This document is a preliminary transcript (Part II) derived from voice recordings of the Gemini 5 flight crew technical debriefing. NASA conducted this…
Full Document Text
Text extracted directly from the source PDF. Text extraction via abigailhaddad/ufo-releases; original file at war.gov.
Read the full text (200,000 characters)
--- PAGE 1 ---
22
Authority:
NW 91526 GEMINI V
Technical Debriefing
j Part ~I_I__________________
CLASSIFICAT:ON CHANGE
o_ ----.......,,_~
c L~A
s:..;;...: o_~
s 1:...::...,::.
By authority of • o I G !>- .2.
F 1 -=-= E
- / - ? "'t..
Chanied by C ' ~ ~ , Date NOV 2 0 973
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 Directive 1382.2.
THIS MA TE ,-IAL CO NTA I NS INF09'MATION AFl"£ CT IN G
THE NA TION" L DE FENSE OF TH t: U NITED STATES
W ITHI N THE MEANING OF TH£ ESPIONAGE LAWS . .
TITLE 18. U .S.C. SECTION 793 AN D n• . THE T9'AN S
MISS IO N OR REVELATION OF WH ICH IN "N Y M"NNIEl'I
TO AN U N ....UTHORIZ£D P'E ASON IS PIIOHIB IT E D BY LAW.
GROUP 4
DOWNGRADE D A T J YEAR I N TF RVALS
CECL ASS IFIEO AFT£9' 12 YE ...,,-5
l
--- PAGE 2 ---
COt~FIDEt~TIAL
PRELIMINARY
GT- 5 FLIGHT CREW DEBRIEFING TRANSCRIPT
PART II
Prepared By
Spacecraft Operations Branch
Flight Crew Support Division
September 2, 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
Declassified after 12 years
co~~FIDEt'4TIAL
--- PAGE 3 ---
('
PREFACE
This preliminary transcript was made from voice tape recordings
of the GT- 5 flight crew debriefing conducted August 30, 1965 thru
September 2, 1965 at the Crew Quarters, Cape Kennedy, Florida .
Although all the material contained in this transcript has been
edited , the urgent need for the preliminary transcript by mission
analysis personnel precluded a thorough editorial review prior to its
publication. Errors in this transcript will be corrected as soon as
possible and an official transcript will be published at a later date .
This document contai ns a transcript of the second part of the
total debriefing. A prel iminary transcript of the first part was
publi shed on September 1, 1965 , and it contains the crew' s description
of the mission from an operati onal standpoint.
--- PAGE 4 ---
; CAts4flOEt!!IIAb
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Par agraph Page number
8.0 SYSTEMS OPERATION
8 . 1 Pla t f o:rm. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . • . . . . • • 1
8 . 2 O.AMS •• ..... . ....... . . . ......... . . . .....• .. •. •• ••••• 16
8 . 3 RCS •....... . .. • ....•..... . . •. .••. .. .... . • .•••••• • • • 47
8.4 Environmen t a l Control System ·•· •·• ··•·••· · ··•••••• • 54
8 , 5 Comm.1.lllications .... . . .. ............... . .. . ...••••••• 66
8 . 6 Electrica l Sys tem ... . ... . ......................... . 80
8 . 7 Computer ..... . .. . ... ... ......... . ........ . .. . . . ... . 82
8. 8 Cr ew Sta tion .................. .... ................. 90
9,0 OPERATIONAL CHECKS
9.1 Apollo Landmark Identifica tion • ••• • ·••·••·•••• • •• · 132
9 . 2 Cabin Lighting Survey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . • . . . . • . • . • • 146
9 . 3 SPADATS Tra cking Check . .. . .. . .. . . .. . . . . .. • .. • • . . .. 147
9 . 4 UHF Antenna Pa ttern Test ..... .. . .. .. . .....••.•.••. 147
9 . 5 Thrus ter Illuminat ion Checks ........... . . •....•••• 148
9. 6 Dual Command Transmitter Tes t ....... . .. .... ...••• • 148
9. 7 Radar Test s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . • . • • . 148
9. 8 ID1 Eva llla.tion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . • • . • . 150
10. 0 VISUAL SIGHTINGS
10 . 1 Powered Fl ight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
10 . 2 Orbital Flight ...... . ... . ....... . .... .. ....•• . .• . . 153
10 . 3 Reentcy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
11.0 EXPERIMENTS
11 . 1 Visual Definition of Celesti al Objects (D- 1) ,
Nearby Object Photography (D- 2) , and Terres t rial
Features (D- 6) ••···· • ·•·• •· ··• · • •• · • · ··• •••• •• •• • · 210
11. 2 Cel es tia l , Space and Terrestria l Ra diometry ..•.••• 222
11. 3 Synoptic Ter r a in (S- 5) and Wea ther (S- 6) .
J?rl.otography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . • . . . • • • • • • • • 228
11 . 4 Vis ual Acuity and As tronaut Visibi lity (S-8/D- 13)
and Vision Test (M- 9) .......... .. ..... . ......... . . 233
11. 5 Electros tati c Charge (MSC-1 ) .......... •• . . •.•• • •• • 242
11 . 6 Zodiacal Li ght Photography (S- 1) .... .. .......• •• .• 243
11. 7 In- flight Exer ciser (M- 3) ........... . .... . ........ 243
11. 8 In- f l i ght Phonocardio gram (M- 4) ••••··•••••••· • ··•• 244
11. 9 Cardiovascular Refl ex Conditioning (M- 1) . •••••••• • 244
11. 10 Cloud Top Spectrometer (S- 7) •·•••••··•••·•• • ••· ••• 246
11. 11 Miscel laneous ............. . . . ... . .•...... . ...••••• 248
--- PAGE 5 ---
CQ t-4 F-1 DEt-4TIAL
12 . 0 PR.EMISSION PLANNING
12.1 Mission Plan (Trajectory) .. . .. .. .. ..... .. . ......... 255
12. 2 Flig}lt Plan .. ... .. ... ... . ..... . . ..... .. . . . .... . .... 255
12.3 Spac ecraft Changes . . .. .. ..... . ... .. .... ... . . .. .... . 255
12.4 Mission Rules . . .... . . . ..... ........... .. ...... ..... 256
12. 5 Experiments .. .... . .. . . ...... . .. ..........•......... 2 56
12.6 Training Activities . . .. . .. .. .. .... .. . ....... ...•.. . 257
MISSION CONTROL
13. l GO/NO GO ••. . ... •. ....... ... ... . . . . ...... •• •. •• • ... . 261
13. 2 FLA and CLA Updates .. .. .... ... ... ....... . .. ... .. . .. 261
13. 3 Consumables .•.. . .. . . . .. ... ....... ..... .. . . ......... 261
13.4 Flight Plan Changes •. .. ... . . . . ... . .. ....•.. ... .. . •. 264
13 . 5 Systems .• •. .. ... . ............ .. . .... ..•.•..•• . . . . .. 267
13. 6 Experiments Real - Time Updates .. .. ........... . . . . .. . 268
TRAINING
14. 1 Gemini Mission Simulator . . ................. .... ... . 270
14.2 LT\T , DCPS • , . ... .... . . . . .• .. . .........•• . .••. . • •. .• • 284
14. 3 MAC Engineering Simulator •• • ••·•·••· • · •·• ••••••· • •• 285
14.4 Centrifuge ... ...... . ... . .. . ........................ 286
14.5 Translation and Docking Trainer ••• · •····•·• · ··•••·· 286
14. 6 PlSlletaritllD. .. . . . .. . . . .. . .... . .. ....... . . ... . ....... 288
14 . 7 Systems Briefings . .. .. ...... . . .. .. . .. . . .. .... .. . . . . 292
14 . 8 Flight Experiments .. . .. . . ... . . .... . . .........•. .. .. 293
14.9 Spacecraft Systems Tests . .. .... . ... .. . ..... ........ 294
14 . 10 Egress Training ..... . ..... . . . . . . . ...... .... . .. ..... 296
14.11 Parachute Training ......... ... ... . . .... .. .......... 297
14. 12 Ia.unch simulation ............. . . . . . .. .. . . .... .. ... . 298
14. 13 Network Simulation .. ....... . ... .. ... . . . ...... . .. ... 298
14. 14 Reentry Simulation . ... . ... .. ...... .. ... .......... . . 298
14. 15 Simulated Network Simulations . . ... . . ....... . ...... . 298
14.16 Zero "G" Fligh.ts ............ . .. . . .... . . ........ .. . . 299
14. 17 Flight Plan Tra ining ... .... .. . . . . . . .. ......... .. ... 300
15. 0 CONCLUDING COMMENTS
15.1 Crew Qu.arters .... ; ....... . .. . .. . .. . . .. •.... . .... .. . 30 2
15 . 2 Physical Training and Aircraft Flying . ... ..... ..... 303
15.3 Sea I.a.b . . .. ........ ... ....... . . ... .. . . .. . .... .. . ... 304
15. 4 Wa tches and Clocks . .. . .. ....... . ....... ...... .. . ... 304
15.5 Miscellaneous Discrepencies •• · ··•·• · ·· • • ••••••••••• 306
15. 6 Medica l Aspects .. . .. .. .. . . . . . ........ . .. .. .... . .... 310
--- PAGE 6 ---
1
8.O SYSTEMS OPERATIONS
8.1 Platform
Cooper By day we used standard procedure of finding a
zero yaw, which is a little easier to do down at
about retro position. The nose is a little bit
in the way for determining zero yaw unless you
pitch down just a little past nose low in zero
zero- zero position. When pitched down just a tiny
bit, zero yaw was very readily apparent to within
a fairly reasonable degree of accuracy, and then
ease it right on up . We had lines for the zero
zero position to give us our pitch and roll on the
horizon. This was the regular day alinement.
Night was pretty much the same except we 1 d get
zero yaw by a star, get roll and pitch by the zero
lines on the window (or knowing where they were
approximately) line this with the top of the air
glow or the horizon. At that point you'd go into
Cage, hold it there at that position until it
caged) then uncage the platform to BEF or SEF
whichever the case might be, and then to to Plat
form and Attitude on the FDM and FDI's. Then
aline the platform fine aline SEF or BEF by keeping
,
--- PAGE 7 ---
2
the needles zeroed. It would slowly gyro torque
itself and correct out the small errors for fine
alinement. Anything to add, Pete?
Conrad Well, I didn ' t hear all of that, but I think the
alinement is straightforward. One thlng I had not
read in either the GT- 3 or GT- 4 debriefings on
this subject on out the window alinement was that
we have a window gage that you can us1i t hat will
put you right on in roll and pitch ancl, of course,
for yaw you still have to use the same out the
window reference.
Cooper One thing that I think that should very definitely
training wise be readily available anc. we looked
and looked and looked and couldn't fir..d any was an
actual scale picture of the left hand wi ndow and
the right hand window with what the hcri zon should
look like at zero-zero-zero and at retro attitude
and at minus 90 degrees left and 90 degrees r ight
and at 60 degrees left and 60 degrees r ight and
this type thing . I've never seen an a~tual drawing
showing the horizon line on a window a·'ld what i t
should look l ike .
--- PAGE 8 ---
3
Conrad Yes
Cooper I think this would be a tremendous benefit and
shouldn't be difficult to come up with.
Conrad If you place your eye so that it goes through the
lower left corner of the right window or the lower
right corner of the left window and run that eye
position right through the front RCS yaw thruster,
the lower yaw thruster in the front ring, I guess
that's ring A, anyway, you take a line between
your eye, the corner of the window and the front
RCS yaw thruster, right through the middle of it,
and put that line on the top of the airglow or the
horizon. Then the spacecraft, and this looks like
an excessively nose up attitude, but it's not,
you're zero degrees in pitch then the window frame
is just about vertical to the horizon and it forms
a perpendicular angle.
Cooper The inside edge of the frame .
Conrad The inside up and down edge of the window corner
makes a perpendicular angle to the horizon and you
can use that as a roll gage. If you set it up
--- PAGE 9 ---
4
that way that platform isn ' t off 4 or 5 degrees
i n roll or pitch.
Cooper So, i t r eally looks like, when you fir3t start
lining it up, it appear s to you that f ::-om the
left seat that you ' re actually rolled l eft ,
Conrad Yes, that's right .
Cooper And f r om your seat it would look l i ke j t was
actuall y r olled right .
Cooper It doesn ' t look horizontal at al l, but that ' s due
to the fact t ha t you 're sitting off by thi s offset .
Conrad One other thing that you might say about platform
alinement is that if you ' re not on in roll and
pi tch, mainl y roll, t his really will ea t you up
in alinement time .
Cooper Roll and yaw are t he bad errors creator:, . Pitch
you can be off a l ot i n and it' 11 corr ec:t r ight
out.
Conrad Not if the other two (roll and yaw) are off .
Cooper But if you 're off in roll and/or yaw th€n it
really takes a long time and its real rcugh .
--- PAGE 10 ---
5
Conrad You don't want to be deceived by the fact that
the needles are holding in the center pretty well.
Cooper That's right, one thing that we found when we
were going through this real, real long platform
alinement prior to getting all l i ned up for retro
fire was that we had the needles all alined, t hey
were sitting all glued out . But you have to s i t
there with them for a little b i t glued out . They
sit there all zeroed out, it looks like everything
was all alined and al l of a sudden yaw begin to
ease off quite a bit showing that we weren ' t
alined.
Conrad At one time we went to Orbit Rate when we had not
pulled the yaw all the way in and, boy, it showed
up in r oll as we started moving around.
Cooper Orbit Rate and Horizon Scan.
Conrad I mean it shwed up in the roll axis .
Cooper Oh, yes. Right .
Conrad You have to take t he time and be careful with the
platform alinement, no doubt about i t.
° CSf*fDEt◄ TIAl
--- PAGE 11 ---
6 ,
Cooper And i t takes t ime to do it and do a r ~ally good
job on it .
Modes . The only thing I can say about Cage is
that it takes an excessively long tim1; to Cage .
Conrad I ' ll comment on this even though we d:i. dn't get a
chance to do the rendezvous , but even in simula
tion, it was apparent and the l i ttl e bit t hat
we did in flight caging the ~latform, getting
ready for alinements and t hings l ike -;hat, it
was very time consuming . I think tha ·; you could
find use for a f ast slave cycle .
Cooper Very much so.
Conrad Fast Cage cycle is what I should say. I 'll say
it's a luxury item but it sure could be helpful .
Cooper SEF and BEF worked j ust like advertisEid . SEF
for fine aline and small- end- forward, BEF for
reYersing your phase angles so that you ' re still
steering to and fine alining blunt encl forward .
Conrad J i m and Ed made the comment that t hey never alined
BEF, that t hey a lways alined SEF. We alined SEF
normally through the flight and when ,:e were ready
60 ►◄~ ~
--- PAGE 12 ---
7
to retro, we wanted to save as much fuel as
possible, so we alined BEF and I think alining
BEF is easier than in SEF.
Cooper Yes ,
Conrad I think you can tell yaw better going backwards
than you can going forward.
Cooper Yes.
Conrad I don't know why, maybe it was just psychological .
Cooper I agree with you, I really think you're right.
I think you can tell it better. It streams away
from you a little more .
Conrad Yes. It was easier to pull in in yaw . I thought
it was a little more comfortable feeling . I
enjoyed the riding around alining the platform
BEF much more than when we alined it SEF, and I
felt we were closer to being on most of the time
when we pulled it in in yaw.
Cooper Of course, we had a little better control system
there, it does help.
Conrad Yes .
Mt ◄ FIDE►~TIAL •
--- PAGE 13 ---
8 ~NftDE~~TIAt·,_
Cooper I think either way (SEF, BEF) is good, both worked
very a dequately and it just depends on which way
you want to aline for what you ' re going to do .
BEF is certainl y a t least as acceptable as SEF.
ORBIT RATE was not bad off a t all . We di dn't
have any l arge errors in it due to t he f a ct that
we had more nearly circulari zed our oroit from
t he burns that we did .
Conrad We were about at 171- 60 at that time p<=:riod . I
don't know what t hey ha d picked as an orbit rate
number at the end fina lly for the REP .
Cooper We were about 107, 166 .
Conrad Yes . I was really surprised with how ,..,ell the
platform stayed on after just t a king a quick look
at zero- zero- zero, not even trying to ali ne these.
We j u st passed freely through this in dr ifting
flight and uncaged the platform right into Or bit
Rate, and it didn't get off five or ten degrees
in any of the three axis .
Cooper For about 20 hours .
'i0 ►~FIDE►~TIAL
--- PAGE 14 ---
G©t◄ FIDl!~~TIAL 9
Conrad Yes, for about 20 hours that we drifted around .
It was finally off the most in roll. It got about
15 degrees off in roll .
Cooper Orbit Rate worked very well .
Conrad Other than inertial work, I just didn't see any
big advantage in free. You'd still think in
terms of the local horizon up there most of the
time.
Cooper Yes .
Conrad We just never had much occasion during the f light
to use FREE.
Cooper Platform displays .
Conrad Bal l oper ation through the poles was just
fantastic! It was so smooth. The only way you
could tell that you were going through a pole
is you could see the roll index, vehicle is on the
,, roll gimbal, flip .
Cooper Yes. This is something we had trouble finding
out, whether this was the case or not and we
deliberately ran several specific checks of this.
<!rJ~~FIDEt~TIAL
--- PAGE 15 ---
10
Regardless of which way you approachec. it from,
whether you approached i t fast or slm.- or whether
you 're going through the 90 or 270 pojnt on the
ball, you can go right smack through the middle
of it, you can sit right in the middle of it,
you can move up or down, r ight or left and the
ball doesn 't jump, doesn't j itter, doesn't do
anything . It's just beautiful .
Conrad Yes .
Cooper We did a burn right through each one of the poles .
I think the controls are pretty simila-r to what
they are in the s imulator . There are t wo
exceptions, one of which I think i s valid and
which I think may be influenced by the fact that
we had a lot of s low degredation in ou:~ OAMS
system. I thought that the PlJISE system in the
spacecraft had a lot less torque, a reasonable
amount less torque and it got a lot leBs, as we
went along it got less and less and leHs .
Conrad Yes .
Cooper But even i nitially, it felt like thP- PlLSE system
--- PAGE 16 ---
11
had less authority in the spacecraft than it does
in t he simulator. On the other hand, I felt the
RATE COMMAND system had a heck of a lot more
authority in the spacecraft than it does in the
simulator .
Cooper That RATE COMMAND just flat snaps you in. In the
simulator, when you come around in RATE COMMAND
and you let off it will go through 5 to 10 degrees.
You have to let off on it 5 to 10 degrees early.
By golly, in the spacecraft you didn't have to
let off even a degree early. When you let go,
it stopped right there jus t like you put on the
brakes.
Conrad Yeah. It was good and it was tight .
Cooper It was so tight that you almost had to - -
Conrad That was OAMS Rate Command.
Cooper You almost had the feeling that the OAMS Rate
Command was almost bending the Adapter Section .
I t had such high torquing rate .
Conrad On day 2 and 3, our OAMS system was working
completely correct. I was extremely impressed
--- PAGE 17 ---
12
•
with how nice a control system i t was. We made
several maneuvers using this control Eystem and
didn 't have any gripes on that sys tem at all . As
Gordo said we were really impressed wjth the
Rate Command system.
FCSD REP When you turned around 90 degr ees in crder to get
rid of the REP, did you use the 8-ball ?
Cooper Yes .
Conrad FDI 's are on this Gimbal flip bus i ness too, you
see . They do that in the trainer, but they were
steady as a rock in the spacecraft .
Cooper Yes, we used the FDI's for t he fi ne al ine . Al
though to get there we used the 8- ball .
Conrad We had trained to use the IVI ' s .
FCSD REP That 's right.
Cooper We used the IVI ' s , not t he FDI' s . We used t he
I VI ' s as the real fine measure of being l i ned up .
We used the FDI 's too .
Conrad You can use anything in the spacecraft.
--- PAGE 18 ---
•
13
Cooper You can't use the FDI 's or the 8- ball as a
reference in the mission simulation because you
have this gimbal flip which just gives you fits .
..
We didn't use Ra te Command very much, mainly just
for the burns . In fact, t he burns are the onl y
times we used Rate Command. I used the Dir ect
system several times and I thought the Direct was
really good. It was good and crisp and you had
good authority with it.
Conrad I had the impression that the spacecraft was a
lot more stable vehicle in Di rect than it was in
the simulator .
Cooper Tm t' s right .
Conrad In t he simulator you tend to sit there and go
too much and go too much . When Gordo'd stick a
shot of Direct in to go someplace, it never
showed up in another axis . An equal shot i n the
other direction would stop it r i ght now .
Cooper Yes.
Conrad The effects momentum of the spacecraft didn ' t seem
to be as great in flight as they were i n the
~f:HDEt◄TIA ~
--- PAGE 19 ---
14 "t OMFtDE~ ◄ TIAL
simulator. You didn ' t have to lead a :, much.
Cooper That's right .
The Direct system was a much more precise system
in the spacecraft than it i s in the s ' mulator .
Conrad I thought it was quite easy to fly, but there's
no doubt about it, boy, that Rate Corrunand eats
up the fuel .
--- PAGE 20 ---
• 15
Cooper Direct uses quite a bit of fuel also.
Conrad We did use a little fuel t hat one day. We were
doing so many experiments in a row that we had to
very rapidly get the spacecraft back to a zero
zero- zero or a pitch down 30 posi tion. When you
track one of these targets and come through the
nadir and keep on going, boy, you're really smoking
towards a rearward direction.
Cooper You're sitti ng i nverted BEF.
Conrad That's r i ght, you ' ve got rates built up going away
from you and you ' d have to use Direct to stop those
rates, get yourself moved all the way back up here
and s top them again. Maybe it'd be so tight that
you'd use Di rect to get down and start on it, and
then switch to Pulse and track in Pul se and then
r i ght back up and start doing something else. Well,
we di d eat up a lot of fuel that day, but we got
everything done that day. We hit darned near all
targets.
Cooper Di rect i s a real responsive , real fine way to
maneuver.
60t~Fl0Et.t:tAt
--- PAGE 21 ---
16
•i Q:M f~Cf1stI IAla ..
Cooper Platform controls were very straight fc,rward. I
thought they all functioned as expected.
Conrad The Platform took the full 25 minutes to go through
the fast heat, and the first time on it was really
cold and took another 3 minutes worth before start
of the Cage Cycle. After that, it seemed to stick
right around 25 minutes to get the platform up and
on the line and start into Cage .
Cooper Right now, I've got extreme confidence in that
Platform. I really think it does well.
Conrad '.Ihe platform did an outstanding job during the
entire flight.
Cooper I t sure did.
8. 2 OAMS
Cooper We fired the OAMS on the pad and it was mushy. You
couldn't hear them fire just gas mainly, About
the third round of firings however, you could really
feel them fire off, they were all good.
Cooper During flight the OAMS started out very good and in
about the third day began to degrade. ~:he f i fth day
--- PAGE 22 ---
~ l i U iiAL 17
i s when we found the two thrusters that were not
operating correctly.
Conr ad 'Ille number 8 thruster was working real good when we
found that the number 7 thruster was out. So we
shut the sys tem down again and had a big talk with
Houston about this . We went one more revolution
and they gave us some tests to perform on 7 and
that 's when we di scovered 8 wasn ' t working.
Conrad 'lwo of them quit , within an orbit of one another.
Cooper We had already run complete tests on it and
number 8 had been working on the previous tests and
quit on the next one. 'Ille story of the old OAMS
inflight system was that gradually as the days went
by there was more , and more that went wrong with
it unti l f i nally at the end we had less than half
the thrusters left and they were pretty bad.
Conrad I realized a couple of heater blankets were probably
out on the OAMS system, but I'm still convinced
unt i l somebody convi nces me otherwise, that the
thing that shot the OAMS system down, was the
decision to turn off the OAMS heater. I had ques
ioned the decision in the air to only point that
--- PAGE 23 ---
18
I could. I didn 't think we were in that much
trouble for electrical power. I still think it
was a mi stake be cause I think even with a couple
of blankets out, if we'd have kept the ,3ystem warm
wi th the rest of the heaters, we'd have never froze
them up.
Cooper 'llie thrusters themselves were actually ·vorki ng
because you could actually get a glow off of them.
There was a little bi t of fuel or oxidiier coming
out of it and burning , but it wasn't getting the
proper amount of mi xture ratio.
Conrad Now, they could have been dirty. That :ould be it,
but it was purely in the valves i n the thrusters
themselves because they were putting out thrust
even at the end. I f you wanted to hold it i n full
D:Lrect wi th 7 and 8 circuit breaker e ngs.ged , you
were getting wet f uel thrust.
Cooper Yes . You were getti ng a little wet thr~st.
Conrad let's go into how the whole thing occurred. We
had shut the heat er down a long time ago and we
really hadn't agreed wi th that, but there wasn't
much we could do about it. We were i n the mi ddle
--- PAGE 24 ---
, 19
of doing experiments on the fifth day, and we had
had a little trouble alining the platform. What
was happening, apparently was the number 7 thruster
was getting cranky, but we also knew we were vent
ing hydrogen and we knew this because we were
getting some torqueing out of that . At the t i me
Gordo was having trouble ali ning the Platform, we
thought it was because the hydrogen was venting.
Finally Gardo said, "There's something wrong with t
the control systems. " Once we deci ded there was
something wrong wi th the control system, that ' s
when it went just like back i n the simulator. We
shut everything down, went to Direct, thought about
it for a second and turned off all the circuit
breakers , turned them all back on one at a time ,
tested all of the thrusters and, sure enough , when
we got to number 7, it was out, completely out.
Conrad So then I tri ed secondary ACME bias power. We
tried the seconday yaw and the secondary attitude
drivers with no effect so we were relatively as
sured that something had happened in either the
hand controller or the fuel was not feeding. We
decided to power down r i ght there , which we did ,
and we advised flight of what the problem was . I
£ 8.M&HW~Jl~i
--- PAGE 25 ---
20
think that's about the time we really decided the
s canner wasn' t a ny good , or had we already tol d
them about that?
Cooper Yes. We 'd already t old them about that.
Conrad Yes , you ' re right. I know what it was . That's
when we discovered that the voice tape was out.
We were right i n the middle of s everal experiments
and it occurred approximate l y like 16:30: 54 on
the f i f th day. We r eported to Houston that the
voice tape was out, the number 7 yaw L~ft thruster
was out and that I had turned the OAMS heater back
on. I was suspicious of that all the ·;ime . That's
when they called up a nd gave us this m:i.nimum power
down. Why did we go i nto that? They had us power
down everything.
Cooper At about the same time that we came up with this,
they came up with this idea that the hrdrogen was
boiling off s o fast that we were going t o be out of
hydrogen by about the end of the f i fth day at the
rat e we were goi ng i f we d i dn't power down and stop
the usage of i t .
.iO~~FIDEMTfffl:
•
--- PAGE 26 ---
21
Conrad Yes. That's when we came around on the next
revolution. 'Illey had us fire up everything again
to take a look at i t and that's when we found out
number 8 had just gone down the tubes too. But
number 8 was still givi ng us something; number 8
was stil l burning, but it was burning off mi xture.
You could see a flame .
Cooper You could see a glow out of it.
Conrad You couldn ' t hear it like you could hear the other
thrusters, but you could see lights on the ni ght
side so you knew something was coming out. 'Ille
drivers j ust weren't openi ng all the way or some
thing.
FCSD REP The fifth day at 16:30 is the first problem you
had with the OAMS, is that right?
Conrad No, earlier. When we first powered the system
up, we were having trouble with that very f irst
platform alining and we felt we were having some
hydrogen venting problems. 'Ihat's when we drifted
way off, and Gordo said, "'Ille Pulse system isn't
going to hack this hydrogen venting. " He went
t o Di rect and blipped the yaw l eft thrusters .
•
--- PAGE 27 ---
22
All kinds of garbage came by the spacecraft. It
looked like we blew a whole bunch of junk out of it.
I remember distinctly seeing gold balls .
Cooper Great b i g balls of l iquid.
Conrad So it must have been raw fue l . Something at this
time wasn 't working right , but I guess number 8
was putting out full thrust and number 7 was still
work i ng but not all the way. Now mayb<? right then
and there if we'd have really worked that system
over; fired all the thrusters in Direc1; and a
couple of good healthy loads throug it ,., and put
the h eater s back on the line, we might have sal
vaged thew
vaged the whole system. It must have been right
at the point of freezing up.
Cooper This was early i n the fifth day.
.£:Obi:EIOEttllAL
--- PAGE 28 ---
23
Conrad We didn't hit the direct thrusters long enough to
heat them I don't think. I do distinctly remember
saying to Gordo "We blew all this junk out of there . "
Conrad We ' d never seen anything like that before and we'd
been up there 5 days and seen all sorts of things .
We could see liquid oxygen when we vented it, if we
vented i t under the right light conditions . We
could see when we vented hydrogen under the right
lighting conditions. It would all float by the
spacecraft and at low sun angles, either at sunup
or sundown any one of these quantities, ECS o ,
2
CRYO o2, or RSF hydrogen, you could see it come
whistling by the spacecraft. We were continually
floating around in these old silver balls of either
hydrogen or oxygen.
Cooper Okay, well that was pretty well the background of
what happened. Some thrusters that had checked
out good would subsequently check out bad or be
completely inoperative as the days went by. So
finally we wound up with maybe half of the total
OAMS thrusters still operating properly.
--- PAGE 29 ---
24
•
Conrad We had some thrust remaining in every axis but yaw
l eft . We had some in yaw left if you just wanted
to dump raw fuel overboard . I don ' t know whether
it was fuel or oxidizer.
Cooper Generally, what we'd do is roll and pitch to get
our yaw left .
Conrad I f we were tumbling and wanted to damp we just
waited until we translated into the right axis in
whi ch we had some authority .
Cooper The one axis that always seemed to work pretty good
so far as control authority was pitch.
Conrad Yes
Cooper Pitch up and pitch down seemed to work reasonably
well all the time.
Conrad Yes . I wonder i f that had something to do with the
pitch thruster lines on the manifold being close
to the source. Pitch was always good . Our trouble
was mainly coupling in the yaw thrusters both right
and left.
Cooper Source pressure was easy to monitor . SJurce temper
ature we could monitor and it was too CJld .
--- PAGE 30 ---
25
Conrad It ran down in the 48 degree area .
Cooper It showed that it was running too cold . That's why
we questioned turning the OAMS heater off ,
Cooper Regul ated pressure was fine .
Conrad Right on the money .
Cooper Propellant quantity seemed to read r easonably good
until it got down towards the end. At that point
(from about 10 percent on down) the propellant
quantity just went on down to the bottom of the
scale . It was reading below zero and yet ground
readouts indicated OAMS propellant quantity remaining .
Cooper Monitoring of OAMS propellant r emaining onboard
information was fairly good .
Conrad Yes. I thought we were fairly close.
Cooper Gr ound i nformation agreed fairly good with onboard
information in general .
Conrad The whole OAMS sy stems got to be reviewed . I
think that they think we wasted a lot of fuel and
I think that on day 3 we probabl y were a little
overgenerous with our fuel usage. But I ' m still
ret◄ FtE>Et.~TIA ~ I
--- PAGE 31 ---
26 COt--1 FID Et◄ :r IA~ ,;
convinced that because we went so long with the
OAMS heater off that we were not burning a nominal
fuel to oxidizer ratio.
Cooper Yes . Even though we were in a rush to get a lot of
....
these things done, I was still extremelr conscious
of fuel usage . Although I'd used Direct to get
i t started, I wouldn't just fire all the way around
in Direct input, let it coast around, a~d then stop
it right there.
Conrad Yes. I never saw fuel usage in the sim1lator like
we saw in flight .
Cooper I t just seemed to go down very rapidly on the gauge
during that one period of time.
Conr ad And yet we went night after night all night long in
Horizon Scan or in Pulse and would hardly use any
fuel at all . As a matter of fact, the ground gave
me the figures. Thi s was when we were ::unning all
ni ght long in Horizon Scan so that we had a nice
reference . They said "You' re using about 2 pounds
11
a night. Now, that seems like a r easonable amount
for what we were doing.
•
--- PAGE 32 ---
27
Cooper We were using it for Attitude Hold and for getting
pictures and to get through the day side .
Conrad Oh Yes. We never used Rate Command except for the
maneuver burns.
Cooper We were tracking the missile using Diredt. Had to
get on it in a rush so I went to Direct .
Conrad I questioned propellant quantity prior to lift- off.
It was 87 percent at lift- off, I thought we were
supposed to be 100 percent on the gage at lift- off .
I thought we had propellant quantity loaded to the
maximum?
Cooper Well, they said we were about 50 pounds under .
Conrad Yes, they said we had about 50 pounds less fuel
than we were supposed to have.
Cooper We asked them about this before we l ifted off,
Cooper At about 4 or 5 minutes before lift- off, we asked
them about this.
Conrad We got a "We ' re checking" and that's the last we
heard from it. And off we went .
--- PAGE 33 ---
28
Cooper So then we asked again when we wer e in orbit,
"About this under load on GA.MS fuel" . I su spect
t hat something was fouled up because we didn ' t get
a full 0AMS load . That was pretty bad .
Cooper I think monitor ing onboard of propell~mt r emaining
t o compl et e the mission was pretty good. The fore
cast fuel for mis si on completion of GE,m ini V ought
to be reviewed because somebody didn ' t quite come up
with the right fuel figures . Twenty- six percent
remaining after the REP would not havE been nearly
enough to have ~one the r emainder of the mission .
Conrad Yes . I t hi nk t hat in computing the a.mount of fuel
used t o perform a maneuver, they figure out how much
to get the r ates going but they must s top there .
They must not f i gur e how much fuel it takes you to .
get back to, say, zer o- zero- zero . Appirentl y t hey
assume that whenever you get done with a tracking
maneuver, you j ust drift to get back to zero- zero
zero. Over the U. S . we had maybe 6 or 7 minutes be
t ween a 30 degree pitch- down target to the next
30 degr ee pitch- down target . You ' ve got to t r ack
it all t he way through, bing the spacecraft all the
way back up and then go to and track the next target .
--- PAGE 34 ---
29
Cooper And stop your rate at the back .
Conrad As a matter of fact, that's about twice the fuel
usage . They may take this into account, I doubt
it. They're very conservative on their estimates .
Cooper Selector controls and switches were all right .
Attitude controller was fine . Maneuver controllers .
(
We had every intention of checking the right one and
we never did check it because of other problems .
Inflight malfunction irregularities we've already
covered pretty well .
Cooper Attitude Control Modes, Rate Command was excellent .
Reentry Rate Command we never checked .
Conrad I don't even think you need it .
Cooper And I think it could be removed from the spacecraft
as far as I ' m concerned . I never used or need it on
the simulator . I never liked it.
Conrad Pilots aren't going to tolerate these higher r ates .
They will damp before these rates are reached.
Cooper Direct is a good mode. There ' s nothing at all
wrong with Direct . I thought it was much crisper,
much crisper in the spacecraft than in the simulator
--- PAGE 35 ---
30
shows that it is . The Pulse mode was very economical
on fuel and I felt that in the sinru.latc,r you had a
little more authority than you actually did in the
spacecraft . The spacecraft had slightly less
authority in Pulse than the sinru.lator does . Inci
dentally, you can use Pulse just for a month of
Sundays and never see the fuel go down on the 0AMS
gage at all. You can use Pulse all day long with
using little fuel usage . Horizon s can, the primary
Scanner was inoperative as was stated e3.Tlier . The
Secondary Scanner worked fine. The sca::m ers, I
think, operated quite satisfactorily. We had a lot
of scanner dropout in the primary and eiren in the
secondary. We had some dropout in the :iecondary
when we first were going in and out of i;unlight
areas .
Conrad But then it seemed to work allright .
Cooper Horizon Scan Control Mode worked fine . Real good.
Conrad It's a loose mode but it still works fir..e .
Cooper It's got wide limits on it of course, -which i s
okay . The mode itself works fine. There was s ome
thing really fouled up in the platform rnode . It didn't
work at all like it's supposed to. The platform mode
is supposed to be plus or minus 5/loth of a degree . If
..
it was plus or minus 10 degrees I ' ll eat my hat .
•
--- PAGE 36 ---
31
Conrad I thought it held to about a degree and a half .
Cooper Not in yaw , you remember . It allowed yaw to wander
off by probably a good 10 degrees there. Remember
it allowed right yaw to wander off by about 10 degrees
and just sit off there in right yaw several times.
It wouldn't even bring it back.
Conrad Yes . That was the trouble .
FCSD Rep Do you think this had anything to do with your con
trol problem?
Cooper W-ell, it may have been . It may have been that con
trol was somewhat intermittent right there . I don ' t
know, but it might have been . But Rate Command sure
worked good using those same controls.
Conrad Yes . I suspect that being the first time that it
was cranked up since spacecraft number 2 , it may not
have been tweeked as well as it could have been.
Conrad It certainly didn't work like it did on the simulator ,
I ' ll put it that way.
Cooper It didnlt work properly, and it was no good the way
it was. We never used it after we originally tried
it out and after we 1 d tried doing this one burn on it
to see if it would hold. The one that it did hold
on, our first perigee adjust, it held beautifully.
During the next one, it got so bad it wasn I t any
--- PAGE 37 ---
32
good . Ther e again , it might have been a f unction of
the thrusters going out .
In any event , I think that 1 s an error ,;hat somebody
needs to look i nto . I ' m n ot sure that pl atfor m mode
is doing what i t should. I know that , t heoretically , •
and by t he diagrams on it and the limit s that it
ought to be a ver y pr ecise control modE! .
Cooper Spacecraft separation at SECO + 20 couldn ' t have been
better , jus t fine . Translat i on per igeE! adjust went
like cl ockwork.
Conrad Tha t was our fi r st r eal burn and I thi r.k we got
something like 9 . 6 f t/sec on t he IVI ir.stead of
10 . 0 , but t he burn wasn ' t that crit icaJ .
Conrad I checked accelerometer bias and it seE•med like the
accel er ometer bias incr eased l a t er in the f light .
I specif icall y checked it f or the REP end it was
okay . I 1 d just set up zer os in the wirdow and
went to Catch-Up and they stayed zero for 3 or
4 minutes or longer . So that satisfied me . I
checked it l a ter on in the f light and I don ' t think
we r an more than a minute and we clickEd up a
f oot per second on the fore - aft window . That can
be checked on the tape . In the beginning it was
entirely acceptable for the REP .
--- PAGE 38 ---
33
Cooper I think we had some bias, just how much I don ' t lmow.
The timing of the translation was fine , updating was
fine. Operations and checklist were okay. Computer
usage, okay.
Conrad It was easier to make a burn on the simulator that
had no up- down or left and right in it than it was
in the spacecraft . Gordo did a real good job of
tracking on every burn and I didn't see it wander
hardly at all .
Cooper And all the IVI ' s would be zero .
Conrad And all the IVI 1 s would be zero, but we'd have .4. of
10
a foot in one axis and ~O in another.
8
Conrad Yes . The worst cross- coupling, we had 10 in one
axis, and when we burned in the platform mode, but
we were checking that . It could have been accelero
meter bias again, or, the spacecraft is more sensi- •
tive to picking up up- down and l eft - right velocities
than I thought it was .
Conrad Gordo did a real good job of tracking. He tracked
as well as he did in the simulator and we never had
this show up in another axis in the simulator .
Cooper It would be zero , zero , zero in the simulator.
Conrad It was hardly worth my time checking address 81 and
82 in the simulator because I could just tell he
--- PAGE 39 ---
34
wasn't going to have any velocities in there , and
very seldom did . But we never fail ed t o have fairly
si zeable ones , like fa and fo fps, in another axis
and I'm not quite sure how it got therE·. I guess
the spacecraft is extremely sensitive . If you ' re
going to make pr ecise burns , you I ve gotta really burn
precisely and i f you want to take out the errors , take
out the addre ss 81 and 82 errors so that you don ' t
introduce anything else . During the difficult ren-
dezvous maneuvers, you have to plan on more
f uel usage because you're going to have to take it out
with the up- down thrusters .
Cooper I think what you ' re going to have to do is stop
short of burning off all your forward or aft velocity,
particularly the forward velocity, and then use the
canted thrusters to burn off the right- Left and up- do,m
and that will take out part of the remaLnder of the
forward velocity. If it hasn ' t taken it all out ,
then bleep out the rest of the f orward . I think
that 1s the only way you can do it if you want to
burn them a l l t o zeros. I don ' t believe you can t r ack
any more precisely if you keep all your IVI ' s zeroed
right down the money. If you burn it off and stop
just at the right time so that everything should turn
--- PAGE 40 ---
;CO tsifH0E1t~I IAL 35
• d up wi· th .1_ , 2-, or
up zero , then youst i·11 win 10 10
6 I just don t t know how you I re
in all your windows.
10
ever going to do any better than that . (Unless you
use the above procedure).
Cooper Translation REP deployment was passable .
FCSD Rep This one you didn ' t . You didn ' t fire back at the REP
after jettison?
Cooper No.
FCSD Rep Let's replace this maneuver with the simulated opera
tion (phantom rendezvous).
Cooper We did deploy the REP and the radar did operate
properly.
FCSD Rep Originally when the debriefing guide was made out,
this section covered the translation back after REP
deployment and the subsequent translations .
Cooper Okay .
FCSD Rep We ' ll just have to use the translations that they
made on the simulated run .
Cooper We kicked the REP out at 90 degrees right yaw .
Conrad We kicked it out at 02 07 + 15, or 15 seconds l ate .
Cooper The reason we were 15 seconds late , as we stated
earlier, was that going into the night side the night
before , after all our careful platform alinements ,
all of a sudden the horizon scanner began to drop
--- PAGE 41 ---
out on us and we began to drift off in yaw.
Conrad Dropping out wouldn't have been bad, but when it
dropped out it also commanded some thrusting.
Cooper We got some real good blips out of it .
Conrad We were alining i n the Horizon Scan Mode and I got
the impression that it pitched us up .
Cooper We wer e already alined , and we had gone to Orbital
Rate and Horizon Scan, just to come alcng there in
time to go in . As soon as we had the Ilatform all
al i ned , and before we went in on the night side , I
decided I would realine the pl atform ji.:st very
briefly . So I had gone to SEF and to IULSE and I
was checking and pulsing it . • But becai.:.se t hen in
SEF position all your torquing is done f rom your
Horizon Scanner. When t he Horizon Scar,ner began to
drop out we began to get real erratic needle display
and it looked like our platform alinemEmt was deter
iorating. I was trying to correct thiB , but
obviously, it was really kicking us off . That was
when we went t o CAGE , tried desperatelr to get it
caged and realined in time , and thought we had i t
realined . We may have had it reasonab:.y well alined
by the time we f inally yawed right . I ·; looked like
it was . The needles wer e all zeroed out and
--- PAGE 42 ---
everything was settled down . The Horizon Scanner
.was working at that point . It quit working properly
after we turned to yaw right . We had already gone
into Orbital Rate, so we could care less about the
scanner at this point . We got it alined, and we ' re
already in Orbital Rate . We yawed right , got squared
away and 15 seconds late ejected the REP on the
IVI's all zeroed . We then used a couple of DIRECT
pulses , zipped back around , picked it up going around
to the 270. It was going right straight out to 270
on our ball . We could see the REP light whenever we
were passing through the 90 degree point . On my side,
I could see it flashing on the nose . By the time we
got around it was in quite close, we could see it
going out with a very slow tumble rate, flashing .
FCSD Rep What would you estimate the tumble rate to be?
Cooper It was tumbling very slowly, I would say maybe a
half to 1 degree per second .
Conrad I 1 d say a degree per second.
Conrad I couldn't tell what it was in roll . It didn't seem
to be tumbling in more than 2 axes .
Cooper That was ha.rd to tell .
Conrad When I saw it , you could see the dipole come around .
We couldn 1 t tell anything about roll, but it was not
--- PAGE 43 ---
38
tumbling in the other axes. The blanket was sitting
_r ight next to it .
Cooper The blanket went out and was sitting ri1sht by it. It
went right on out with it . That was thi~ funny part of
it . The blanket was between the REP and us .
Conrad Yes.
Cooper The blanket goes out first. The REP ha:3 a lot more
mementum , apparently the REP had gone b;r the blanket:
Apparently it had either hit it or moved it over or
something because the blanket was betwe,m us and the
REP .
Conrad Yes. I don ' t know exactly what happenecl there .
Cooper It was just a few feet outside of the REP . The REP
went straight on out to 270 , radar was working fine ,
r eading out everything just right , lock1~d on, and went
out to the point where it should have s·~arted s l owing
down .
Conrad This is where I had a mistake in the fl:.ght plan and
didn't catch it . The computer was in PHELAUNCH and I
was wondering why I couldn't get any digital readout .
I t took me a few seconds to catch on to that one and
I realized that I had to get the computEir into
CATCH- UP. We had never run into this problem where
we'd gone through a complete insertion checklist
--- PAGE 44 ---
39
which calls for putting the computer to CATCH- UP.
I had gone through and zeroed 25 , 26, and 27, talcing
the ascent routine numbers out of it . So that I knew
that we were getting the right readings . I had put
the computer back in PRELAUNCH, also had this discus
sion at that time and that ' s when I didn't blow the
cold IR doors until the REP was out .
Cooper I've said it before, and I also said it after my
Mercury flight ; that is , "If you continually shove
things in on people very early in the flight, the
quality of it is going to be degraded." You need the
first two or three orbits to check the systems over,
to get oriented , learn how to aline the platform, to
learn how to use the systems , to learn where things
are, to do these things before you start giving
-p eople complicated tasks . You just aren ' t going to
get the quality out of them unless they're flying
exactly the same vehicle for the second or third
time and they 1 re very experienced in it and they 're
familiar with everything that 's onboard and there ' s
no change in equipment , no change in control system,
no change in any of these things . Then , perhaps they
could leap right off and go right into the first
orbit and do these things . But to put somebody into
iottf ~~ •
--- PAGE 45 ---
40
a strange vehicle, with strange control systems tha t
you've only simulated as about best you can , and no
visual simulation available for doing anything out
the- window ; you just cannot expect people to stay
right on top of things when it occurs ir. the firs t
part of the flight . This is an ideal eYample ; we
had worked and worked and worked and worked and
worked to have our timing down just rigl:.t. If noth
ing had happened , we would have had our timing down
just right and everything would have gor..e just per
fect . Pete would have been right on hi~ checklist
and blown the cold IR doors right on tirre.
Cooper I I d have been right exactly on time on g·etting the
REP out and everything would have gone reach- keen .
Just that one thi ng , the Hori zon Scanner failure ,
really threw the skids to the thing and caused us
to be running s l ightl y late . There was added con
fusion in trying to f igure out how to get t hings
going and salvage the whole thing really threw the
skids to it .
Cooper The REP went out and it continued going out instead
of slowing down as it should. It cont i nued to move
on out at quite a separation r ate . The thing that
still has us a little puzzled , instead of slowing
--- PAGE 46 ---
41
down and coming to a null out there , it appeared to
s t art moving s omewhat at the same separation rate to
the south of us slightly towards a trail position very
slowly. We tracked it f or a long t ime . We were track
ing it straight out and then all nf a sudden , it be-
gan to loop around slightly to the lef t .
1
Conrad It di d something like I d never seen before!
1
Cooper I d never seen this happen in the simulator, and
it still doesn ' t seem quite f easi ble to us that this
could ever happen .
Conrad One pos sible answer, and it ' s r elated to something
that we saw later in the flight , Gordo , where we
alined the platform and had -yaw error couple into
roll . Might not this have given us bad steering in
formation as far as our radar needles were concerned
if the scanner wasn ' t working properly? We didn ' t
have the platform alined right . We went along
30 minutes , almost one- third of an orbit . I f we
di dn ' t have an alined platform, that would start
coupling up in some other axis like roll and we
woul d be off in yaw . Then when we thought we were
pointing at the pole , we reall y weren't. Maybe it
didn 1 t reall y drift behind us , maybe it stayed out
on our wing. We must have put it out fairly well
--- PAGE 47 ---
42
out of plane , in that it hung around us so darned long.
Cooper It stayed with us for 20 orbits !
Conr ad We saw it until the light burned out . I t was never
f ar away from us . During five night cyc les it was
close enough that the flashing light illuminated the
spacecraft . At the proper times, when we would get
nodal crossing, when we turned around and actually
s aw the REP it was very close .
Cooper We t hought we were going t o hit i t .
Conrad It was bright enough t o illuminate the spacecraft and
the flashing light r eally impress ed me .
FCSD Rep Did you take pictures?
Conrad Ye s , I think we have some 70- mm Hassel blad pictures
and I took 16- mm moving pic tur es .
Cooper That was the last of the REP exercise .
Conrad I understand all t he movie film came out, too. So
you ' ll have pictures of it .
Cooper At this point , we wer e rapidly running out of cryo
genic fuel cell oxygen. We decided t hio.t the only way
we were going t o salvage the f l i ght waE to stop
using it at this rapid a rate . We had to make the
choice whether we were going to power down and con
t i nue the f light , or whether we were gcing to end
the flight very abruptly if i t continuEd going down
we@t.tf 1!9 l!l'it~~.
--- PAGE 48 ---
43
at this rate .
Cooper We had a short discussion on t his and decided that we ' d
better power down and forget the REP because we were
in trouble .
Cooper So we tearful ly decided to give up the REP and power
down . Houston agreed with us when we got in touch with
them that we had done the right thing. That ended the
REP. We did see it for quite a few orbits later .
Then Houston came up with the simulated Agena ren
dezvous exercise , which they put on one of their
computers . The three burns they gave us to do went
off very satisfactorily, the thrusters worked very
well . They would not allow us to use anything but the
aft firing thrusters because they wanted to keep the
cryogenic oxygen in the right position in the cryo
tanks . Apparently the burns went to their satisf ac-·
tion too . They seemed to feel that it put us right
where we should be .
Cooper We tried one of these burns with the Platform Mode .
It did not work satisfactorily so I used Rate Command
which worked very well .
1
Conrad We t ried to take the errors out and thats where we got
into trouble . fo error left and right
We had about a
and a fo error up and down , so Gordo fired off the fo
tG~~FIDE► ,•♦♦ L.
--- PAGE 49 ---
44
left and r ight . We wound up wi tr. too much going
forward and we s tarted to back up and suddenly we
remembered we couldn't back up s o then we
decided well , we 'd j ust leave thEi errors on
the burn and burn i t the best we could
because no matter what happened He're going
to translate i nto forward and what we should
have done and we didn't think of i t at the
time--but you learn--we shouldn ' t have
burned all the forward--we should have
burned down to about a foot of what we
were supposed to have forward ancl then taken
out the left , right , up and down and go
ahead and burn the forward again.
FCSD rep The updates that they sent you on--
Conrad That worked fine. There was no problem.
We copied the numbers down , entered the
computer. We had plenty of t i me to make
the maneuver. We btuned r ight on the cl ock
as advertised and we seemed to have gotten
approximately i n the positi on they wanted
us to get to .
FCSD rep What burns did you s i mulate?
Conrad Well, we did a-- I ' ve got them r ight here.
@oM~lA Al
--- PAGE 50 ---
co~~r,ocr~r,At , 45
Cooper We did a separation burn and we did a cl osing
burn and a coelliptic burn . Those the ones
we did , Pete?
Conr ad Well , i t was--
Cooper We did not a standard coelliptic--it was
a--
Conr ad No , we did a maneuver burn , which as--wait
a minute--we did an apogee adjust maneuver
which was a retrograde of 20.1 feet , then
we did a phase adjust maneuver which was a
forwar d burn of 15 feet . No .
Cooper Yeah.
Conrad 15 . 8 feet , then we did an out- of- plane
burn , yawed left 900 of 15 feet and then
we did a reverse coelliptic burn- -
Conrad We burned- let's see--we burned 16 . 4 feet
forward and we di d four burns altogether.
FCSD r ep Aft thruster s for all?
Conrad Aft thrusters for all- -on out- of- plane-
and that was the only t ime that we did
ever , ever f l y the translat ional l eft ,
right , up, down thrusters. We used them
to take out some of the IVI readings there
--- PAGE 51 ---
a couple of times. And they were very
straight forward--left, right , up, down .
Cooper We even fired the forward-one quick l ittle
blip .
Conrad We fired the forward one then we suddenly
remembered we weren't supposed to .
FCSD rep What kind of visual out- the -window did
you see on these translations? In other
words--
Cooper Left/right lights things up real w?ll-
I could see the glow from the aft--they
were- -
Conrad J. B. is referring to visual cues )n the
horizon and we were on the gages--
Cooper They were at night--middle of the night-
everything we did was in the middl 1~ of the
night--this spacecraft only ran in t he
middle of the night (laughter) .
Conrad I really don't remember making a burn-
Cooper We never did anything in the day--
Conrad Yeah , I think one or two of them were on
the day side--but by and large--
Cooper I never did so much night work in rzy- life--
EONFIDEt~ AL,.
--- PAGE 52 ---
COt~FIDE~~TIAt 47
FCSD rep OK- well , I don't think there is much we can
add then--did you get all of these readings
out of--
Conrad 8O- 81- 82- 58- 59- 69- Yeah, that stuff works
just like the simulator. We got the readings .
Cooper OK - On to 8 .3 - RCS .
8 .3 RCS
FCSD rep Let's go into the RCS - yeah , I don ' t think
there is anything more--
Cooper This is all--
Conrad Yeah, this is all we can do on the REP .
Cooper OK- RCS Operational Checks - We did just like
we had planned in our little book. We
a ctivated the RCS and Check Ring A and ACME
and direct--al l three axis- Ring B - Check
Ring Bin ACME and direct--all three axis
and they worked beautifully.
FCSD rep How about the pad checks--were they-
Cooper Negative
FCSD rep No pad checks?
Conrad Not with the sealed system--
Cooper A sealed system - I'm glad it was-
Cooper Control Modes - We used pulse and we used
horizon scan--
tQEt◄Ttl<L
--- PAGE 53 ---
48
Conrad We didn ' t even check reentry rate command-
Cooper We used direct, UBed pulse . We uned the
,.
rate command . We used hori zon scan .
Conrad I know what it was--why don ' t you tell
them about this--and I ' m going to see if I
can get the fuel f i gures--
Cooper OK. And they all worked very ade quately.
I thought the rate command system, I mean
the RCS system was an excellent system.
It was really crisp and just really, I
thought, it was a real good solid system.
Rate command was much more--
FCSD rep What about the retrof ire - how did i t
hold retrofire?
Cooper Beautifully , it was just no effort at all-
hold--
FCSD rep + 1 degree or less?
Cooper Oh, yeah , easily. We had a litt le offset
in number 3 and number 4. I could feel
them offsetting us . I just cranked in a
little bit of RCS : Boy, it just glued it
right in there, it just wasn ' t about --
I felt like we could have had four or five
times the offset we had--and never have
--- PAGE 54 ---
GQt"EIDE~~TIAt 49
budged it off there . RCS , I mean the rate
command--One thing on rate command before
retrofire and just after retrofire, waiting
for retrojet , and then starting the pitch
up to go up and roll over inverted and go
to zero lift , the dual ring rate command
is just mor e than you can handle. It ' s
just a lot more than control authority than
you want--you tend to over- shoot on things
because there is just so much control
tor que in there . As I had stated, after
I f ired retro and jettisoned the retropack
and pitched up to roll over then from
ther eon I went to s i ngle ring pulse, and
used that . Reentry rate command--we didn ' t
use . Direct - used direct t o do the reentry
on single ring direct and used the pulse
mode from r etrojet to 400K.
FCSD rep On the single ring direct reentry did you
have--did you feel like you had all the
authority you wanted?
Cooper Yeah--until very late--as I stated some
time down , oh, half way thru the reentry
,_C~ Ji Hl:EttT
--- PAGE 55 ---
50
where you really begin to get the high g ,
after your high g , in fact, along about
coincidental with a real high g, when you
..
begin to get some fairly good oe1cillations ,
very r apid rate, I had no problE'ms damping
them at all but I didn' t have tt.e time to
keep switching back and forth f rom rate to
attitude and go back to rate anc. damp them
real quick and then go back to &.ttitude and
decide where I was on the guide and then
go back to rate and damp them and go back
to guidance , so I finally--they got to
getting fairly good where I had to devote
a l i ttle bit of time to damping them , and
I f i nally just went to guidance and stayed on
guidance andJust flicked over tc single r i ng
rate command to damp the oscillati ons and
then used the attitude control i n the rate
command to steer the computer steers . Which
worked out versJ well and there was--there
never was really any oscillating-you never
really--I could go to rate on there and you
could hardly ever see the rate needles
CQNftO Etsi:filA L -..
--- PAGE 56 ---
CO t-ct FIDEt'<ITI AL 51
jiggle--single ring was holding i t just as
tight as could be . Retrofire attitude
. control - I had already mentioned on there
dual ring. Rate Command, reentry attitude
control-- I had already mentioned how we
shot the reentry. No primary heater lights .
Heater lights on the RCS - they were on
practically--we had the heater on 99 percent
of the whole flight. We turned it off, got
heater lights on Ring A first, brought the
RCS heaters on then rechecked-heater light
went off and turned the heater off and about
five or ten minutes later-fifteen minutes
later, the heater light came on and then it
was on Ring Band we turned the heater back
on and this went on five or six times and
finally we just turned the heater on and
left it on the whole flight. I monitored
the temper~tures f~equently throughout the
whole flight in the RCS Ring A - temperature
ran about 70 degrees or about 65 degrees
and the RCS Ring B temperature ran about
70 to 72 degrees the entire flight . At
<::.:.€0►~FIDE~~T I A L
--- PAGE 57 ---
52
one time I noted the RCS Ring B was up to
80 degrees. I watched i t quite closely for
a while and then it never went beyond
that and came on back down to about 70.
And they stayed there essentia.lly the whole
flight . I think you need thoee heaters
on obviously the whole--all tt.e time--I'd
never have any of them off at all now.
Thruster firing colIDllents . When the RCS
thrusters fire at night they clank out what
ever you are l ooking at in the night side.
The only way you are going to use any night
attitude reference i s to watct. what you are
doing, get l~ned up in a reference and then
f i re a thruster and pl an on ws.iting a few
seconds before you can tel l wt.ere you are
at again . They really light t ~ the place .
When you are firing them at night .
FCSD rep How far does the flame stick cut?
Cooper The plume goes out about-- appear s to go out
about 4 feet and the plume is j ust the width
of the outside diameter of tha.t thruster
as i t comes out --it has a little bit of ex-
pansion ratio as it comes out and it goes
-'>►4 FlDEfi~Tfii: l' .;
--- PAGE 58 ---
b4~1DEt◄ TIAw 53
r ight up just about that size--it grows very
slightly but not a heck of a lot and s o it's
just about something i n the order of 4
inches diameter. Something like that--it
has little expansion ratio--i t expands as
it comes out the nozzle slightly, and the~
it just goes sort of like a column and it
fans out very s lightly but it goes up
something in the order of 4 to 5 feet
distance from the thruster.
FCSD rep Did you ever get any pictures of that?
Cooper No, we didn't . We had all our cameras
stowed at the time we got that cranked up .
We intended to. Systems Shutdown - It
worked just like advertised and we turned
the prop valves off , very shortly then
it rtms out of f uel and stops firing and
you notice that there is a little burning
around all the nozzles. There we got a little
residual fuel--not much--just a little bit--
it dribbles and fumes after i mpact- -probably
very neglible. I don;t really think we got
them after impact , I think we got them while
still airborne . But they were almost
--- PAGE 59 ---
54
i o+◄ FtOEP◄ IIAl
neglible-- you had to really b3 looking for
them to tell they were t here . There was
just a very s light musty odor in there- - fume.
Not sure-- I'm not sure that p~rt of this
odor isn 't part of t he ablati:1g going on
because fiberglass ablates with pretty
high fume rates. Some pretty pungent fumes off-
ab}ating fibe:rgJas s ·
8.4 ECS
The mobility of the suit is nJ better or
no worse than any other suit . It--suit
definitely cuts you down and iecreases
mobility. In anything you do , i t just
limits you i n what you can do, limits the
movements you can make and I 1 :n talki ng about
unpressurized mobility at thi3 point even .
We didn't do any pressurized ·Nork in the
cockpit but t o unpressurize t ·:1e suit
definitel y cuts you down a gr=at deal in
your mobility and where you cm reach and
takes up a great deal of r oom. Pressure -
Are they talking about pressu rized suit work
here?
FCSD r ep Well , since you didn't do any pressurized ,
how about the und and--
€'01QF1
--- PAGE 60 ---
a@8t◄ ftef~tJtl 55
Cooper Yeah, when you are sealed up in it it gives
you about a half a psi in pressure in there
which doesn't decrease your mobility a
great deal over what the regular suit does .
Temperature in the suit, I certainly
can't complain there. I had to sort of
eat crow on that . That suit circuit ran
consistently. We had to really shut it
completely down to get above 55 degrees
t emperature on the suit heat exchanger
outlet and generally it ran around 50 degrees
which just froze my rear off and I had my
suit flow . . the general configuration we
had was both of us f".ad the suit flow
rates quite a bit back . I had mine clear
back to almost a minimum position and we
had the suit coolant loop shut down to
where it was just about a half to one notch
open from the fully OFF position. I really
got quite concerned that they were going to
freeze us to death. In fact one whole night
side I had my suit inlet exhaust hoses off
and laying down alongside the seat because
e ~ as iust too cold in the suit . Humidiv.
C ►fF 9Et-~,l'AL
--- PAGE 61 ---
56
The suit seemed to run pretty ,iry . I wasn ' t
conscious of any great amount of perspiration
in i t at all. A couple of tim1~s when we
had fairly heavy work loads I 1;as aware of
the feeling of cool air and folt
like it was drying sweat . CO2 . We got 2
or 3 indications of CO on the PCO gage .
2 2
One thing, whenever a station nends you a
calibrate, well, you get a big jump on that
gage but there were other timeB when we
weren ' t even near a stati on when that
gage came up and began to give an indication
and one time it gave such a poBitive
indication for quite a period of time that
we got a little concerned about i t because
it was right when all this other stuff was
'
going, on day 5 and we I d shut c.own control
systems had failed and we were destined for
3 deys of drifting and the PCOr started up .
~
So we pulled out one of the ta;es , one of
the CO2 tapes that we had onboard . lt showed
it was below 2 nun of mercury, below that anyway.
It was this usually erroneous €:age . The
suit comfort is no darn good. It is worse than any
~ mNffl>Et◄ llA ~
--- PAGE 62 ---
57
other suit but there just isn't any way of
having comfort in a pressure suit .
Darn thing gives you pressure points and
bulges and gouges and cuts down, scrapes
you here and there, prevents you from being
able to stretch and scratch and have any
comfort. There isn't a;ny comfort in a suit .
I don ' t giv e a darn who says so . There just
isn't a;ny real comfort in a pressure suit .
In the configuration that we flew in from
the time we got 6-4 GO , our helmets and
glove s came off--were stowed in the footwell ,
and they were never put on again until just
before retrofire . We ran the whole flight
in just the basic _pressure suit torso
with the neck dam on and the wrist dams on
and with the light- weight headset and I guess
the comfort was as good as you could possibly
have , but it still wasn't a;ny good and we
cuffed the pressure suits plenty of times.
--- PAGE 63 ---
58
Cooper Humidity. The suit seemed to run :pre·;ty d:ry. I
wasn't conscious of any great amount of :perspiration
in it a t all. A couple of times we had fairly
heavy work loads , I was aware of any :.ittle cool a:ir:'
and felt like it was kind of drying sweat . CO2 .
We got two or three indications of CO? on the PC0 2
gage. One thing , when ever a station gives you a
I
cali.brate
. well you get a big jump on t hat gage
but there are other times when we weren't even near
a statiun when that gage came up and began to give
an indication and one time it gave such a :positive
indication for quite a :period of ttme t hat we got
a little concerned about it because it was right
when all this other stuff was going on , day 5
and we had shut down , control systems had failed
and we were destined for three days of drifting and
the PC0 started up . So, we :pulled out one of the
2
tapes , one of the CO tapes we had on board and gave
2
a check of the suit circuit there and i t showed
that it was below 2 millimeters of a,., two milli
meters of mercury was what it was .. . below that
anyway. We probably assumed it was tr.is usually
6j@t4FIDE
, ►◄T IA-4 •
--- PAGE 64 ---
...,CQt~FH)Et~TIAf • 59
erroneous gage . The suit comfort is no darn good .
It ' s no worse than any other suit but there just
isn't any way of having comfort in a pressure suit .
The darn thing gives you pressure points and
bulges and gouges and cuff dam scrapes you here and
there and prevents you from being able to stretch
and scratch and have any comfort . There isn't
any comfort in the suit, I don't give a darn who
says so, there just isn't any real comfort in a
pressure suit . In the configuration that we flew
in,from time we got our 6-4 Go, our helmets and •• •
gloves came off, were stowed in the foot well and
they were never put on again until just before
retrofire . We ran the whole flight in just a
basic pressure suit torso with the neck dam on and
with wrists dams on and with a light-weight head
set. I guess the comfort was as good as you could
possibly haV@, but it still wasn' t any good and we
cussed the pressure suit plenty of times . The
controls were good on it . No problem there. The
o Demand Regulator , as far as we could tell, worked
2
fine. We had no real occassion to reall y stress
it much or anything. The suit umbilical was
always in the way. Both my inlet and my exhaust
~~9i►,•f.A~
--- PAGE 65 ---
60
•
made my whole chest and rib area sor E• f rom the
mainfol d , the end i nside the suit being gouged over ,
being cantilevered over and digging in side ways
on me . So , it 's a real pressure point. It was the
worst pressure point I had were from the suit
hoses, and I had
,, my suit hoses deliberatel y longer
than people said they should be so I ~ould get away
f rom this effect . So, I di d have sla~k to
prevent ~hem from getting drug over ·but even so
they bothered me. Finger tip lights ·,1ere good and
I kept one glove out and kep t it over on a piece
velcro o,.l t he side to use in the event we had any
kind of cabin light failures. When P(~te was asleep
I frequently used my finger tip lightB on that
glove to light up some of the gages to look around
with. Ca bin pressure sealed off high on our gage .
This i s under s ection 2, Ca bin. Our CE.bin pressure
a t launch sealed off high a t about 5, 5, which it
always did i n the a t titude chamber in a ll t he runs
we made, in f ac t , in just exactly the same way.
Then i t bled down slowly t o about 4 , 9 and never
budged from there the whole flight . It stayed
right there . We never saw one flick out of it a t
--- PAGE 66 ---
all. Cabin temperature ran 70 to 75 degrees and
humidity ran about 62 to 67 per cent the who l e
flight . We have the figures somewhere here . We
can get in here and get those ou t , but we have
the figures where we mn daily checkr:i; H.:. 1,~i i ,1 t;
once a day and generally t wo or three times a day ,of
the wet and dry bulb readings .
FCSD Rep Okay. We have that back in the original check .
Cooper Okay. CO . The cabin, I thought was just really
2
good. It was very seldom that you really got any
smell in the cabin a t all . We thought the cabin would
have a dark green cloud evolve out of it when they
finally opened it, but I think the cabin, to the
time we landed, was still a pretty fresh cabin.
It seemed to scrub the odors, defication odor s
would linger on for two or three or four hours
perhaps , but it even scrubbed those out . You
couldn ' t smell them at all . CO ; we had no--any
2
kind of co . Comfort day or night . The cabi n
2
ran too cold at night , particularly when we· were
drifting and had some fairly high drift rates
the cabin got quite cold and in fact even froze
up the windows. The cabin fan we never used at
all until we turned it on just before retrofire ;
--- PAGE 67 ---
62
about 45 minutes before retrofire we turned the
cabin fan on and let it run for about 30 minutes
and i t decreased the cabin t emperatu:ce about 20
degrees . Got it down about 50 degre,:)S and then
turned it off prior to starting retrofire . Cabin
pressure relief valve; never actuall;r did we . . .
the cabin pressure dual regulator , the release
side of the cabin pressure regulator was the only
one that ever . . . . We never heard the
cabin relief valve actuate after launch . During
launch we were going up we heard it moan a couple
of times . The cabin vent val ve . Th•? cabin vent
valve, we actuated it on the way down once since
we couldn't maintain positive pressu:~e we actuated
the vent and the snorkel. Cabin rep:~essurizati on .
We never checked it because we didn ' t need to.
Cabin air inlet valve . We actually never ran any
check on it . Cabin air recirc , we had open the
whole time . Fully open . Pri mary o2 . System
monitoring, system monitoring was ea:3y. Primary
o2 was very good. The only problem we had with
it, it kept yawing us around when it was venting.
Whenever it would get up to vent pre:3sure and
vent, why, it would give us a bit of a yaw, left
--- PAGE 68 ---
yaw. Build up to any rate you wanted to . Over a
period of time , one time we got up to about 12
degrees per second. You just sit there, and drift
it will build you up more , and more and more .
You can really hear it pop off back there . You
can hear i t "shhh". You see this tremendous big
fiel d of stars go by. If i t ' s in the early or lat e
night you just , the whole sky is just complet ely
covered with this , just millions of stars .. . part
icles, liquid gases ... I guess . ~uantity measur
ing system; worked perfectly satisfactory. Flow
rates were good. Pressure was . . . pressure was
fine . It got up ; I don ' t think you ever need to
use, unless you are doing something like EVA ,
I don't think you ever should consider ever
using a heater on that oxygen system because i t
all by itself fairly rapidly gets on up there to
boil off pressures . Boil off temperatures I
should say.
FCSD Rep How about BJC.Jp, UTE, Di d you ever use that?
Cooper Used O Hi gh Rate when they were purging the cabin.
2
It worked f ine , reset fine. We used i t then for
landing. Manual heater we never used. The controls ;
we did very little as f ar as doing anything wi th
--- PAGE 69 ---
•
the Secondary O . Mine was ope:1, Pete' s
2
was closed the whole flight . That's the way they
stayed, just like for the check list . Never saw
one quiver in either one of them the ',1hole mission.
FCSD Rep Pressure stayed right?
Cooper Pressure stayed right where it was on launch. CO 2
partial pressure . The gauge was some·,1hat erratic
and gave us two or three readings that we had
CO partial pressure~one of which we finally
2
checked and found we did not have and so then we
disbelieved the gauge . . . : After that, although it
generally read down at zero . Coolant : Coolant
loops worked real fine . w~ were -running two
coolant loops ON most of the time sin,Je we had fuel
cells running . For 2 twenty- hour per iods we
had fuel cell, section 2 of the fuel ,)ells shut off ,
and the coolant loops shut off. In one period of
time we had ci rcuit breaker pulled on coolant
loop number 1 coolant loop . Secondary cool
ant 1 oop , then we were running on pum:? B and with
bYJ>ass ON. BYJ>ass ing it around so we were heating
before bringing the section 2 back nn the line
after long shut down peri od we bYJ)assed the cool ant
loop , the secondary cool ant loop , in order to warm
-€8-t◄ FID[pqf6tL_ ~
--- PAGE 70 ---
COt~ft0E~~TIA l
up the fuel cell section and then went to normal
configuration right on the line . Evaporator oper-
ation: for 45 minutes the Oh , t his i s not
the suit. Yes , this ie the water evaporator . 45
minutes after launch we got yaw deviati ons from
the evaporator and after that they stopped.
$ornewhere just slightly beyond 45 minutes they were
gone . By the time we got around one or bi t anyway,
I didn't notice any at all . Water management .
Well, we ran the water management in t he normal
mode all the time. In our configurat i on t he normal
mode is the drink mode . We r an NORMAL , NORMAL ,
NORMAL and OFF the whole time . The only t i me we
went to OFF was when we went to over - board and
the FLUSH position on the uri ne heater system and
they all worked fine . No problem at all, and the
water was excell ent water. It was ful l of air.
It had a lot of air i n i t , a lot of air bubbles ,
but they didn ' t s eem to effect us adversely. We
decided to go ahead and just ignore i t and drink
it and i t seemed to work out f i ne . The wat er was
really nice and cold the whole t ime , so i t t ast ed
good . No objectionable t a s te to i t at all. I
thought the water was excellent . Humidity sensor .
.GON£Hil Et~TJ.il:s
--- PAGE 71 ---
66
Yes, we took it. It worked fine . It dries out
very rapidly; you have to refill it with water
frequently, but that is no problem . The drink
gun fills it very readily. I t seems to be pretty
accurate . Stowage , of course , is always a problem
and we obtained readings at least once a day on it .
8,5 Communications
Cooper Communications . Interphone : operation and quality
were excellent. UHF performance : cJuntdown
was excellent , orbit was excellent, md recovery
was excellent , except that nobody was receiving
our transmitter in the recovery area. However, they
were receiving it back here in Houst)n. Twice
AIR BOSS finally shut up talking long enough, said
"some other station calling : me, say"' , and
then immediately he'd launch off int) another long
spiel and I don ' t know whether he was just drowning
us out or whether they just never got us. At any
rate , nobody was getting us , except Houston, a
couple of times. But the UHF perfonnance in gen
eral throughout the whole flight was excellent .
And even AIR BOSS received when we w,~re on our
way down in the parachute. He got two steers to
us on the way down . Voice tape reco::.-der worked
wQOhU,IDEN+t1'<~
--- PAGE 72 ---
fine for two cartidges worth and then quit.
FCSD Rep Was i t two or four?
Cooper I don't lmow, it was some l ow number. Maybe it was
four . Anyway, it quit fairly early in the flight .
The tape recorder was finished. DCS . Ok8iY , until
the last 30 minutes of the flight , the DCS couldn't
have been better. The updates were good , the
ground coordination was f ine on i t . The things
they gave us to put in the MDIU were given in a good
manner and were put in. No problem. Pete got
them all loaded in fine . No problem at all
until that last up-date we got from Carnarvon which
they updated us with our compu t er a~d reentry con
figuration, after we wer e all ready supposed to have
our last update from Houston and without telling
everybody to look on his board and see what mode
our computer was in, he sends this update which is
just about ... blew our cork there . And which I
think at this point right now, having experienced
this one occasion of this happening at the worst
possible time it could happen in, my recommendation
right now to flight crews is that they fly the DCS
circuit breaker in the OFF position.
FCSD Rep I concur.
ee~◄ F tDe~ Al~
--- PAGE 73 ---
68
Cooper That's a drastic move to make , but just that one
experience was just enough to convince me that if
you can ' t 100 per cent trust everybody and the
system isn ' t going to work, then you just don ' t
dare trust it at all. I wouldn' t even think of
not flying again wit h that DCS circui t breaker ON .
Conrad At least for reentry.
Cooper At lease in crew ... .
Conrad You couldn't have hurt us any better than by sending
t hat load up .
Cooper Real- time t ransmitter,delayed-time trmsmitter, fine .
Stand-by t ransmitter ... .
Conrad We were out of fuel on Ring A. And we had 4.9 and
4. 6 left in Ring B. Which is good. It says that
Ring A ran out sometime after Ring B ~ame on, which
says we went around the world 1 1/2 ttmes and re-
entered on Ring A by itself . That's :9retty impressive.
33 pounds of fuel It al so shows you how much
fuel we used in Ring B. We tested Ring B and
turned it off and didn ' t turn i t on u1til sometime
less than 70,000 f eet and turned it back off again
at 30,000 feet so we used the majorit;r of the fuel
on RATE COMMAN]) in Ring B from 65 to 30 which says
it probably fired continuously all thi? way down ,
08-~~FIDE~~T.I•
--- PAGE 74 ---
69
damping those rates . But it sure was steady. We
used almost 80 percent of the , yes , 80 percent of
the fuel in Ring B from 65 to 30 .
Cooper 65 down.
FCSD Rep On this voice tape recorder. Didn't you say ·it
broke after you got 4 tapes.
Conr ad Yes, what happened was that the thing worked j ust
· 1ike advertised. Two minutes before the tape ran
out you get the little flicker on the tape recorder
l i ght which is now up on the caution and warning
panel, and at the end of the two minutes the TAPE
OUT light comes on steady and that operat es just
as advertised and then one day I put a new tape
in it and Gordo and I held a big debriefing on it ,
About what all our storage was and present
configuration that we were in in the spacecraft ,
and what we thought the six, I mean , 'that the seven
troops would want to know about how we were using
our storage and we thought the best place to do it
was in flight right there while we were using it
and we really put down some good dope and we also
had some thoughts on Apollo on the darn thing and
I figured we talked at least an hour on the thing,
and I couldn't understand why it hadn 't run out and
--- PAGE 75 ---
70
I looked down in there and I marked ·;he t ape , you
know with my pencil , and put it back in the tape
recorder and turned it on and sure enough it
wasn ' t running. The motor burned ou·; in the tape
recorder. Now, when I turned the tape recorder
switch ON and OFF I could see a slight rise in
the ammeter but I think what was happening was that
we were getting the amplification part of it , but
that the motor to the tape recorder was not running, tt
wasn't driving the tape . That seemec. to be the
f ailure .
FCSD Rep While we're here why don't you flip back a couple
of pages while you were out and see jf there is
anythi ng that you want to add.
Conrad Okay. Yes ,. Gordo covered the h~ater operation on
the ECS . Okay, they came on pretty early in the
flight and we kept checking to see that it was
truly working and it was . System check covered
the fumes and we got fumes at 27 ,000 and we were
very light because we did have the ... .
Cooper Under EX:;S I covered how you loved your pressure suit
for mobility and comfort .
Conrad Yes , okay. I won ' t say anymore on that .
Conrad Finger tip lights . Listen, now there ' s a very in-
.-o►,fJOet>Jflltt
--- PAGE 76 ---
co~~FID EtiTI-A L 71
teresting thing. The finger tip lights were the
only darn lights we had in the spacecraft that we
could move around, which is ridiculous . We kept
holding a glove up once in a while looking at lights
all night because we
Cooper They sure were ... .
Conra d We had the gloves stowed a.nd I broke my auxiliary
light because it was too ha.rd to hold there. When
I pulled it out, the very first time I pulled it
out I shattered it a.nd Gordo never used the one on
his side because it's just not handy. What you
really need in there is, we've got to quality one
of those little pen lights .
Cooper One of those little pen flash. lights .
Conrad A g.zy- really needs one of those little pen flash
lights up there a.nd I really wish that we had
ta.ken the ones along but we couldn't get them
qualified. They had an open switch in them a.nd we
couldn't get them qualified for 100 per cent oxygen.
Cooper You really need a little light that doesn ' t have
a.n electric cord fastened to it that you ca.n just
s tick in your suit or on a pieoe of velcro where
you can just get to it and use it, you know.
--- PAGE 77 ---
72 I
Conrad There is plenty of time at night when you are
flying. Now the worst thing a t all wa s a guy
sleeping. If you turn on your instrument panel
lights it only lights your instrument and the· thing is
you are interested in most is that ce,n ter panel
with the cabin press and the secondary o and
2
all these things in it. So , the big thing is
that you need an auxiliary light in t here, like a
pen light.
Cooper Yes, you did.
Conrad The umbilicals: I had about the right fit on the
umbilicals and all that s ort of jazz. The cabin
press was great. .The thing locked up a little
high on lift off like it was supposed to but then
a 4.9 never moved. We covered the co bit. Did
2
you c·o ver the comfort day night and how the high
rotation rates that effect us? We m~ver used
the cabin fan except just prior to l:Lft off
where it is cal l ed for in sequence SJ1d when we put
the cabin cooler to the full cold po::11tion and
brought on the cabin f an and fl ew it through ' -re
entry that was it. Primary o did vent quite a
2
bit. You covered that.
Cooper Yes .
.:i~ fid:DE~~Tl&Li
--- PAGE 78 ---
73
Conrad I'm sure that's all for now. It never bothered
us, of ~ odor. The normal type venting system
worked fine.
Cooper I covered that on the CO partial press . . . .
2
Conrad Did you cover the coolant splashing all over the
nose of the spacecraft just after adapter s ep .
That must have been coolant, it's the only thing
I can think of that wouldn't be frozen up there.
But it was liquid and it actually splashed on
the nose after adapter sep and retrofire. It
ca.me around behind the spacecraft and I saw it
splash and the marks are still on the nose of
the spacecraft where it hit . Water management
I thought was great except it had air in it. It
did have air in it but pressures were good, the
wa ter was cold, it tasted good, but we did have
air in the water and it wasn't the amount that we
had at the factory, but there was air in the water.
You could see it when you filled your darn rehydra
table food bags.
Cooper Yes.
Conrad But, it was good water.
Cooper I covered the humidity sensor, we used it ... com
munications, I don't think you say anything but
--- PAGE 79 ---
74
excellent on that.
Conrad They were great. Even the UHF worked wnll. I
mean HF .
Cooper Voice tape recorder. Then we were on. I just
covered tha t . It didn't work.
Conrad Did you cover the . .. the exact detail s on this
DCS? How we didn ' t get the light. The only time
we didn't get the light.
Cooper No, I didn't cover the details on that Eixcept just
that we had gotten DCS unforecast over Carnarvon
after when we already had our load in from Houston,
and then it came on unexpectedly, not ev-en checking
to see what mode we were in here, We we•r e in re
entry mode and sent us this DCS updatin€' our TR
and updating our load, DCS load there, and just as
he said he was sending, why rapidly then we switched
out of reentry to prelaunch but never got any DCS
l i ght on either the TR or the load.
Conrad Yes , he s ent two s eparate commands, and theoretical ly
the light should come on each time but I never got
the lights, so I'm highly suspicious of what hap
pened and I've got to have an explana tion why this
load....
Cooper Which he verified to the cores and they checked out
--- PAGE 80 ---
ak0tr4f.lDEt-4TIAL 75
all right.
Conrad Yes, it was address 03 and address 10 and they ver
ified okay and that seemed to convince everybody
except me that the load was correct and my mistake,
in retrospect, I should have made them ,transmit the
load and either satisfied myself that the DCS light
had burned out, or that the operation did take place
truly in the ma.mter in which it was supposed to
and it did light the DCS light . He knew the TR
was right because he had his TR clock synched in
with the spacecraft TR.
Cooper And he assumed the load was right because he got
maps back on it, but ... . I'm not too sure I .. . .
Conrad Yes , that's pretty dangerous. Pretty dangerous .
Cooper I think this is it as I jus t pointed out to J . B.
and we were discussing in the corridor here, my
feelings on it are right now are real strongly, that
my recommendation would be to piloia during really
critical time periods, "I'd just turn the DCS
circuit breaker off." I wouldn't even fiddle with
it because that one violation that of everything
we had agreed on has just completely destroyed my
confidence in the whole set up . That's all it takes
is that one time just to completely foul you up .
0'8HF+9E►.IW.L
--- PAGE 81 ---
76 ~ IDEtff
Conrad Big Brother.
Cooper Yes. sir. I do feel that way, I really do . Okay.
Let' s see, all this real time, delayed time,
s t andby, that all worked fine, I thought.
Cooper Yes, we had real little trouble .
Conrad The coordination with the ground really in general
went excellent.
Conrad Yes, the only guy that had any problem ,.,as Guaymas
doesn't have a command system so , poor old Guaymas
was stuck when he was first to pick us up coming
into the states with having to call us a.nd tell us
t o turn on real -time and ack and then th,~ Rous ton
people would have to remind us t o turn :Lt off again
but the rest of the flight the command 13ystem ran
t hat telemetry and dumped t elemetry and everything
else just fine as f ar as I was concerned. We
were glad not to be bo thered with it.
Cooper Communications control and switches . The vjc . Man
I tell you, that really worked s lick, e:ccept thos e
darn rubber guards on there. Those havH got to go.
Conrad Yes. The cabin is dry enough. The onl:r reason
I can see they need them on there is in case you had
a catastrophic water spillage which you do very
easily have. ...
£QMF--1De~JIA~·•
--- PAGE 82 ---
77
Cooper Yes , I pulled my ear plug and put the ear plug right
in the bottom of my ear where it was barely hanging
there and I could hear anybody calling then . Then
I put the plug back in. I thought the quality of
the communication.ewas really, as far as we were
concerned, in the air a:n:yway, was excellent.
Conrad Our beacons worked satisfactorily both adapter and
reentry, C band beacons most of the time they were
in the command position, the people used them
as they wanted them.
Cooper Let's see, the s l eep configuration, we covered
that , yes, that worked fine .
Conrad Antenna selection. I went to adapter and I really
couldn't tell much different and then we decided
we would go back to the check off list which called
for reentry. Oh, I know how I got in adapter position.
Cooper Somebody asked you .. . . Oh, it was that test.
Conrad Yes, it was the UHF test that we pulled and we
were switching from reentry to adapter, from
reentry to adapter, and I finally left it at
adapter one time and the thing was working just
great as far as I could tell .
Cooper Yes , it was there for a day or so.
Cooper Yes, it was there for a day or so. I really
--- PAGE 83 ---
78
Cooper You could dUlllp OUZD or something.
Conrad Yes, I ... .
Cooper But the neoprene things are hard to s ee· through ,
you could actually push them up to the control
knob to read what you got on there.
Conrad Let ' s face it Gordo, once we got those controls
set, we never moved them.
Cooper Yes, that ' s right, Once you set t hem you very
seldom ever set them from there on. Sc,, I guess it
really isn ' t too bad. It's kind of a :Mickey Mouse
thing..,, -..net iit works-, I guess.
Conrad Those light weight head sets , Those PlEll'ltronic
head sets that we had, I don't think 8J'tybody can
argue about the voice quality and they are really
comfortable up there.
Cooper Yes, and they were really good reception , too .
Conrad Just pull a plug out of my ear and l et it hang
and turn the sleep switch on when I W8J'tted to sleep.
Never took the think off my head in 7 or 8 days I
don ' t believe. I'd sometimes take it off and hook
it under here for sleeping, but after E1 'While I
just got so used to having it on my head I just
unpull the ear plug and let it hang ancl turn the
sleep switch, and the sleep switch worted grea t ...•
--- PAGE 84 ---
c:.COMElllB!PYM• 79
couldn't see, we didn't have too much problem with
that, but they wanted it back to reentry and I
presumed that they will get the right data out of
that UHF test to know what's wrong with the adapter
antennas , if anything' s wrong with it. But we
stayed in reentry configuration most of the time.
Conrad E™ controls?
Cooper We didn't have a:ny problems with i t .
Conrad We had no problems there at a ll .
-.;_COMFHDEffFIAA. •
--- PAGE 85 ---
80 C@ t l ~ l iE t ◄T I A L
8. 6 Electrical
Cooper Elec trical system monitoring.
Conrad Well , I can't say enough for the fuel c:ells, they
really performed they --
Cooper They s ure did , boy those little rascal Et really work.
Conrad The purging, I recommend that we changEi those purge
switches , and I don 't think this is dar.gerous . I
recommend that we change those purge swi tches to
three position. Maybe guarded ones. Yes , maybe
guarded ones.
Cooper What you might do was put a little thrEie position
guar d there.
Conrad But that spring loaded business , that Bpring
tension on those , so I tell you my fingers are still
sore from doing that. I used my toothbrush ... •
t hat's what I used a ll the time to purge them
with. You had to j a ck them up with your tooth-
brush because we've got them guarded u.nd they are
spring loaded , and you just don ' t think about it
but you just try and hold that spring :'..n that
pos ition for two minutes , it' s like a :rear.
Cooper Particularly under zero g. You don't have anything
t o push against .
E@t l~IDEWI1h L
--- PAGE 86 ---
~'it l'FIOEt•l'fl P1 ... 81
Conrad So I recommend they make the purging switches.
Well, I recommend that they either cane up with a
gimmick that you can insert on the switches when it
is time to purge so that you can flip them on and
time it and then f l ip them off, or ~beyma.ke the
s witches three position. Especially in that 14
day flight . You purge every 6 hours you know, and
that's minimum. If you are running higher loads
you are purging every 4 or every 2. So, that's
quite a chore and it's like house keeping.
Those fuel cells have to be purged and 5 minutes
of s witching is what it takes, holding those spring
loaded switches.
Cooper 2, 2 and almost 1, Yes, 2, 2 and half a minute .
26 seconds. That's really hard on the fingers ,
hiding behind these guards we have, makes it even
more difficult but the guards should be there.
Let's see , monitoring electrical power remaining.
Conrad There was no big argument there.
Cooper No problem there a t a l l, just watching the hydrogen
fa.11.
Conrad They were either there or they weren't.
Cooper Ground information required to complete mission.
--- PAGE 87 ---
82 eOl <U'IDEl ◄ T I At
Well , that there again. Ti-ie cryos were rea lly
the only problem we had with electrical. The main
bat teries ... the times tha t Pete touched them they
were just exactly like advertised.
Conrad Yes, they were 22½ volts every time we tested them ,
Cooper No problem at all. Squib ba tteries were fine , no
problem.
Conrad Squib ba tteries came down about, I would say
2½ volts during the whole flight. We
s t arted out with a common ccmtrol bus t ha t had been
27½ vol t s and a t the end of the flight it was 24 . 7
or s omething like that, 24, 8 or something. It came
down about 3 volts. But one thing that nobody ever
tol d me, was man , when you fire thrusters and
things like that you can s ee a l ot of t ransients on
that common control bus. Tha t thing rea lly gets
to os cil l a ting up and down. I wasn' t sure s ome
thing wasn't wrong at the beginning, SlJd I just pass
t hat on as a tip to people who go later .
8, 7 Onboard Computer
Cooper On.board computer,
Conrad I can' t say too much for t he computer 6ither.
It worked f ant astically,
--- PAGE 88 ---
=€8t 4Flli'0@1A1-- 83
Cooper It couldn't have worked better. It really
did .
Conrad The IGS Guidance was indicating everything that we
did. We knew that we were going to loft a little
bit and boy, it showed that we should pitch down
at second stage and RGS did pitch us down, and when
it pitched us down and put us on the IGS was
centered up. I never saw any big needle deviations.
I didn ' t see this big pitch transient at the end
of the flight. I think it did wander just a little
bit in pitch but none of this off the scale stuff.
It looked like it was on the money all the wey , am
I felt that if we ever switched we would be right
down the pipe with it.
Cooper Yes. I did too. Real good.
Conrad In the insertion, boy, that math flow 6 ca.me up
with all the right numbers. The numbers were just
right. You didn't read the numbers. Where the ta~e
began the numbers were on tbe money. Address 72
was 25,808. Address 94 R dot was plus 20 feet :pga
97 was plus 2 feet. 52 said we had a perfect
:insertion that we had no apogee adjust . At perigee
there was 00000 and then calculated , even though
--- PAGE 89 ---
84 -e8 tsl □P Fls1TIAL
we didn't need one, the directions should be applied
at 3,042 seconds and the nominal value io ?, 008
seconds and I just don't think you can ask for
better computations than that.
Cooper Okay . I think that everything that we did on it
worked out quite well.
Conrad Catch- up mode worked well . The .... tl:.e one
thing it did though, there was one ancmaly that
I saw on there and I almost had a heart attack at
the beginning of the flight. Remember, we got
into orbit and I don't know whether I did it or
what, but I got in the mo::le where I got the darn
IVI 's running and it wouldn't stop running , and
the worked until I switched into pre- launch nav
again a couple of times and I finally got the IVI 1 s
to quit and then I was very careful about how I
did any switching after that and I don't know what
that was. I'll have to sit down and talk to the
computer people about that. It seemed to me that
what I did ....
Cooper It happened once more.
Conrad Yes, it happened one other time and we got out of
i t by going to pre-launch and letting it sit for
• @Ot ◄ FID E► ~.tA I
--- PAGE 90 ---
c€~F,6Ef~ f I 85
awhile and it finally ran itself out and stopped.
But it looked l ike the accelerometer bi as took off
or did s omething that just made IVI 's run . I
don 't rea lly understand what happened but I wanted
to note that an anomaly. I felt that the thing
was running right and that this might have been a
little glitch so I didn't report it to ground
because, well , later on we didn ' t really have any
need for catch up or anything like t hat and it
seemed to operat~ okay.
Cooper Okay , let's see. Orbit maneuvers. I don 't think
there was
FCSD REP How about the powering down and powering up?
Conrad It shut down and s tarted up d~t as advertised. ON
with the on s witch and 18 seconds it went through
it's s elf check and the green start comp l i ght ca.me
on green and it did it every time .
Cooper Okey, Orbit maneuvers we have already covered that.
Conra d We powered it up for a ll our updates and it accepted
it every time, llO strain·.
Cooper Retro fire, you got those numbers through , We gave
the number to .. . . IVI's after retro fire . Read
269 aft and 10 left and 181 down.
--- PAGE 91 ---
86 @@ I 4FIDEr4fliAll
Conrad 10 left and 181 dOWl\, 269 010 181 .
Cooper Yes .
Conrad And as soon as those retro ' s fired the llght came
on green and it went right into reentry ,5',lidance
. . . reentry guidance
Cooper Reentry guidance was right on the money when it came
on, it came on exactly on time . Roll neeclle , roll
bug . . ..
Conrad Stopped a t 400, 000 feet , right at the tine Hous ton
gave us our c omputed time to 400 K.
Cooper And the 290 K steering commands came in ~ ust right.
Came in just where they should , the dir ection they
should come in and everything~
Conrad At about the r ight magnitude • • • •
Cooper And about the right magnitude. Then the problems
star t ed.
Conrad And tbat was the loos e nut on the ground and n ot
in the a ir, f ortunately.
Cooper MDU , t hat worked fine .
Conrad That apparently worked fine .
Cooper Computer modes. Let' s s ee, pr e l aunch worked good.
Ascent worked beautiful ly, catch up . . . . Ne didn ' t
rea l ly do any ca tch up except the one . .. .
:m O b4F19 itL4il.Air
--- PAGE 92 ---
87
Conrad Now, there was one thing there, I don't know if it
was the radar or the computer. But , the first
time we flew over the Cape and locked up on the
back up REP on the ground, it read out the
digital millage to a gnat's eyebrow. It locked
up at 248,66 miles and I don 't believe it will read
any higher than that supposed to be 250 , but I had
the same number at the other end so I suspect
that that is as high as it will read out. And it
tracked t hat thing right over the Cape where we got down
to, I think we got down to .... our slant range at
the closest approach was 161 miles or something
like that, and everyti.me I punched it up to the
range went do'Wl'l. and - -
Cooper Man that was really beautiful, just beautiful,
The radar itself stayed locked on for .. . . I felt
like you could a lmost point out the tower it was
right on the mila.ge mcxl e.
Conrad But in the catch up mode it read out to 248 . 66
miles both at the start of lock up and the end of
lock up , and I was really impressed with that. Then
after that we always locked the Cape . The r adar
locked on like it should on the REP , but we
--- PAGE 93 ---
88 a@Q t 4Ft9€NII • b
never got it to read through the compute1r now I
Cooper Yes, but my analog read- outs read.
Conrad Yes, but wait a minute, your analog readouts only
go to 300,000 feet and that's 50 miles El.l'l.d we were
never within 50 miles of it, so . . ..
Cooper Yes, but they rea d correctly and I got Hteering,
radar steering.
Conrad Yes, but the analog couldn't have read correctly.
If it read anything on your scale it wa.E1 wrong
because it should have read only digital . . . .
Cooper What I saw it was showing that it was getting a
r eading.
Conrad Oh, yes, well , there was no doubt that ue were
locked up.
Cooper The R dot was going right on out past there , you
know, and then it came on past .
Conrad But I don't know whether if the problem in the
--- PAGE 94 ---
89
digital read- out was a computer problem in the
catch- up and rendezvous mode of accepting radar data
or whether it was radar problem, but I ' ll mention
under the computer becaus e I sort of suspect it was
a computer problem.
Cooper Eut I don't understand why it worked so well the one
time and the other time it didn 't work.
Conrad Something gave out . Either in the radar or in the
computer. Well, then we never did get ·to check'- a.ny
thing in the rendezvous mode.
Cooper No , reentry ....
Conrad We dan 1 t know what the problem was in reentry, but
I think the canputer did a 40 job it did just what
it was suppose to do. It just had bum dope .
--- PAGE 95 ---
90
8.8 Crew Station
Cooper Okay, control s and displays, sequence telelights .
The only comment I have on sequence t el elights is
that the comp light on the comput~r is too bright.
Conrad That 's right.
Cooper We are going to have to have some way of iimming
that or put some tape over it or something, because
Conrad That 's a comment for GT-6 especially.
Cooper Because when you are running it at night with the
computer on for rendezvous, that comp light darn
near blinds you.
Conrad Yeah, it I s really bright . That needs a dim f eatur e
on i t.
Cooper The other sequential telelights that are in there
are all dimable, or turnoffable .
Conrad Say, there is one thing t hat we didn 't t r y through.
I wonder if that thing is on the bright-d im sequence
We never did put the switch to dim. I never
thought of it in 8 days eibher. I'll bet you it's
on t he bright- dim circuit, but we never used that
swit ch. We ' ve never had occassion to ever use t hat
swit ch. You lmow we always check sequence l ights
bright .
Cooper So, that is what that check is f or . (laughter)
--- PAGE 96 ---
91
Conrad Learn something new everyday.
Cooper I didn't think about that.
Conrad 1 1 11 bet baby it is.
Cooper Well , that ' s something somebody ought to check out .
This is just a comment.
Conrad But we never did have any reason to dim it in the
simulator. You never tried to look out the window.
Cooper You don't have anything to look out the window at.
Conrad Yeah.
Cooper Okay, event timer - - We stopped at 48 minutes after
insertinn and never ran it again until we cranked
it up at 27 minutes prior to retrofire.
Conrad Yeah, that's right. That was one of those things
they had ~s power down. We never powered it up in
the flight.
Cooper Apparently, it is a fairly good power consumer.
Conrad But it worked all right.
Cooper The IVI 1 s worked fine, other than the one comment
Pete made while ago that they were continually run-
ning there for a while. The FDI 1 s excellent.
Range and range rate indicator worked good on the
REP, boy, really, really good . It worked very good
on the - -
•
--- PAGE 97 ---
92 a ef ◄ FIE)l!I ◄ 'Pl~L
..
Conrad And the analog range was in close agreeme:'lt with
the digital range when the REP was going away from
us.
Cooper Yep. The GLV fuel and oxidizer pressure gauges
worked excellent except for the IPS . Stage two IPS
fuel gauge failed to the full max deflect:i.on posi
tion just shortly before POGO started, ancl stayed
in the OFF position until after staging. It came
back on and worked for about a minute and then went
back off again. The altimeter worked just like it
worked in the altitude chamber. Stopped at 96 800
feet .
Conrad It was very jerky on the wa:y up .
Cooper It was erratic going up .
Conrad And I don ' t guess you ca.n expect a pressm·e alti
meter like that to follow as fast as that booster is
moving.
Cooper I t's r eally winding up.
Conrad Coming back on reentry, why, we were apparently a
lot slower on the other aide of it, because it
unwound in a.n extremely steady manner and it seemed
to be right with the barostat .
Cooper It was right on the barostat , actually.
Conrad And this is really the important thing.
--- PAGE 98 ---
93
Cooper Rate of descent - - you know, I even forgot to look
at the rate of descent .
Conrad Well, we didn ' t even worry about it. When the chute
Cooper When the main chute opened as good as i t did --
Conrad -- out there, t hat we both watched the main chut e
and I saw the water coming at the corner of t he
window --
Cooper I didn't even think t o look at the rat e of descent .
I knew it was good.
Conrad Yeah, we didn ' t have a:ny reason to look at it.
Cooper I forgot about t hat .
Conrad No, we got busy doing a check there, too.
Cooper Well, we were also having a couple of radio calls
in there and it was int errupting --
Conrad Yeah, radio calls , and we knew the chute was good,
and there wasn't a:ny reason to look at it .
Cooper I ' m sure the rate of descent worked all right .
Cooper Accelerometer i t seemed t o wcr k, f ine.
Conrad We 'll look at it the next time .
Cooper Yeah, okay. 1 1 11 make a not e.
Cooper The accelerometer worked fine . The switches and
circuit breaker panel s --
Conrad I t's still extremely easy to knock off a:ny circuit
breakers --
--- PAGE 99 ---
94 € 8 t JFIB Et 4Tl"'1L
Cooper Anyt:iJlle you move around in there.
Conrad You get in the habit of real fast checking that.
Cooper I would strongly recommend to anybody in any crew
that anytime they do any moving around o::- turning
around in the cockpit that they run a c:Lrcui t
breaker check.
Conrad we did.
Cooper Because, invaribly, we would always find one off.
Everytime we would run a check, somewhere or another
we would find one knocked off.
Conrad We usally found a reason for it though, t he over
head ones we knocked off with the water gun so we
stopped putting it up there. And the orni I thought
I knocked off on the right hand side, I came to the
conclusion that was one the o heater blnw out. It
2
just blew it off .
Cooper And the mirrors worked excellent. I must say,
Deke, you do need that in-flight repair occasionally
to tighten those mirror --
Conrad You mean the postlanding kit.
Cooper Whew! Gracious! I lost my head. The pontlanding
kit to tighten up the adjustments on thoeie mirrors
to keep them tight . Repair reticle, you know ,
things like that.
~J~ilE► ttlAt
--- PAGE 100 ---
- COtrt~IQitililil ·\ l 95
Conrad Suit s.
Cooper The first tlling that happened -- Pete's suit had
to be repaired.
Cooper Swizzle stick -- I used the swizzle stick for qui te
awhile to punch off the DOS light when Pete was
asleep, but, finally, it got to where it was j:ust
easier to reach over there. I've got pretty long
arms. I think most people would probably need the
swizzle st ick t o get over there to punch it off.
Conrad I never had the occasion to use it.
Cooper That's the only time I used it. I used it once for
turning on the ACME power over there.
FCSD REP Before we go a:ny further, while I'm thinking about
it, on the pad out here, you said you could see that
umbilical tower when they started to raise it.
Conrad No, the erector.
FCSD REP The erector. Yes.
Conrad You could take t he mirror out of the holder and hold
it at the bottom of the window, and you could measure
the distance . Now I don't know exactly how high we
are above the road, but where the road winds up to
the pad and makes a left turn in and drive straight
into the pad, you could see the intersection of that
road. So, I S83 that you can see the ground some
tet-tPfOEtfF1'tl
--- PAGE 101 ---
CO~◄ F18 E~ fF h't-l - ,..
350 feet away from the booster . You can see ground
level, and we were going to use that procedure if
we aborted. We didn't know if we were going to make
a land or a water landing, but we f elt t hat we
could use the mirror to see if we were over water
or over land, at least within 350 feet of the space
craft in the direction of the windows . J didn't
use the mirror on the water landing out c~er Bermuda,
because I oould see the water out of the corner of
the window by just putting my head up and peering
at it - - in the two-point attitude. I could see
the water coming. I knew we were fairly low . As
a matter of fact, that altimeter was just about on
the money, wasn 1 t it?
Conrad We were at just about zero feet when we hit the
water . We had a good altimeter setting.
Cooper Almost exactly zero feet.
Conrad Th.is is what McDivitt said. Don't go on that 29 . 92 .
They gave us a 30 . 10 altimeter setting, and when it
read zero we were on the water.
Cooper Yes, that was a real good one.
Conrad So , I recommend they stick with this -- giving the
altimeter setting in the recovery area be,~ause it
can make the difference of a co~ le of hundred f eet .
'€01'1FtDEl"~TIAt
--- PAGE 102 ---
97
Cooper Okay-, radar. Warm up time -- we don't have any
comment on that?
Conrad No. That was straightforward.
Cooper Acquisi tion range --
Conrad It acquired in excess of 250 miles and read at
250 miles.
Cooper That's that. Acquisition attitude -- well, at one
ti.me I thought we were out of attitude, and it still
was reading right on, locked up.
Conrad Yes.
Cooper Ease of lock on -- good. Capability of holding lock
-- it seemed to hold lock very well. Flight display
Conrad I t was fine. All you needed.
Cooper Radar tests generally -- from our point of view it
went very well. We never had any false lock problems
at all . We didn I t really give these a fair shake,
however.
Conrad Yes.
Cooper But, from the testing that we did, we encountered
no false locks.
Conrad We didn't get a false lock when we turned around
and looked at the REP.
Cooper No, we didn't .
--- PAGE 103 ---
98 @ 0+4Fl !J! l ◄ if 11'L ,...
Conrad We t urned around and we waited unt i l 1 mjnute was
over , and banged on the radar and it didn ' t take t his
23 seconds or anything. I t just bammed . It just
locked up on us right t here.
Cooper Locked up instantaneously .
Conrad There it was. No doubt in your mind.
Cooper Lighting, indicators, and instruments.
Conrad Okay, there's a def iciency here. You need to see
that center instrument panel, and
Cooper You need some kind of glow. You need some kind of
a little glow down t hat center instrument panel to
be able to see that t hing. That thing is really
black . Without bringing that big darn
Conrad I really don't underst and why those guys took that
r ed center light out.
Cooper Whil e we are talking about lights, let's see if we
cover that. No, we don't. But there is a real
safety- of-flight item in t hat cockpit lighting.
That is, if you leave a:ny one of these lig·hts on,
and, in particular, the big bright center light
which is the landing light -- I think it is on
ther e in the light solenoid area , the reostat,
you build up a heat thing that is actuall;y- to the
point of being explosive. I t actually gets to
•eet*t8 i ~q;rw.L
--- PAGE 104 ---
99
where it will burn --
Conrad Yes , you could smell paint.
Cooper It burns the paint in the spacecraft .
Conrad You can smell paint cooking. That's the first
thing that we noticed, the first day. I 'll tell
you what heats up. It 's the reostat . Well, the
thunderstorm light th.at Gordo 1 s referring to doesn't
have a reostat. That just flat puts out heat.
Cooper It just flat puts out heat. You can burn your
glove right off your hand on th.at one.
Conrad Your under-window right and left lights -- if we
ran those at great periods of time with the light
dimmed down , th.at reostat gets so bloody hot th.at
you can smell the paint cooking again. I felt that
that was a real bad sit uation and we have comments
on th.at --
Cooper So we kept rotating these lights on and off.
Conrad We never did burn our lights too steadily unless we
absolutely had to . The other problem there was that
anything that generates th.at much heat is going to
have a tendency to burn out, and I 'll tell you, you
lose one of those cockpit lights, buddy, and you
are screwed.
Cooper You really are.
,QNFl9Et ◄ TIAL.21a
--- PAGE 105 ---
100
Conrad I had already busted my au.xiliary light a.nd if I would
have burned out the light on the right i :'.lstrument
panel, we would have had to rtm that center light a
lot, and I don ' t think that center light would have
lasted either.
Cooper No . I think that whole center console area is a very
weakly lit area. It could certainly stand a very, very
faint soft light. When you are rtmning 1mder night
light conditions you'd be able to see thn radio swit
ches and this type of thing. Let ' s see, indicators and
instruments--well t of course t a pet peeVE! of mine is
that we couldn' t get EL in the 8- balls . I still think
the 8- balls could certainly be lit a lot better, al
though they are satisfactory for what we ' ve got. I
think the--
Conrad We really didn't use that except during lift- off and
reentry, but it does shine. Mine shines in your eyes,
doesn ' t it?
Cooper Yes , there is a real bad f eature in the cockpit in
that a:ny lighting at all, either one of the right or
the left lights- say Pete turns his right light on,
particularly--if I'm trying to look through the reti
cle, it just zaps. It 's gone. Can't see a thing in
--- PAGE 106 ---
• 101
there with a.ny light on in the cockpit. In order to
use the reticl e , you have almost got to dim out all
the lights in the cockpit, and this is pretty ha.rd
to do because you need to use some around.
Conrad And , you know, they bad a light down on the center
pedestal shining aft that was supposed to light up
the water management panel, and everybody took it out.
You have to do most of your work on that water manage
ment panel blind. I mean, you sort of put your hand
in there backwards and everything, and , as long as
everything runs all right , you only need that one
switch to go from off to overboard. The other two
switches stay in the normal position unless you have
some sort of problem. But it would be nice to light
up that whole area down there. There is no way,
without a flashlight or pulling that auxiliary light
way over there , to tell how much water you have in
the water tank.
Cooper I don't think you can tell with it. I took that
auxiliary light and got back in there and practically
crawled down in there. With that darn M- 1 experiment
thing installed on t0p of the tank there , you can't
see the water level bubble anymore. They i nstalled
--- PAGE 107 ---
102
-
Pete's M- 1 experiment right on top of the water tank
where the water level bubble and the mea3uring gauge
is . It ' s built right on over it, so you can ' t see it .
Conrad We used every combination of l ights in t :1ere that you
could think of, depending on what we we:re doing.
Sometimes we ran with Gordo--if one guy was sleeping,
the other guy would run with his red lights on dim.
And many nights, we ran with no lights at all . We
had that much confidence in things like 1!abin pres
surization and so forth , that we just powered down the
lights and we would go through whole night sides without
ever turning the lights on and never even looking at
the instrument panel when we were in dri::ting f light.
We would both nod or look out the window.,
Cooper Or sleep.
Conrad Yes, and one of the reasons we did this Has because
of this heating problem. I had a decided fear that we
would be in real trouble if we burned ou·; any light .
We had no way of replacing them. So , an;:r time I
could conserve elec t rical lighting, by saving the
bulb , I would turn the thing off. I didn ' t want to
build up big hea t loads in them. We ran red lights ,
we ran white lights, we ran the center lights only,
--- PAGE 108 ---
-e@N Pl8ENTI 103
we ran the left side only, we ran the right side
only; we ran them in a:ny combination you could think
of, just dependent on what you wanted to do with them.
Sometimes you needed lights in the daytime , sometimes
you didn't need lights in the daytime . It depend s on
what your orientation ~a9 and what you were doing.
That was very interesting. It's an entirely lighting
situation than in an -ai-rplane .
Cooper Let ' s see. We checked out the one light that we hadn't
mentioned here. I think we mentioned all of them ex
cept the doggone docking light. We did check it out,
and it really throws out a nice light out there . We
didn ' t have anything to try it out on out beyond the
nose, but it sure lights up the nose. As a matter of
f act, on that onenlght side we kept wondering where in
the heck that light was com.;_ng from.
Conrad I kept saying, "Hey, the sun is really shining on the
nose for a long time . " It was the night I blew up the-
Cooper We were pointing straight up.
Conrad Yeah, I 'd blown up the shrimp and gotten it all over
the right console, and when I was cleaning it off, I
had inadvertently turned on the docking light switch.
It took me about 10 minutes looking out there trying
..
--- PAGE 109 ---
104 -€0i'IFID Ef~TIAt -
to figure out what the heck it was shinj ng out there
on the nos e . It finally came to me in a. flash that
the docking light was on. Now that is another thing-
I don ' t know how they covered that REP with the re
flective t ape , but, man, that thing wa s bright!
Cooper All you could see was the light.
Conrad No , I mean in the daytime.
Cooper Oh yes .
Conrad In the daytime with the sun shining on that thing, it
almost burned a hole in your head. Boy it was bright!
Cooper "{es, actually--
Conrad It looked like a little sun out there.
Cooper Pete went into it deciding that he was n~ver going to
see it in the daytime , and I think he ha1i a big sur
pri se. I was determined that we were go:Lng to see it .
Conrad .And we did see it in the daytime, several times after
i t had gotten a fair distance away from us, I ' d say
2 or 3 miles away.
Cooper It was bright. It was almost brighter on the day
s i de than it was at night . In fact, it was so bright
i t would blot out those blinking lights .
Conxad Yes , that ' s right . The REP, itself, was bright enough
and reflective enough that it would blot out the
--- PAGE 110 ---
-ee,Nfl!) f!l!fftlrt 2 105
flashing light, but there were times when we saw it
close enough in the dayside that we could see the
flashing light. it didn ' t get that far away from us,
and thats why I s t ill challenge this 375 miles--
Cooper You aren ' t going to see that dipole as long as we did .
The last time I saw that thing, I was still seeing the
dipole antenna.
Conrad That ' s right. That's the last thing I saw.
Cooper You aren't going to see that dipole at several hun
dred miles.
Conrad That ' s right, and we saw it in the daytime.
Cooper Yes .
Conrad And it was on the 5th or 6th orbit.
Cooper Okay , utility light, interior lights , outside lights
FCSD REP Talking about outside lighting from external--
Cooper We didn ' t have any flashlights . All we had was the
gloves.
FCSD REP It says glove . It should be glare.
Cooper Gla.re--well, anytime the sun comes whopping in the
window there, you are going to really have a gld,re
And anytime you are sitting there watching the earth,
tracking a target down on the earth, and you suddenly
come back into the cockpit, you aren ' t going to see a
zCOt'4f K)itsl11.,tfLP
--- PAGE 111 ---
106 @9 ► IEll;l Ii~ 111..\L
thing. You are completely blinded because when you
have gotten used to the outside--sunlit earth--and
you come back in ..the cockpit, it takes a few seconds to
adapt to seeing things ins ide.
Cooper Intensity controls--! think they were f:.ne . I thought
they worked pretty well, and I must say 1, as Pete
mentioned, I did like thos e red lights very well .
Fingertip lights- they work ed out all r :.ght. A
flashli ght would have been better, but t he fingertip
lights are f i ne. Onboard data-
Conra d Flight plan strip we r eally didn ' t use, We used our
own checkoff list, because all we had on the flight plan
strip was checkoff lists . You couldn't read it at night ,
and we just put something on there beca1::se it was
going to be in the spacecraft .
FCSD REP You didn ' t use it?
Conrad I set it up in the proper places , but ar.ytime I really
used a checkoff list, I used this one right here . And
I think that one is going to be replaced by a clock.
Cooper Yes . Checkl ist cards- -
Conrad I can't s ay too much for them.
Cooper They are really good.
Conra d We beat them over the head and we reworked them and
EO♦~ liiM-iJiO. L
--- PAGE 112 ---
107
reworked them. I lmow we drove thos e guys nu ts down
there , but I ' ll tell you, there are darn few things I ' d
change on these set of cards right now, after having
flown the flight . They really helped us. And the
experiments book helped us and the log book worked
well , and I think we kept things fairly straight .
Cooper In general , I thi nk the books worked out very, very
wel l .
Conrad Our big flight plan book worked out well , it didn't
get in the way . Our reentry book, I t hink, could be
made smaller. I would recommend next t i me that they
put the schematics together like Neil did in the GOH
Junior , which turned out that he had the schematics
in a b◊Ok that was 10 inches high and 2 1/ 2 inches
wide and about 1/ 2 inch thick. Just by folding them
a certain way, and this you would put away and never
pull out. Now, everytime we hauled out that reentry
book to do anythi ng, we had all the schematics and
everything. We really didn ' t need to haul those
around all the time. We could have found a proper
plac e for them. So , I ' m not complaining against the
reentry book and I wouldn ' t take anything out of it.
By golly, we used everything in the books . We looked
€O ► 4ft90tt 1 A1,--
--- PAGE 113 ---
108
at schematics when we were up there. Don't think we
didn't with the troubles we had. We used everything
in that reentry book . There is only one book that we
didn't take out of its holder and that w~s the REP
and that is because we gave up the REP, or we would
have used that one. And this big flight plan like this,
I'd recommend that you make it even bigger. You've
seen how much writing we did in it. I recomment that
you use the same procedure of keeping a log book and
a flight plan, because two guys are working all the
time. You put it down in the log book and then you
write it down in the flight plan, and this helps you
organize it . By writing it down in the flight plan
is when we really recognized just what we had tc unstow
and how we had to put it together to make that series
pass work right. It took us three days to do that.
We still spent a lot of time thinking about this . The
maps--boy, that's another thing. If we didn't have
that map, we wouldn't have known where in the hell we
were.
Cooper Yes, that orbital map-
Conrad Those map updates were the greatest !
Cooper I'll tell you the map that was the useful one was the
--- PAGE 114 ---
109
D- 6 map that Harry Kozuma had in there.
Conxad Yes , we used this one, too.
Cooper Yes , this big map that he had in here.was really a
good one.
-.
Conrad Yes , that helped you even better find out where you
were.
Cooper Man that's a good map . For instance, over here , we
were over here trying to find some details on some
isla.nois . Where was it?
Conrad Yes , you could go to this map and get an orbit and come
down to--
Cooper Oh, islands or something off here. Let ' s see, where were
they? Some of these little islands right here , off
India-
Conxad We could pick up these little tiny chains and these
things . The Solomons and these little messy things
down in here- boy,. and all this stuff out in here . Here
is all that junk we kept passing over in there-
Cooper Yes ! We were getting the New Hebrides, the Carolines,
and the Marshalls . We were going over everyone of
those darn islands, just like on our maps, boy. Just
beautiful .
Conrad And you could really pinpoint your location. That
--- PAGE 115 ---
110 ee1<Wl" Er4TIAL
r eally impressed me.
Cooper Here is where we did all t he photographing.
Conrad Yes, that' s right . Here is where we photographed
Australia one day .
(Much Laughter)
Cooper We were photographing the hell out of Au stralia coming
right down across here. Then we thought , well , that ' s
odd. Never had noticed that. Where is that island
off here? Well , that does look kind of like Sumatra
coming across there . And there is another big island
and I thought , well , darn, I know there isn't another
big island coming off there, and it was Borneo , and
~ here comes Austra l ia. Fortunately , we had the
time on it, so somebody can go back thro·igh and
reconst ruct wher e we really were .
Conrad I was trying to find where we struck out Australi a and
wrote down Palestine.
Cooper Pal estine. Dear me. We had two cameraB going j ust
as f ast a s they would click. You know, elicket y
click click. Nobody had gotten aerial photographs of
Australia before during the daylight .
Conrad
.
Listen, I t a iLked to Paul Backer and he t old me the
16mm film came out great. So, maybe we got t he REP
pi ctures , too .
,,.COMFfOtf
--- PAGE 116 ---
11 1
Conrad Okay, maps and overl ays--they were really good.
D-6 books and the data books were good and we used
the star charts--
Cooper The onl y maps I thought weren't worth a darn were
the Apoll o landmark maps.
Conrad Yes , well you' ll get to debrief on that through
Apollo in here. But our straight data books and
everything--
Cooper Yes , they were good .
Conrad We used .all of them .
Cooper No comment on them.
Conrad We took the experiments procedure book and the ex
periments log book just like this , and whoever had
the watch side put them in the Volkswagen bag. We ' d
take the reentry book, which we had the PLA updates
in, and the other book, and we woul d just throw the~
down between our legs. If you wanted to l ook at the
f l ight plan you would just f lick it up , grab it , and
read the thing, and throw it back down there again.
Cooper There was enough r oom so that Pete kept them on the
side of his left l eg, and I kept them on the sid.e
of my right l eg, and we woul d just pass them back
and forth.
Cooper Okay, start charts--by gol 1 y , I thought they were
--- PAGE 117 ---
112 -
r eally good, and I think anybody that wants to get
lined up for a night retro, if they do :_t once and
aren't convinced that star charts were pretty use
ful they're --
Conrad Well, it gave us a great deal of confidence to go
into the star chart the last day and pic:k out the
right yaw stars, and then, as we were aJ.ining the
platform, to see those yaw stars go right through
the middle like they were supposed to.
Cooper I think the star chart was very usable snd very neat,
much smaller and neater in this fashion than it is
in this great big mechanism thing we hav-e . I think
they're very usable in that fashion.
Cooper Stowage. Hah! What are we supposed to say about
stowage? Boy, it's probably the most critical thing
in a long flight . It has to be kept up on an hourly
basis . Belts and harness-- I thought they were
perfectly satisfactory, except for one set of bel ts
I wanted to get out before the flight and if I were
doing it again, I'd take my own scissors down there
and cut them out. That is the knee belt which was
put in there for pressurized ejection . I t is still
in there, and it is in the way, and I hated the darn
thing. Mine flopped and f l apped around in there .
--- PAGE 118 ---
113
I final ly took them and gouged them down in al ong
side the s eat. I took my scissors and cr ammed them
down in there , and that is where they stayed the
whol e fl ight .
Conrad Yes , I ' m not convinced they are necess ary.
Cooper That knee restraint belt was put in there so that
if you were ejecting at high al titude and you came
out in a pressuri zed condition - -
Conrad I think the arm restraints ought to be l ooked at the
same way.
Cooper My arm restraints stayed in the down position , I
l aunched with them down , I r eentered with them down,
and they never came out of the down position. They
could have s aved a good 2 or 3 pounds of weight on
my sea t by taking my arm restraints out . I t old
t hem that before and they said , "Well, they woul dn't
ever be abl e to get them of f . " You know the seat
was out s itting over there and I coul d have removed
them my~el f in 5 minutes when we were in Weight and
Bal ance . They said the paperwork involved in re
moving them would probab l y take a year. So,' those
two items I f l ew with I thought were compl etel y
worthl es s . And the lifevest- - I don ' t know what
you are going to do better . I really don ' t
--- PAGE 119 ---
114 ••
honestly !mow what you are goi ng to do better because
of the ejection situation, but they are in the way.
They are in the way of everything you do, and they are
real little bearcats to get on and off---these little
lifevests.
Conrad We didn't have a place to stow them.
Cooper Yes, we left them on the whole darn time just because
we didn I t have anywhere to stow them. llut they are
really in the way. They are a real pail'.. in the rear.
Conrad Yes , it ' s all part of the suit combina tjon.
Cooper Well, that's right.
Conrad If you didn ' t have the suit, they wouldn.1 t be so bad.
Cooper Waste disposal- pack harder.
Conrad Yes .
Cooper Pack tighter. That's a very grave problem, in the
f act that as you start getting defecaticn wastes of this
type you want an area where you are not going to mix
ing that with other items too much, and you want an
area that you start packing right the first time so
you don ' t have to keep dragging it all out and repacking.
I don't !mow how you are going to do it any differently
than we did~in keeping one area completely open for
it, and just working and using that for your disposal
--- PAGE 120 ---
115
area.
FCSD REP How about urine?
Cooper The urine system worked just great .
Conrad Except for one problem. It leaked on occasion, and
I really attr ibute that to the fact that this rubber
device gets covered with tars . I cover ed t his pretty
thoroughly with the doctors . I recommend that you take
new urine rubber receivers along, one per each day of
the flight . We had four along and we changed t hem
every two days . They get gummy and tarry and they
don ' t have their holding power and urine tends to
flow back.
eeft#AD Ei<ITt,o,L •
--- PAGE 121 ---
11 6 C:@ l ◄ i IOLN I iAt -
around the side . That is what i t amounts t o .
Cooper Yes.
Conrad We never had any t r ouble with them when w1~ put on a
new one . The new one would l ast about a day before
i t would start getting gummy . We t ried everything
to keep them clean.
Cooper It would get gummy.
Conrad ... wipe on them and we left them unrolled so that
t hey would dry out.
Cooper The rubber gets so gummy you can put the t wo together
and they j ust stick together. It gets all gummy and
sticky. It may be a better material is available .
Conrad I still think i ts the urine t hat does i t .
Cooper Tha t ' s what I'm saying. There may be a better material
available tha t the urine won ' t effect that way . The
urine is eating into that latex--its late~ rubber ,
I suspect . Either carry more good ones al ong or
get a better materi al to use . That should have been
evaluated by CSD. They should have determined tha t
urine does effect them and makes them go to pieces
in a hurry .
Conrad Yes , I ' m not sure they don ' t even wash then out
occasionally.
.
--- PAGE 122 ---
117
Cooper Two other things we have is that you leave preheat
on for 4 minutes prior to flushing. We got one
t remendous big glob of urine ice that broke off
sometime about the fifth day.
Conrad Oh, yes .
Cooper And, man, that indicated that it really bui l t up .
It must have been as big as that box there .
Conrad It looked like one of those sand castles you build .
It was a conica l buildup of ice . The liquid
had flowed out . It kept building up and building
up . But it was still flowing out through the center
like a volcano. The darn thing broke off one day
ou t there , and, boy , I tell you that thing was about
this big around and it was about 3 and 1/2 inches
high. It just went floating right by the spacecraft
and it was pure yellow. Ha , ha! It was about 3 by
4 by 3 or 3 1/2 or 4 . About 3 inches in diameter
and about 4 inches high . It was triangular , dribbled
up, rough shaped, but you could see where it was smooth
on the back side where it had actually s tarted to
freeze. Boy , that scared us . We didn ' t want the urine
system to freeze up so we went to 4 minutes . We used
the recommended McDonnell procedures and we revised
those slightly when we found out the tar was beginning
.CO ~4 FIB l!r 4ih',I&
--- PAGE 123 ---
118 eO ►+Ft0Etrff~
to gum up the little valve too .
Cooper The little relief check valve .
Conrad We ' d built up a pressure in there when you would
start to UJ1inate in that thing . We would open it
up and dump for 30 seconds after we went through
regular dump cycle and evacuated the bag. We
woul d open it up to the cockpit and let it dump
30 seconds which is what MAC recommended . Then we
woul d sit there and cycle it on and off a 1d have
that vacuum suck around down on that valv,~.
Cooper Open and close that valve dry .
Conrad We cycled it three or four times rapidly with the
vacuum opening and closing it and then we shut the
system down . I don ' t know whether that helped or
not. We had the impression that it did .
Cooper It made us feel better about the whole si·;uation.
At least the thing worked the whole time .
8. 9 Biomedical
Cooper Medical Data Passes--They weren ' t really too big a
problem. They ' re necessary. I guess they are as
minimum in interfer ence as you can get thEise medical
data passes . They weren ' t too bad . I tal ked to
Chuck Berry this morning about it. I thir.k that
getting the food down into a better type i:.ystem where
~ 10E L •
--- PAGE 124 ---
€9~J f lil E► ll bt, L, 119
you give the pilot more option in what he eats
rather than t ry to give him meal A, B, C, D, E, F , G
is goi ng to alleviate their problem as well as the
pilots a great deal . It ' ll make i t easier and t ake
a lot less t ransmitting. They were thoroughly
confused by this numbering system. It made it
more difficult f or them to keep track of what we
wer e eating. The excersior worked fine . No problem
at all . I n f act , I used tha t exercisor a lot of
times other than medical passes . My lcnee s got
hurting me . About the t hird day they really start ed
hurting. So I started using the exer ci sor
r egular and found that it helped . Pete did t he same
thing l a ter when his--
Conrad I didn ' t use it as much as Gordo did , but I did
use it for t he same reason . Both my knees got
sore from being bent all the time . For some reason,
I don ' t know why, it settles in your knees . I
just found out that maybe once or twice a day with
that thing in additi on to the medical dat a pass elimi
nated the whole thing.
Cooper Yes, it real ly helped . Food and water evaluation.
We have already evaluated the water . The water was
excell ent . Having cold water is really a luxury .
€ O ► 4Fl&li ► 1 lhtl l •
--- PAGE 125 ---
120 :ti 0t ◄ fl8Et ◄ T1)!(~
It i s sure different than Mercury. The food just
boil s down to the fact that we quit eating the
bite size food entirely. We had absolute ly no desire
for it after the third day . I doubt whet·:1.er we
touched a drop of that bite size food affor t he
third day . We ate s t rictly the rehydrated food.
If I were sitting down r i ght now to redo this
flight, I would make up a recommendation ::or the
food . I would have a number of bags made up just
the size of these rehydratab l e bags . Bagi; that
don't have to be folded, crushed , rolled, or steam
rollers driven over them . I ' d make up these packets
of eight , ten , or f i f teen or whatever the neatest
package with a zipper or a velcro on it if:. I 'd
put those in there and let the pilot pick out what
he wanted for a meal. He could pick out one or two
or three or wha tever he fe lt like he wanted for a
meal. He could do the same with the juices. I'd
have other bags in with just juices . We ' d have a
grea t many juices all stacked i n there , and they
don ' t have to be all folded and crumpled up . I
thi nk they will probably package a lot neater this
way . You just have two types of bags . You 'd have
--- PAGE 126 ---
iO ► IE1Qfti&i 12 1
food bags and juice bags . And then I'd have another
bag just full of these wet wipes . I f somebody
wanted a wet wipe they could go in and get a wet wipe .
They wouldn ' t have to be handed back and forth ,
back and forth . They wouldn ' t be hanging all over
the cockpit. And that way you ' d have a very neat
set up . You wouldn ' t have a lot of food that is
difficult to stow. The big difficulty in s t owing
this food is the paper . This makes the bulk.
All this tinfoil and other · things wrapped in
individual plastic and then more foil and a great
big package holding the whole thing . And When you
get all this paper gathered up the best you can
possibly packet you have at least equal volume to what
you had initially with the food . I think that you
can cut down a great deal by clever packaging and allow
the pilot to choose his foods per meal . I think he'll
be happier . I think the packaging of it will be
neater and easier . I think you will get a lot more
effective use of space . I think the biggest
problem for GT-7 will be that they are going to
have a 2- 1 factor . Everytime they pul l out a package
of food, by the time they get that food plus the waste
products back in and stowed it ' s going to be exactly
@ot ◄ FtMl5 ◄ 11xr
--- PAGE 127 ---
122 EO ► ~FH!Jl!m l
twice the size it was when it came out. I don ' t
believe there is anyway t o get around it the way
the food is packaged .
Conrad What are you going to do? Jim a.nd .l!:d at11 everything
in the spacecraft. You and I hardly ate anything.
If we had known that we were going to eat what we ate ,
we could have had twice the room in the Bpacecraf t .
Cooper Yes.
Conrad We lef t 10 packages of food there . We m•ver
ever touched it . Plus we filled up the Jocker
with another third of the food we didn't eat from
the packages that we opened . Toast, apri cot cubes ,
brownie squares, fruit cakes , a.nd I don ' t know
what all were stuffed all over that spacecraft .
We didn 't eat any of that . I couldn' t eat it if
I had wanted to. I just didn ' t have a:ny desire
for that stuff at all .
Cooper I don ' t know what it was about, but it jus t seemed
to be so dry, and chew and concentrated .
Conrad The doctors figured we were running on ab)ut
1800 calories a day , and I don ' t feel that we were
cheating ourselves . There is a big diffe::-ence between
our flight and Jim and Ed ' s . They went a::ter this
big extravehicular t hing, and I think tha·; it probably--
(@t 4F18{MiWIL •
--- PAGE 128 ---
123
Cooper Well, I ' ll tell you , a couple of days we ate a
lot more . That third day we had a real full day .
We were really busy. Man , we really had the appetite .
We really gobbled down the food and we ate good .
Those days we were just drifting were--
Conrad That makes sense to me because if I ' m wor king I eat
a lot and if I ' m not working I don ' t eat much.
Cooper Maybe our morale was low all over . We didn' t
consume much food . I got hungry and Pete did , too .
I could tell when I was hungry , and we'd say okay
let ' s break out the food and eat . We really boiled
down to just about 2 meals a day when we powered
down and 3 meals a day when we were working hard .
It was only about 2 meals a day powered down that
we even wanted . The bite s i ze food tastes awful
good when you just sit around and snack on bite
size food . I t just didn ' t taste wor t h anything up
there . I may have finished off maybe one or possibly
two packages of it up t here just by having it
sitting around i n •that little nook or cranny .
Maybe once a day , I'd have one of t hem. Jus t an
i n-between meal snack but other t han that i t was
really a waste having t hem along. I think that if
we had all bite size food we would have quit eating
-eof'~kJelSt rrm
--- PAGE 129 ---
124
entirely. I imagine that would be an ea3y way to
package the food. But the rehydratabl e ,)nes were
really good. There is just no getting acound it.
They are good food. The are nourishing and ...
Conrad Boy, I don't know what to say about the :3leep periods.
Cooper The juices were good. They were really Hxcellent.
We had some leaks . We had four bag failures on
those plastic bags . I think it was the /unction of
crumpling this bag all up again and having t o wad
i t around to fit it -tightly into a diffe:'.'ent
shape from the fold that it was in. I think tha.t
those four bag failures could have been r eal serious.
Pete had one that was worse probably--
Conrad I was eating merrily on the eighth day, r:hrimp creole,
and it blew out the side , and it blew this itty bitty
dehydrated , rehydrated shrimp all over the circuit
breaker panel. It was red and i t looked like somebody
had flashed their hash all over--Ha,ha! You can ' t
clean it up in zero g. Everytime you wipe a shrimp
off one place it would float over somewhEre else.
I was snatching shrirap out of the a i r a l l over
everywhere. I was bloody mad at the bag. I was
abou t to have a fit .
..ONPl9@11ff.,_L •
--- PAGE 130 ---
~ eMUAL 125
FCSD Rep Why don ' t we finish this sleep period? And we wil l
be through with systems and pick up those questions .
Conrad Start the experiments. Okay .
Cooper Okay , sleep period . I think the schedule needs to
be set somewhere around the normal s l eep cycle that
a person has a l ready, in other words , I don ' t think
that the s l eep ought to be set for mid- morning or
mid- afternoon . And I personally think that the
cockpit is small enough that you ' re al mos t going
to have to s l eep both guys at the same time .
Conrad I concur . I don ' t think you can be doing the ex
? eriments with one of them--
Cooper And have the other one as leep .
Conrad Yeah.
Cooper Pete and I both found that the times when we really
slept the bes t and most comfortable and real ly got
some good sound s leep was when we powered that thing
completely down and turned all the l ights out and
were down around the backs ide area of South America
and there wasn ' t anybody to cut in and be flashing
in to tell us all kind of things and they woul d
leave us a l one and we just both power down and go
to sleep and get a good s l eep . And that is the only
way you are going to do it , becaus e if one guy is
•
--- PAGE 131 ---
126
doing experiments or working, or if one in the
spacecraft, or doing all this other stuff, the other
one is just not going to sleep. This i~: pure and
simple as that.
FCSD Rep How about mentioning about how quiet it is .
Cooper The inside of the spacecraft is just as quiet as
the inside of a very quiet office room .
Conrad Yeah. Well now , the big thing here is ihat we had
taken our helmets off and put these neck dams on
so we had no, none of this suit air flow over the
mikes. And when you get in that configuration so
you are not picking up any noises, as a matter of
fact , we had our intercom volumes turned down . Most
of our talking we were doing was to one another.
Cooper We were just talking in our normal tone of voice.
Conrad And our radio volume levels were extremely low . We
were carrying about 4 on our radio volumes . And
that was more than adequate volume. I mean that
guy came in loud and clear in the headset. You
could hear a pin drop in that spacecraft . The only
sound that you were aware of was a very gentle
swishing sound of air which was flow due to the
recirc being open .
Cooper Right .
•
--- PAGE 132 ---
127
Cooper And it was so quiet that you could hear a guy when
he picked the book up and started turning the page .
Conrad Yeah , I could hear in back in the adapter section
after real ly getting adapted to this thing , we
could hear the hydrogen vent , we could hear the
fuel cell hydrogen purge . We couldn ' t hear oxygen
purge . We could hear all thr uster firing of the
attitude thruster s . When we did our burns, we
didn ' t even have our helmets on . Did we? We had
our helmets off when we did the maneuver burns ,
when we did those perigee--and we could hear all
thrusters firing . Aft firing thrus ters . We
bl i pped the forward fir ing thrus ter s and we fired
the up-down and left and right thrusters and we
heard them al l fire -- all the maneuver thrusters
and all the attitude thrusters . And I could hear
many other noises working back in the--There was a
pump package or something squeaking back there that
squeaked for all through the test period and I was
curious to see if I was going to hear it in flight
and sure enough , it was loud and clear . It was
back there behind my head in the adapter section.
And you could hear jus t anything that was out of
the ordinary noise . And that was what the pr oblem
ee-NFlt:JfflTF-;1¥1_
--- PAGE 133 ---
128 @@:t 4FID it tTls-tt~ ..
was , it was so blas ted quiet in there that when
something did click or snap or that was not cyclic
in nature that you got used to it woke you up just
like that . And as Gordo says , turning the pages
i n a book , or he ' d reach over and pull something
off the Velcro , jus t a little food package and just
that little zip of the Velcro sounded like it was
magnified in ther e cause it was so blasted quiet
in the spacecraft . He couldn ' t talk in the micro
phone without me hearing it .
Cooper I tri ed actually cupping my hands and talking into
my mike here so I could make as little n)ise as
poss ible .
Conrad And I tried it too . We would wake each )ther up .
So our recommendation - I ' m sure the spa~ecraft is
safe. You may want to look at something - I really
don ' t think you need this, but I think it should be
looked at f r om an engineering point of view - what
would - what are the catastrophic things that could
bother you i f you were both asleep that ·,,rould need
somewhat of a warning to wake you up and I real l y
don ' t think you need any myself .
Cooper I don ' t either .
Conrad But I think that the spacecr aft - and we felt that
--- PAGE 134 ---
129
way in flight , and we did ; we both went to s leep
at the same time . And I ' m sure if we would start
losing pressurization our ears would have told us
that we were as sensitive to that as we were to
noise .
Cooper Thi s schedule we have covered that , I think it
should be in . Because invariably, we could get busy
doing other things and have many interfer ences and
it would wind up that we would both wind up sleeping
during the normal Eas t Coast nighttime cycle . In
variably, we just weren ' t sleepy at other times .
Conrad Yeah , I think the other thing is that now in the
schedule my naptime al ways took place when we were
cleaning the spacecraft . This was too short after
the stateside passes . That compressed the whole
rest of the sleeping cycle . Although we tried to
stick to it . Gordo woul d go to s leep for his long
period which was usually 5 hours instead of 6 be
cause we ' d slid into that time . We always ate our
meals together and we were scheduled not to . We
always took the vision test together . We weren ' t ,
this way we compr essed things down . And uh , then
I usually wound up having about 5 hours off , but
I never s lept the full 5 hours . There was just one
..
--- PAGE 135 ---
130 •
night that I did . There was one night that Gor do
slept maybe 6 or 7 hours and I let him Eleep that
whole time because we were just exhausted. And
that was the same reciprocal thing -- he let me
sleep for 6 or 7 hours . That was the on ly time in
the f l ight that we both real ly s l ept any long period
of time . The rest of the time I don't t hink we ever
slept longer than 2 hour s at the most -- And most
of the time it was 50 minutes between s t ations.
Cooper Well, that ' s the whole thing , that the -- on this
schedule thing there are many , many, many inter
fer ences to sleeping and these stations just calling
in letting you know that they have TM sclid and are
standing by, interfere with you-- they wake you up.
Conrad They shouldn ' t even do that--on backside passes un
less they got something to give you , they shouldn ' t
even call you .
Cooper And then too , when they start handing ycu a bunch
of flight plan updates and they want yoi:.. to do this
and that and one man is trying to be-- ttey ar e try
ing to keep one man real busy whil e the other sleeps ,
just doesn't work out. Configuration , i,,ell , just
close your eyes . The best configuration t o s l eep
is to turn all lights off and s l eep . I will say one
--- PAGE 136 ---
131
thing right now that we haven ' t mentioned befor e ,
I believe the Polaroid window f i l t ers we
took were the greatest things we had along.
Conrad Es pecially when we got on that drift in fl i ght .
Cooper I ' d real l y r ecommend thos e very strongly, We put
both of those up dim then down to where they com
pletely block things out, turn the lights out , go
to s leep and rea lly have at it .
Conrad One guy could open his up and real ly s ee the gr~'.ll1d
well with them in the open conditi on , but i t was a
circular hole that was small and with the filter on
the other window it kept t he spacecraft r el ativel y
dar k i f the other guy was t rying to sleep .
Cooper Ri ght . What ' s this miss ion br iefing?
Conrad I think that was supposed to be the t hing that we
changed courses in midstream and we di d; we briefed
each ot her and br ought one another up on what was
going on and what we had written down .
CO~Ffl!J !PffM •
--- PAGE 137 ---
132
9,0 OPERATIONAL CHECKS
9,1 Apollo Landmark Identification
FCSD Rep On these - let ' s try to get everything in that log
on these --it ' s going to take a little more time?
I think - -
Conr ad Well , you want to take each Apollo landmark separa
tely? Is that what you want to do?
FCSD Rep Yes . As your list - - go down and call out the ones
you did and whatever you have on your log there and
we' 11 put this in one neat l i ttle packag(?.
Conrad Well, the first one they gave us--you want to do
this exactly fully like - time , rev?
FCSD Rep I ' d like to , yes , because we ' ve had an awful l ot of
trouble .
Conrad Okay, the first Apo l lo l andmark was 208 and it was
on day one at 09 : 27 and it was covered b;r cl ouds .
And it was Cape Rhir and we didn ' t get 1. .,c, .
Cooper In fact , the clouds were right over the (?dge and
we didn ' t see anything until just about off the
land.
Conrad And the next one was - - Gordo , why don ' -~ you talk
about -- You took all these except--you -~ook them
al l , as a matter of fact, so why don't you give
them the business on that, I didn ' t even look at
--- PAGE 138 ---
60t H@
l8 Et tlh\L 133
half of them . Most of them occurred during my sleep
time .
Cooper Okay, the next one was Sequence 212 . And that is
on Lake Winemarka and it was a point out in the
l akes in Brazi l --down in the Br azilian area, and
it ' s a l arge l ake . There are no other l akes in the
immediate area . The l ake was very , very distinctive .
You could see it from some 6 or 700 miles away very
clearly--big, heavy jungle all around the lake and
the point that they selected was the finger of a
little peninsula out in the lake in a particular
point right on the peninsula . I thought the lake
was easy to find , the peninsula was relati vely easy
to find from quite a distance out . There was no
problem getting on it . It was a fairly disti nctive
landmark . The light was fairly low - it was late
in- the- day type pass, and the light was fairly low
over in the West , but no particular problem getting
on it , holding on t he target , and ident i f yi ng it .
Apollo l andmark--l et ' s see , I took 1 , 2 , 3, sequences
of pi ctures over that . And Apollo landmark 213 was
the next one , and I wonder if they want the magazi ne
and sequence number s . Okay , on 212 it was magazine 1
and exposure 62 , 63 , and 64 . On Apollo landmark 213
--- PAGE 139 ---
134 •
it was magazine 4, exposure 10, expo:rnre 11 . 213
was Lake DePoopo in South America and here again
.. _
the l ake was fairl y distinctive although this was
a shallow water lake - the other lake was i n the
mountains in a fairl y deep water - crater-type lake,
whereas this Lake DePoopo was a flat land lake fai r ly
shallow , the lake was not the same shape as on the
map that we had of it . In fact, the map we have is
quite a poor map and the isl and that the point i s on ,
Is l a de Panza , is not the same shape as the is land
that is shown . It is the onl y i slanc it can be,
i t is not exactly, quite different in reality than
it is here on the thing . The island is changed in
shape, but being a shallow water l ake you can see
that the lake could very r eadily change with the
water level - - change shape with the water level ;
and these islands could very readily be modified
fairly readily just by dredging or hacking away at
them . It was obviously the only lake in tha t im
mediate area that i t could be and it had the same
general shape as this lake . This text is truncated. The complete file is available at the official source.
View the official fileCongressional Context
No confirmed links between this file and the congressional record yet. Connections are added only when the source text supports them, never inferred.