of curious of the whole time . We
were out nearly an orbit , I think . We didn ' t
get it closed back again till we got back around
to Carnarvon .
McDivitt We were in a whole orbit depressurized .
White Yes , I don ' t think people quite realize that .
McDivitt We ' ll remind them . As we got to the hatch
opening t hi ng , we had our first difficulties
with the hatch . The gain gear , I guess you want
to call it--actually I call it the ratchet
didn ' t want to engage into the UNLOCK position .
--- PAGE 109 ---
101
We fooled with it a f ew times a~d it f inally
engaged in t he UID.iOCK position , and Ed was
able to go ahead and start .
White The first indication of trouble was when I
unstowed the handle to open the hatch . The
handle free ly moved up and dovm with no tension
on it at all . I knew righ t away where the
trouble was . It was up in that little spring
on the gain pawl . So , I went up and manipulated
it back and forth in hopes that I could break
the lubrication loose in the spring to get it
to work. We must have spent several minutes
with t he hatch. I thought perhaps it might
have been stuck in the manner that the hatch got
stuck in t he Wet MOc k , where it just was stuck.
You could ratchet it open , but the hatch itself
wouldn ' t open. It was pretty apparent the trouble
was in the gain pawl . I jimmied it back and
for t h, and then I decided to go ahead and try
the technique of actuating it in sequence
with the hatch handle . If you actually replaced
the operation of the spring with mechanically
moving the gain pawl up and down, you can do
the same work that the spring does .
EONFtDENTIA~
--- PAGE 110 ---
102
McDivitt Your fingers sort of take the place of the
spring and drive this l ittle pawl home .
White This is the first time we actually tried this
in a suit . It requires you to press up with
your left arm to get at the gain pawl, and at
the same time hold yourself down . And I think
l ater on t his was a source of some of our
problems whi ch I brought out now so that we can
find out later on. I f e l t it start to engage ,
and start to ratche t the lugs out . Jim also
verified that they were coming open. I backed
them off , and I remember Jim saying "Ooop ! Not
so fast !", and at t hat time it popped . The
hatch actually popped open , jumped open about
3 or 4 inches .
McDivitt I was expecting the hatch t o come open with a
bang. Although we had the cabin to vent and it
had bled on down to where there was nothing
indicated on the Cabin Pressure Gage , we still
really had the repress valve on. He was
bleeding right into the spacecraft . We never
got down to a vacuum and even though we had a
cabin pressure of only a tenth of a psi , we
spread it over t he entire area of that hatch,
OONFl0E~TV\L
--- PAGE 111 ---
103
and that puts a pretty good size forc e on it .
I had a real tight hold on the hatch closing
device , and when it popped open I was able to
snub it .
White It didn ' t really open with much force , did it?
McDivitt Well, it did. It opened with a fai r amount . It
popped and I couldn ' t stop it the first inch
or so . Then , of course , as soon as it opened
that much pressure bled off . I just sort of
snubbed the thing to keep it from fly ing all
the way open. Now if I hadn ' t been holding onto
it, I don ' t think it would have gone open more
than two or three feet .
White This is another point too . There ' s more force
on the hatch actuator than I thought . I didn ' t
just flip the door open with my hand . I had to
actually forcibly push it open , similar to the
forc e with which I opened the hatch laying on
my back under one ti g II . That ' s about the force
that I had to put on the hatch to open it .
McDivitt This extra force that we are talking about is
due to the 0-rings they put in the pyres that
are used for jettisoning the hatch . This is
something that they put in just before the
Ee-NFt0ENTIM.
--- PAGE 112 ---
104
OO~~FK:>fN--TIAL
flight . Something that we 'd gone out to the
spacecraft t o feel . We knew just about wh at t he
force was , but it was pretty high .
White Okay. At thi s time I had certain things that I
had to accomplish . I had to mount the camera
on the back of the adapter , and mount t he
umbilical guar d on the edge of t he door . I
elected, as I had pl anned , to go ahead and mount
the camera f irst and then the umbilical guard .
I mounted the camera and it went on without too
much difficulty. The t hree little lugs on the
bottom are a good mounting scheme . I think I
would make a littl e eas ier engaging device for
working out in a hard suit . I had familiarity
with it , and it did lock up there all right .
The umbilical guard for the umbi lic al on the
side of the door took me a little longer to
mount . Back to opening the hatch--I had the
thermal gloves on when we were opening t he
hatch , and because of the fine work I had to do
with the little gain and the drive lugs up
there , I had to remove the thermal gloves so
thtt I could actually actuate those small
l evers. I couldn ' t do them with any precision
EOl'JFIDEN+JAL
--- PAGE 113 ---
G()NFIE>ENTIAt 105
with my gloved hand . So, I took the thermal
gloves off at this time and I handed them to
Jim. When I got back out I didn't notice
any temperature extremes . I felt quite confident
that there wouldn I t be any heat since we just
came out of the dark side , so I decided to do
the actual work in putting this equipment on
with my plain pressure suit gloves . I had much
more feel with them . Let me get back now to the
umbilical guard on the door . I t went on pretty
well . It took me a little longer and it took
me four or five trys to get the little pin into
the hole that actually snubbed the guard down
on the door . I did something then that I
hadn ' t planned to do . The bag had floated up
and out of the spacecraft and now it was above
the point where the hose was going through the
umbilical guard . I had planned to keep it down
inside . I left it there for two reasons : (1)
I figured it was there already and I would have
had to take the umbilical cord off again and
scooted it back down , and (2) I also felt that
Jim might have had a better view if it wasn't
sitting right in front of him on the hose coming
CONflDENTIA~
--- PAGE 114 ---
106
up from th1~r ~press v ,1.lve . I elect ed to go ahead
and leave the bag there . I t hen reported to
Jim that I had everything all mounted and was
ready to go . I had planned to take a short
series of pictures. Since we had gotten out
early, I had a little extra time at this time ,
so I went ahead and turned the outside EVA
camera on . I took a short sequence of pictures
that actually gives the egress up out of the
seat . I kind of went back down and came out
again so they would get an actual picture
of it , and then I turned the camera off again .
I mounted the camera and I turned it on while it
was on the mount . I took a short sequence when
I asked Jim to hand me my l eft thermal glove ,
which he did . I put the thermal glove on while
the camera was running. I t urned back around .
I wanted to be sure the camera was off , so I
took it off the mount and I turned the camera
off and actually visually took a look to see if
the switch was off.
McDivitt Did you lmock it off one time? I thought you
said the camera f ell off .
GO MF tf}ENftA L
--- PAGE 115 ---
107
€0tt<tFIDENTIA-6 -
White By golly , I did . So I must of mounted it four
times . That ' s right , I knocked it off one time
during this time when I was out there . I got
the picture of the egress , and then I asked you
t o hand me the gun . At th is t i me the camera
wasn ' t running. I had the glove on my l eft
hand , and I went ahead and t ook t he gun and made
sure that it was ready to go. I had the
camer a on at that time and the val ve was on . I
checked the valve to be sure it was on and I
was essent iall y ready to go . I don ' t know how
l ong this took , but it took me longer than I
thought . We had had early egress and it wasn ' t
too much bef ore I got the GO t hat I was ready to
leave the spacecraft .
McDivitt I ' m not sur e whether we got that GO from
Hawaii or Guaymas . I sort of suspect that we
got that GO f r om Hawaii , not Guaymas as we had
originally planned .
White Well , it sure seemed short from the time I was
mounting all t hat stuff out there to the time
you told me go.
McDivitt That ' s right . I ' m sure we were talking to
Hawaii , and they said you ' re clear to proceed
-ee·NFI0EN1=·1Ab.
--- PAGE 116 ---
108
with EVA.
White And that ' s when I went . I bet we went out at
Hawaii .
McDivitt I think we went out at Hawaii.
White I delayed from the time you gave just a minute ,
long enough to actuate the camera on the
outside . This was kind of interesting. When I
actuated that camera, I had D\Y gun tied to my
arm with the tether . It floated freely to my
right . I turned back around and turned the switch
ON on the camera, and listened and made sure
the thing was running. I knew it was running,
and put it down. I think you 'll see t his on
the film. I wanted to be sure it was running
when I mounted it back there . I actually took
it off and turned it on, and I remember it
jiggling up and down when I was trying to stick
it on there . It ought to be a funny looking
film . And it might even show the gun floating
beside me as I was mounting it . That ' s when
you said, "Slow down. You ' re getting awfully
hot . " I was working pretty hard to get that
on. I mounted the camera again and this is
where I tried to actually maneuver right out
--- PAGE 117 ---
109
of the spacecraft . I knew right away as soon as
I got u~I felt even before - - that the technique
of holding on to the bar in the spacecraft and
sticking a finger in the RCS thruster wasn ' t
going to wor k . I mentioned that to Jim before -
that I didn ' t think I would be able to do it .
McDivitt I think that you and I both knew how you were
going to do, and ever-sbody else was planning for
us how we were going to do it , but without any
real experience in it. People. who didn I t know
a lot about it were planning this sequence a~d
it wasn ' t the way it should have been .
White I couldn ' t have done that . I didn ' t have three
hands . I couldn ' t hold the gun and put a
finger in the RCS nozzle , and hold the handle
at the same t.ime . I thought it would be more
d~sira.bl:'; anyhow to actually depart the space
craft with no ·.re locity, other than that imparted
by the gun. This is exactly what I did . I
thought t hat I was free of the spacecraft , and
I fired the gun. I real'i.zed that my legs were
still dragging a little bit on the side of the
seat , so I pulled myself out until I could
see that my feet 1vere actual l'•' on!; 0f the
--- PAGE 118 ---
110
CSl>,lflQEDlllA I
spacecraft . I think you called me and said I
was out of the spacecraft .
McDivitt I called and told you that you wer e cl,3n.r .
That ' s right .
White And that ' s when I started firing the gw:i a"ld
act~ally pr~pelled myself under the influence
of the gun . I don ' t believe I ga ve any input
into the spacecraf"t whm1 t 1,3ft that t Lne ,
did I?
McDivit t No , you left as clea,1 as a whistle .
White Later on , I gave you some pre tty big ones .
McDivitt You were re~lly boun0ing arou~d then .
White Now at the tjme, J l ef t entire ly under the
influence of the gun avid it 0arried me right
straight oat, a little higher tha"l I wanted
to go . I wanted to ma:.~euver over to your side ,
but I maneuv•;r~d out of the spacecraft and
forward ru1d pBrhaps a little higher· than I
wanted to be. When I got out; to whst I estimate • I
as p~obablyone- half or two-thirds the way out on the
tether, I was out past the nose of ·t'ne
spacec:::-clf t . I started a yaw to the left with
the gun and that ' s when I reported th~t the
gun r 8al1J worked quite well. I believe that I
--- PAGE 119 ---
111
~ONFl01:~TtAT
stopped that yaw, and I started t .1.·a.nsla:b.• 1-"'
back toward the spacecraft . It was either on
this translation or t~'1P. one following this that
I got into a bit of a combination of a pi·tcl-i
roll and the yaw together . I felt that I could
have corrected it , but I knew tha. t i.t ww.~d h av0
ta.-<e.'1 mor,-: f...i.el than I had wanted to expend with
the gun , so I gave a little tug Jn the tether
and came back in. This is the first experience
I had with tether dynamics and it brought me
right back to where I did not want to be . It
brought me right ba~k on the top of the sp~ce
craft , by the adapter section. Jim was
calling me and said that I was out of his sight .
I told him that I was all right , that I was up
above the spacecraft , I looked down and I could
see attitude thrusters firing , littl-~ white
puffs out o~ each o~e . I wasn I t very close .
They looked j ust like what Chamberlain ' s report
told us . It looked just like about a foot and
a half or maybe 2 feet of plume from the space
craft and certainly didn I t look omin-.11H.~ to me
at all . In fact it looked kind of like the
spacecraft was r eally alive and working down
<;.eN·FtDENTfA-t,.
--- PAGE 120 ---
112
CDr ◄ FIDiNI IAJ..
there . I knew Jim was doing his job holding
attitude for me .
McDivitt Let me comment on the attitude- holding right
now. Initially we started out in blunt-end
forward. banked to the left about 30 degrees or
so . This happened to be the attitude we were
in . We wanted to be bl u:~t- end- forward for the
sun . and they told me it didn ' t make any
difference what attitude that we were in when
we opened up the hatch . We had originally
planned on opening the hatch toward the ground .
I was CRlled by some station that said it didn't
make any difference what attitude I was in when
I opened the hatch . We opened the hatch . We
opened it in that particular attitude, and I
held the attLtude for the f irst portion of the
time that Ed was out . When you had th" gun you
managed to stay reasonably well out in front .
I held the sp~cecraft essentially stationary
with respect to the local horizontal . After
yvJ. ran out of f uel in the gun yo'J. were on top
of the spacecraft all of the tim~ . I felt that
unless you really had to have the thing
stablized , to maintain your S•?nse of balance or
EO~~FIBf~TiAL
--- PAGE 121 ---
CO~◄ FH:>·EN'fl7'L 113
whatever you want to 8all it, I wouldn't fire
the thrusters .
White You asked that already wnen I was out .
McDivitt Yes . I asked you if you needed it and you said
no . So , then I felt it would be better not
to fire the thrusters , because you were drifting
back up over the co~kpit . I could see that you
were going up over us . I couldn ' t see back
behind me , but I could see by the motions that
you had when you went by me that yuu were going
to continue on . I felt th~t it would be a lot
safer if we just let the spacecraft drift
unless it got into very high rates . I fired the
jets a couple of times just to bo~k ,:,.ft the
rates . I let it start drifting when y0u got
on the tether so tha~ you wouldn 1 t get back
there on top of one of those thrusters when I
fired them . From abou-: the time? you ran out of
fuel until you got back in I didn 1 t do mu-:::h
attitude controlling. I did some . Everytime
the rates got up pretty high, I 1 d knock them
off . You were able to ma...~euver around the
spacecraft when the spacecraft itself had rates
of say plus or minus • 2 degrees/second in a
<;9·M'FID ENTIAl
--- PAGE 122 ---
114
couple of the axes at the same time . Here again
before the flight we discussed the axis system.
Ed selected the spacecraft as his axis system.
It didn ' t a:;:>pear that he was having a bit of
trouble with i t . He was maneuvaring with
respect to it , regar,lless of what the earth ,
sun , moon , a~d stars were doing . It was
pretty ob\·i,..,us to me th:l.t was exactly what he
was doing .
White Well , when I came back the firs t tims to ·~he
spacecraft with the gu-:r-- I had used the tether
to bring me back-- I did go back up on the
adapter area. This is the first time it had
happened . I said , "All right . I ' m ~omL'1g
back out again." This is one of the most
impressive uses of the gun that I had . I
started back out with that gun, and I decided
that I would fire a pretty good burst too . I
started back out with that g.m , a.~d I literally •
f lew with the gun right down along the edge of
the spacecraft , right out to the front o~ the
nose , a..'1d out past the end of the nose . I then
actually stopped myself with the gun . Tha t was
easier than I thought . I must have been fairly
tD~L
--- PAGE 123 ---
115
fortunate , because I must have f ired it right
thro..igh my CG. I stopped out there and , if my
memory serves me right , this is where I tried
a couple of yaw maneuvers . I tried a couple
of yaw and a co:..1.ple of pitch maneuvers , and then
I started firing the gun to come back in . I
think this was the time that the gun r an out .
And I waa actually able to stop myself with it
out there that second -';:irne too . The longest
fi r ing time that I put on the gun was the one
that I used to start over the door s up by the
adi=tpter section . I started back out then . I
probably fired it for a one second burst or
something like that . I used small burst all the
time . You could put a little burst in and the
response was t r emendous . You could start a
slow yaw or a slow pitch . It seemed to be a
rather efficient way to operate . I would have
liked to have had a thre~ f oot bottle out there-
the bigger the better. It w~s quite easy to
control . I f eel that with the gun there would
be no dif ficul ty in maneuvering back to t he a.ft
end of the spacecr:eif+ , and r.h;.s was exac tly
what I did later oi-1 , j u st on the tether . I got
CO~ff)EN"FIA~
--- PAGE 124 ---
116
CONEJDtNI-l~
all the way back. So , I ran ou~ of air with
the g~n ani I reported this to Jim . I didn ' t
attempt to take al}Y p-Lotures while I was
aotually maneuvering with the gun . The
techniq·.1e th;,.t I used with the gun W 3.S tne
te:.!h.aiq 1e ~hat we developed on the air- bearing
platform. I kept my left hand out to the side,
and the gun as close to my cente::- of grcrri ty
as I could . I think l;hat the training I had ,)n
the air- bearing tables was very representative ,
especially in yaw and pitch . I felt quite
confident with the g.m in yaw a:u pitch , but I
f elt a little l ess confident in roll . I f elt
that I would have to use too mich of my fuel .
I f elt that it wo~ld be a little more difficult
to control and. I didn ' t ,,,ant to use my fuel
to take out my roll combination with the yaw .
We divided our plan so tha.t I would havd a part
of it on the ma.YJ.euver and a part of it on the
tether . I don't know how far along we were
whP.n the gun ran out .
McDivitt Right on schedule when the gun ran out . We
planned f ollr minutes for the gun port ion of it .
We were just abQut on schedule .
GeN FID ENTIA-l
--- PAGE 125 ---
..CE>-NFIDENTl~ l:- 117
White I bet we used a little more than four , because
I think we came out earlier th'll1 we thought .
Mc Divitt No , I sta~ted the event timer to time it .
White Well, this is where m:r control difficulty
I
began . As soon as my gun ran out I wasn t
able to control myself the way I co-..1ld with
the gun . With that gun , I coi.lld decide to go
to a part of a spacecraft and very confidently
go . I think right no·,. that .1. wish that I ha:i
given Jim t he gun ,u1d taken t he camera off ,
Nov, I was working on taking some pict.1res
and "lorking on the tethe:r dynamics . I immediately
realized what was wrong. I realized that our
tether was mounted on a pl ane ohlique .to the
angle in which I wanted to translate . I
remem·i:cL' i'.c-•.1::n our air-bea:::-ing work that every·-
time you got at an angle from the perpendicula-:7
where yom.· tether wafl r:iounted , it gave yo.1 a
nice a::-cing trajectory back in t he opposite
direction. You I re actuall y like a weight on
the end of a str ing. If you push out in one
direc;tion , and you ' re at 911 angle fron ~he
perpendicular , when you reach the end of a
tether , it neatly sends you in a long ar.c ba:k
e6NFIDENrlAc--
--- PAGE 126 ---
118
in ~he opposite dir ection. Each time this arc
carried me right back to the top of the
ad.9,ptec- , to th~ i;np ,.:;(' 1,;he s_pa~e(;raft , in fact
toward the adapter section. One time I w11s so
close to the t hrusters back there that I called
• .
J :i.;n I s,:u.•d , "Don I t f ire
. a.nymor:; . ti , b eca.use
I was right on the thrusters . I was even
closer than that f oot and a hal f wh.ich I had
noted to be tne leng!;1:1 of the thz-uster plumes ,
and I didn ' t want to sit on a firing thruster .
°CONFIDENT'IAL
--- PAGE 127 ---
119
White We were discussing the EVA and I was si:1.ying that
I spent approximately 70 percent of my time , it
seemed , trying to get out of the area back a:1ove
the spacecr aft in the adapter area .
McDivitt Yes , you intended to go toward the position that
was directly over the cockpit . You always arced
passed it beca.11,•11~ y ::n W1'l ce coming from the front .
White This was exa~ t ly rig'•rl. because that ' s exac Uy
wher e my tether was connected . Chris had been
very emphatic that he wanted me to stay out of
this area , and I had agreed to stay out of there .
I tell you , I was doing my level best to keep
out but the tether dynamics just put me back
there all the time .
McDivi tt Let me inter ject something here. When we were
talking about the control modes and how we were
going to control the spacecraft , we decided on
the Pulse Mode rather than the Horizon Scan
Mode , or anything like th..,t . The Horizon Scan
Mode would leave me free to use both hands to
take pictures of you and that way I wouldn ' t
have had to control the spacecraft . But since it
CONFl0EN-'flAL~
--- PAGE 128 ---
120
was an automatic mode and it fired whenever it
felt like firing. It didn't give us any flexibil
ity, and . this is why I felt that the best mode
to be in was Pulse , in case you did get back
there .
White That ' s exactly what happened .
McDivitt I didn't have to worry about the thruster going
off in your face . I didn't want the thrust ers
to fire and they didn't fire because I didn't
touch t hem . It was a wise choice .
White I think this was good . When you look at it
f r om a picture-taking viewpoint , it gave a
wider spectrum of pictures. You got different
views of the earth and the horizon . I ' m glad
we weren 't held to a specific mode .
McDivitt I think that the picture we did take or the
attitude that we started out , which is shown i n
the newspaper , is just about right .
McDivitt I guess we banked over to the right, I don ' t know.
White That must have been just as I came out .
McDivitt I don't remember, but it had enough of the
ground in the background so that it was certainly
CO~FTDENT~L
--- PAGE 129 ---
ce,~F~f>ENsrlAL 121
worthwhile.
White On one of my passes back to the adapter area I
got so far back that I was about 3 or 4 feet from
the adapter separation plane, perpendicular to
it . It was rather jagged . There did appear
to be some sharp edges but it really didn't
look very imposing to me . I took a picture of it .
That's one picture that I believe was good and
should come out.
McDivitt The trouble is it was probably set on infinity
and you were up about 5 feet .
White No , I set the camera to about 15 feet or so . It
might be a little fuzzy because it was too close.
White No, I didn ' t see the far side of the adapter . It
didn't go all the way around . I think I could
have pushed off and gotten back that far.
McDivitt No . Better to s t ay away from it.
White Well, I felt that if I got going I could h~ve
swung all the way around and had my umbilical
right on the edge, without anything to hold on to
or any gun to control myself. This didn't seem
like it was at all safe and I had told Chris that
I wouldn ' t go behind the craft. So I didn ' t go
back there .
-e(:)'Nf ro ENrttrt
--- PAGE 130 ---
122
McDivitt That must have bee~ just about the time I told
you to come back in .
White No, I would estimate this was about two-thirds of
the way and about this time I was after pictures.
I knew this was a part of the flight plan that I
had, in my mind , fulfilled satisfactorilly. So
I tried to get some pictures and this is where I
really impar ted some velocities, trying to get
away from the spacecraft into a position so I
could take a picture. I went out to the end of
my tether cord quite a few times doing this .
I seemed like every time I would be completely
180 degrees to the spacecraft . I'd have
beautiful views of the ground but I couldn ' t
see the spacecraft. It was a definite mistake
to mount the camera on the gun . That made it
very difficult to use the camera . I had to
point not only the camera but the gun with the
long thrusters mounted out on the little arms.
I 'd want to take a picture of an object like t he
spacecraft, • and there were too many loos~ items
to get tangled up in and block the camera . I
know my tie-down strap was floating loose . I
had left that out intentionally so that I could
--- PAGE 131 ---
-CONFIBENf-1-M 123
get it later on anytime I had to pull my helmet
down . Occasionally when I got in close to the
spacecraft, the bag and strings associated ..,,-; th
the bag were tangling up around the vicinity of
the gun and the camera . And it seemed like
the umbilical was right in front of the camera
all the time . So , I think the pictures will
verify that I was flicking my right arm quite
a bit in the l atter part of the flight , trying
to clear things out from in front of it to get
a picture . Whenever I was in a position to get a
picture it seemed like I was facing away from the
spacecraft . I took a couple of shots in desper
ation and I think I might have gotten a piece of
the spacecr aft . But I never got the picture that
I was after . I wanted to get a picture of Jim
sitting in that spacecr aft, through the open
hatch , with the whole spacecraft . I know that I
didn ' t get that . In fact, as time went on I
realized that I wasn ' t going to get much of a
picture . I was trying everything I knew to get
out there and get stabilized so that I could turn
around and get a good picture . I just couldn't
do this . This was at the time when I was looking
~F-tDEN+IAL
--- PAGE 132 ---
124
a little into the tether dy,1amics , and I actually
kicked off from the spacecraft pretty hard . I
remember Jim saying, "Hey, you're imparting 2
degrees/second rotational velocity to the space
craft when you depart . " I was pushing the space
craft quite vigorously . I wanted to push off at
an angle of about 30 to 40 degrees to the surface
of the spacecraft , And anytime I pushed off from
the surface of the spacecraft , my main ve locity
was perpendicular to the surface . It shot me
straight out perpendicular to where the tether
was attached . Again , this wasn' t in the position
that Jim could take a picture of me, and it wasn't
too good a position for myself . I usually ended
up facing away from the spacecraft .
McDivitt Let me interject something here . In desperation
I took the Hasselblad camera and stuck it over
out through :Ed's open hatch , and asked him if he
could see the camera and if he could tell me
which way to point it. He couldn ' t see the
camera so he never really did tell me which way
to point it .
White No . This was the time that ~rou said , "Hey, get
in front of my windo;,.· ." It just so happened that
co~~FtDENTl:AL
--- PAGE 133 ---
125
I was right up close to the spacecraft and that's
when I came over. Do you remember me coming
over and actually looking about a foot from your
window, Jim?
McDivitt Yes .
White Looking right at you.
McDivitt Yes, I think that was the time the movie camera
wasn't going and I was fooling around with it ,
trying to make sure that it was running .
White Oh, that woul d have been a very interesting
picture.
McDivitt I'm not sure it was going, Ed , ~ecause, as you
know, we had so much trouble making the left
hand one run . We had that t rouble throughout
the remainder of the flight. You pushed a
switch over and it seemed to run so:netimes, but
sometimes it wouldn't. I kept worrying about
whether or not it was running so, I would grab
a hold of it to see if I could feel it clicking
over. I switched the ON-OFF switch on a couple
of times to make sure I could tell the change in
the feel of it. I'm afraid this time is one of
the times that I didn't have the camera going,
because I was trying to make sure that it was
!eeNFl0ENTIAb--
--- PAGE 134 ---
126 c»Ot\JFID l:t'4TIAL
going . I ' m not positive . I hope I got :,he
picture but I ' m not sure about it.
White That was the time that I came right in , and I
couldn ' t have been more than a foo t from your
window , looking in . I could actual ly see you
sitting there .
McDivitt That 's pr;.,bab ly :,..-hen you put a mark on my window .
White I think the way I did that--I could actually see
you in there and I pushed away with :ny hands a
litt le bit . I think this was t he time t hat eHher
my arm or my shoulder contacted the upper part of
your window and you called me a "dirty dThis text is truncated. The complete file is available at the official source.
View the official fileCongressional Context
No confirmed links between this file and the congressional record yet. Connections are added only when the source text supports them, never inferred.