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PRELIMINARY
GT-4 FLIGHT CREW DEBRIEFING TRANSCRIPT
PART II
Prepared By
Spacecraft Operations Branch
Flight Crew Support Division
June 18 , 1965
This material contains information affecting the
national defense of the United States within the
meaning of the Espionage Laws , Title 18. U. S. c.
Section 793 and 794 , the transmission or revela
tion of which in any manner to an unauthorized
person is prohibited by law.
Group 4: Downgrade at 3 year intervals
I Declassified after 12 years
NOTICE: This document may be exempt from
public disclosure under the Freedom of Infor
mation Act (5 U.S.C. 552). Requests for its re
lease to persons outside the U.S. Government
should be handled under the provisions of
NASA Policy Direct:ve 1382.2.
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• • I
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PREFACE
This preliminary transcript was made from voice tape -recording3
of the GT-4 flight crew debriefing conducted aboard the recovery ship,
the USS Wasp, on June~' 1965, and concluded at the Manned Spacecraft
Center on June 12, 1965.
Although all the material contained in this transcript has been
edited , the urgent need for the preliminary transcript by mission
analysis personnel precluded a thorough editorial review prior to its
publication. Errors in this transcript will be corrected as soon as
possible and an official transcript will be published at a later date.
Thia document contains a transcript of the second part of the
total debriefing. A preliminary transcript of the first part was
published on June 16 , 1965 , and it contains the crew ' s description
of the mission from an operational standpoint.
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itit 4Fl8E!I ◄ • I Jlt'&'
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Paragraph Page number
8 . 0 SYSTEMS OPERATION
8. 1 Pla tfo:r,n ................................................ . 1
8. 2 O..AMS ....... ............ .........• ...... ...............• . 5
8. 3 RCS ................................................ , ... 17
8 .4 Environmental Control System •••·················••••···22
8.5 CoDlDlunications ........................................ . 68
8. 6 Electrical System ...................................... 82
8.7 Computer ............................................... 87
8.8 Crew Station .......................................... . 93
8.9 Bio-Medicat ........................................... 134
9.0 OPERATIONAL CHEDKS
9 . 1 Apollo Landmark Identification (D- 6) .................. 144
9 . 2 Apollo Yaw Orientation •••·•··•·•••·•··••·•••···•·•·•••168
9 . 3 One Attitude Thruster Fai l ure Check ... ......... ....... 171
9.4 Horizon Scanner Track Check •·•••·•• ••·• · •• · •••• ·•·•••• 172
9. 5 Horizon Scanner Check ....................... ...... ~ ... 173
9 . 6 HF Transmission Reception Check ....................... 181
9·. 7 Orbit Navigation Check ................................ 182
9.8 Rela tive Humidity Test ................................ 185
9.9 Zodiacal Light Check .................................. 186
10.0 VISUAL SIGHTINGS
10.1 Cotllltdo\.lll .................•.•........................ . 188
10. 2 Powered Flight . ................... ..... ..... ... ... . .. . 188
10 . 3 Orbital Flight . ............................... ........ 191
10 .4 Reentry .................... . ......................... . 213
11 . 0 EXPERIMENTS
11 . 1 Two-Color Earth-Limb Photography (MSC-10) ............. 217
11 . 2 Synoptic Terrain and Weather Photography (S- 5 and S- 6) . 219
11. 3 Simple Navigation with t he Sextant .... ......... ....... 219
11.4 Electrostatic Charge (MSC- 1) .. .. ......... .....·........ 229
11.5 Proton- Electron Spectrometer and Tri-Axis Flus-Ga.te
Magnetometer (MSC- 2 and MSC-3) ........................ 229
11 . 6 Radiation ( D-8) ........... ... ......................... 230
11 . 7 Inflight Exerciser (M-3) . ........ .. . . .. ... ... ......... 230
11 .8 Inflight Phonocardiogram (M-4) . . ...................... 232
11 . 9 Extravehicular Activity . ... ... ...... .. .......... ...... 232
11 . 10 Miscellaneous ................. . ....................... 232
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12 . 0 PRE-MISSION PLANNING
12.1 Mi ssion Plan ( Trajectory) ....... .......... ...... .. .... 234
12 . 2 Flight Plan ..................... ... .. .. ............... 234
12 . 3 Spac ecraft Changes ............. ... . . .................. 239
12 . 4 Mission Rule s ........... ..... ... . ....... . . . .... . ...... 240
12. 5 Experiments ........................................... 241
12 . 6 Training Activities ................. .... . . ............ 24 5
13. 0 MISSION CONTROL
13.1 GO/NO GO ' s ............. .. .............. .... ........... 249
13 . 2 PLA and CLA Updates ...................... . ............ 249
13. 3 Consumable s ............... ... ............... .. ........ 249
13.4 Flight Plan Changes ....................... .. .......... 250
13. 5 Systems ............................................... 254
14 .0 TRAINING
14 .1 Gemini Mission Simulator ..... . . .. ................ .. .. . 255
14. 2 LTV Simulation .................. . ...... . ........ .... .. 260
14.3 Centrifuge ...................... .. .......... . ... ...... 261
14 .4 Translation and Docking Trainer ...... .. ............ ... 262
14. 5 Planetarium ..................................... .. . ... 26 3
14. 6 Systems Briefings ................................ .. ... 266
14. 7 Flight Expe rimen ts ............ ... .............. ... .... 267
14 . 8 Spacec raft Sys t ems Te s t .. . ...... ... ... . . .. .... ... .. ... 273
14 . 9 Egress Training ........................ .. ..... : .... . .. 274
14. 10 Parachute Training ................... . . ... ............ 275
14 . 11 Launch Simulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .............. . 276
14 .1 2 Network Simulation . .... . ............ . . .. . . . . . . . . . ..... 277
14. 13 Zero "G" Flight ........ . .......... ... . .. . .. . ... . ...... 278
14. 14 Flight Plan Traini ng .................... . ............. 279
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8.0 SYSTEMS OPERATION
8. 1 Platform
McDivitt Actually , the first portion of any alinement is
to cage the thing. The case of caging the thing
is much more important than the alinement itself.
In the daytime I felt that I could cage the plat
form to a reference with an error plus or minus
about 3 or 4 degrees in all axes . Did you think
we could do that wel l?
White Only in the daytime.
McDivitt The yaw was a little problem. It took longer
to get it, but if you kept after it for awhil e ,
I felt that you could get down to just a few
degrees.
White Within a couple of degrees .
McDivitt The big thing is that you have to stop your yaw
rates, and then sit there and look outside for
awhile and see which way you're going, straight
ahead or sideways . If you are going sideways
you rotate around for awhil e and stop the rate
and then look out a gain. Ri ght? I felt you could
get the thing ca ged quite well. We. didn ' t do it
BEF at all, did we? We never did cage in BEF.
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2
White I ' m not sure.
McDivitt The caging of the thing with small- end-forward in
the daytime was r elative ly easy . At night I don't
think it would be quite tha t simple . I think what
you would have to do at night time is to point
the spacecraft down at the ground pretty much so
you can see the track ac ross the ground, I could
see which way the land was moving under me . I
felt--although I never did this --that if I could
do that and then roll around to where I had no
bank angl e , and fac e in my yaw directi on, either
small-end or blunt-end- forward , stop t he ro l l t her e
and pitch up to the horizon I could cage there
withi n plus or minus 10 degrees for sure . It was
much less accurate at night, I fe lt, than in the
daytime .
White You aren' t kidding! We both felt that on those
dark nights when you really couldn ' t see anything
on the ground, pure star reference for yaw was
pretty rough .
McDivitt Pure s tar reference for yaw was almost impossible
to use. That was the only place where that thing
we decided not to take with us--the view of the
stars through the window--might have been of some
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3
use to us. We knew the stars along our track but
you couldn't see enough of them. The quickest
way to get the yaw reference was to look down at
the ground. Once we got the platform caged, aline
ment was quite simple . All you had to do was just
hold the needles at zero and the platform alined
itself. Of course you had to have the scanners
on , The modes--the SEF and the EEF wer e identically
the same except the spacecraft is pointing in
different directions . You tended to null the
needles by using pulses and just hold the needles
very close to null and the platform alined itself
through the horizon scanners . Orbit Rate was a
satisfactory mode, I thought. As a matter of fact,
it was very good.
White I liked that Orbit Rate,
McDivitt Yes, because we finally had a reference where we
didn't have to look out and s ee the ground . It 's
like having the old altitude indicator back in an
airplane . The only thing was, we had the wrong
orbit rate in the spacecraft because it was s e t
for an orbit rate t hat was to take care of, I
think, a 60 nautical mile circular orbit. This
was to take care of the short period of time between
~~ SQ -lii4Q"itsll-lM.- .
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4
going to Orbit Rate at T- 5 and firing the retros
at TR. We wanted to have exactly the right rate
in there so when we did our closed-loop reentry
we wouldn ' t have an error. As I said , I had the
most accurate platform in the world with nothing
to do with it . I think the displays were adequate
and the controls were adequate . After t he first
couple of revs I really didn ' t have any confidence
at all in the platform. I had done nothing to
establish any confidence in it . I really didn't
get the chance to get the thing alined, and I
real ly didn ' t have the view out the window to check
it with. We were hurrying and scurring through
there . We finally shut the thing down before I
really got a chance to use it very much . When we
powered it up there on the third day and we saw
that thing coming around there• -and cage properly,
we compared the out- the- window attitudes and that
old a ttitude reference was right there. That's
when I got some confidence in the platform.
White This is where we lost a couple of bets .
McDivitt That ' s right . We lost a couple of beers on that
platform . At retrofire I had a lot of confidence
in the platform , but the first two and a half to
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5
three days I really didn't have anything with
which to establish any confidence. It was just
an unknown.
White Jim did the majority of the work in this area and
I think his comments reflect my opinion also .
8.2 OAMS
McDivitt On the pad we did the thruster check that we
wanted to. We went around one whole cycle and
got nothing. We went around another whole cycle
and got nothing until we got to the l ast one.
We were going yaw left pitch-down, yaw right
pitch-up, yaw left pitch- down, yaw right pitch
up . When we got to that second pitch-up, I heard
the thrusters fire for the first time . ·
White You can hear them. It was very distinct.
McDivitt That's right. And then we went around and yawed
left and they fired again. We -waited 20 seconds
and fired a yaw left again, and they fired again .
These were the bottom manifold jets. We said,
"Okay, we're ready to go.", and that was the end
of it. So, it -was a pretty straightforward check.
The inflight checks--I got my operational checks
on the OAMS systems while chasing the booster
around. I had Direct, Pulse, and Rate Command in
Le !~FllffiPMxMii t a J
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6
there as I chased it around, and those were the
only modes I intended to use right then . Later
on, I checked out the Reentry Rate Command and I
checked the Rate Command before we thrusted . It
did seem to be operating fine . Why don ' t you go
through the next part , Eli?
White All right . We 're going to get into the source
temperature and pressure , the regulated pressure ,
and the prope llant quantity . Let ' s take the
temperature first . The temperature of our OAMS
was 75 degrees all the way down the line . The
i nit ial indications on the pressures were approxi
mately 2800 psi for the source and 320 psi for the
regulated pressure .
McDivitt The quantity gage operated all right except that,
as I mentioned earlier , the thing seemed to wander
up and down somewhere between 2 and 4 percent ,
depending upon where you were in the mission .
You ' d read it one time and it would be 60, and
you'd read it a little while later and it would
be 62, and you 'd r ead it a little while l ater and
it 'd be back about 60 . The greatest variation in
that thing that ever occurred was when I went to
sleep one time with it reading 60 and woke up and
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7
it was reading 56. Another hour or two after that
it had climbed slowly back up to 60 again. I
had a long time to look at it in the same position.
When we ended the cha.sing-around at the end of the
first hour, we were down to 70 percent indicated
and we never got below 50 percent in four days.
White I'll tell you, the position it seemed to stay
for days and days was 59 to 60 percent. We fired
in Pulse Mode for a long time with the gage at
that position, and all of a sudden that one time
it dropped down to about 55 percent .
McDivitt But then it came back up to 60.
White I guess it did , didn ' t it? The temperatures all
stayed fairly constant. If I recall .right, they
dropped down to around 70 degrees. It seemed to
me they continually decreased throughout the
flight. I noticed this particularly in the RCS,
but I guess we'll get to that later. The propellart
quantity though , I think we mentioned earlier ,
ended up on our gaging at about 3 percent at the
end . We got a little bit of ground information on
the 0AMS propellant. I felt a little suspicious
of the gage when it kept staying there at 59 to 60
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8
percent for so long.
McDivitt We were pretty miserly with that OAMS fuel . We
set out to save the fuel and we sure did it .
White I think that in future missions , if they permit
the crew to use the Puls e Mode in a saving-manner
they could do a lot more with the mission--if you
could use Pulse Mode instead of just free-drifting
around. In other words , line yourself up so you
can make some decent observations.
McDivitt Shoot! We were in Horizon Scan Mode when we got
the last data, and I don ' t think we used any more
fue l than we were when we were in free drift.
White That ' s right. We certainly got more out of the
orbit than we did when we were just drifting free.
McDivitt I 'll tell you one record that we ought to hold .
We've looked at the earth from more different
angles than anybody else in the world . Well,
maybe not . I guess the Russians did , but we sure
got a lot of different views of that earth as we
rotated around.
White I thi nk the ground information that they called up
on the status of our OAMS wasn't as much as they
could have called up to us, but I 'm really satis
fied that our OAMS was staying pretty constant .
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9
McDivitt So did I. The way I felt was that I knew that we
had to be as miserly with the fuel as we possibly
could, so we got as much out of as little fuel as
possible . There wasn ' t going to be anything to
change that velocity. We just went along and I
really didn't care how they were plotting that fuel
on the ground. I knew that we were starting to
get ahead of the schedule, because I was plotting
it roughly onboard the spacecraft . I could see we
were ~p above the line that we needed to remain
above to handle our OAMS retrofir~.
White Actually , we followed the profile rather closely,
We leveled off there at first, and then when we
started using it , we we~c right down the profile,
McDivitt We were a little below the line and we just held
the same fuel level until we walked out across it
and got up on top of i+ Then, we went on down
above it.
White I think the controls and the switches were all
satisfactory.
McDivitt I think so too. The attitude controller worked
fine and dandy. We didn't have any trouble with
it. The stick forces weren't too high. We didn't
get a chance to use it in any other mode besides
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10
Pulse . It seemed to wor k all right in Pulse. I
don't really have any comments to make on the atti
tude controller .
White As a matter of fact, I didn't ~se any Rate Command .
McDivitt Didn't you really?
White We didn't use the Rate Command . I got to use
Direct a couple of times . I used Pulse a lot .
Everytime you 'd go to sleep, I ' d rea lly have a bal]
McDivitt I could tell that by the wiggling.
White No . That was real ly great--flying that spacecraft .
McDivitt That ' s right, and I think Pulse is the mode . You
ca.n do a lot with it . With a little bit of planning
you could get to the attitude--if you start out 5
or 6 minutes ahead of time. That's what we were
doing. At 10 minutes before I was supposed to be
at a certain atti tude I ' d start, and one or two
little pulses and you'd--boop, boop, boop, boop--
th€ bad thing was if you were in an attitude where
you couldn ' t see the horizon and didn ' t know where
you were. You would give it a couple of pulses
and nothing would happen, and you ' d have to give
it a couple of more pulses. It ' d t ake a long time
sometimes before you would get to where you could
see . As a matter of fact, if at 5 minutes be fore
@i~FfDENTI>4ct
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11
we were supposed to be at a certain attitude we
weren't approaching it, I 'd start pulsing a little
harder.
White You'd hear a series of about five quick pulses.
NcDivitt It was a very economical control mode.
The ma.ne·,..;ver controller worked the way it was
supposed to.
White What about the deadband? Did you think the dead
bands and breakouts were all satisfactory?
McDivitt Yes, just like the one we used in the simulator.
You've got a lot of slop in it when you're making
gross maneuvers because you're not fixing your
elbow and manipulating around tmt point. You're
fixing your shoulder and your whole arm, and
it's just like shoveling coal--you've got about
that much finesse to it . I don't think there's
much you can say about it. The controls weren't
too gross and they weren't too minor. The whole
thing was adequate. We did have an inflight mal
function, or irregularity. We were in Horizon
Scanner Mode one time and Fd wanted to yaw around.
He started to yaw and the thing rolled. The
Horizon Scanner Mode fired the roll thrusters to
level it back off--
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12
White I couldn ' t get the yaw . We had a circui t breaker
off.
McDivitt Finally , after you did that a couple of times I
looked up and saw we had knocked a circuit breaker
off. That was one thing that we didn't cover in
EVA that I should have mentioned . Ed was a real
hazar d to the switch positions in that he was all
over with his feet, arms , and hands - - .
White I don't think I threw any though . Did I? Come
on now. You ' re not guilty until you ' re convic ted .
McDivi tt I don ' t know . You kept putting your foot on the
HF Reentry Antenna Switch and stepping on it .
Ha . Ha . Ha .
McDivitt As for the a tt i tude control modes --I mentioned
the Rate Command in OAMS seemed to be tighter than
the Rate Command i n RCS , a l though t hey use the
same electroni cs, the same gyros , and the i,,rhole
thing . It might ha.ve just been my imagination,
but I felt that the Rate Command system in RCS was
a lot looser than it was in OAMS . The Reentry
Rate Command operated just the way it should . It
had a 4 degree dea dband , and handled the spacecra ft
very well during reentry . Direct had a lot more
a uthor ity than I thought it would, but it was
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~IDE►~llM. 13
pretty straightforward. I think Pulse was the
best mode on the spacecraft for the orbit phase .
We were able to save all kinds of fuel, it worked
fine, and it was just about what the doctor ordered .
We didn't use the Horizon Scan Mode during about
the first three days of flight, except for the second
orbit when I think I \\18.S in Horizon Sca.n so that I
could have the freedom to help Ed prepare for his
EVA. The last day we used the Horizon Sca.n Mode,
and I found it to be an excellent mode . There was
only one case when it broke lock and didn ' t recover.
Wasn't that it, F.d.?
White You've got it in the book .
McDiYitt We've got in the book and we'll check on that .
The Ho~izon Scan Mode worked essentially for 24
hours without any problem ~and I think it' s an
excellent control mode, It seemed to be very
economical on fuel . We were doing a lot of
yawing around and right at sunrise a.nd sunset it
seemed to get a l ittle nervous , especially if we
had the horizon scanner pointed within about plus
or minus 45 degrees of the sun. The moon didn ' t
seem to affect it at all. I noticed that, occa
sionally, we would ~et some thruster blips with the sun
n&Q·tslfiO EtslltAIA ·
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14 :i Ob JFIDE1'4 Tf,t(ilf r
pointed toward the hori zon scanner although we
never got an unlock light . We wouldn ' t get an
unlock light , but we 'd ~et a bunch of maybe four
or five thruster blips right there.
White Particularly at sunrise .
McDivitt It would hold . I thought the Ho rizon Scan--
Whi te It was definitely getting some spurious signals
through but not enough to break it out all the way .
McDivitt I thought the Horizon Scan Mode was an excel l ent
attitude-hold mode.
White Did you notice the water boiler venting, Jim?
McDivitt Yes, I did. We kept yawing around to the left .
I believe it was left. I did notice the fact
that we were yawing , but not very much . We were
yawing a t rates that we r e extremely low and it just
took a pulse every once in a while to handle the
thing. As a matter of fact, when we were chasing
the booster around a lot a t the beginning, I never
even noticed. It was when we were i n the Pulse Con
trol Mode for a period of time,when we didn ' t do much
thrusting in yaw, that I noticed we did start drifting
off in yaw . So I did notice the water boiler venting.
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15
•
White I didn't think you noticed it earlier when we
were working.
McDivitt Well, I did notice it a little bit in that first
orbit, but it wasn't distracting at all. It would
just drift off a little bit and I'd whop it and
it would be back . At SEX:;0 + 30, I used the trans
lation thrusters to damp the booster-spacecraft
rates . One of them was a little higher than the
other, although they were both down in the order
of a half of a degree/second. I did fire one
thruster one time or possibly two times to damp
the rate. I don't know if it was pitch or yaw .
You know, you are working in spacecraft pitch and
booster yaw and spacecraft yaw and booster pitch.
I was getting my coordinate system transformed
around in my mind, going from booster coordinate
system to the spacecraft . I don't remember
whether it was yaw or pitch, but I did thrust
once or twice. By the way , I could hear those
thrusters fire. At SEC0 + 30 I said, "Thrusting, "
and I started thrusting. "Separate" , and Fd
punched the SPACE.CRAFT SEPARATE. We were in Direct
and I thrusted straight ahead for about 5 seconds.
Then I went back into Rate Command. Separati on was
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16
just smooth--we didn ' t come off with a rotational
rate .
White I think one of the things you mi ght commant on , Jim ,
is that you fired most of those thrusters during
that initial time .
McDivitt I ' m sure I fired the upward-firing thrust ers a
number of times . That isn ' t any more difficult
to control than t he other one . Actually you can
fire these thrusters whether you are in Rate
Command, Direct or even in Puls e . When you fire
them, you get a rate and you just damp t he rate
out with the a ttitude controller . When you are
firing the translation thrusters , th0 things t hat
you r ea lly hear are not the trans lation thrusters,
but the attitude thrusters . Those translation
thrusters are really tough to hear , but the a tti
tude thrusters a re very easy to hear . I doh ' t
understand why. They must be mounted differently
because their location isn't that much different.
I think I fired the aft-firing thrust ers a couple
of times and they didn ' t make any more noise than
the f orward-firing thrusters, that I could tell .
The up and down and left and right ones were just
as easy to fire as t he other ones . Our OAMS retro
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• 17
was 127 feet/second which, incidently, happened
to come out exactly 2 minutes and 40 seconds. I
suspect that we selected OAMS retrofire on the basis
of time, rather than on the basis of t::,.V.
White Very convenient , wasn't it?
McDivitt Very convenient. It -was obvious there is no more
difficulty in timing 2 minutes 40 seconds during
our OAMS retrofire than it is during any other
thing. We had no trouble with it . I was convinced
that when we got through with it, that was really
the proper conversion factor between t::,.V and t::,. T.
We had exactly 127 feet/second, and we sure had
the time nailed down.
8.3 RCS
McDivitt The operational checks that we did on the RCS
occurred at about TR minus an hour. When I checked
the system out it seemed like I had a lot less
authority and a lot sloppier Rate Command than I
had in OAMS . The operational check consisted of
pitching up and down , yawing left and right,
rolling lef+ and right on each ring in Rate Command
and Direct. Direct worked as I expected it to.
In Rate Coremand, however, as I pitched up and down
I noticed that my top left yaw thrus ter was doing
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18
a lot of firing , too. I started out checking the
Rate Command , so I thought I might possibly have
one bad pitch thruster that was causing a rolling
moment that was bei ng counteracted by the yaw-roll
jets. When I did it in Direct, however , it wasn' t
doing that . It wasn't rolling either , so I felt
that it must just be a very tight deadband that
was trying to hold us in there . So , the operational
checks were all right . The only thing we had to
monitor on the system was the temperature and the
pressure of the propellant . It seemed to hold
pretty well .
White I have some comments on that. I kept a running
log of them as we went along . The tempera ture
started out at 75 degrees and 3000 pounds . It held
that way pretty well until about the 65th hour , when
the temperature gradually went down. The temperature
decreased to a point where we started getting the
RCS heater lights that we noted earlier. We got
about eight series of RCS heater lights . It took
about 5 minutes to extinguish the light . It was
t he A-ring,then the B- ring, and then the A-ring.
I t s eemed to alternate each time back and forth and
it came on for about 15 to 20 minute periods of
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19
time . It started right after a night cycle . It
seemed rather natural to me that there wasn't
really something wrong, but that we actually had
a cold RCS thing out there and it did need some
heat . After heat was applied it did appear to go
away. I decided to go ahead and set up a slow roll
rate in the daytime, and I kept that roll rate in
for several orbits. Whether this actually helped
to get the light off or not, I don 't know. We
didn't get anymore lights after this time . I think
there ought to be one other comment on the RCS ,
and that is the temperatures and the pressures
stayed up pretty well except when we actuated the
system. The pressures then went down further than
we had expected them to go . They went down to
2400 to 2500 p~i. This was a little lower than I
expected to see.
McDivitt I think the pressures in the RCS A and B dropped
by about 100 pounds throughout the four-day period.
They were slightly over 3000 pounds and they got
down to slightly under 3000.
White The lowest temperatures I noted were in the neigh
borhood of about 63 to 64 degrees. They started
out at 75 degrees.
--- PAGE 26 ---
20
McDivitt Let me ask you a question?
White Yes.
McDivitt When you turned on the RCS heaters , did you turn
on the heater s on both r ings , or did you turn on
the RCS Heater Swi tch and then turn off the cir cui t
breaker on the ot her ring?
White I turned the heaters on and then I checked to see
which ring it was that was ac tually heat ing up by
using the circuit breakers . The first time I went
ahead and left them on and then the other ring
came on . I fel t that one of them was about as
cold as the other, so I left the heaters on both
rings throughout the heating cycles .
McDivitt Good.
White They were in perfect sequence--A and B, A and B,
and about 15 minutes apart . The regulari ty was
surprising. The temperatures at the time when
these lights came on were indicating about 63 or
64 degrees and it seemed like it would come up a
little bit, and then come right back down and pop
back on again. I felt it was not an actual
temperature problem .
McDiv.itt I used Rate Command, Reentry Rate Command and Pulse
c ontrol modes. I didn ' t use Direct . They a ll
--- PAGE 27 ---
'-OtslF-tD--E~.l lA:L:;;. 21
operated as I thought they should. I've already
mentioned I thought Rate Command was a little
sloppier in RCS than it was in OAMS . It certainly
did a fine job of holding the retro attitude during
retrofire. Retrofire attitude control was excellent.
We didn ' t deviate more than about a degree from
the attitude we were supposed to hold, and I had
plenty of authority there . From my standpoint
it couldn ' t have been any better. I was really
happy about it. I used the Reentry Rate Command
with roll rate gyro off, so that I had essentially
Direct in roll and Reentry Rate Command in pitch
and yaw axes. It had the typical 4 degree deadband
that it was supposed to have. It did do rate damping
as it was supposed to. It performed just the way
it should. Fd, you want to cover that heater-lights
thing again? I think you've already got that thing
pretty much in detail.
White I have the precise times at which the lights came
on. It started at about the 64th or 65th elapsed
time hour . At 06:47, the first light, in the A-ring,
came on . At 08:23 the A- ring light came on again .
That was the last time . During that period of time
the A and the B-rings cycled on and off inter-
MWfiO,ftSl;QAJ•
--- PAGE 28 ---
22
mittently .
McDivi t t During descent , we turned the power off to see if
t he drogue chute was unstable . It wasn ' t . We
turned the power back on and the propellant valves
of f and burned up a l l of t he fuel i n the manif olds .
We had no fumes after impact .
8.4 Environment a l Control ~ystem
McDivi tt I thought the suit mobility was as good in the
s pacecraft as it is anywhere else . I think these
sui ts a re pretty good suits . I didn' t f i nd any
trouble with them whatsoever i~ the spacecraft
that I wasn ' t a lready awar e of . The pressure held
up good . I did a pressure check on the suit . It
bled down about 0. 2 or 0 . 3 psi in about 30 s econds ,
which real l y wasn ' t too bad . The temperature was
a lways good. It ran between about 50 and 55
degr e es diring the entire flight except when we
really worked hard . I don ' t think it ever got up
over 60 . Do you , Ed?
White No.
McDivitt We had reasonably good temperature contro l .
Whit e The ca bin temperature got up pretty high one time
and then it came back down .
McDivitt Yes , on about the first orbit .
_ _ w , f _ . . , .....
I '
--- PAGE 29 ---
23
White That's r ght . It got up to about 90.
McDivitt 100, it was. We turned the cabin heat exchanger
on for just a short time and it went right back on
down to 80 degrees.
White It stayed in the area of 82 to 83 degrees the whole
flight.
McDivitt The humidity in the suit must have been pretty dry
because rrry foot dried out. I didn't take any wet
bulb readings inside the suit. The CO stayed at
2
zero all the time. It never did go up except when
we'd go to o High Rate, when it would bound off
2
the top peg and fall back down again. The comfort
and suit controls were pretty reasonable. The o
2
demand regulator seemed to work all right . My
umbilicals were short. My fingertip lights were
lousy. Before _launch I only had one that worked.
On rrry right-hand glove one of the bulbs obviously
didn't work. One of them did work. On rrry left
hand glove the switch on the batteries would only
turn the lights on if it was in one exact position,
vh.ich wasn't full throw in either direction. So I
found out I had only one fingertip light that
worked. However, during the flight I didn't use
my' fingertip lights except one time when I used ·
--- PAGE 30 ---
24
them for a flashlight. I had my gl oves off and I
reached over and got my gloves and turned the
fingertip lights on and shined the gloves on some
thing . I didn't use them a lot . I do want to
comment on one thing , though , since we ' re talking
about the suits here . I launched without the plug
that goes in the blood pressure port in the suit .
I don ' t feel we should launch these things with
no plug to plug up the blood pressure port in the
suit , especially when we ' re going EVA . I think
that was a mistake . The only pressure points I had
in the suit were in the helmet . Those were just
above my ears where I tended to move my head back
and forth within the helmet. I finally rubbed up
a ll the hair so that it was going in the wrong
direction . When you press against hair for a long
time in the wrong direction it becomes very uncom
forta ble. At about the end of 2 3/4 days I took
my helmet off for a couple of hours, and it felt a
lot better. The only problem is that when you have
your helmet off there is no place to stow it. We
had the foot wells full of gear , so when I had the
he lmet off I just let it float around on my lap ,
and over in Ed' s l ap . There wasn ' t any place to
--- PAGE 31 ---
25
put it. The micro-meteroid blanket that I had
strapped under my right leg wasn't a detriment.
As a matter of fact since we had no place to stow
it , I just left it strapped to my leg until reentry.
Then, I felt that if we had to get out in the water
I didn't want to have any straps hanging off me
that I didn't need. So, I took it off and threw
it on the floor a long with Ed's sleeves . I don't
have anymore comments on my suit .
White I wore the ENA suit . I think the mobility of the
suit was about what I had expected. Actually, I
think the mobility in some respects was a little
better, and in some respects it was a little less
than I had expected. I wasn't able to get into the
right-hand aft food box as well as I had thought
I was going to be able to in zero g. In fact, the
position that I had figured out to use, which was
leaning forward and reaching in backwards with my
left arm , didn ' t work out well at all. I had to
actually turn around 90 degrees in the seat and
reach in with my right arm. This worked out all
right. I was able to get hold of things in the
box. The surprise that I got though , was that I
could get into the right- hand aft refuse box much
--- PAGE 32 ---
26
easier than I had thought I ' d ever be able to . It
turned out t ra t I was able to get into that box
ea sier while in orbit, by far, t han--
McDivitt It ' s a rubber covered box.
White It's a rubber covered box on the right hand side .
I think that box does have the capability of s tow
ing refuse in it and stowi ng some things prior to
l aunch in it , too .
White Did you try that box during flight , Jim?
McDivitt Yes , I did. I didn ' t find it easy to get into .
I thought the things we had stowed in it wer e
real good things--items that we didn ' t need at all
in flight and possibly might not need--
White I used all four defecation bags that I h~d on my
side . I used them up during flight . In fact , you
used one of them .
McDivitt That ' s right , we did have a bag of those defe ca
tion bags out . It just happened to be over on my
side where you could get to it.
White You were asleep. I had to get them or wake you up .
I pres sure- checked rey suit . I checked it at 8 . 5
and it bled down several tenths of a psi . I was
satisfied with the pr es sure-holding of rey suit .
--- PAGE 33 ---
27
There was one thing though with the suit that I
wasn't too happy with. I was hot all the time
in the suit. It got so that after a while I got
used to the normal temperature as being warm.
I could incr ease the temperature , which seemed
rather strange to both Jim and me, by putting out
zey gloves and closing zey faceplate . I could go
to sleep. At that time zey temperature would go
up considerably inside the suit . It seemed like
I coul d stay in there only an hour or an hour and
15 minutes and rest before I had to either open
up the faceplate or do something else. So, the
temperature got uncomfortably warm in about an
hour or an hour and fifteen minutes with the face
plate closed, the sleeves on and the gloves on .
The humidity in the suit, I thought , was quite
dry. I had quite a tendency for zey lips to crack
and nzy- nose to get very dry . In fact, I noticed
zey nose was itching considerably. This was an
indicator to me every time I would go to sleep.
I would wake up with zey nose itching and feeling
quite hot and uncomfortable. }zy- lips got to the
point where I thought they were going to crack,
--- PAGE 34 ---
28
and I was trying to be very careful and keep them
from cracking and getting anymore uncomfortabl e
than they were . Jim mentioned the CO
sensors
2
stayed on zero, which I was happy to see . I
think one thing that I was fairly happy about was
that the suit , as bulky as it was , wasn ' t depres
singly uncomfortable. I felt that I did have a
pretty heavy suit on most of the time , and I was
a little bit constrained in my mobility. The
i dea to have the detachable sleeves that I could
take off after the EVA work was , I felt, a very
good decision. I felt much more comfortable ,
and I had a much higher degree of mobility around
with my arms in the spacecraft. It was not as
tiring to move around as it had been when I was
inside the heavy sleeves . So , I was quite happy
to take them off. We took them off, I believe,
shortly after my first sleep. I slept with t hem
on the first time, and then we took them off . I
think they were quite easy to take off. As a
matter of fact, I think if you went EVA at a
later time you could take those sleeves onboard ,
and if they were made just a little aasier to
slip on and off over the wrist, you could take
@e 14 rte Et<4,t,\ t
--- PAGE 35 ---
29
them on and off in flight if you wanted to.
McDivitt I don ' t know. I'd hesitate to recommend putting
them on in flight . It might get pretty tricky.
I think if you put them on in flight , you'd want
to put them over all the harness, rather than
i.mder the harness.
White That ' s exactly what I was going to sey. I think
if you took the life preservers off , you could
actually make the sleeves big enough so that you
could slip them on and velcro them across the
back over the harness. This might be for the
type of operation of throwing equipment in and
out . I think in the future , though , a suit as
heavy as this might not be required. The controls
and the switches in the suit , I felt , were satis
factory. There wasn ' t anything that I couldn ' t
get at in the spacecraft . It was easier under
weightless conditions for me to operate certain
controls. In fact, I think I was able to get
down and unscrew the bellows in the gun hose as
well and maybe a little easier than you could,
Jim . At least initially, I was able to get down
there . Of course you weren ' t really particularly
trying to do it at that time.
@8 ~ •••i-EM-liaJ.;;
--- PAGE 36 ---
30
McDivitt I suspect I probably could have gotten down there
as easy or easier than you if I had really gotten
around to trying.
White I don ' t remember , but , anyhow, I was surprised
with the ease which I had in getting down .
McDivitt We were trying to dump the pressure in the bellow
before we went EVA with it .
White Right . The demand regulator was satisfactory. Ivzy
umbilical,I thought,was very easy to use and
disconnect . I was quite happy to have the micro
dot in there. One comment on the micro-dot--the
first time we exercised the micro- dots on our
suit , they were pretty hard to operate . Mine got
progressively easier to use each time I used it .
The fingertip lights that I had were better than
Jim ' s . I ha:l lights with Lexan tops on them .
All my lights worked, and r felt that their
operation was quite satisfactory. We had decided
to put my lights between the first and second
joints for several reasons . We thought the EVA
gloves would be easier to don and there'd be less
tendency to break them. I think, though, the
position of the lights was still a little too far
forward if it was intended to put them back between
--- PAGE 37 ---
31
the first and second joints, because the lights
were resting right on top of my first joint . I
think if I had worn my gloves anymore, I would
have gotten a very sore first knuckle . If you
are going to move them back, I think they should
definitely be moved back behind the first knuckle.
McDivitt Where were they getting you, .fili?
White Right on the top of the knuckle .
McDivitt You think they ought to be back?
White If they are going to be anywhere, they ought to be
back here, and I'm not too sure that is necessary.
In fact, I think the best place is behind the
fingertip and in front of the first joint .
McDivitt But, with the pl astic covers over the gloves.
White With the plastic cover on the glove , and I think
we've got the right position for the lights . I
don't think they should be back behind the first
knuckle . I think they should be in front of that
first knuckle and behind the fingertip, That's a
good place for them . That's where we've been using
them in the past. I think thf' Le::mn cover
on the light bulb is a darn good idea ,
McDivitt Yes, I think so.,. too . Shoot! I checked my lights
before launch and found out that I already had one
--- PAGE 38 ---
32
of them out on my right hand. I wasn ' t too happy
about it .
White I was a li ttle disappointed. I think the only
discrepancy I found in my suit was that I had no
blood pressure plug either. A point that I was
pretty happy with was that I had no pressure points
from my suit at all on my body . I had one set of
pressure points from my helmet pressing down on the
front forward part of my head. I lmew why this
was . I 'd had Joe Schmitt adjust my cables so that
I could pull my helmet down to a maximum amount
for the EVA work. I felt that I just bought this
discomfort by having my cables adjusted in this
manner. It was pretty uncomfortable though . I
checked out the use of the emergency bottles on
the EVA equipment and they worked as they were
supposed to . I was able to regulate the flow.
Incidently , before I went out the reading on the
EVA bottles was full-scale, 3400 pounds . I was
happy to see that . Al l in all, I was quite happy
with the suit . I think it was a very well designed
suit and it met the requirements that were levied
upon it . It was a heavy suit and a big suit to
wear for four days, but I felt the auit wasn ' t as
€ ~~f-~ L
--- PAGE 39 ---
33
bad as I had expected it was going to be.
I have one more comment. I'd like to comment on
the inner liner. We decided to go with the inner
liner. in and I felt this was a good decision .
The inside of the suit was comfortable , and I
didn ' t get any pressure points . I think one reason
why neither Jim nor I got any particular pressure
points from the suit was that we had worn these
suits a heck of a lot of time . I had over 50
hours on my flight suit. I don't know how many
hours Jim had on his.
--- PAGE 40 ---
34
McDivitt Actually Ed had just finished talking about his
inner liner . I 1 d like to comment about the inner
liner too . I thought about it when he was talking
about his . I think that was one of the reall y
wi se decisions •- to go with that inner l iner .
I felt that it offered a lot more comfort than
wearing that rubber suit up against my body, or
up against my underwear . I sort of felt that I
was really quite comfortable in this suit . I
didn ' t find my mobility limited by my inner l iner
at all , and I had made sure that it fit . I think
that has a l ot to do with it.
White I worked the suit once for about a four-'hour
period with just the rubber ins i de . I did no-
tice it sticking to me, and I didn ' t feel as com
fortable . After I got inside the suit with pres
sure on my body , the suit felt pretty darn good.
I had the knees cut out of my suits . The knees
are still too short . Having been in it for four
days , I know the dimensions are wrong . The di
mension from my knee down to my foot is not long
enough . I t ' s not just the inner line~ but the
f¥18~4AL
1 ·~
--- PAGE 41 ---
35
link net in itself just isn't long enough.
McDivitt You wouldn ' t say you had a pressure point though?
White No, it was just a constant pull on there all the
time.
McDivitt Did it bother you very much during the flight?
White Yes, it bothered me a little bit .
McDivit-'- So you really did have sort of a pressure point
then?
Yes, to some extent in that area . I had had that
one so much before. It had been so extreme in
some cases that it really didn't bother me too
much .
White Both of us should mention something about the
visors .
McDivitt I thought you ought to mention something about
your visor problem, your EVA visor or the other
one.
White Well, I have briefed the visor on the EVA pretty
well. The one that I will mention now is the
visor that I had on my regular helmet . I thought
that the vision through it was quite good . I
noticed no distortion at all through it, but I
did immediately put a couple big scratches on it
--- PAGE 42 ---
in the beginning when I was unstowing equipment .
I continued to scratch it throughout the mission.
When I finished , the visor was considerably
scratched up as you would pr obably notice if
you looked at my suit . I don ' t know what there is
to do about this other than to accept a scratchy
visor .
McDivitt If you ' ve got the visors down in front of your
face, you don ' t tend to scratch it up as much .
I think it was really worn out because you
started opening up your visor and leaving it up
over your head a lot earlier than I did. At about
the two and a half or three day mark , I looked at
your visor and it was really a mess . I took the
helmet off and cleaned the visor because it was
dirty on the inside and the outside . I looked at
my visor and had very few marks on it . I had a
few l ittle scratches , but very minor . Then I
started putting my vi sor up more and mor e be-
cause t hey wanted us to stay open . Because I ' m
a lot taller than you are, I really started beat
i ng mine up . In the last day, I think I caught
up with you and maybe even surpassed you in the
--- PAGE 43 ---
37
amount of marks on it . I'll say another thing .
I'm sure glad we didn ' t go in for those Lexan
visors that they wanted us to fly with, cause the
distortion woul d have driven me batty in about
the first six hours .
White I think you must insist on perfect l y optically
clear visors .
McDivitt That ' s right . You 've got to have good optics .
White I took my helmet off about three times , and I
didn ' t leave it off very long.
McDivitt I took mine off about two times . I took it off
one time for an hour because my hair right above
my ears was really bothering me . I didn ' t bother
getting a light- weight headset out , and when any
body called me , I had the thing sitting in my
l ap and I could hear it . I took one of the • ~ . ~
and pulled it back and I hollered into the mike,
Ha , ha. ! 1 till I could hear it . I s~id , "I ' ve got
my hel met off . Unless you 've got something im
portant to tell me , don't bother me ." .Ha , ~a!
And he said, "Okay . " It was one of those passes ,
you know , where you only talk to one guy for about
an hour . Then I took it off one other time for
about a half hour to rub my ears . I was quite
s€0►~ ~t8l!lttfif1Aif:r:
J
--- PAGE 44 ---
comfortable with my helmet on for two days.
White Do you want to know something that ' s kind of
strange? I was more comfortable with my helmet
on than off. I n fact, I kind of got used to
those pressure points on the top of my head with
the helmet on . When I took the helmet off and
moved my head around , I felt a little dizzy from
not having these restraints. I didn ' t feel as
comfort able as I did with my helmet on. The times
I had my helmet off were when I was running D-9.
I ran the D-9 Experiment several times with my
helmet off so I'd have better use of my sextant .
I took it off one other time near the end when
they indicated they would like to have every-
thing off . I didn ' t feel particularly comforta
ble with my helmet off any more. I got so us ed
to having that thing on that I put it on so I
could talk better with the stations . They were
calling me from time to time , and I thought it
would be a little better. Before I forget, I
think the portable headset is really a lousy
design .
McDivitt I concur. I think it ought to be thrown out .
-
--- PAGE 45 ---
39
White I've seen the ones they've got in the MCC and
they're good plain old headsets. I don't see
any reason why we can't get one that stays on
your head and stays in your ear . You put this
thing on and it pops off about two minutes later .
It's not built to stay on my size head and I
noticed it didn't stay on Jim's very well eit~er .
I think the portable headset idea is a good
idea, but we ought to have a good headset for
it . Okay. As we mentioned earlier the cabi n
pressure relieved at about 5. 5 and held that
way during launch . It went back down to 4.9
or 4.8 and this is where it stayed for the re
mainder of the mission. I think that they prob
ably overshot their zeal to correct the cabin
pressure that John and Gus had had on GT-3 and
put ours down so that it was actually relieving
lower and sealing lower than it would have been
desirable. I was expecting it to seal up around
5.5 or 5.7 like it was advertised.
McDivitt I checked my suit gage against the cabin pres
sure g-age and my suit €8,ge read higher than:
the cabin pressure gage by about .3 of a pound.
--- PAGE 46 ---
40
White Yes, mine was right on it though .
McDivitt I know . You checked your suit gage against
the cabin pressure and yours read just about on
it, didn ' t it? Was it a tenth of a pound higher
or was it right on it?
White Right on .
McDivitt Okay . So mine was reading a little higher,
indicating to me that possibly the cabin pres
sure was higher . But since Ed's read with it,
I don ' t know where we were .
White Well, the pr essure at which it relieved at went
right into the problem of the temperature- pres
sure relief in the cryogenic oxygen system so
t hat those two problems kind of lashed together .
The venting in the o system was set at around
2
970 .
McDivitt 967, I think the poop sheet said.
White Well , it was about 967 or 970 . We had the pos
sibility of losing oxygen in a steady manner
out of the spacecraft if we let the pressure
rise up above- -well , the ground felt 960 , and
I concurred with that figure . So throughout
the flight we had to keep venting our o system
2
--- PAGE 47 ---
41
down so the pressure woul d remai n down below
960 . They initially told us to vent it to keep
it at 930 to 960 . Then they told us to vent it
on down to about 890. From then on, we vented
it down in the neighborhood of between 890 and
93, depending upon who was asleep and who wasn't
asleep . It sure seemed to be an unsatisfactory
solution to two problems--one of the cabin hold
ing at a higher pressure than they wanted it to
on GT- 3 and also the problem of the o system
2
venting outside of the pressure gage . In the
oxygen system I think the solution to putting
the venting down at 967 was a poor solution to
the problem of having a poorly designed ga ge .
I think the gage was agai n poorly designed and
it should be designed to read about 1200 pounds.
Rel ief should be up in that area .
McDivitt I f they really went ahead and jacked down the
relief pressure, to get it on the gage, I think
that is one heck of an approach to an engineer
ing problem.
White I think that ' s a gross thing to do and if they
did that deliberatel y, I thi nk they deserve a
--- PAGE 48 ---
42
very black star for that one.
McDivitt They need their heads examined t
White I guess we beat that one around pretty well,
didn 't we?
McDivitt Yes~ The way that we were venting the cabin
was by going to o High Rate and venting the
2
oxygen out through the cabin vent or going to
cabin repress and using up the oxygen through
the cabin and through the cabin vent valve
that way.
White I was quite satisfied with the cabin temperature .
It started out and got pretty hot at one time
early in the flight and went up to 100 as you
noted,and then it went back down into the 80 's.
I think it actually dropped into the 70's a time
or two.
McDivitt That ' s right. It was in the 70's most of the
time .
White Right.
McDivitt Let's get the data book , The dry bulb tempera
ture was 80; 80, the first time we tood it.
Then it was 79, 79, 79. Then it was 75, 75,
75, and then they stayed between 75 and 77,I
OQ\il I i ~ L
--- PAGE 49 ---
think, .the rest of the flight . No, here it is
down as low as 72 . So it got down to around
72 late in the flight, and here we are with a
whole bunch of 70's to 73's and a couple of 76 1 s.
So I guess that 75 was the average temperature
throughout the whole flight.
White I think our cabin temperature gage was reflect
ing a little higher temperature than these.
McDivitt No, let's see . It was down around 75.
White It went down to 74 at one time, I remember.
McDivitt Yes, I think 75 was a good average cabin temp
erature for the whole flight.
White I thought this was a pretty satisfactory cabin
temperature. The suit temperatures were also
down. They stayed down from about 52 to 54
most of the· flight. I thought that was a pretty
satisfactory temperature there. I believe that
there was a difference in suit temperatures be
tween Jim and me because I was continually
hollering about being hot. I think that temp
erature-wise Jim was relatively comfortable .
McDivitt I was vecy comfortable, and as a matter of fact,
when I went to sleep, I tended to get just a
--- PAGE 50 ---
44
little bit cool , especially if I had urinated
all over myself.
White I don ' t remember one time during the flight
during which I was cool in the suit . I think
I was hot most of the time in the suit . I got
used to i t after a while. The only time that
it was not satisfactory, as far as I was con
cerned, was when I was trying to sleep. The
humidity data that we got doesn't go along with
what everybody was expecting.
McDivitt No, not by a l ong shot .
White No, not at all . Our l i tt le gage seemed like
it was working properly. We didn ' t have any
visible moisture at any time at any pl ace in
the spacecraft . It seemed to be indicating
down around 62 to 63 percent relative humidity
which was a big surprise to myself. With this
type of data , I began going open faceplate and
open gloves fairly early in the flight, about
a day or a day and a half, and continued in this
manner just about throughout the flight . We
used the wrist dams quite a bit of the time .
But I had my faceplate open with my wrist dams '
CiO t ◄ F10E._ffd +b
--- PAGE 51 ---
on a great deal of time also. I think you had
your faceplate closed a little more than I
did . There at the end we were both going to an
open-faceplate and open- gloves all the way .
'
McDivitt Yes, we were especially going open-faceplate
at the end just to see if we could jack up
the humidity. I actually preferred to have
my faceplate closed, as opposed to having it open.
I went ahead and left it open trying to get
the humidity up . We never really did get it
up over 60 perc ent. That seemed to be where
it was going to stay.
White We were happy to see that the CO sensor
2
gage stayed down low the whole flight . It
would pop up any time we turned the o High ·
2
Rate on and go up to a pretty high reading,
and then settle back down to zero. I didn't
notice any particular discomfort versus day
versus night .
McDivitt No, as a matter of fact, I didn't either. We
took some temperature readings on the cabin
window frame and they varied by about 6 or
8 , 10 degrees at the very most .
--- PAGE 52 ---
White Yes, I don ' t think there was any discomfort
associated with the day-night cycle. We didn't
use the cabin fan as we planned during the
flight. We did neglect to turn it on initially
.,
during the preparation for retro. We noticed
that we weren ' t cooling off in the cabin as
much as we would have liked to . So, we turned
the fan on and immediately the temperature
dropped down about 10 degrees,if I remember
right .
McDivitt Yes , that cabin heat exchanger and that cabin
fan really do the job.
White It really cooled it off.
McDivitt Early in the flight when we got the tempera
ture up to 100, we turned the fan on and the
temperature went down to below 80 in about
20 minutes, or so. It really did the trick .
White The cabin pressure relief valve was venting
just a hair abouve 5.4. We checked this out
very many times. Every time we filled the
cabin up with o High Rate, it vented,or if
2
we used the repress l•ever the cabin would
vent .
--- PAGE 53 ---
'3@>rNfff) EttlIM:· 47
McDivitt Here we had an environmental control system
that was supposed to protect us . We found
out that the darn thing was overpressurizing.
f The first couple of times, to keep the ECS o
2
bottle from venting, we vented the cabin it
self . I found myself sitting in there vent
ing this thing with my gloves off and my face
plate open. It began to dawn on me that the
pressure went down inside the cabin at a tre
mendous rate. If this thing ever stuck open
and I had my gloves off and my faceplate open,
I would be a dead man . So we made it a proce
dure to suit up when we were going to dump
this thing . This meant that every four hours
we had to put our gloves on and put our face
plates down and lock them and get all suited
up just in case this vent valve didn ' t reseat.
Frankly, as much of an inconvenience as it
turned out to be, I think that was a wise
maneuver. I would never suggest that anyone
vent that cabin again without being fully suit
ed. I thi nk there is such a risk involved
that you would be fool- hearty to do it . For
--- PAGE 54 ---
48 GO~ ifli itl..l,tct 0
that reason I think that we ought to make an
effort to get the ECS o tank vent and the
2
ECS o tank pressure gage compatible and at
2
a l ot higher pressure than they are. This
'
suiting up and unsuiting every four hours is
for the birds.
White I thoroughly agree with you, Jim. There are
two things I want to know. I want to know if
they deliberately lowered the venting pressure
for the o system down to 967 to solve the
2
problem on GT-3. I would also like to know
if they deliberately lowered the cabin venting
down to 5.4 . I'd like to know the answer to
those two questions. I think the combination
of those two situations make what I feel is an
unsatisfactory situation in our flight. It
occupied far more time--
McDivitt That's right, we were screwing around with
that ECS o . That's something we never had
2
touched. It was a eage that we should have
monitored, instead of a thing that we manipu
lated all the time.
White Right, Okay, the cabin pressure regulator.
--- PAGE 55 ---
49
I didn't have any comment on that.
McDivitt Neither did I. It seemed to be doing a good
job .
White I felt the cabin vent valve was set lower
than I had thought it was going to be . I
thought it was supposed to be set up around
5.7. I'd like to know if it was cha.l'lged in
tentionally.
McDivitt The manual vent valve worked fine. When we
wanted to vent the cabin, it vented.
White The cabin repressurization valve worked fine .
I was very happy to see how well it worked
also with my chest pack. Any comment on that?
McDivitt No, I don ' t think so . I don't think the cabin
repressurized or overpressurized when we were
trying to vent it. Since you were repres
surizing it and venting it at the same time,
I think the vent valve actually overcame the
repressurization,which is a good thing if
you're trying to vent it, and it is not a good
thing if you're trying to keep it from venting.
Going back a little farther to my other state
ment, in case that vent valve sticks open
--- PAGE 56 ---
50
and you are not suited,I don't think you're
goi ng to have time to get suited . I t takes
me too long to put those gloves on.
White Okay, the cabin air inlet valve worked fine .
We vented the cabin with it when we went EVA.
It apparently worked all right when we used
it down on the water. I rave no further com
ment on that.
McDivitt Neither do I. It seemed to work fine .
White The cabin air recirculation valve worked as
it was supposed to .
McDivitt As advertised .
White Okay , that primary o system gets another
2
black star. I think this is the area that I
want to know the answer to , for sure . I want
to know whether that was deliberately set
down into the range of the gage to solve the
complaint on Gemini 3. I think that if this
was the case, this is a prime example of poor
engineering. As far as monitoring the system
though, as long as their reading was down be
low 960 the system worked pretty well. I
felt fairly confident that the pressure wae-
--- PAGE 57 ---
51
McDivitt That ' s right . The way that the thing was set
up , we could sure monitor it because we knew
it was going to vent without being on the
gage . I think they compromised the whole
system so we could monitor it .
White As a matter of fact, we monitored it very
thoroughly and spent about 100 times as much
time on t his SJs t em as we should have . John
Young ' s been complaining about this point,
and I think that it ' s a very poor thing . They
ought to dig up the money and put a gage in
there that will do the job . Very strong
point . The quantity measuring system,I thought,
was all right.
McDivitt I thought it was pretty good . I thought it
was excellent as a matter of fact . It was a
very readable gage ,. It had tremendous scal e
on it, but, shoot, you could read the thing to
a percent . I don't know why it was a:ny more
readable than the other ones, but I thought it
was pretty good.
White The flow rates--I don't have a:ny particular
comment on that . I thought the flow rate on
N4sl-f.1Dfl~T1Aw
--- PAGE 58 ---
52
..
that repress valve into my suit was satisfactory
to keep me in a pressurized state and keep me
venti lated enough under normal operations .
Under tough operations though, the flow rate's
too low and you really heat up.
McDivitt Yes, I think since it was an open loop system,
you had to keep from dumping all the oxygen
overboard, and had to go high enough to keep
it from dying from the heat. I think it was
a compromise system.
White I thought it was well set up, I have no com
plaints there . Primary o temperature--I didn't
2
have any comment on that.
McDivitt No, neither did I.
White The manual heater--I think that you used the
manual heater twice during EVA .
McDivitt Twice during EVA for about five to six minutes
each time . It responded all right , but it didn't
go overboard, It got the temperature right back
up there, and I shut the thing off again.
I\!0 ~~FIDE~iilA L
--- PAGE 59 ---
53
•
White We were able to turn the automatic part of it
off quite early in the flight , particularly
since this was the problem we were having .
We were getting--
McDivitt That was something I wondered about . You
know , the t hing is marked , and we were always
instructed that when the thing got down below
38 percent we didn ' t need the heaters any
more . We shut the heaters off at 42 percent .
White Right .
McDivitt 0bviously,the guy that told us to shut the
heaters off at 40 percent knew what he was
talking about because we never needed them
again .
White I think, again , I am very suspicious of McDonnell
on the fix on that gage, and on setting that
pressure on 970 , and I'm going to get to the
bottom of it .
McDivitt Yes , but I think, though,that the pressure
would have still built up even if we had the
relief set at 1050 or so. It would have still
built up .
White It might have built up and stabili zed,
•
--- PAGE 60 ---
54
because it ' s a cryogenic system and it could have
stabilized out around 1000 or 1050.
McDivitt But on the other hand it could have continued to
build right on up .
White Su.re it could .
McDivitt But I sort of suspect that the--well, I don't know.
It's different from this other problem where we
were told that the thing didn't require heaters
below 38 percent , and we found out that it really
didn ' t require 'them below 42 percent .
White We turned them off at 42 percent .
McDivitt Right .
White The secondary o system--I thought those performed
2
admirably. In_fact, they had more oxygen in them
than I thought they could hold. Jim ' s was up to
around 5500 pounds shortly after launch . It re
mained up there and drizzled out about 100 pounds
throughout the flight .
1'1cDivitt Actually they increased by 100 psi each right after
launch .
White Right at the first mode of flight . Then they
drizzled back down and stayed at 5400, I think,
right on down through the flight . The lowest
--- PAGE 61 ---
55
mine got was about 5250 maybe .
McDivitt Did you notice by chance what they were at land
ing?
White No, I didn ' t check them .
McDivitt Neither did I.
White That was the last thing I had on my mind , to tell
the truth. I thought the quantity measuring was
fine . It was a little questionable, that we might
have overpressurized on your system, but I guess
they had plenty of margin in that respect . The
secondary o flow rates were satisf actory as far
2
as I was concerned.
McDivitt I think so . I was amazed that secondary o flow
2
was such that I really didn ' t get too hot in i t .
White Yes, I was not as uncomfortable as I had been at
other times.
McDivitt You know, after awhile· you hit yourself in the
head so long that it finally stops hurting.
White It ' s like that big heavy suit, after awhile you
begin to feel good . I know the average guy on
the street probably wouldn't like the flow rate,
but it didn't seem to be too bad. It wasn ' t too
objectionable .
--- PAGE 62 ---
56
White I think we jumped into something else . We were
in secondary o system and we weren ' t on flow
2
rate. The only time we had the flow rate on that
was during reentry. The flow rate there was sat
isfactory . The pressure obviously was satisfac
tory, but we didn't check it at the end . The
control--r.de put an extra detent on that control.
I think the control was a positive one and we
were able to keep it in the detents where we
wanted it . I had no p~oblem there.
McDivitt Right, I think that the way it's rigged up now
is excellent. We designed it . It had better be,
ha., ha!
White Right . Okay, the CO partial pressure. The gage
2
has been discussed prior to this time.It stayed
down satisfactorily.
McDivitt Yes, it never got off zero.
White Okay, the coolant- the radiator operation config-
uration--I don't have the times in front of me
right now that we went onto the radiator, but I
think it was about 40 minutes.
McDivitt 40 minutes.
White We went on the radiator about 40 minutes and we
--- PAGE 63 ---
never had to come off it again . We didn ' t get
any abnormal operation of the radiator at any time .
One time they called up to me and mentioned some
thing about the radiator and the coolant loop and
I didn ' t get any clarification . I lost contact
at that time , and I thought just maybe that I
had a failure of some type in my primary cooling
system . So just for caution sake I turned on the
secondary coolant pump and waited till I got con
tact with them again. They asked me why I had the
secondary pump on , and I said , "I thought maybe
I had a problem in the primary system ." They
asked me why I thought that and I said , "I thought
they were telling me something about it when I
lost contact with them . I did it just to be sure ."
But that was the only time that I thought we even
might have had a problem in it , and I turned it
off . We used double coolant loop early in the
mission,and after we turned the secondary system
off we did not use it a.gain until the teentry .
Prior to the reentry , we turned it on .
McDivitt That's right . That coolant system real ly worked.
White Okay , here is one at which we'll get at them--
--- PAGE 64 ---
58
the water management system. I think you have
a few thousand words you'd like to say about
launch. I think you actually already hit on most
of them, anyhow .
McDivitt Man, I sure do. The l'brmal mode , Drink Mode, and
Flush Mode . We got the water management thing
kind of goofed up. Let's just take the drinking
thing first. The drinking nozzle was attached to
the management panel by a hose and the hose looked
like it was made out of rotten rubber . The
first time I tried to drink out of it , I stuck
the thing into my mouth--
White The first bad moment of the f l ight .
McDivitt --I pushed the button in and no water came out ,
~d I almost had a heart attack. I said to Ed ,
"Ed, this is going to be the shortest four day
flight in history. " Ha, ha!
White Jim said, "Guess what? · The water doesn ' t work."
McDivitt Ha, j{.a ! But you ' d already had a drink out of it ,
though , hadn ' t you?
White No , I hadn ' t .
McDivitt Oh , hadn ' t you?
White You handed it to me.
--- PAGE 65 ---
eeJmrDEMffM 59
McDivitt Oh, so I handed it over to him and then he took a
drink out of it and didn ' t have any problem at all .
What happened was the hose was wound in the helix .
It came out to the gun in a straight line . When
I drank out of it on my side this thing always
crimped like it was an old rotten piece of rubber
that had been bent over in that position many
times before. It looked like something that came
out of a 1890 steamboat or something, instead of
a--
White It looks like your old oxygen mask hose.
McDivitt That's right. It looks like my old rotten oxygen
mask hose . So I think that we ought to get at
least a decent piece of hose in there. The next
thing is the water gun that you drink from. You
push the button in and a little spigot would come
out and the wat er would start running out of it .
This worked great. You could always get the wa
ter to come out when you didn 't have your hose
bent. It got worse and worse and worse and worse
and worse . As far as returning it towards the
end of the flight , I almost drowned a couple of
times because I ' d get that thing out and I couldn't
--- PAGE 66 ---
60 @ONFl0Et'4Tl=At
get it back in. I finally ended up actually using
two hands to operate the water gun so that I
could get the button back out.
White The button definitely did get more friction in it
as the flight progressed.
McDivitt It seemed like it was all scored up and it kept
getting worse and worse and worse as the flight
went on. This could have been a major disaster
too. If we had that gun squirting water inside
the spacecraft , you'd have had water all over the
place. I'll be the first to say that we made a
real effort to keep the water out of the space
craft. We wanted to get four days out of the
flight. I felt one of the major probierns would
be the humidity in the spacecraft . As it turned
out, it wasn't a problem. We didn't know it right
off the bat and we were really concerned about the
water. The last thing I wanted to do was to have
an open water nozzle running into the spacecraft .
So I think that takes care of that . I think the
whole water management panel ought to be clarified
before we fly GT-5. We were arguing about what
position the waste .Mmagement Switch was going to
be in during the countdown to launch. I think this i d
w@f'f Fto•Ef'IT trA L
--- PAGE 67 ---
61
certainly not the time to be deciding what the
heck the position these switches were going to be
in. We were always briefed that this thing would
be in OFF. We were going through the switch
positions and they'd ask me to check in the count
at. about T-45 minutes or so.
White And I couldn ' t see that one .
McDivitt You couldn ' t see that one and you asked me to look
down at it . I saw the thing was in EVAPORATOR,
so I question the STC. He checked around and they
had a big flap about what position it was supposed
to be in. Pretty soon we got a call back and he
said if I could get unstrapped and reach the thing,
I ought to turn it over to OVERBOARD. • We thought
it should have been in OFF. They had it in EVAPOR
ATOR so we finally decided we ought to go to OVER
BOARD to keep the thing venting. I was already
strapped in the spacecraft . I undid my shoulder
harness and reached around in the spacecraft and
flipped a little valve over to OVERBOARD where
it should be and then got strapped.
White You sure they didn ' t have you put it OFF?
McDivitt No, we went to OVERBOARD .
--- PAGE 68 ---
62
White I remember they argued. I thought they had it on
EVAPORATOR firs t.
McDivitt It went from EVAPORATOR--
White That seems like the least likely of any position
to put it in .
McDivitt That ' s right. We went from EVAPORATOR over to
OVERBOARD. So I think a comment that I ' d like to
make right now about the whole water management
panel is that it's a simple thing. It's got
three !mobs and each !mob ' s only got three or
four positions . We had the ECS engineers at
McDonnell give us a briefing on this simple water
management panel. We had about seven guys there
with seven different versions of how it was de
signed, how it operated, and what the different
positions we were supposed to be in. They got us
so screwed up that when we left ther e we didn ' t
have any idea in the world whatit was supposed to
do.
White I think those designers didn ' t either.
McDivitt They didn ' t either and it was pretty obvious that
they didn ' t . We went through a lot of discussion
with that water management panel. Finally I think
--- PAGE 69 ---
that the four of us got it pretty well squared
away. Then just before launch we found out down
at the Cape that because they had gotten those
switches in the wrong position we pumped 32
pounds of water out of the adapter , used up all
the pressurant for the water system, and pumped
all the water into the lithium hydroxide canj.,3ter.
If it hadn't been for one last minute check in
the data, we would have lost the lithium hydrox
ide canister full of water and nothing to drink
with. So we would have had about an hour flight,
if we had gone that long. I think that before
we fly another flight we ought to have all the
people at McDonnell and NASA, who are · respons-ible
for this thing get it squared away and figure out
just where the heck they want these switch posi
tions.and get them there. If there are a lot of
switch positions on that panel that aren't useful
anymore, we should just go ahead and block them
off. We decided between the four of us that there
were--I don't even know what they call those
switches--
White Condensate Valve and Water Valve.
..
--- PAGE 70 ---
McDivitt --and the Water Valve should be put in NORMAL
NORMAL.and left there. That was ~xa.ctly what we
did and we knew how to work the waste management
valve. We didn't screw it up, but I ' m not sure
that if with a little trying, we couldn't have .
We never had to use the Evaporator Fill Mode .
The Flush Mode,or the waste ·management portion of
the thing,had a couple of different positions .
In the normal OVERBOARD position and in using
the Preheat and Flush switch over on the side ,
we managed to dump a large number of urine dumps
through this. We dumped both our launch- day
urine bags which were full. I probably urinated
eight or ten times and you probably about five
or six t i mes.
White About five times .
McDivitt About five times . So we had a lot of dumps
through this thing. At 92 hours it stopped work
ing . Ed had filled up the bellows pretty well
just before this. I was the man in charge of
dumping urines, it seemed like .
White The Urine Dumper!!!
McDivitt I was the only one who could reach the knobs and
swit ches . It ~ nerally went down in spurts.
~8-M f'IDt=P,.ff IrA L
--- PAGE 71 ---
65
About haliwny through the dump , it started
slowing down . Then it just went in very slowly
the last two or three inches . Then I urinated in
the thing and had a bellows full of a mixture of
air and urine . It started dumping . It looked
like it went down about halfway and then it
stopped . I wouldn't be a bit surprised if it
wasn't the air going out of it. It w.ent very
slowly for ju.st a short time and then it stopped
completely . Nothing else would go out of it . S~
I turned off the Flush Switch and I went from
OVERBOARD to EVAPORATOR,and it flushed through
the evaporator . We had one more urine dump through
the evaporator and this worked all right . Well,
I ' m sure glad that we had those two ways of work
ing it . All the way through the flight after I ' d
dumped the urine through this thing, I kept say
1
ing :w-ell , McDonnell finally designed this thing
so it works after about 30 or 40 attempts and
redesigns :' But I guess I was over-optimistic be
cause it did drop out just before the flight .
It finally got to work for 88 hours . We didn't
use the E~aporator Film Mode . Okay, Ed, why don't
--- PAGE 72 ---
66
you take over. I extended my wrath .
White I just had a feeling you wanted to say something
about that, Jim. ~, ha!
McDivitt After having messed around with that thing for
96 hours trying to make it work .
White I think you expressed my feeling too .
McDivitt Did I leave anything out?
Whit e No , no . I had the same feelings . I thought you
might have had them a little stronger since you
were the one who discovered the water gun was not
working.
McDivitt I ' m really serious about that simple panel being
able to screw up the whole flight. If we don ' t
get that thing figured out we ought to stop fly
ing space missions .
Whi te One of the worst moments of the prelaunch down
there was when I found out they had that two
gallons of water in the system somewhere and didn ' t
know where it was.
McDivitt That's right .
White The humidity sensor--I thought if the readings
are right, it worked very well and pr oved the
point that the humidity in the spacecraft is
--- PAGE 73 ---
67
relatively low•, and that the water problem is not
quite the problem we had it cracked up to be .
I ' ll make a comment on the sponge material on the
s ide of the spacecraft at this point ,since we ' re
talking about humidity . I didn ' t think the sponge
material was a very good idea to begin with but
once it was in there and we flew with it, I think
it was--
McDivitt It was a real bad mistake! Ha, h9. !
White No, I thought it was all right in there . The only
thing wrong with it was what they had it treated
with for fire - proofing. I thought that part of
it was unpardonable . There is no excuse whatso
ever for having those ammonia vapors and the hy
drogen sulfate ~or whatever those other things
were that we had permeating around the spacecraft.
McDivitt We smelled bad enough, but it was no contest when
it came to comparing ourselves with the spacecraft .
It smelled worse .
White If there was any moisture it grabbed it all. I
don't really think there was any moisture for it
to grab .
McDivitt I don 1 t think so either, Ed. I kept feeling that
--- PAGE 74 ---
68
r1ecr,
thing and it was dry as could be .
White There was no moisture that I could notice .
'lhe sponge stuff on the side wasn ' t objectionable
to me but the odor that obviously came from it
was very , very objectionable . The readings we
obtained I thought, were easy to take. The stow
age of the unit was not a problem. It was easily
stowed in the spacecraft while we were using it .
8 , 5 Communicati ons
White Okay, I have a few comments on the communications
which we ought to go on to . We ' ll take them in
sequence .
McDivitt Okay, why don ' t you go along I'll express my com
ments .
White I think the interphones worked pretty wel l . I
noticed one thing, though, as we progressed along.
lf'he volume requirement on both my side and on Jim ' s
side needed to be increased all the time to get -
McDivitt No , Ed . I launched with all my volumes full up .
White Is that right? Anyhow in my interphone , I pro
gressively raised it as the f l ight went on .
McDivitt Yes , I started off with mine almost all the way
up . On the UHF it was absolutel y all the way up ,
C04 4~t!li 1t6 L
--- PAGE 75 ---
69
and I flew with it almost the whole flight .
White I don't think it was all the way up. The one
thing though --I think the interphone operation
and quality were quite good .
McDivitt Yes, I thought so too .
White We were ready to communicate back and forth. It
was just the way I would liked to have done it .
I thought it was very good. The UH performance at
the countdown was satisfactory and just after we
got into orbit we felt that we had a bit of a
communication loss. We switched to UHF No. 2.
Later during the flight we used both UHF sets and
didn't have any difference in performance from
either one . During the recovery you were using
the UHF primarily. I think you had as much com
munication as you could expect.
McDivitt That ' s right. I think so too. I do think, though ,
that we had a very bad UHF situation in the first
eight or nine orbits. It was really lousy. As
a matter of fact, I was getting concerned that
maybe we were going to have to land because we
were going to run out of communications .
White You were actually working more on this problem
b
--- PAGE 76 ---
70
than I was. You were communicating during the
FNA work and also after I went to sleep. I heard
you working on the Communications Check and that's
when you went to the reentry antenna.
McDivitt That's right, when we ran through these checks,
it finally became apparent to everyone that the
reentry antenna was doing a better job than the
adapter .a ntenna. And then later on, I switched
back to the a dapter antenna for some reason which
I can't remember right now. We ran a couple of
more checks and it seemed to be--
White I know what we did. We ran an HF check , Jim, and
we switched back to the a~apter so we could use
the HF antenna back there . We got just as good
U1IF transmissions at this time as we did on the
r.eentry a.ntenna .
McDivitt When they checked them out again, they said they
still thought the stub antenna was better. So, we
went back to :reentry antenna .
White We used r .eentry just about 95 percent of the
flight.
McDivitt That's right. In the last 55 orbits it was great.
In the first eight it was lousy. I was really
--- PAGE 77 ---
71
concerned about having to come down because we
didn't have any radios .
White One thing that I'd like to say is, I would give
a good gold star to the controllers down there.
I thought their voice procedures were excellent
and their methods for giving us information were
all good . I had no comment , whatsoever, other
than I thought it was all very good .
McJ)ivitt That's right.
White I had no objection . I thought there was no time
in the flight in which we got a cluttered voice
from anybody . Yes, I think that is pretty good
when you have that many people working the loop.
McDivitt I think so too .
White Okay, the voice tape recorder- -let me vent my
wrath on this one.
McDivitt Get ' em Ed, get 'em!
White Right . This is another thing that should be fixed
before the next flight. I think we're going to
end up being very, very sorry. We're going to
end up losing valuable data from time to time .
This will be due to no reason other than a voice
tape recorder which is poO'r on all accounts.
--- PAGE 78 ---
72 EiOt •rt"Ef ◄ lt/.L:
McDivitt We ' ve already lost some very va l uable data from
this flight. We could have taped t he entire
EVA and brought those communications back down.
As it was, we couldn ' t tape them becaus e we had
to put the thing in UHF so that we c oul d transmit
to the ground . We los t all of t he bless ed
stuff going to the ground anyway .
White There are certain systems in here that I think
are very poorly designed . I think t his is about
the poorest of them all . It ' s l ocated in such a
position that you can not see the opeation light
when it is on. The light is in an area where
you normally would put things . Things get put
on top of it so that if you look down there, you
can't see the light . The light is such a small
insignificant thing when it comes on. Unless you
conscious l y bend your head down and l ook down
below your right elbow, you can not see whet her
the light is on or not. The switch is set so t hat
you have to go in either RECORD , Ul!F , HF, or
INTERCOM and you can not be in RECORD while you're
on UHF or INTERCOM. This is a very unsatisfa c t ory
method of having a tape recorder. The tape r e corder
--- PAGE 79 ---
73
should be set up so that it can record conversa
tions on normal UHF , HF , and INTERCOM type opera
tions . As Jim pointed out , in our flight alone
I think we l ost sets of valuab l e information.
During launch we weren ' t able to tape anything
onboard . We weren't able to tape the work during
EVA . We could have taped some of the work duri ng
t he rendezvous part of the flight , I don ' t be
lieve we taped i t though . The w~y it's set up
you wouldn't l eave i t on i n t hat manner . We both
had requirements to communicate over UHF . This
was our normal mode of operation . If we have a
tape recorder , it shoul d have a separate switch .
If t here is an hour limitation on the tape, there
should be a light that oomes on and is easily visi
ble on the front somewhere.
MoDivitt That's right . It ought to go right on the VCC .
White That's right . That ' s really where the light be
longs . I think that it woul d be desirable and
important to have a voice t ape of what ' s going on
throughout the flight . I wouldn't have any ob
jection to having a tape recorder with the capa
bility of recording more than the one hour at a
CO t 4fl"Et tTI.Q:t
--- PAGE 80 ---
74
time that we have now. I'd like to see us record
ing a great deal of the flight . It'd be nice to
have a switch to turn it off from time to time
if you did want to discuss something that you
didn ' t want to go on tape .
McDivitt I don't think we ought to put the whole flight
on tape . If we flew a week-long flight, it would
take a week to go through the tape. You wouldn't
want long periods of nothing on there . I think
the way we wanted to operate it this time would
have been all right, if we could have just opera
ted it that way. There were certain periods
where we put a tape on and ra.n it all the way
through. Well, that was the tape that covered
a certain experiment or something.
White On our D-9 Experiment, we used it.
McDivitt Yes , that's where we used a whole tape on it .
Then there were periods that were questionable
when you were s l eeping and I wasn I t doing anything,
or I was sleeping and you weren't doing anything .
White If you carried adequate tapes, and you had adequate
warning when the thi ng went on and off, you would
not have the same situation we had on the D-9
--- PAGE 81 ---
75
Experiment . You could have the tape stop in the
middle of the experiment and be lying on your
back looking out with the sextant. You haven't
got any idea in the world the tape's run out on
you .
McDivitt Right.
White I think that it's a ve-ry, vezy unsatisfactory sys
tem . It ranks right up along with the top ones,
and we ' ve already hit on some of them already.
The digital command system I · thought worked very
well. I thought the light in there gave U$ a
good indication of several things. It gave us an
indication of when the station was about to come
on and communicate with us. We used this as a
clue to turn on our UHF to warm our transmitter
up so we would be ready when the transmission came
up. I think updates from the ground came up in
a ve-ry orderly fashion. I don't have any objec
tion about that or any further comments . Do you?
McDivitt Ed, I thought it was very good.
White Handled in a very good manner.
McDivitt I think so.
White The only update that I have an objection to is
--- PAGE 82 ---
76 <i8MftDl!
t hat they updated our t ime reference system and
had it inaccurately updated by a second .
McDivitt Yes, I think there is a big fla p about that .
White I 'd like to find out about that , too . The r eal
time-transmitter , delayed- time transmitter, stand
by transmitter-- they seemed like they all worked
pretty well . We had no use for the standby
transmit t er and we used the rea l - time and delayed
time transmitter throughout t he flight . You don ' t
have any comments on this, do you?
McDivitt I 've got one comment . When we came over Guaymas
after our computer went out , and we ' d already
fouled the thing up , I know , they said they wanted
us to come right- side-up for a critical tape dump .
So I did , and I got a message from the ground say
i ng , "Put your Tape Playback to CONTINUOUS ." So
I put the Tape Playback Switch to CONTINUOUS .
Pretty soon they called up and said , "Do you have
your TM switch to REAL-TI ME and DELAYED-TIME?"
I said, "No, I don't have. You 're going to have
to put it down there." They didn ' t bother telling
me that t hey didn ' t have any command capability
whatsoever . I went ahead and put the Tape Play
back to CONTINUOUS , which means that you 're dumping
--- PAGE 83 ---
77
all that tape. If you don ' t have the ~eal- time
delayed-time transmitters on, you're just dump-
ing it into noth!e!lg. You're erasing. So we got
some pretty inadequate communications there. They
should have said, "We don 't have any command
capability. Will you please place your tape
recorder and your TM switches so we can receive
it?" We knew how to work the thing. It ' s just
that the instructions we got conflicted with the
normal procedures. Consequently we dumped all this
tape that really was critical. I'm not sure how
much of it they got on the ground. I'm not even
sure if they ever got any of it on the ground • .
because we got some not only inadequate but really
erroneous instructions.
White Okay, communications---we covered them in coordin
ation with the ground a little earlier. I think
that the flight controllers handled our flight in
a very good manner. I think that when they had
something to say, they said it , and when they knew
that we wanted to talk to them, they'd talk to us.
When they didn't have something to say, it was kept
in a good manner. I thought it was a very profes-
--- PAGE 84 ---
78
McDivitt Yes, I thought that they were to be commended .
As a matter of fact, when we have our world-wide
network debriefing or whatever the heck we ' re
going to have I really intend to applaud them
loud and long .
White I thought the teamwork between the spacecraft
and the communicators on the ground was outstand
ing.
McDivitt It was really good .
White No adverse comment on anytime during the f l ight .
McDivitt Shoot, if you wanted to talk to them they were
more than happy to talk to you . A lot of times
they ' d come on and say, "This is Gu.aymas . We
have your TM solid . We don't have anything for
you . If you have anything for us, we 'll be
standing by." And that would be it . They were
really good , I thought. We've about covered
procedures .
White Right, I think we've hit that too. Okay, the ..,
communication controls and switches--voice control
center--I've always been pretty happy with that .
McDivi tt One other thing I want to comment on is the voice
control Center. If we had carried that idiotic
--- PAGE 85 ---
79
contraption that McDonnell had designed to keep
the moisture out of that thing , we would have
had one more hunk of junk in the spacecraft with
us. It would have been a completely ·useless thing
because of the nwnber of times that we switched
switches on that VCC . Heck , we switched switches
on the VCC more than all the other switches on
the spacecraft put together. I think if we would
have had to pull off that big piece of plastic
every minute, it would have gone on the floor and
stayed there. That's right.
White That was a very poor fix to try to solve a bad
design.
McDivitt Okay, why don't you talk about that sleep config
uration?
White Okay, with the sleep configuration , we lmew right
away we had bought a weenie . The first time I
tried to go to sleep, we tried to t urn everything
off. We tried turning all my volumes down to zero.
We turned to PUSH.JIIO.JI'ALK only, and I could still
sit there and hear it about a one by one level.
It was just enough so I could hear audibly what
was going on and under stand if I paid attention
--- PAGE 86 ---
80
to it .
McDivitt If you really listened, you could hear .
White That's right . If you were very close to going to
sleep and something went on that was interesting ,
you could hear just enough to wake you up and
pull your interest to it. It made sleeping
rather difficult . We didn ' t want to disconnect
ourselves from the system a ltogether. We ' d like
to have a way to actually tum the volume all
the way down and provide the astronaut · that ' s
awake the capability of controlling the voice
c~ntrol ccnter ' R volume so that he can turn the
sleeping astronaut ' s volume up and talk to him
anytime .
McDivitt That ' s right . I think what we really need in
there is an ON- OFF switch for each half of the
vcc.
White So you can effectively cut him off and turn him
back on .
McDivitt That ' s right. You just reach over there and you
break t he communications with a simple ON-OFF
switch. Then if you ' ve got to get to it in a
hurry , you j ust f l i p the thing back on and then
--- PAGE 87 ---
81
talk to him . I don't know where on the VCC you ' d
mount it.
White I think they can solve that problem pretty well.
It might not be in that manner but I think they
can solve it so you've got it definitely on or
off.
McDivitt That's right. T.hey need a simple way of disconnect
ing the man from the c©mmunicat i ons center wi thout
disconnecting his--
White I'd say that this was a very unsatisfactory con
dition. When we finally went to get some rest, we
disconnected the communications cord at the hel
met. I think this is an extremely unsatisfactory
mode. If we should go pressurized at any time
and have to pressurize our suits , we 'd just lose
communications between each other. This would be
a very, very unsatisfactory situation. I believe
that this should be corrected prior to the next
flight. The .Jieacon Control, Adapter and l:\eentry-
no comment, Those were all right.
McDivitt Yes, that was excellent.
White The TM control transmitter and antenna--I don't '.
have any comments on them.
McDivitt No, they were pretty well designed, I thought.
- • · '5Q ►+F•9~~.W.,1,--+
--- PAGE 88 ---
82
White That ' s right . Okay , the electrical system--
8 . 6 Electrical System
White Okay, t he systems monitoring. I thought it was
satisfactory . We went through and monitored the
systems every time for the GO/NO GO checks, and
quit e a few times along the line in addition to
this. So I thought the method of monitoring was
satisfactory. I don't believe we really had any
way of monitoring the electrical power remaining.
McDivitt Yes, that ' s a draw back, and we all know it, I
guess .
White Right . That ' s an unsatisfactory conditionmd
I don ' t know what we're going to do about it.
I think it's too much of a job to try to think
that you ' re going to sit in there and calculate
all the things you have on,and try to keep an
onboard plot of what electrical power you have
remaining .
McDivitt Yes , I think this is a ground function . I don't
think that we can realistically do it onboard the
spacecraft .
White I don't believe we got any indication of how our
electrical power was going from the ground,except
--- PAGE 89 ---
83
for one time when they called us up and told us
we wer e 190 amp- hour s , I think it was 190 amp
hours , over--
McDivitt That was after we turned the computer off. I
wanted to find out why we turned the computer off
and if we were really short on electrical power .
Then they told me we were 160 amp-hours over the
200 amp-hours cushion. I almost went throught the
overhead .
White I think I'd like to have had a little more infor
mat i on from the ground on the status of our elec
trical system. The mai n batteries--I have a com
ment on them . They started out with a charge of
about 24 volts and progressively decreased to the
point where I was a hair concerned about them.
They progressed down to the 22 . 5 reading and
began to shade lower than that near the end of
the mission . I was using the parallax to be sure
I had a satisfactory reading on t he gages each
time . I noticed they decr eased down to a minimum
of 22 . 5. Maybe it got to 22 but it was getting
near t he end of the mission.
McDivitt Ha , ha ! Maybe 22 .49 .
White Just the way I 'd lean my head I could get the
--- PAGE 90 ---
7
iii> blBO.E~IJA:~
reading the way I wanted it. Ha, ha! The
squib batteries--our electrical briefing I
thought, · wa.s very good. Everything behaved just
the way they told me . The squib batteries star ted
out pretty high, around 27 or 28 volts , and they
progressively decreased in voltage as we went
through the mission . The main batteries--every
time I checked them they always checked out at
about 9 • as far as the amps were concerned . The
adapter batteries--I was glad we'd had the brief
ing on them because I realized that knees on the
adapter batteries were in operation during the
launch when we got a high reading on the left
stack ammeter up around 27 or 28 amps, and we had
a reading of around,I believe,14 amps on the right
one. I didn't alarm Jim with this information
because it was still below my cut-off point of about
30 amps or so. I felt that it was due to the knees
in the adapter batteries causing unequal loadings
of the main batteries with respect to the adapter
batteries.
McDivitt Hold it . I want to make some comments about the
electrical system and the power as we used it .
--- PAGE 91 ---
85
When we powered down , we turned of.f the a . c.
power, t he QA.MS power, t he ACME": biag power, the
rate gyros, the horizon scanner, the IMU, the
computer, both FDI ' s , and the attitude indicator
lights. We operated with as little in the way
of cockpit lighting as we possibly could. It
got less and less and less as the flight progressed.
In earlier orbits we had a l l the lights on in the
cockpit- the over, the middle light , and the two
side lights . Then £or the night time passes, as
the flight progressed, we got around to using the
red lights . We finally got around to making the
night-side passes generally with one r ed light on
or one white light on, as we got more confidence
in the spacecraft . I think we save quite a bit o{
power that way. They were surprised that we were
160 amp-hours ahead , and I don ' t think that we
got that way by accident.
White I ' ve got a comment to make on that. We were both
watching the loadings and I could read them a
littl e better over there. We started out operat
ing arourd 14, maybe a l i ttle better . The reading
on the combi ned amp-hours s l owly decreased down
--- PAGE 92 ---
86
and near the end of the mission, we were down to
12 or 13 amp-hours on unpowered down configuration.
That was as low as I saw it go, down around 12 .
McDivitt Another thing that we did was that when we wer en't
actually planning on transmitting on one of the
radios, we were always putting the mode control
switch to INTERCOM, which would then cut the trans
mitter off the line. You could actually see the
ammeter go down a little bit. So I think that
by really powering down the spacecraft and getting
all the non-essential items off the line , we helped
ourselves a lot. We got this 160 amp- hour cushion
because we really worked at it, not because it
just happened like that.
White This takes a little diligence.
McDivitt Yes , not because it was a miscalculation on the
guys who were planning the flight, but just the
fact that we really worked at keeping the lights
off , keeping the radios off, and keeping those
little bitty things down. You know, you only
have to save two amps per hour . We ran on a single
suit fan almost the entire flight, except when Ed
was getting warm when he was sleeping we ha d to
--- PAGE 93 ---
87
go to two suit fans.
White Right. When it got so uncomfortable that I
couldn't sleep, we would go over. We really did
n 't do that too much .
McDivitt No , we didn't . We made a real effort to keep the
electrical load down. I think that it sort of
showed up there towards the end of the mission
when we really had enough spare power to run the
IGS through the last day--uselessly of course ,
but at leas t we ran it.
8 . 7 Computer
McDivitt In the launch we had the computer in ASCENT . F.d
was reading out the errors during launch. I read
ou~ the rates which didn ' t require an;y information
from the computer.
White I was readi~out the lack of errors most of the
time.
McDivitt Lack of errors, right. Why don't you discuss the
error status.
White I think we discussed it earlier and I'll just go
briefly through it. We didn't have any error s
that I feel would be worth repeating during Stage I.
At guidance initiate we got a ful}-scale-down indi
cation. This indication I had been told
--- PAGE 94 ---
88
fairly routine, and it appeared routine ' to me
too as it began to steer into zero and steered
right on into zero . As we approached iSEXJO the
error started to increase a little bit and in
creased out to a little less than a degree in
pitch-down on the error needle . Aside from that,
we didn ' t have ,,as far as I can see, any other error
that was worth talking about during launch.
McDivitt Okay, at SECO + 20 the IVI ' s counted up as we
separated,rolled around, and did all the maneuvers
we were supposed to. The IVI's acted as they should .
When I got turned around and was faced toward the
spacecraft,I was in a hurry to get all these
things done . I started thrusting and I went from
Ascent to Catch-Up, and then hit the Start Comp
button.~ I lost a couple of feet/second here ,
but this was sort of insignificant at the time.
The IVI's counted up in the Catch-Up Mode and they
operated properly throuehout the rest of the chase
phase of the mission. We were getting the kind
of information that we needed right there early
in the flight . Ed had 52 punched in and it read
out at 30 feet/second, I think he said earlier .
--- PAGE 95 ---
89
White Yes , I picked that up later on because I wasn't
even concerned with it since we had a good orbit.
McDivitt Once we had a good orbit that kind of information
wasn't that important.
White Do you want the IVI readings at this time?
McDivitt Yes, you might just as well read them out.
White The IVI readings at the time we decided to read
them --at zero, zero, zero on the attitude indi
cator~- 20 forward, right 11, down 5.
McDivitt The attitudes weren't really what they should
have been, because we had a good insertion and
we had to go right then and we had to get turned
around and get at that booster. I didn't fool
around with getting the spacecraft at.exactly the
right attitude to read out the IVI's. I thought
that was of a :~;:i.demic interest . It would be great
for post-flight analysis but it wasn ' t going to
help the flight at all. So I didn ' t do justice
to those things. I'm sure that we can go back
and resurrect this thing to find out exact ly
what it was. It wasn't very meaningful at the
time . The orbit maneuvers consisted of really
just chasing the booster around and reading up the
IVI ' s as they came out. We received all our updates
difi)~~FIDE~~llAuw-
--- PAGE 96 ---
90
properly. We got the computer on and got it
loaded . The DCS updates were going in and they
were gett Lng V fJ dfication on the ground. One time
I remember we didn't g6t the DCS light . As a
matter of fact, they sent the load up again and
we sti.l.l iid.n ' t get the DCS light. They verified
on the ground that it was going in .
White Well, the funny thing 'we.S when the computer wasn ' t
on we got a DCS light.
McDivitt The DCS lights come on when they get set up for
the TX and send out a :r.ealbtime command,too.
White Well, mRybe the TX when they sent up-· They
kept telling us that they got a good load in it
and I had no light. I really didn ' t quite bel ieve
them .
McDivitt Neither did I. As a matter- of fact, we had it
verified at the next station.
White Okay.
McDivitt And that ' s where the onboard computer thing ends .
I might go through what happened to the thing .
We were over the .States and h!;',,d the onboa rd computer
on for getting a new load in it. I got just about
over Florida . He said, okay, I could turn the
--- PAGE 97 ---
tffiFIDEr-4TIAL 91
computer off. I turned the switches off and
nothing happened . The comp l i ght stayed on
and I don ' t even think the ·malfunction light came
on , did it? No, it didn't. So I said, "Well, that 's
interesting that the darn thing doesn't go off. "
So we flicked the IGS power of~ and back on
quickl y and told them on the grotmd that it
didn't look l ike I could get the computer to go
off and stay off.
White I think you told them you thought you had a
failure in the switch .
McDivitt Yes, I told them it looded to me like I probably
had a failure i n the ON-OFF Switch or the ON- OFF
switchiqsfunction. And they said okay . So I
said, "What do you want me to do here?" I knew
we could a l ways t urn it off by t urning the IGS off,
but I wasn ' t too keen on that , So they said, "Stand
by. We' re going to have the experts check it. "
So we flew on out of communication with them.
I think they talked to me over Bermuda too, but
nothing of much importance. They said to stand
by they were still checking it. Then we got ove.c
Tananarive and I got this message to turn the
GQt◄ FIDE~~TIAk
--- PAGE 98 ---
92
switch to the ON position but to turn tie a . 0.
power to ACME,which was going to power down the
computer whether we wanted it to or not . It
was a voice relay station but we weren't getting
the voine relayed. We were just getting a message
sent up from somebody on the g~ound. I ' m quite
sure we didn't have any controllers at Tananarive .
I don't r eally know who was talking to me . Probably
SOUlf-! COM TECH , So • not being able to discuss the
thi.ng with them and not knowing what the status
of my total electrical p,wer was at the tim., , I
went ahead and t·..1.r.ned them off. The comp light
or the malfunction light came on and then it sort
got dim H,nd wen-f: 1)ut. Then I sort of figured that •s
the end of the ACPU. So we put the thing back
on over Carnarvon and back off again and it
woul dn't come on. It was dead,of course . So
that's the life story of the computer. Then we
played a lot of games afterward trying to ml'l.kc~ ..
a dead man come back to lifA. I have nothing
else on the computer. I sure wished I'd have
had it though.
f'~t 1F1DfJM+IAit
--- PAGE 99 ---
93
8.8 Crew Station
McDivitt Controls and displays-
. -okay, I' 11 talk about
that. The s,equential Telelights all operated
properly,--came on in the proper colors, and
punched off and everythi.ng. The event timer
operated properly. The IVI operated properly.
The flight director indicator operated properly.
I would like to discuss the GLV fuel and oxidizer
pressure gages here for a minute . We got about
a $25 million vehicle,! think,that depends almost
entirely on a launch. We've got an onboard
manual ietection system ,or something like that .
White Malfunction detection system.
McDivitt Malfunction detection system . An integral part
of the malfunction detection system, are the fuel
and oxidizer pressure gages for both the first and
second stages . This is one of the abort criteriaI
On the scal e of these gages down below the glass
is a beautiful, beantiful set of lines and numbers
and hash marks ,tha.t are wrong. They updated the GLV
information and found out that these things were
in error by quite a bit. No~ to take and fix
these gages would have taken a couple thousand
bucks. I don't know exactly how much or how
--- PAGE 100 ---
94
long, but it would have taken a few dollars. In
stead we decided it would be simpler and cheaper
and a lot quicker to go ahead and paste some
paper decals over the top of the glass . The
parallax with these things is horrendous . The
decal s were pasted on over t he top of the glass
in such a manner that they completely obscure
the inside-the- glass readings.They also obscure the
center needles which are not only the clue to
what the taz1k pressures are but a clue to whether
you have any APS power, which is also critical .
When you cut these things back so that you can
see the inside needles , you see the inside gage
too . I think this nickel-dime fix to ·our multi... ·!.
million doll ar vehicle is ridiculous. I think
that we ought to get those inside gages painted
the way that they ' re supposed to be painted. I
think we ought to end this Mickey Mouse gage
routine right now and get going on GT-5 ' s fuel
and oxidizer gages for both stages . It's ridicu
lous the way they are right now. The a .l timeter
worked as advertised. I mentioned that it went
down and back up again at around 100,000 feet .
--- PAGE 101 ---
95
The rate of aescent seemed to be all right. The
accelerometer was okay. The switches and circuit
breaker panels--! had no comment. We knocked a
couple of switches and circuit breakers off dur
ing the course of the flight. We always caught
them and got them back on quickly , or maybe we
didn't get them back on quickly. We got them
back on quickly enough because nobody ever said
much to us about it. They commented one time .
Two times,I think, they asked us if we turned some
thing on or off.
White I remember that . One was over on my side.
McDivitt Was one the A pump on the s econdary
loop or the E pump on the secondary loop,or did
you turn that on?
White No. I think one of them was up there, and I for
get how we got it on.
McDivitt Maybe we just bumped it. Yes, there was another
one over on your right-hand side and there were
a couple of them in the center circuit breaker ~
panel. One time I know I bumped one on the left
hand side circuit breaker panel. I thought it
was the-electronic timer. It was one right above
~ ►~FlDWTlAIJ
--- PAGE 102 ---
96
that. I almost had a heart attack when I saw
that thing go down because it would have messed
up the whole time reference system . I thought
the switches and circuit breaker panels were
very good . I have no complaint about it. I
think that's a well designed cockpit. The mirrors
were fine and the swizzle stick was a real life
saver . I can't reach the circuit breakers and
switches over on the right-hand side unless I
use the swizzle stick. I had to do a lot of
switching when Ed was sleeping. This swizzle
stick was the real answer.
White I 've been always telling you to get some long
arms . H~, ha! I didn ' t use the swizzle stick
very much .
McDivitt Yes, but you don't have to reach over and get
those switches all on the left-hand side .
White I found the swizzle stick was quite useful for
unstowing items out, of the center stowage box.
McDivitt That ' s right .
White It was really good there. I used that every time
when I unstowed.
McDivitt It ' s a good piece of equipment . Okay , lighting- do
.you want to ~ ~ ting, Ed?
GiQ.f >.~tfit~
--- PAGE 103 ---
97
White Okay, I think that the lighting to me was sur
prisingly good. I think that at one time there
was a press to put two white lights on either
side on the instrument panel. I think the lights
on the instrument panel should remain just as
they are. I think we used the red light much more
than we used the white light. There was quite a
bit of time when you had to do a lot of out-the
window operation at night and you wanted to have
some reference inside. The red light doesn't
seem to destroy your night ~eference at all. So
I think the instrument lights, the two on either
side above the panel, are satisfactory. I also
thought the del etion of the red light in the cabin
light and the substitution of a bright white
light was certainly good. There were several times
when I wanted to get a reading on something right
away and I didn't want to fool around with dim
lighting. I would switch on the big bright light
and I was almost always able to get good readings.
Now when the sun was really bright in you face,
there was a period of time in which your eyes
had to adjust to the instrument panel before you
.e@t'4FIDEMTIAL
--- PAGE 104 ---
98
could make the readings . I think you could put
spot lights in there and not get by that prob
lem.
McDivitt That's exactly what I was go ing to say . Lights
aren't going to solve that problem .
White No, it's just plain bright outside. When you look
back in, even though you have your lights on , it's
fairly dark inside . I personally wasn ' t troubled
by this very many times during the flight . Were
you , Jim?
McDivitt No, I wasn ' t.
White I didn't feel that was too bad . S~ actually, I
felt that the lighting , although not abundant ,
was adequate. I think the actual light ing of the
instruments would certainly be nicer if we had
individual instruments lit up. Oh, ene thing -
several times I would like to have had a flash
Eght in there, something where I could direct a
real beam of light. The little side light& I
thought, were close to being useless . I didn' t
use my little side light, the auxiliary light ,
very much at all.
McDivitt As a matter of fact , I didn ' t either .
White Very seldom . I think that if we're going to have
•Gl>J~LOiMIWs.
--- PAGE 105 ---
99
a little auxiliary light like thatl it
ought to be a light--
McDivitt It ought to be a big auxiliary light ! Ba, Pa!
White a directed beam. This goes right back to
something that we forgot to point out in water
management. I think we ought to point it out
right now loud and clear. I think that we have
to have a system in which we can gage the water
outflow. I think the medical people feel fairly
strong about this also. I know that I restrained
from drinking because I didn't want to drink all
the water out of there prior to the end of the
four days. I got a feeling Jim was doing the same
thing.
McDivitt That's right. I was doing exactly the same thing.
White I didn't drink abundantly at any time during the
flight except perhaps right before the r3entry.
I felt I was taking quite a bit of moisture with
my reconstituted food. I felt that if I overdid
it t he first part of the fligh~, we wouldn't get
through the last part, because water is so critical.
McDivitt That's right. We've got a number of expendp.~les
like OAMS, and we've got a couple of gages for
--- PAGE 106 ---
100 t◄ p=rr,aq l¥A l
the propellants . We ' ve got the EGS oxygen . We ' ve
got quantity gages for that . We ' ve got electrical
power and we ' ve got .ways of measuring that from
the ammeter . We've got food and we can a l ways
count that . But when we get down to water, which
is just as critical as all these other things in
flyir.g_ long duration missions, t here ' s not a single
way in the world we can measure how much we've
gotten or how muchi. we ' ve drunk . I think it ' s
imperative that we get some method of measuring
this t hing before we try to fly another long du
ration flight.
White The white light on the little utility light was
not satisfactory. We tried to look to see if we
could find out what we had in the cabin bottle-
McDivitt Water tank .
White And that wasn ' t satisfactory. I think we ought , ,
to have some t ype of a metering system which
would enable us to actually determine the water
that we 've utilized and in some way koow that
we ' re getting it out of t he adapter . I don ' t
know . We need to look into the whole water
metering system, which is non- existent, and see
ic!o~{Bt some kind of system.
FNilAt
--- PAGE 107 ---
101
McDivitt You lmow even if we can ' t get something that they
can pipe into the spacecraft, at the very least
we ought to TM the pressura.nt pressure down to the
~ound and back up again , or something, and get ,
some sort of calibration curve--
White So that we'd lmow what we have remaining in the
a .dapter.
McDivitt We could at least call the people down at the
ground and say, "How much water do we have left?"
White That ' s right. And I think we ought to be able to
tell what our bottle has inside of it in the
spacecraft .
McDivitt Yes, I 1:h:ink they're really two separate things .
I think first of all you 've got to know the
total water that you've got left and the r ate
that it's going down. I think the second thing
that Ed's pointing out is that we don't even have
a:n:y way of telling what the water supply is in the
spacecraft. The first clue that you get that
you're out of water is you just run out of water.
White The lighting on the water management panel I
think is just about non-existent. You can see it
in the daytime. If you know the position of the
--- PAGE 108 ---
102
switches and lmow where they're supposed to be,
you can make sure they ' re located properly and on
the proper indication, but I can 't read anything
down in that area at night. The lighting is very
poor in that area.
McDivitt One thing that I'd like to comment on here a
little bit is that ~ amber light that I insisted
that they put on the Preheat-Flush switch over
back of the water management panel . I felt it
came in real handy. Two times during the course
of the flight I left the Preheat switch on after
I flushed it for short periods of time to make
sure we didn't have any ice left in the lines .
I did it on every occas ion, but two times the
thing that called my attention to the fact that
I still had the thing on , was the fact I could
see that orange light-amber light-shining up be
tween the food box and the front of the spacecraft .
I could tell that I had another light on in the
back.
White And so I think the left panel, center panel , right
panel, pedestal, and console are not lit abundantly,
but are lit what I ' d call adequately and perhaps
--- PAGE 109 ---
a little marginal in some cases . I had no diffi
culty in reading the des i gnations on the switch
breaker panels. I think they were lighted ade
quately also. I'm not going to say they're
lighted well , because I don ' t think the lighting
is real good in the spacecraft. The water
management panel isn ' t lighted properl y . I 'm
not sure we reall y have to have it l i ghted too
well . The utility lights, I t hink,as they are
now.,are very close to being useless . It's like
taking a match and trying to use it to find your
way around . It doesn ' t provide enough light .
From time to time I would have liked to have had
a light which had a little stronger output of
light available,~ so that I coul d-- I several times
wanted to look behind my seat for things at night
and I ' d like to look down into the area in the
water management panel light.
McDivitt Yes , I think probably the wattage on those bulbs
should go up an order of magnitude to make them
effective.
White You use it so seldom that it wouldn ' t be a big
power use. You ' d only use it when you needed it ,
--- PAGE 110 ---
104
It wouldn't be something you ' d use very often.
McDivitt I'll tell you what it all is,though. When you
want it, you want something that you can see .
You just can ' t see with those things at all .
White I don ' t particularly understand what the interior
and exterior lights mean . Do you?
McDivitt I think the exterior lighting is probably the
lighting that could probably be used for docking .
We didn't have any exterior lights.
White I thought the intensity control of the lights was
an absolute necessity and I think it was satis
factory. I think the fingertip lights are quite
useful , and were commented on already. They should
have the Lexan covers, and we've also commented
that they should be located between the finger
tip and the first joint. The onboard data--now
here we come to a very useful piece of equipment.
Ha , ha! I believe I made a considerate effort
three times to update that thing, and I never
got up with it any one of those times .
McDivitt We had three positions on our flight plan strip.
We had launch,the first five minutes-- ·t'he next
time I tried to get it was 23 hours. The next
--- PAGE 111 ---
105
position was 88. :Ha, ha '
White And neither time did I catch up really where we
were . I turned and turned and turned and then
got distracted into something else .
McDivitt Quite frankly , the only things I, ever saw in that
flight plan roller were the 23- hour and the 88-
hour times and I never even read what it said .
White I didn't quite agree with--
McDivitt 84 it was, I'm sorry. It wasn ' t 88, it was 84 .
And Ed wrote something on here. He wrote my
parachute-deploy time .
White I wrote your times during l'.eentry on there .
McDivitt It would have been much more useful if there
hadn ' t been anything on it at all.
White Yes , we put a few times up there--
McDivitt I couldn't read those things, which were the only
numbers that I really was interested in at all .
White 40CK 2+ 38 • Ghute 12+ 33 . The only two that I
thought you really needed were those two. I put
them on there. I diat t thoroughly believe Gus
when he said you ought to take the thing out,
throw it away, and leave a hole in the instrument
panel . But I ' m inclined to agree with him r ight
--- PAGE 112 ---
106
Now. You ought to take it out, throw it away ,
and leave a hole in the instrument panel . But
honestly, what I do think ought to go up t here ,
is a good digital clock readout .
McDivitt I don ' t think an analog clock in that position
would do you any good though.
White They both have a high degree of parallax .
McDivitt Yes, the parallax would make it usel ess . I think
if it goes in there it ought to be digital .
White Yes, a one- second clock.
McDivitt I ' m not really sure that we're going to get a
digital clock in because of the complexity and
the weight and all that jazz.
White Let ' s talk about the clocks right now , Jim.
McDivitt Okay, let ' s talk about the clocks .
White I ' ll hit mine and then you hit yours and then
there should be a conclusion that we could come
to .
McDivitt Very good .
White I think the clock on my side is unsatisfactory.
I wouldn ' t recommend flying it on another flight .
It's difficult to read . There are two hands
going aroun~ keeping track of minute~ and some-
t~ ou read the wro~ minute hand. The one
Q ~,FtDEf>ffl~~-
--- PAGE 113 ---
107
that ' s keeping your hack-¼t's easy to mistake for
your minute hand. The way the face is marked it ' s
difficult to read the minutes out . The hours
interfere with each other. The whole readability
of the clock is unsatisfactory and the readability
of the hands is unsatisfactory. SQ I think the
clock is out in all counts as far as I ' m concerned.
I kept watching Jim's clock over there and I think
I could get a better Greenwich Mean Time off of
his clock than I could on mine on my side of the
instrument panel.
McDivitt Hey, let me comment on mine . I thought the reada
bility of t hat Accutron 24-hour clock was excellent.
The accuracy of it was lousy. It lost four or
or f ive seconds every day or more . I reset it
about every 24 hours. My Omega wrist wat ch that
I had set on GMT never lost a second, except I
forgot to wind it one day, and it ran down . It
stopped. Ha, ha!
White I was guilty of the same thing.
McDivitt But the Accutron clock on my side of the instru
ment panel, that they put on as sort of an
afterthought, was indeed a fine clock as far as
--- PAGE 114 ---
108 ~ee, ◄ rrAL
readability. It didn ' t have any chronometer func
tion to it at all . It had strictly a second,
minute , and hour hand on it. It told you GMI'
and it didn't tell you anything else. It told
you GMI' in a way you could read it . You could
read out the minutes, you could read out the hours,
and you could read out the seconds. I really
didn't have any trouble with it at all . It had
a nice thin second hand which I find to ~e much
more useful than those great big blunt t hings
with huge arrows on the end of them. I hat e to
lose the chronometer feature on that right-hand
side, but I do think that the readability of
this thing ,as far as the GMI' is concerned, is so
much superior to that other clock that it isn ' t
even comparable.
White I'm not sure that the chronometer function on
that side is really too important .
McDivitt • Don' t you?
White No, I would be perfectly happy to go ahead and
take that ,out and put a good clock on there in
Greenwi ch Mean Time. Now I 've got some further
comments on--
--- PAGE 115 ---
CO f\J FIDEf\lTlAL 109
McDivitt I guess what you end up with is two clocks that
aren ' t any good . Either one of them aren ' t any
good . You ' d rather end up with one clock that
was good.
White Yes , the way it ' s combined together right now ,
it ' s really not too good. I hacked your OAMS
burn on my watch . I work with two clocks on my
left arm and it worked out r eal well for me. I
had elapsed time on one and I had Greenwich Mean
Time on the other . I used the elapsed timer as
the one on which I made my hacks . So I feel we
got adequate backup. If one poops out , you can
use the other one to make your time on. So, I
think we should have a good clock to keep track
of the time in the spacecraft on the instrument
panel . Now , I'd like to get back on the clocks
again. I think that elapsed time is the only kind
of time that we ought to have in the spacecraft .
I think that we ought to have a good method of
keeping track of elapsed time. I think probably a
ten-hour clock that keeps track of each ten-hour
incement that you pasa to a high degree of accu
racy, is the kind of clock that we need. I don't
--- PAGE 116 ---
110 0Gb liUailJJlAL
know what we're going to do about wrist watches.
Maybe they 'll design us a ten- hour wrist watch
that we can wear. I don't see any reason why
they can't . They can design twelve-hour ones just
as easily. We 're going to go to this in Apollo.
We should face up to it and go ahead and spend the
money to get ourselves a proper t iming piece of
equipment and get our ranges and stuff operating
on elapsed time. In long flights this is the kind
of thing that ' s going to be of interest . It was
confusing to me, to tell you the truth , to operate
on Greenwich Mean Time and elapsed time through-
out the flight. I was constantly adding and sub
tracting. They'd call us up Greenwich Mean Times
and I'd want to convert them to what I was using
on my flight plan. I found this a gr eat incon
venience.
McDivitt I concur with what Ed said. I ran the whole
flight plan using elapsed time except for the
times where they called a specific GMT time to
perform a function . I did it off of a twelve- hour
face wrist watch. I added up all my twelve -hour
incements and came to whatever I wanted. If I
--- PAGE 117 ---
111
had something like 83 hours and 15 minutes , I
had to figure out that that was six times around
the clock and another 11 hours and another 15
minutes . Obviously,not the best way in the world
to do it , but the only way that was practical from
the standpoint of the flight plan .
White Well, to tell you the truth , Jim, I feel strong
enough about that elapsed time that I would be
happy to go with that type of a system of timing,
and just go ahead on elapsed t i me all the way and
use twelve-hour incements. They would call up
your time and elapsed time and use your own clock
to keep track of it . I felt it was simple enough
also to do it in this manner . But I feel that
this is ini'erior to having a good elapsed timer
and ten- hour digital incements.
McDivitt I tell you I hate to see us get involved in some!..
thing where you 've gpt a clock thats so difficult
to read,where you've got to add up twelves and-
White Now you're on the other side of the fence now!
McDivitt No, I think that we ought to do things like retro-
fire time a.~d that' s ort of thing in a
standard time that you can use-:.. something like GMT .
--- PAGE 118 ---
112 g?t 1~18 Et fFt,-,L
White Well, you really need- -elapsed
time. If we had elapsed time- -
McDivitt If we had a good elapsed timer onboard the space
craft, I would say that there ' s no doubt about it .
Elapsed time.
White I think we ought to start working on it right
now .
McDivitt Elapsed time is the way we should go . I don ' t
t hink that with the timing systems we 've got
available for the Gemini that we want to go to
elapsed time for the whole mission .
White Trying to get our data back from this f l ight is
going to be a horrible mess because of those two
timing systems .
McDivi tt I know it . I agree. Before we lai.mched , we knew
that we wanted to run it in elapsed time , and
there wasn ' t any doub't about it .
White I think maybe if we make the point str ong enough
maybe they ' l l get busy on it .
McDivitt You ' re right . l,,J,e'll get going on it .
Whi te Okay , why don ' t you take the checklist cards , Jim?
McDivitt The checklist cards . We had two complete sets of
car ds that were broken up into t wo groups . We
Qt@ tffl4f11D8JWA L
--- PAGE 119 ---
C9f<JFIIDE~~IJAl 113
had the launch, insertion, M:>de II and M)de III
aborts, EVA, the suit check and all the things
that we were going to use in the first five orbits
of the flight on one set of cards. We had another
set of cards from Pre-Retro Checklist down to the
post landing and emergency egress . The cards
included all the plots that were needed to do all
the retrofire and to make corrections to take
care of all the non- nominal things that might
happen to us during the retrofire . We also had
in this group of cards a card that we used to con
tain the final retro information such as with
OAMS or without OAMS burns , time to reverse bank,
and all the other things that we had. It was a
format , something that cou1d be easily held in
our hands and was actually used during the launch,
during insertion, and during reentry . We actually
had these cards out so we could check them off.
White I thought the only thing we would have out during
these t wo critical busy periods of time were these
two easy- to-hold , easy-to-operate, hand-held card
checklists. The rest of the stuff was all stowed
away .
c:@ ► H•I1.>6hlil4'.L
--- PAGE 120 ---
114
McDivitt We got every checklist that was required to make
the spacecraft run on these two sets of cards,
which together were about 3/4 of an i nch thick .
White I feel that we had a real workab l e solution to
the problem. These things were the same size as
those carried on GT- 3 . They were much more ex
panded than what GT- 3 •had. We had the whole
how-to-operate the spacecraft routine on these
cards.
McDivitt The preparation and availability of them-- is
this from a training standpoint . That i s later
in the brief.
McDivitt Well , anyway, we actually received our cards at
about 8:00 the night before the launch .
White That ' s the thing that I was hollering about the
loudest not to have happen and it happened . I
understand why it happened, but--
McDivitt We had so many changes in the flight plan and
nobody was working on turning this stuff out .
Our time was so filled with over- all t rai ning
and the change in flight plan that we just didn ' t
have time to go--, We did not have time to go
through the checklist over and over. When we did
00-lstEtDEtJIJA L
--- PAGE 121 ---
115
go through them it took too long to get the
thing back to us . Dick Benson came down to the
Cape and did an absolute marvelous job, I think ,
in getting these things turned out .
White I think he did, too . I think we all owe him a
real vote of confidence.
McDivitt That's right. He did an outstanding job .
White I think the biggest confidence builder that you
had, Jim , was when we started getting. these books .
McDivitt That ' s right. Shoot, I was worried about us get
ting ready for the flight because I didn ' t think
we would be able to get all this stuff together.
'Finally he showed up and really went through it 9
but it doesn ' t change the fact that these check
list cards and data books didn ' t arrive until
8: 00 the night before the flight . We had a few
changes that had to be made . I guess I went to
bed about 9: 30 . Dick Benson and Martin Miller
were still in our conference room making changes
to our books. So a lot of t hese things we didn ' t
see until we flipped them out in flight . I think
our data books, as we had them laid out, couldn ' t
have been better. Well, I shouldn't say that;
--- PAGE 122 ---
116
there is always room for improvement .
White Yes, I think we could organize them a little
better for utility and use . We had so many
changes in so,..many things that
got put in at the end. It got so that they were
put in in a bit of a helter-skelter manner, but
certainly they were easy to find .
McDivitt Well, I don ' t know. I was really q_uite pleased
with the outcome. I think that the general ar
rangement of one data book and two-- .whabever we
ought to call those other books--
White What did we call those other books?
McDivitt Two Experiments and Spacecraft Procedures and
Flight Plan - 3o uks--
White Two procedures and one data .
McDivitt Yes , two procedures books and one data book . One
thing I would have changed -- I would have expanded
the flight plan and made maybe two or three times
as many pages as we did . We could have written a l l
the notes right in it and had enough room to make
it intelligible. Because it turns out , tha:t!s
where we really kept all of our notes .
White Yes .
McDivitt Right on the flight plan.
• 8t-tftfl~E ►•ffi l-A L♦
--- PAGE 123 ---
117
White About the way they had it initially was pretty
good. Maybe that ' s a little more than we need,
but--
McDivitt No, I don't think it is, Ed. I think that is the
way it should be.
White This is a whole hour on one page .
McDivit t Really?
White Yes . So later on, you see, they went from one
hour dovm to six hours on a page . Maybe if they
cut that in half and made two or three hours on
a page--this is probably about the--
McDivitt Two hours on a page for our flight would have
made 50 single sheets or 25 double pages . That
would not have been bad .
White That probably would have been just about the ·
right length .
McDivitt We'd have gotten a lot more out of our notes, I
think, because we found ourselves scribbling in
places where it was pretty hard to determine
where you were .
White The requirement to mak~ ·changes i-n the bo0k after
the flight goes· on is ab5o;tut-ely nil . So , I thi nk
--- PAGE 124 ---
118
that rings should be replaced with something that
doesn't come undone . My rings came undone sev
eral times during the flight and luckily only
one at a time came undone. It would have been
a real mess if a:ny of these books would have come
apar~ because it would have destroyed numerical
sequence. So , I think something other than rings
ought to be used . .
McDivitt I tell you one thing I found.- -that size boo.k and
that concept that we had, I think , was really good .
White That was just the right size.
McDivitt It ' s just the right size. Their sheets are big
enough where you can write a.lot on them .
White They ' re easy to handle .
McDivitt They ' re small enough so they ' re easy to handle .
They ' re easy to stow . They fit into the flight
suit. When we launched, I had both flight sets
of data cards in my right lower pocket and the big
data book and my procedures book in my left- hand
lower pocket. I had all the checklists right on
my spacesuit..
White I had one procedure book and both my cards.
McDivitt And both your cards . So that between. the two of
~PIDE~4TIA1
--- PAGE 125 ---
119
us we had all the data books right on the flight
sui~ which was just right where we wanted them.
Whit e Another thing we did - -we hand carried this equip
ment down to the spacecraft to be sure it was
there on l aunch .
McDivitt The maps , overlays, and star charts we should
lump all together along with all the other junk
that we carried in the data case .
White Let's start with the star charts. That's easy.
I thought the star chart was satisfactory. I
think you used the one with less stars on it
than I had .
McDivitt Yes .
White I used my own one that J fly with all the time
and I was quite happy with it . I think t l.is is
exactly what you need and I don't believe you
need to overla~ two times around, but that wasn't
for the chart .
McDivitt Yes, and really the flight chart, the one that
was actually designed for the spacecraft, was de
signed ,30 that this swiveling out the window dis
play fit on it . It was a certain size to take care
of that and had a lot of dead space out on the
--- PAGE 126 ---
120 C~'4fFIDE~~TIAl
edges . I would have rather seen the stars ex
panded more so that we could tell it. We used two
polar plots of stars that were put out for the
Apollo thing that we picked up on our training.
We actually f l ew with one of the training things.
I took one out of my brief case.
White Those weren't put out by Apollo. Those were put
out at Oll<r request.. Remember? We asked for a--
McDivitt Yes, but I thought they came from the Apollo office .
White No, they came from our own Flight Crew S uppart .
McDivitt I know we requested them , but I thought that's
where they dug them up.
White No, they got them from--
McDivitt Okay.
White See, what they did is they added on all the Apollo
navigation stars . They came from our own boys in
FCSD.
McDivitt Those polar charts are really the cat ' s meow.
White All those charts are pretty good .
McDivitt So I thought the star charts sure gave us all the
information we needed. The maps and overlays--
I think we really ought to cover the maps and over
lays by the experiments. The map with the sliding
--- PAGE 127 ---
121
overlay of the orbits, I thought was a real good
tool.
White Very easy, yes .
McDivitt Yery easy to use and I am sure glad we came up
with that .
White I think also carrying pre-plotted orbits on the
· maps was also useful and stayed pretty- -
McDivitt That ' s right . Right at the last second we decided
to take four maps that were glued back to back ao
we had two sheets . They were on a sticky- back
which made them reasonably thick and durable .
One of them had no orbits on it , one had one to
22 , another one had 22 to 44, and another one bad
44 to 66 . You could look through there and you
could get a quick reference of where you were going
to be at a certain time . The times did get off,
but you were only off a little bit .
--- PAGE 128 ---
122
White You can keep track of how far you're off.
McDivitt You knew about where you ' re going to be . As Ed
sa.ys,as the time went on you could tell a.bout
where you ' re going to be just by knowing the cor
rection . It didn't change much . So, we found
these to be pretty useful . We didn't really get
to start using them until the second day .
White I didn ' t know you had them in there .
McDivitt We took them out, I guess, one time when you were
sleeping just for the heck of it and, my gosh, they
started working pretty well.
White I used them almost exclusively once we got them
out.
McDivitt Yes .
White We had a l ot of other information onboard and I
don't know whether we should go into all that
stuff now?
McDivitt Oh , yes , I took schematics of all the systems
right out of the GOH. I didn ' t ever have to use
them .,but I thought it was worthwhile having them
along. Everybody was getting so screwed up on
the water management panel and I took my notes
on the water management panel with me . I had a
ce~~Fl0.ENJJAL
--- PAGE 129 ---
• corsiFJOEffflAL 123
couple of drawings.
McDivitt I had what happened when I put all those valves
in a lot different positions. You know when you
compare something like that digital computer with
the water management panel you certainly think
the computer would be more difficult to operate .
But after the million conflicting descriptions we
had on the water management panel,I think we all
agree that it was the worst in the spacecraft.
8.8 Stowage
White Well, I guess I was the chief stower and unstower.
McDivitt All I did was take the food out .
White I thought the stowage in and out of the center
stowage box was probably the easiest place to get
in and out of . The boxes were easy to slide in
and out and the stuff was easy to put in and out .
I felt that the right-hand wing box was tough to
get in and out of. Getting in to get the bags
full of equipment took a little bit of time.
When I got to actually stowing the refuse back
in the right 'hand box, it was easy enough for me
just to reach over my left shoulder and put the
items in without even turning around . It was
--- PAGE 130 ---
124
pretty easy to use as a trash can. The stowage
of the items of equipment in the footwell, to me ,
was not objectionable at all during launch and
reentry. The ventilation module which was stowed
on the left side of the right footwell was well
out of my way during these times and offered no
impairment to me whatsoever. Something that was
a bit of a surprise to me was all t he equipment
we had in there, that we were not able to jetti
son after EVA , I knew we were in for a bit of a
problem with so much equipment. I think the stow
age of the miscellaneous pieces of equipment
underneath your legs back up in the heel in back
of the stirrup area is . pretty good s torage
for almost all of the loose items during flight.
Jim and I had the a r ea just chucked full.
McDivitt This was not any big su£prise. Remember how we
were talking about how we were going to put all
that stuff up?
White We were going to put a big refuse bag in there .
McDivitt We decided that the most likely place to put these
big items would be back underneath the seat be
cause we weren 't going to keep our legs back
--- PAGE 131 ---
125
there. We never did get them back there.
White There was no possibility to put them back there
once we filled it up .
McDivitt Yes, but even if we wanted to, I don't think there
was any big desire to put them back there.
White It would have been nice to stretch but that's
just about all . That would have been from time
to time.
McDivitt That's right .
White I found that actually the thing that I appreciated
the most was having a lower seat so I could actu
ally stretch my legs out forward than actually
behind and bending my knees.
McDivitt Yes, I was more interested in straight"ening my
legs out than bending them back more .
White I couldn ' t have done that if they hadn ' t corrected
that seat. I was able to get in and use the stow
age in the refuse box on my side fairly easily.
White This is the rubber covered box. Jim said his
wasn ' t quite as easy to get into . I had to get
into a certain position to get back there, but it
sure surprised me. I thought it would be just
about useless.
--- PAGE 132 ---
126
McDivitt Well, I got things out of it . I got a defecation
bag out one time and I got another little bag out .
I don't know what else I had back there .
White The right hand box with the clamp l ock was easy
to get in and out of . I stored things from time
to time in there .
White Yes, I found that the most useful storage area
that I had was the right-hand little velcro cov
ered container right down by my right knee . I
kept all the slides for the cameras and the mis
cellaneous little pieces of equipment in it . I
felt that was a very useful container.
McDivitt Is that the one with the canvas cover on it?
White Yes, I really used that one .
McDivitt Yes, that was pretty nice.
White The periscope container I didn't use much at all .
I really didn't need to use it. I kept the blood
pressure adapter in it throughout the whole
flight.
McDivitt The left-h8Jld aft food box actually had food in
it. It was pretty difficult to get the first
piece out . It was a long hard struggle, but I
finally got one piece out. Once I got one piece
out~the rest of it was a real snap. They had the
cbN~?fA!t
--- PAGE 133 ---
things taped together . I l eft the door open the
whole flight after we once unstowed it. I would
leave a meal floating out so that when I wanted
to get a meal I would reach up and grab the meal
that was floating loose. I would pul l the tape
out until I got a hold of the tape so I could
force another meal out of the box . Then I woul d
cut the first meal off and we'd eat it. I managed
to get all the food out of the box ~ithout getting
out of my seat. The left-hand side box had the
film stowed in it and it was easily accessible.
I think the most useful stowage place that I had
in the spacecraft was the little Volkswagen-type
bag that we had made up and bolted on the center
pedestal .
White Oh , that was a jewel .
McDivitt We kept our checklists, maps , data books , and
procedure books in it. When we went to sleep and
had a change of command and we wanted to get to
one of the pieces of equipment that the other
gu:y had, we almost invariably stuck it in that
little pouch . I really thi.nk the most useful
i8t~Fi8~
--- PAGE 134 ---
128
thing that we had put on that spacecraft were
those little pouches.
White Yes, I think the pouch could even be made a little
bit bigger.
McDivitt I think it could, too.
White Then it could receive a little bigger item and
perhaps have a little more volume that it could
expand out to., I think that it was a very
useful item. We used that as storage area more
than any other.
McDivitt That's right.
White I used the long khaki refuse bag on the side for
various things, but the· main thing I use it f or ,
once_we got the flight going,was a refuse ca...
I would put all my refuse in there until I got
a full container of it. Then I would package it
up and put it back in the right .1.a.nd box. I
thought it was very useful . .
McDivitt I used it for all kinds of things. I stored your
Mae West in it, and I had some of the camera
equipment in it when we were doing EVA .
McDivitt When I got all the good pieces fished out of it,
I finally started putting trash in it.
--- PAGE 135 ---
129
White We both have an interesting item on this . Well ,
I emptied mine out all the way , but I think you
enter ed with it full of trash .
McDivitt I reentered with that bag full of trash and it
didn't tear off .
White It was in pretty good shape .
McDivitt It was light-weight trash . Papers and things
like that .
White I have a comment on the other little trash bag ,
I never used it .
McDivitt Neither did I . I would get them out and I did not
even know where they were . Yes , I think it ' s
just too small .
White Yes , it ' s just too small and I think that Volks
wagen pouch can be improved upon . I think both
right and left canvas storage bags we~e very
adequate and should be continued . I think i t's
satisfactory just the way it is .
McDivitt They could make the -Velcro strips on it a little
longer 8Jld the Velcro strips attached to the
spacecraft a little longer so that it didn ' t have
the big curls on the edge . It tended to curl i n
and make an opening. I never could get the thing
'2
--- PAGE 136 ---
130
c l osed.
8 .8 Belts
White The bel t s worked satisfactorily.
McDivitt Yes , mine wor ked very good .
8.8 Harness
McDivitt Harness . Okay .
White The harnes s was satisfactory .
8 .8 Life Vests
McDivitt Life vests. Very good.
White Very good .
McDivivitt I might comment on those l i fe vests. I never
took my life vest off my r estraint harness the
whole time. It wasn't i n the way at all and I
was amazed that I didn't pop them. I always pop
them in the simulations .
White I was waiting for you to pop one. But I was sur
prised with the ease I could t ake t hem of f and
put them on weightless. Ther e 's just no compari
son at a l l. That's an easy task.
8.8 Waste Disposal System
White I thought the defecati on bags worked as well as
anything we had. Ther e isn't anything you're
going t o do to make it go to the bottom of the
--- PAGE 137 ---
131
bag when you use it . I think you should be
familiar with how to close the bag . I only used
one bag and I think you were a two - bag man .
McDivitt I was a two-bag man .
White The stuff didn't float out of the bag or anything .
I would permit t he thing to remain open while I
used the paper. I actually used the pa.per as kind
of a charging n.echanism to push t he stuff on down
in the bag. Y)u 1mow like loading the cannon .
Then I sealed it up on top . There was a tendency
for the fecal material to be up on the sticky part ,
which m5de tle closing not quite as nice as I
would like i ' to be , but I was able to close it
up all right I broke t wo of the disinfectant
bags and I c it the bags . There were two different
kinds of dis mfectantJ , One of them came in a bag
inside a bag and the other just came in a bag . I
was a little suspicious of that one , so I cut it
first and I think you did that , too .
McDivitt I did that to a couple of mine . I still think
that those ba 5s break too har d. I hate to have
to cut those things before I st i ck them in there .
I cut one and the darned thing floated back out
again and I didn't notice it . I had the bag just
C8MFIDE~~TI.Asl
--- PAGE 138 ---
C~MFIDE~~TIAb 132
about sealed up when I noticed this thing float
ing around inthe spacecraft. I had to push
it back down in there .
White When I cut it, I got the stuff on me and a little
bit around . The two that I broke , that were
contained inside the plastic bag, seemed to work
all r i ght . On the whole I was satisfactorily
pleased with the defecation bags. I felt also
that the liquid was easy to work into it. I
think that ' s a satisfactory system.
McDivitt You really have that knack of kneeing .
White One thing, it is just like oleomargarine was --
. Ha, ha!
McDivitt A little different in coloL Ha, ha!
White One thing t hat I want to comment on was the toilet
paper with the darn wax job. I did not think the
toilet paper was satisfactory. It had a waxy
back so that it was like the back side of a Sears
Roebuck Catalog.
McDivitt That was not the side you were supposed to use.
White I know it but the other side had such a small
amount of absorbency . This is why you always used
so darn much paper J im McDivit~ Ha , ha!
--- PAGE 139 ---
133
I found that the tissues that we car ried in the
little containers were very satisfact ory for the
purpose . I think they can leave the paper out of
those bags and provide us with adequate tissues.
Whil e we ' re talking about these tissues , let ' s
go into the container .
McDivitt That 's right . The container .
White Yes, the container failed . Both of them failed in
a similar manner . We had tissues just loose .
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