--- PAGE 1 --- . - ,. 19 Y authtrity of E. c 1 1 G hanged by C4?1 • 'o <<=­ / GEMINI V TECHNICAL DEBRIEFING (U) Part 1 NOTICE: This document may be exempt from public disclosure under the Freedom of lnfor• 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 MAT E RIAL CONTAINS INF'ORM.ATION AFl"IECTING THE NATIONAL OEFENSE OF THE UN I TEO STATES WITHIN THE MEANING OF' TH£ £8P'IONAGIE LAW 5 ,. TITLE 11. U . S.C, SE CTION 793 ANO 794 . T HE TRANS­ M I SSION OR REVELAT I O N Of' WH IC H IN AN Y MANNER TO AN UNA UTH ORIZED PERSON IS PR OHIB ITE D av L AW. GROUP 4 OOWNCiftAOEO AT ) V EA R I NTFRVALS, OECL ASSI F'IEO AFTER 12 VE ARS t " 6 () t JF18Er4TI;\ b --- PAGE 2 --- PRELIMINARY GT- 5 FLIGHT CREW DEBRIEFING TRANSCRIPT PART I Prepared By Spacecraft Operations Branch Flight Crew Support Division September 1 , 1965 This material contains informati on affecting the national defense of the United States within the meaning of the Espionage Laws , Ti tle 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. Gr oup 4 : Downgrade at 3 year intervals Declassified after 12 years --- 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 1, 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 contains a transcript of the first part of the debriefing, during which the crew described the mission generally from an operational viewpoint . A preliminary transcript of the re­ mainder of the debriefing will be published by September 3, 1965. It will cover systems operations , operational checks, visual sightings, experiments , pre-mission planning, mission control , and training. a i eJ~FIDff:!TIAL --- PAGE 4 --- 9'0Ni;10 ENTll(t ~ TABLE OF CONTENTS Paragraph Page Number 1.0 COUNTDOWN 1.1 Crew Insertion. . .. .. . .. .. .. .. .. ,1 1.2 Communications . . . . .1 1. 3 Crew Participation and Countdown . .1 1.4 Comfort ......... . .1 1.5 Environmental Control System .2 1.6 Sounds .. .... 2 1.7 Vibrations ........... 2 1.8 Visual ........... .... 3 1. 9 Crew Station Controls and Displays 4 2. 0 POWER.ED FLIGHT 2.1 Lift- Off Cues . .... 6 2. 2 Roll Pr ogram 7 2.3 Pitch Program . 8 2 . 4 Aerodyna.mci.cs. .... 8 2 . 5 Environmental Control System . . 9 ...... 2 . 6 Maximum q .... 9 .. . . 2 . 7 Windshear 9 ..... 2. 8 DCS Update . .... 9 2. 9 Engine 1 Operati on. 9 . .. . 2. 10 POGO. 10 . 2 . 11 Engine 2 Status .. 12 2 . 12 Acceleration g ' s .... . 12 .... . 2 ,13 BEXJO 12 ... 2 . 14 Staging 2 . 15 Engine 2 Ignition .... 13 13 .. 2. 16 RGS Initia t~ ~4 .. 2,18 GO/ NO GO . 2. 17 Fairing Jettison 15 20 2, 19 Systems Sta tus 21 2 . 20 SECO . 21 2. 21 Steeri11g , . 22 I' ...... 3.0 INSERTION 3. 1 Post- SEXJO ....... ..... . . 23 . . .. . . . 3. 2 SEXJO + 20 Seconds 26 30 3.3 Inser tion Activities 4.0 ORBITAL FLIGHT 38 Wf.lE>ENTl~E --- PAGE 5 --- Page Number 5.0 RETROFIRE 5. 1 !R- 36 Events . . .168 5. 2 ~R- 256 Events . . 172 5.3 ~ - 1 Events . . . . . 173 5 ,4 1R- O Events . . . . . . 174 5.5 Retropack Jettison . . 182 5 . 6 Communications . . 183 6 .0 REENTRY 6.1 400 K . . . . . . . . 194 6 . 2 Acceleration profile . . 196 6.3 Spacecr aft control . .197 6.4 100 000 Feet . . . 197 6.5 50 000 Feet . . . . . 198 6.6 35 000 checklist items . . 202 6 . 7 Commtmi cati ons . . . . 202 6. 8 10 . 6K barostat . . . . . 202 6 , 9 Main chute deployment . 203 6 . 10 Single point release . . 204 6 . 11 Blood pressure measurements . . 204 6 . 12 Postmain checklist items . . 205 7. 0 LANDING AND RECOVERY 7. 1 Impact. . . . .206 7,2 Checklists . . . . 210 7.3 Communications . . 211 7.4 Systems Configuration . . 211 7 , 5 Spacecraft Status . . . 212 7 . 6 Post- Landing Activities . 213 7, 7 Comfort . . . . . .. . 214 7. 8 Recovery Force Personnel . . 214 7 . 9 Egress . . . 214 7 . 10 Survival Gear . 215 7. 11 Crew Pickup . 215 --- PAGE 6 --- 1 1 .0 COUNTDOWN 1.1 Crew Insertion Cooper The crew insertion , I thought, went very well . Conrad Yes , we had the suiting thing down on my cuffs and everything so that we got right ou t t here and, boy, th& Gunter was ready for us and i n we went . Cooper They were all set . There were no delays and every­ thing went exceedingly well on t he gantry. 1 . 2 Communications Cooper Communications , I thought were good and no probl em at all on communications, and everything went real well. Conrad Yes , Stoney handled that whole thing real well . Cooper All right, volume was still down on the little comm sets in the transfer van there . That ' s Stoney' s little improvement . 1 . 3 Crew Participation in Countdown Cooper Crew participation in the countdown was good . I didn ' t see anything at all wrong. Conrad Yes , we weren ' t rushed . We felt t hat we had enough time to get the switches in the right position and just ever ything went real good. 1.4 Comfort Cooper Comfort was real fine . We went on to two suit fans --- PAGE 7 --- 2 right away. I thought we felt plenty cool the whole time. Cooper ECS was good. Never any problem with it . 1.6 Sounds Cooper Sounds , I thought the only sounds tha·; we had that were abnormal we'd been warned about. When the prevalves opened, they were fairly loud and when the engines gimballed they were quite loud , and both of those we were aware of the fact that they would cause a lot of noise and vibrat:.on. Conrad There is something that really dings t he booster too when they start .. . . I don ' t--whet her they drop a platform away. Cooper It ' s before they start moving the gant ry. Conrad Just before they start lowering that erector. Boy, something really, like it really bangs tha t booster , I thought. I still don't know what it is , but , of course, we ' d been up there with the erector down twice before that so we were sort of e~tting used to those kind of sounds. 1. 7 Vibration Cooper Okay , vibrations we already covered tr.at . Sounds , vibrations. --- PAGE 8 --- 3 1.8 Visual ,. Cooper Visual . Nothing.... Conrad Oh , yes , wait a minute, I started getting this win­ dow fogging . Cooper Well, let ' s cover that under the right area . Conrad Well, it was actually in the countdown when the erector went down before liftoff . Cooper Well , okay , allright . Conrad I mean we still had it later . Cooper Well, you want to cover that now then in systems . Conrad Well, is that what this means , is visual, or does that just mean something else? FCSD REP Yes, that ' s before liftoff. Powered flight is next . Conrad Yes , well t lri,s-tra-,:5pened 6e:f'1 Cooper / Allright , even before liftoff , hat this really is completely unforgiveable. Each window was filthy. Just fogged completely over, and it was on the inside of the outer pane of glass . It was I within the sealed unit of glass , and it was so foggy when they lowered the erector that it it was frozen over solid, I d neither could Conrad Well, it had fogged over before they lowered the (j()tqflDENTIA[ ,. --- PAGE 9 --- 4 erector and then the guys heated it w:.th hot air to make it go away and that just made th:.ngs wor se when they lowered the erector . Cooper It didn't make it go away all the way. Conrad That I s right it made'"it- ~ actually. Cooper / L my side in my window ~etweer. the inside pane and the two outside panes of\\8-~s , I had a sma ll bee , and I had a fly, and I had\several flecks of things that I had written u~ before and never got corrected, and they were the whole flight, and I ' m sure they will show up on all the films and everything. Now between the outer sealed panes of glass there were numerous little specks and of stuff and throughout the flight as . .. well , we ' ll cover that later, but that was even 7rore the flight started . The windows were not pla/n a nd were not in good shape to go forthe--f~. 1 . 9 Crew Station Contr ols and Displa_ys Conrad I think the Gemini cockpit is a pretty good cockpit . Cooper I think in general that crew stations eontrols and displays were pretty adequate . Conrad I 've got a couple comments on switches and things, but these are . . . . ~FIDENTIAL - --- PAGE 10 --- 5 FCSD REP Okay , how about the time you spent in there on prelaunch . Do you think that this is about right? Cooper Yes , yes , I think that this is just about right . I think that if you cut it down too much more than that you are going to be ....you could cut it down some more , there's no doubt . .. . Conrad It ' s that cabin purge cycles when you ' re not doing anything really , and that ' s excellent time . Cooper ... that you can cut it down, but that ' s the thing that takes the time for both the ground crews ... and that ' s lost time. I don ' t know . ... Conrad I don ' t think you want to rush the crew and now our count that second day went by the clock, boy. We got in there at the right time . We counted down and lifted off on, and I didn ' t feel that I was rushed , and I didn ' t feel that I sat in there for an excessive amount of time . Cooper No , I didn ' t either. I thought that it went just about right , time wise . ,. Conrad Long as there ' s no holds in the count everything' s great . --- PAGE 11 --- 6 FtE>ENTI L 2.0 POWERED FLIGHT 2.1 Lif t Off Cues Cooper Okay , lift- off cues , CAP COM . CAP CO~ didn ' t come into the act until later . Stoney counted us down thru ignition and lift-off and then CAP COM picked us up at l ift- off . Motion is an excellent clue . There ' s doubt in your mind when you ljft- off . You know, the second you lift- off that yot .' ve lifted . Vibration was very low. Conrad It had dropped out almost completely a.t lift- off, felt that shaking was very l i ght. Cooper There was very little vibrati on at all . Okay, vibration , very l ow. Noise I thought, was quite low . Conrad I was particularl y aware of the noises of goi ng through the max Q regionar y thing . Oh , t his is lift-off again . I thought the noises were very well at l iftoff . You know the engines were running from the outside before , you know, and man they really make a racket , but from where you are it's pretty quite . You know there running. You can here them , there's no doubt about that , but .. . Cooper Okay , on visual I don ' t . . . . We had a very cl ear day . There weren't even any clouds in sight on ~ IDENTI~ --- PAGE 12 --- C.(&)Hft0ENTI:,\~~ au, !to 7 our sight as we were lifting off, and I couldn't tell any visual cues to lift- off, could you? Conrad You had the feeling that you were moving visually. After you get your ro ll program you see it visually and you can see the pitch program starting visually, but just at first l ift-off you don't really have any visual cues . Cockpit displays are just l ike advertised . The two stage - one lights go out, and . .. just l ike the simulator. 2 . 2 Roll Program Conrad Yes , I watched roll program on the gyro, I was watching for it to come i n on time and in glancing up when the roll program started I was still looking at nothing but blue sky, but I was aware visually as you say that the booster was rolling. Yes , you can have a airplane when you are looking at nothing but blue sky and start a motion and you may not know exactly what the motion is, but you know t hat you are moving. Cooper Now on this cockpit display, something that I got two different answers to from different people on how the gyro and the actual case was going to be set and it suddenly dawned on me that they actually set the gyro so that you are launching down the 90 degrees. You're --- PAGE 13 --- 8 progressi ng down to 90 degrees line , e. la the simulator, although the booster sets on 85 degrees and when you turn to 72 degrees launch azimuth you are rolling clockwise so far as tr.e crew is concerned . Conrad You roll to zero . Cooper But you are rolling to is real ly to O on the gyro as precessed around so that you are net really setting on the actual launch azimuth, you are actually setting so that when you stai§'e on over i n yaw then pitch over then in your yaw your on the in­ plane line. FCSD REP You ' re coming down the zero line . Y01.:. 1 re yawing down the zero l i ne . Cooper That 's right , and I kept getting diffe.rent answers on this and this is in fact the case. Roll program was exactly right on time and ended e>:actly on time. 2 . 3 Pitch Program Cooper Pitch program started exactly on time. 2. 4 Aerodynamic Cooper Aerodynamic was nothing new or differE:nt about it . It was just standard. We build up to the noises at max Q; the noise built up to gradual level and the vibration and quantity built up to ma>:~ and then dropped off very rapidly J.1'd:i!Jitely thereafter. FlDENTIAL --- PAGE 14 --- CONFICtleNTIA~ • 9 2. 5 ECS Conrad Right on the button. Cooper ECS was right on the money , no problem at all . Max Q we ' ve already stated . Conr ad The cabin s ealed a little bit high like they said it would . I forget the number. It was about 5.8. Cooper About 5.8 or 9 and just gradually dwindled back down . Conrad And just after we got in there by the time I looked at it again after insertion everything it bled down on our gage to 4.9, our gage read a little low . I think the actual reading , you will pr obably find the cabin actually was 5.1 1 but the whole rest of t he flight the gage never budged off the 4.9. Cooper The gage stayed right there like it was glued . 2 . 7 Wind Shear Cooper The wind shear , we had none and , certainly nothing that we could tell , but as I understand we ' ve been told that for that day anyway we had almost negible wind shear. 2 . 8 DCS Updates Cooper DCS updates were right on time . FCSD REP You had two updates? Conrad 1 plus 45 , 2 plus 25 . 2 , 9 Engine 1 Operat i on Cooper The engine 1 operation couldn ' t have been better, ----~~K)ENTIAL --- PAGE 15 --- 10 .. It was beautiful. Just now in between engine 1 operation and engine 2 here we have t wo items we will insert in here . 2, 10 POGO Cooper One was POGO.. At 2 mi nutes and 5 seconds we started picking up POGO and I got a fairly gcod amount of POGO on through , stopping just at abcut 5 to 7 seconds before staging. POGO dropped. cl ean out exactly the same time there that we programmed POGO on the early days. Conrad Yes, that one surprised me . We ' d he1:.rd and read tbat both John 8{!.d Gus ' s and Jim and Ed ' s f l i ght that they were hardly even aware of IDGO and boy when it came in on us it was loud anc. clear and , ( well Gordon , neither one of us could talk hardly; we were really vibrating with it and I was hard pressed to read the displays. ------- By golly , if I had to re__:-t ad -;-:h;--e- num;-er - --:b- _ on __ _ , e a:·-i~-s p~r-ays ___ I- .,,. think I woul d have been hard pressed to do it, because we really had it pretty good. Cooper Yes , the rate ... the amplitude of them were such . . . 11 cps frequency and the ampl itude of them was such that you were on -- you were on the marginal --- PAGE 16 --- 11 edge of reading of any large gage and any fine reading that you had to read, you would never be able to read any numbers. It was exactly like the POGO we did all along on the program up at Ames and as the exact amplitude , I don ' t lmow, but i t was , . . . . . I think we don ' t want that ~ POGO. It was no par icu ar y upsetting to me , because I really was fai rly familiar with POGO having been through a ll that POGO program, but this thing kind of t i ckled me that we got it to see that we had still hadn ' t solved it , but I don ' t think . . . its something you don ' t want because if you had ot~er things going wrong during that period of t i me it would make it vecy difficult to say what you had wrong or what Conrad It didn ' t upset me , but it surprised me , you lmow, because I just wasn't expecting POGO. RCSD REP Wbat g- level would you estimate it to be? Cooper Well , we were sneaking right up there . FCSD REP I mean the POGO . Cooper Oh, it was right at about 5 g ' s . ·\ 1• FCSD REP Well , I mean plus or minus amplitude . Cooper Well I , my estimate on it was that it was something --- PAGE 17 --- 12 on the order of maybe three quarters of a g . Well, I don I t !mow whether it was that high c,r not . Conrad I thought it was at least a half , if not better . Apparently it wasn't that high . I ws.s really surprised. Like I say, we were really getting the Cooper ramrod out of it. -- s beyond what we selected as we th~ht should be the cutoff. It was more tr.an wh~ we l had selected at Ames as being max acc 7. in this.I passed up ver b • there one of the first things that happened immediately about the time that we got the pitch program was the IGS Stage 2 fuel needle failed in thE full -max deflection position. And it came back on and was reading after staging briefly and thEn failed again during staging. It was intermittent . 2 . 11 Engine 2 Status Cooper Engine 2 status stayed ... was perfect . There was not anything wrong at al l. 2 .12 Acceleration G' s Cooper Acceleration g ' s were right on the piofile , were certainly very pleasant. Nothing wrong at all with them. 2 . 13 BECO --- PAGE 18 --- 13 Cooper BECO was right on the money . . 2 . 14 Staging Conrad Boy, that staging was smooth too . Cooper They told us that BECO was going to occur early , but it was Conrad We did loft a little bit apparently like they said we woul d because, right a fter staging .... 2. 15 Engine 2 I gnition Conrad Well , Engine 2 ignition, I wasn't even hardly aware of that other than we jus t started to get a little , yc,11 know, we just sort of went off the peg at 6 g's and Gordo said s t aging OK and Engine 2 is good and I wasn ' t even aware that Engine 2 had lit . You can ' t hear it, to speak of, but you can feel the acceleration slowly building up . FCSD REP Did you see anything visually? Conrad No , I didn't see anything. I heard the other guys talking about s ee the flash at the brig. Never saw a thing and I wasn't aware of any flash out there either . I\ Cooper J didn ' t see anything at all at BEDO. The best clue that I have on my side , is that I see the Fuel and Oxidizer needles start coming down as the engine --- PAGE 19 --- 14 • starts burning. And then they coming c.own fairly rapidly at first, I mean you get a very definite motion on them right at first there and. they kind of settled out. Engine 2 ignition we've already covered. 2.16 RGS Initiate Cooper RGS initiate right on the money. Conrad I was going to mention that we had l of t ed and that we were expected to pitch down a.nd we did when it picked up RGS. Cooper It smoothed in very smooth, and the fading was just right. Conrad The IGS needle really deflected and I ~as , you know, I don't think it pitched, it didn't peg- out , but it did make a large dip and then when the booster came down just pitched down very smoottly down to about 75 or 80 degrees, I guess it pitched down almost 10 degrees. FCSD REP What rate did it pitch over? Conrad Very slow, but steady, at just Cooper It took about 20 seconds I guess to fade it in there . Conrad The needle came in and made a big deflection and right after that the booster started pitching and the needle started back and boy the needl e was • --- PAGE 20 --- CQ~ElDEhJIJA 15 back and thing was right on the money at about 80 degrees. It was a very smooth transition and then do you remember they were telling, us to look for this one cps oscillation? Well, I didn't have rate needl e s like Gordo did, but I wasn't aware of any oscil lations at any time. That booster was in pitch and yaw as far as that went Cooper Those rate needles were like they were glued . There was never through boost or second stage was there ever any rate except that one tiny little rate , one teensy little rate just at when we were in POGO we got one tiny little longitudinal rate, ' just one tiny little fleck on a rate, and was the only one . Otherwise it was just smooth as silk, the whole time, rate wi se . 2.17 Fairing Jettison Cooper Fairing jettison. We jettisoned fairings at 3:25 and man do they ever go . Conrad I counted Gordo down to them. Okay, yes, that ' s a good point . Cooper Beside the scanner fairing and the nose fairing go and when the nose fairing went it went with all kinds of debris . There were pieces flying all --- PAGE 21 --- 16 over. Conrad Yes , and I don't think it went right . I don't believe it went right , because the Rand R can was ripped up in the front , and I can show you on my side the nose went like that and there was some tape or fiber glass that goes around t he . . .. It was fiberglass cloth and it was a ll broken loose in jagged flaps sticking up t hat, you lmow, had broken loose from a long in here when i.hat cover went I had decided impression that the cover went off askew, that it didn 't jettison t he: way i t should have. And this could be a good point of putting it back to a fter insertion. Cooper Well, it ' s supposed to go off askew. Conrad Yes , well, it just di dn ' t go off clean . That 's why this was ripped up, see . Cooper Well , it something somebody might look into , but you don ' t want to recommend that they put back to after insertion , because your taking a weight penalty to carry that all the way up. Conrad Yes, I realize that , but . . . . Cooper It was designed to go off ... . Conrad That was the reason in the first place that they WIDE --- PAGE 22 --- 17 moved it up there anyhow, because they weren't .... Cooper No , the reason they moved it up there was because they didn ' t have strong enough propulsion on those squibs and spring combinations or whatever they use . We never did get a reading on that, but whatever the total propulsive expulsion system wasn't kick­ ing, the scanner fairing wide enough but what they would come back into the booster. But didn't you have the distinct impression that the nose fairing broke into j illions of pieces when it blast . Conrad I certainly, I certainly , yes . That ' s why wh~n I say askew , I mean something didn't look right. I can't put my finger on it, but -- Cooper It came off in many pieces anyway. There were many, many pieces and the whole area was just filled with debris . Conrad Yes, and then , I 'm not sure that that's when we got all that gl op on our windshiel d, the spots ... Cooper Well, I noted exactly at that time immediately after the fairing went, I noted about 5 or 6 , I saw them hit , 5 or 6 gray splots, just small ones , very small little gray- type splots and I was distinctly looking for that and watching for it and --- PAGE 23 --- 18 they were not there before they were t'nere and I ; saw them when they hit. They h it duri:'.l.g all this debris flying around period . Conr ad I think that you can s ti11 f i nd them o:'.l. the windshields . They didn ' t burn off during reentry. Cooper But they ' re not bad and there are just a few little scattered ones and I think it might be interesting t o compare how many you get there vers us and how many you get when you jettison them in orbit . It may wel l be that jettisoni ng in orbit would be pre­ ferab l e , but I didn ' t f i nd anything objectionable t o jettisoning where they went , they wenm fine. It did add a lot of debris and I agree with Pete there was a big torn something or other out there which may just be a fiberglass thing that is kind of . .. ,. Conrad Yes , I want to get down and look at the R and R and and I can tell you what it was , describe it a lot better. We ' ll probably have some pictures of it too in the camera somewhere. I know it ' ll show up in some film . FCSD REP How l ong was this visible? You say there was a big bunch of stuff out there . ONFIDENTIAL --- PAGE 24 --- 19 Cooper There ' s a whole fly . Oh, you mean the debris . It was gone . Conrad It was gone like that, but it just looked like the whole darn thing exploded. Cooper It looked like it just flew into a jillion pieces. It was all around you for maybe a period of a second or two . Conrad I didn't think it was that much , i t was just gone . Cooper But it was a defininite period of time when you were aware of all this debris all over and then clear . Okay, enough for fairing jettison. --- PAGE 25 --- 20 2 . l8 GO/NO GO Cooper GO/NO GO: We never got a GO/NO GO beeause we lost our number 1 radio in about 4 minutes s ometime just prior . . . let see we got a . 8 . . . . Wti got a V over VR of . 8 . We got a GO/NO GO of , .. FCSD REP You did get a , 8? Cooper We got a .8 . Conrad Yes , that comes much later - that com(!S after the GO/NO GO. Cooper Yes, that ' s right , okay, well I don ' t remember ever getting a ... yea , we did, we go·~ MCC GO. Right we got a GO/NO GO , okay, but then immediately after . 8 we never got any·':hing at all from there on until aft er we were insi~rted and gone to UHF No . 2. Conrad I think it must be in the antenna problem, I really do . Cooper Well , there 's some problem there because the same thing happened on one of the previous flights and we definitely and completely lost radio and I swi tched over just before we inserted, I switched over to number 2 and then when I call1~d but the IVI's we were back with them then . --- PAGE 26 --- 21 2. 19 Systems Status Cooper System Status everything .. . . Conrad We did have ... Let me describe the delta P lights . Shortly after liftoff I got the number 1 fuel cell delta Plight and I reported i t and just about t he time I reported it , then the number 2 fuel cell delta Plight came on . They s tayed on all the way through boost and they were on aft er insertion for ten , fifteen seconds and after that \ they went right back out again and that) i s it . It didn't effect anything on the fue y e11 operation, tn currents , the voltages , / t h i n g stayed fine other than • bein n----tliere was no other way of telling the~ was out of tolerance so I don ' t think it is a problem. We expected it. Cooper I ' m glad that we had them changed to orange rather than red . Conrad Yeah, yeah . Cooper Systems status in addition to that I don ' t think we had any systems that were exactly right , except the radio and the acceleration as we had expected it . We were right on the profile. SECO was ... 2. 20 SECO !Oa!IIAL --- PAGE 27 --- 22 Conrad I think we burned out at, Gordo, 7 anc. 1/4 g's. Cooper Right. SECO was exactly on time, just exactly on time and IVI's read 002 AFT. Almost ierfect. 2. 21 Steering Cooper Steering was ... there was no steerine· accelerations or velocities that we could tell. Steering was just smooth as silk , apparently they :t.ad us going right down the slot . And when we came off, apparently we were lined up well because there weren ' t any rates because when we came off and wajted our 20 seconds there were no rates whatsoever and it was just setting there just . . . . as smootr.. as Conrad As stable as a rock . Cooper As smooth as silk so that and when we started thrusting and separating we came off :ust right straight forward . No deviation , no skidding around or anything. Just right straight off, Conrad I thought the IVI's were plus 2 . That ' s what I haVle written down here. Plus 28 right , 3 t.p. Cooper I guess that's what it was. FCSD REP This velocity you read? Conrad I was going to cover that in your ... , Cooper Your right, plus 2, it was -- that's :r·ight . Plus --- PAGE 28 --- ~IE>l!NTtAE 23 002 . Conrad I have al l the computer readouts . Cooper 008 right and how many up? Conrad 3 up . 3 ,1 Post SECO Cooper MANEUVER CONTROLLER worked fine . We went right through .... Conrad Wel l, l et ' s go through t hat. The way we had practice SECO, Gordo, got SECO and Gordo unstowed the CONTROLLER and I armed the BUS ARM Swit ch so that we get the MSC- 1 doors OFF. Cooper Brought the propulsion power ON. Conrad Brought the ATTITUDE CONTROL Elect ric Power ON. Went from RATE COMMAND to DIRECT. Armed the switch and hit the computer. Armed t he sep spacecraft thing and Gordo and I counted the seconds down . I n the meantime , I punched off address 72 so that it was reading and then in 20 seconds we had SEP s/c . ... Cooper In 20 seconds I start ed and I called it out and started thrusting and Pete would hit the sep spacecraft ... . Conrad The reason we did that was so that we would have --- PAGE 29 --- the inertial velocity readout on the ga.ge and that was ·beautiful 25,808 and nominal was S-.lpposed to be 25,807. You can't ask for a better calculation from a computer than that, and a lot of people don ' t have much faith in that thing but, I think that I'll bet that the computed MCC figure isn't more than a foot or two off. I t couldn ' t be because everything was nominal for hours and hours in the past, Day's it went that way where we stayed on the flight plan to the minute, to the second so I know that it was a good computation, and I have the five address readouts that we read , We read out address 72 as 25,808; address 94 which was R dot for gamma was plus 20 feet which is pretty darn small so we must have almos t a zero gamma address 97 which is the forward IVI was plus 2 feet; address 52 was perfect , it was zero. So there was no adjustment needed and if there had been an adjustment needed that would ha:ve come at 3 , 042 seconds on the computer if tbere had been an address . 52 correction and nominal 3,008 seconds so the computer computed the nomi nal thing off only by less than a minute, about a half a --- PAGE 30 --- 25 minute of what the actual nominal value /een , s o I think thats pretty darn good ascent routine in that comput er, and I think hat ( now that we have Math flow 6 in there t his i why I think the guy shouldn't get so darn worried in MCC underspeeds and giving them burn co/rections t his Mickey Movse. I' ve been t rying to make tbis pein-t-ewe· since we got associat ed with . . . . Cooper I think we had better immediate data avail abl e on board than people have been giving it credit for . Conrad Tha t ' s right , and it really pleased me to see it come out on the computer this way. Cooper And had we never gotten our communications back we would have known tha t we were i n good shape because of the data we had on board, we didn ' t have to worry about the ground readouts and what to do ; we would have known what to do whether we had been under or over or anything else . Cooper Attitudes and rates , t here weren ' t any rat es . The thing was steered right down the s lot . We came off smooth . Conrad Spacecraft separation NflD~NTlAk --- PAGE 31 --- 26 CONF:10ENT-IA Cooper We separated as smooth as silk just r i ,5ht straight .;; ahead Conrad Well, we counted down and Gordo said h? was ready and I SEP spacecraft and he thru3ted and I went back to RATE COMMAND for them and we came straight off . I didn't even feel it . The first t hing we felt was thrust . Cooper And rolled upright and went to 000 00 - 15 which happened to be right on the horizon. As it t urned out that 15 figure was good . It read out the IVI•s . FCSD REP That's, you know on 4 . . . they thought they came off the booster. Conrad Yes, that's why I mentioned that because Cooper That's what we were looking for, too, 3.2 SEGO Plus 20 Seconds Cooper We've already mentioned the IVI displays . Space­ craft separation occurred very smoothly. Thrusting was smooth , nothing wrong at all . Attitude rates were good. Conrad Yes, I don't understand this! I don't understand this guy saying that they can't hear them or they can ' t sense them. Boy, I was easily aware . . . . --- PAGE 32 --- FHID~Nf lAL 27 Cooper 1/ than you can hear You can feel t hem almost mo,-e them. You can feel them vibrate r eally, more than .. you can hear them . I mean , you can hear them too , but the vibrat ion you can hear them too, but t he vi bration you can f eel the thrust . Conrad Have you ever heard a high speed hose or high speed water j et. Shhh ... That 's the impression that I had. Cooper Yes, that ' s right. FCSD REP Even from the aft firing thruster? Cooper Ever y thruster we had on t here. Conrad We heard every thruster on the whol e f l ight Cooper It never occurred in my mind when the thrus t ers were fired. You can feel them and I can hear them. I couldn 't hear them in the sense of an expl osive sound or a roar . It sounded like wat er swishing. Conrad Yes , very definitely, more a Shhh . Cooper And I was aware of it again when we made the burns l ater on, you know , we made the reverse coelliptic stuff and all that. FCSD REP How did these noises , the thruster noises , sound compared with the way the last crew set the mission simulator? ' --- PAGE 33 --- 28 Conrad Hey, that's another i nteresting point. Cooper They're not very close on pulse. Conrad Pulse is a ... • Cooper Pulse is more of a thump . Conrad That 's the one sound that does sound like you ' d expect a rocket engine to sound . Cooper Here ' s a sound just about like this : (knock) Conrad Yes , it very definitely sounds like a knock . There is no "shhh" or roar, just a little thud. Cooper You can hear it just like somebody knccking at the back of the spacecraft . You can hear it go "tap tap, tap , tap, tap, tap," Conrad Really, the simulator doesn I t sound tl:.e right way. It ' s a general enough nature and it tl::.e same type manner Cooper Yes, it is close enough to give you a good cue. Conrad The platform mode for instance , you krow, when i t goes shh, shh, shh, shh ... did the same thing i n the spacecraft except it was all in one thump and swooshes when it was constantly firing the thrusters it sounded like the swish. Cooper The air-to- ground communications I thought was excellent the whol e time. I didn't find anythi ng , --- PAGE 34 --- ONEl0EtslJl~E 29 wrong. Conrad We really had good comm the whole flight. .. Cooper There was never a time -- the only time the only fault we find was one or two times through the remote site when the MCC was trying to remote to these sites they would get some fading. I must say the HF worked excellent. When they were ~ r ~ u s i c , broadcasting music to us, my\ gosh they had us practically the world round on '-----~ T h e music quality was quite _g0od in most cases. Conrad I got times on that we can bring out later so that they can correlate how far Cooper GO/NO GO , there wasn't any problem on that. They gave us the GO right away. FCSD REP How long did it take them to give this? Cooper Oh , heck, immediately. Almost immediately. .> vveaf Conrad There was no swivel because there was no velocity ~ correction. Cooper There was no velocity correction needed. Orbit quantitites were good, they had those for us. It took them quite a while to read us our experiments but they just said you have a nominal orbit and then mayb_e . . . . . eQNFIE>ENTl~t --- PAGE 35 --- I Conrad I've got down here the GMT of liftoff . I wrote down ... 13 plus 59 plus 59 which they l ater change to 14 plus 00 plus 00 . I have the one A time they got " it up to us okay, which was 10 pl us 11 . Then I have the 2 dash 1 they gave us was 01 pl us 27 plus 16 which they later revised to 01 plus 26 plus 27, I wrote those down. 3. 3 Insertion Activities Cooper Okay, l et ' s start on inser tion activities. SAFE t he swi tches we did that just right for our check­ list . In fact , we are even more convinced than ever that a good, thorough, accurate, checklist is the only thing to have and Conr ad Physically marked them off when they "·e r e done . Cooper We followed it conscientiously. The sequential light t ests, we did it j ust by the teE.ts . Stowage:; . we already had modified our checklistE, ·and we already had written on some of it that we would do these i f we decided to. For instance, the D- rlng safety pin, we did install them at right t i me, and there was no problem on those ; they wer e nruch easi•~r under zero- g to get in and out than we had thought and I had no --- PAGE 36 --- .kQt4FIDfNJ1A.L, 31 trouble getting my D-ring in, did you? Conrad I waited on mine , remember. . Cooper Yes , you waited . .. . Conrad I s towed my D- ring thing Cooper So we closed the cover immediately and I decided I woul d go ahead and see if I could get mine, and I got to i t right away and it went right in, so I put it in . Conrad We, of course, got in trouble in the second orbit , but we did not unstrap or put t he drogue pins in the seat or unstow any items of gear other than the flight plan books and the 16mm camera and the Hasselblad. I take it back. We went through the Flight Plan as advertised and then stowed the items. We had D-2 canera out, the Blob out, but we did this in the proper places in the Flight Pl an. But we never did unstrap . Cooper We never unstrapped and never put the drogue pins in until after we go to 6 - 4 GO. We got a 6 - 4 GO. Conrad But we restowed too , after we got in t rouble . We throught maybe having to go into 6-4 why, we'd put ourselves back into the configuration --- PAGE 37 --- 32 to reenter Cooper were never up . lready decided t hat I was not going to launch with th£~ They " are just useless as far as I am concerr..ed, and I as delighted I did not have them; and I didn ' t miss I don't think, I think could remove th€m and - Conrad The arm restraints are there for the pressurized case and high altitude ejection . I did go with mine up . I would prefer to go with thEim down, but there wasn't any reason , I didn ' t need to get my hands on the hand control or anything ~.o I left them as they were, but I don' t think tr.ey were necessary. • --- PAGE 38 --- FtDENTtAL 33 Cooper Okay, belts . I couldn ' t ~~ he belts . The harness - While we 're on the harness , I don ' t like that harness worth anything. t hink what we need is a simple type adjustable type harness wi th clips on the legs that you can undo legs to get to some of the functions you have to : uri pation and defecation and so on in the spacecy ft . I do ' t see why we have to have a big, expensi/e, custom, made ha~ss that you can ' t readily get on off and this on~ you can not readily get and if you had one with on it and snaps like you do on harness , it would be, I think, a hundred times useful as this one . Conrad Let me ask you a ~uestion . Do you really - now , do you r eally - I agree. Let me say this . I agree you should firs t be able to get your harness on and off, but in zero- g I ' m not convinced that three , especially two leg snaps type arrangement. In other words , a harness that would come completely loose and have many straps that hitch to the other straps would be really good in zero- g . What I think we need to do is to be able to get in and out of that harness that we have , easier. Like, maybe you could loosen the leg straps on it but not have them come apart . Now , I ~ NftDENTrAL --- PAGE 39 --- took my harness off in flight twice . I took 1 em " off once-- Cooper Yeah, but you wouldn ' t even have to step through these :: leg loops if you had - just like on an airplane harness . You could undo that and you wouldn ' t eve·'.l. have to worry about the leg loops . Then all you 1 d have to do is just slide out of the torso area. Conrad Yeah. Well» lets sees that ' s what I' m saying. If you unhook both of those leg loops and you throw the whole thing down in the footwell and then you pull it back up again you got a leg strap floating off ever here and you got a - - Cooper Well that ' s no problem. It ' s no worse i.han it is find­ ing your lap belt . Did you ever have i;rouble getting your lap belt back on after you took it off? Conrad I always hitched it on the Velcro over on the side . Cooper But you never had any trouble ~ ting t o it. I didn ' t . / I let mine float free and I never had any trouble getting t o them at all . Conrad Well , I just don 1 t lmow now. I really d:i.dn ' t think it was that bad getting in and out of this harness . My only concern was that if- - I stayed- - Cooper How many times did you get i n and out o f it? ~ --- PAGE 40 --- ( OhJFt0! 35 Conrad Twice . The big problem was having you unhitch the straps on my suit . Cooper That ' s right . With the cables to go over the harness . Conrad The harness--the easiest thing was getting in the legs . That was no problem at all . Cooper Yeah. Conrad Where I needed help was getting over my shoulder and getting the straps on the suit hitched back up again, which is a two man operation. Cooper Well , my point is that for normal wearing around the pad area or wearing around when your suited and every­ thing, you ' d be much more comfortable if you could have those straps loose where they ' re not gouging you in the legs , Conrad Yes , well-- Oh, I agree. Cooper Or where you had adjustments on them . ... Conrad . .. adjustments see-- Cooper Okay, well . Conrad Where you coul d make the legstraps loose but you' d never disconnec t them so you don ' t have free floating straps around t here . It was no big problem .... Cooper My suggestion would be to have them exactly like you did in a parachute harness . You have the leg adjust- --- PAGE 41 --- ment and on that same fitting you have the little snap " wher e you can unsnap in the places you want to . Conrad Oh yes , you dan do it either way. Sure . Cooper You cou,Yd either loosen them or--I just thi we've gone to such complex tailoring devices in orde f ovide some company with a great elaborate pro of providing expensive harnesses that they .. . per- sonally don ' t think they ' re worth a darn for what they're ·ntended for . I don ' t think you gain that much . I think'y~u loose a lot of it . Conrad ~ stow that harness . Cooper The life 7 est. Now I disagree wit everybody that ' s ever said that those aren ' t in the way. e were them all theI time mainly because we didn ' t hav a darn place to s i ore them and they're a pain in the Ii,leck t o get on and off but they are really in the way. The;r ' re in the way @f everything you do . They bump int0 your arms . Tbey ' re there to cut down visibilit on ;rour chest and they ' re just a nuisance, Conrad Yeah , e didn ' t have a place t store them. Cooper We didn ' t store them or we'd have taken them off and left them off . I am here t o say t hat I --- PAGE 42 --- ONFTDENTl~t 37 think they ' re r eally bad where they are . Conrad After the big sweat was over and we got a GO and we were relatively sure we were going to stay there for awhile unless we , you lmow, had some other emergency come up , I would have preferred to take off the harness and the life jacket and stow it somewhere if we ' d have had a place to stow it . Cooper Right . Conrad But the other thing is that maybe that ' s just my per­ sonal feeling . I ' m extremely meticulous and we kept that spacecr aft as empty as possible . Everything had it ' s place and it stayed in it ' s place . Cooper And that harness and the vest--are pret t y big, bulky items - Conrad And I wasn ' t going to have it rattling around down there on the floor , loose . Cooper Okay, on the drogue pins . By golly, I thought those new l i ttle things on the drogue pins made them very easy to get in and out. There wasn ' t a bit of problem wit h those . Conrad I popped the drogue pins in and out on mine . Coope~ I put mine i n or out once just to ... . Conrad I think Gordo put his own in and out once to see if he --- PAGE 43 --- could do it and he coul d . That worked real well . Cooper Okay. Fuel Cell o and Fuel Cell Hydrogen Quantity Read . 2 Yes , we read them at least a million times . Fuel Cell • Power Readings . Yes , everything checked out fine on t hose. Bermuda 2- 1 update : fine . Orbital Flight . FCSD Rep You ' d better get out your flight plan on this because t his is the original stuff I was telling you about . Conrad Well , that ' s all right . This probably will go fairly.... FCSD Rep All three , if you go the way you did it. 4.0 Orbital Flight Cooper Okay, on 4 . 0 Orbital Fli ht . Platform Alinement. Conrad There ' s our first problem . Cooper There ' s our first problem. Our plat orm mode did not work and I don ' t lmow what ' s wrong wit but the darn thing does not zero out on the space­ I craft. It allows a good e to sit in there and won ' t zero it out and it is ex remely s l oppy ·n pitch . The whole thing, I think tb7:r was something ~rong with the whole thing because it d esn ' t work at I a \ 1 like the ones in the simulator, an the whole thing ... plu's or minus a half a degree a very, ver y system lucky to be plus or thing really wrong with it . I personall y think that --- PAGE 44 --- ~ pl&f~T A~ 39 \ something was wired up wrong or something in i t because it was not working right . Conrad We didn ' t really get a chance to evaluate it too well because we had trouble with it so we stopped using it and by the time we ' d been able to do anything with it we had other problems , fuel problems and so forth . So we never did get back to using it again . Cooper Well, we had other control system problems which were overpowering, platform problem wise , but we did try one burn on the platform and it was a terrible mistake . The darn thi ng did not have the accuracy to really hold it and we got one foot per second in and out of plane there . Conrad Yeah. That was in those coeliptic . Cooper In one of those , that coeliptic burns and we ~ade our other burns then on Rate Command and man, that Rate Command system is just beautiful . It holds that space­ craft so tight that it can ' t vary. Conrad Yeah . We had a beautiful control system, I thought . When Gordo made any of the burns on the Rate Command or anything l i ke that it really responded -- well. Coope1: Rate Command has tremendous torqueing. Boy, it ' s strong and it ' s instantaneous and you can just stop it right on the money. Really good. --- PAGE 45 --- 40 FCSD Rep Okay, on this platform alinement thing. You went to SEF and caged and SEF and Platform Control Mode, Cooper We pitched down to visual when we went to CAGE and then went to SEF and we went to Platform mode and after fid­ dling around with it awhile we decided the Platform mode wouldn ' t work so I went to Pulse and then I , just using my needles , Platform needles then , I just pulsed the er­ rors out until we torqued around and got the ... got it ... on a fine line. Conrad Okay, Now , there ' s no doubt in my mind that the Primary Scanners , there ' s no doubt in my mind now, but we lost on Primary Scanners . We started to aline the primary Scanners and I don ' t think we ever got to platform a line correctly because the primary scanners were not working correctly, Cooper Now the primary scanners, The funny part of it is the Primary Scanner was working in such a rr.anner - working just enough, that it checked right because when we checked out t he alinement of it and the tolerances on it it was working fine , but there was something in it on one of the tests that we did later showed thai it was actually driving, tending to drive the spacecraft down . Conrad Continuing to torque you down to about fifteen degrees nose- down , --- PAGE 46 --- • 41 Cooper Or more . . Conrad In other words , it continued to try to aline t he platform at about fifteen degrees . It tried to put the nose on t he horizon is what it did . FCSD Rep It tried to aline the platform up at fifteen degrees nose down? Cooper Or more . I figured it was about somewhere around-­ Well , one time it alined us at about 40 degrees nose down and it still was indicating in scanner limits . Conrad The scanner got worse as the flight went on, but I don ' t think it ever worked correctly . Cooper No . I don't think it did , now I look back . Conrad That ' s the thi ng right there and I think that this- - I 'd l i ke to know what they decided from tracking the REP on how we put the REP out because we put the REP out in the proper position, but I don ' t think the platform was alined correctly . We had trouble with that scanner in the sunlight on the horizon and this was right when we were using it to aline - j ust before we put the REP out . Cooper Just as we were using it to aline and put t he REP out , the Scanner began to skew all the platform needles off and it skewed off and , --went to ORBIT RATE. --- PAGE 47 --- 42 L Conrad Now wait til we get the onboard tapes because the tape .. recorder was working and this all is on the onboard tape ; the conversation that Gordo and I had about that. So we weren ' t really sure it was working right but it f wasn 't that far off that we were going in the dark-- Cooper . Approximately 30 seconds before we had to pitch around or had to yaw around to eject the REP, I had to go back to CAGE and try getting a real rapid P] a tform aline in there , SEF and PULSE and I had the neec.les zeroed and we may not have been so far off but you don ' t know . That isn ' t enough time to really get it alined. In other words . I had about the time we did it and got there we probably had maybe , 30 seconds to Plat::orm aline . That ' s about all we had . Conrad Well , we were just hoping that if it had been pulled off only in pitch why, you know , we ' d get it right--we'd pull the pitch right back in again. Cooper But the scanner was acting up very badly by that time . FCSD Rep How long did you aline the Platform initially? Cooper Initially, we alined the platform for about 15 to 20 minutes and it seemed to aline allright although at that time Pete and I had a discussion right then that we seemed to be alining nose down . --- PAGE 48 --- Conrad Now , you see . Here ' s something that I've never heard from the other guys . Cooper Now there ' s another thing. See, we never had a simulator to show us . Never once did we have any darn thing to show us what out the window should look like . Conrad And when the Platform is alined and you ' re zero- zero- zero , boy, oh boy! That ' s a , just -- It's a very peculiar looking situation and it ' s not what I expected to see at all . Cooper No , it isn' t me either . Conrad And I ' ve never heard either Gus of John or Jim and Ed say "Put a little gouge out" Now I ' ve got a gouge tha t I can draw for you where I 'm sure tha t I can put the Plat­ form in roll and pitch within a degree in roll and pitch of where it should be out the window on the horizon and it ' s by using the corner of the window and the RCS thrusters on the front : the front RCS yaw thruster in the lower corner of the window and you can put the Platform-- you can put the spacecraft zero- zero and roll and pitch just, well , like that. We didn ' t know that before we went . Cooper This is one of my strongest recommendations if we aren ' t going to have any kind of a visual out the window display at least we ought to get some of the great planners to • --- PAGE 49 --- 44 • ----- draw up on a piece of paper what the window , what the ;: horizon should look like through the window whic~ d requested several times and never got -- to show ~~~) guy what these various things should look like out the ......__ window;'---...We spent the whole darn eight days trying to ~rt=--'l;fl:e-s-0--~ ~ ~43 ~ould look like and I'm not sure we were very clear on it to the day we re- entered, Conrad Yeah. Cooper Now that 's ridiculous! And it ' s becau:3e of this odd angle that you sit off in there . It completely fouls up everytning, as to getting these various angles : inverted and right side up and 90 degrees angles and all this . Conrad / 1think we ought t;=-I ' ll tell you i ; ~ d recommen­ dation for the guys who are going to do this on GT- 7 with that Hasselblad can take a pound or two of fuel and sit up there and pl:.otograph the camera back inside the spacecraft get the window perspective in this thing . zero- zero- zero , bank right 90 , bank lnft 90 , at ifferent nose pitches above the horizon , Att --- PAGE 62 --- , CO► I F 1 DE NJ:1A t 57 thought everything was going perfect . The REP was moving just exactly out of plane away from us and it was moving at about the right velocity and then the mystery came. It just kept on going. Cooper Yeah. Conrad It kept right on going straight out, and-­ Cooper It wasn't slowing down very much. Conrad And I got over here on the graph and I kept reading the mileage and we were up to about 7 feet a second. It was leaving us , and I realized, I began to think , well gee, this is- That ' s when I was really convinced that the platform wasn't alined and we must have kicked it out some screwy way. Then it started to drift : ~ us quite fast . It finally did peak out an ent ) ----------- a ~ ...--n:-~---------;---:--:--:-----;------:-:--:;-,i"'T"--,-----,-----r-;-;:--:-:--­ he corner at some phenomenal dis ance , was almost nine tenths of a mile away from us , but drift aft quite rapid and .when we got to the nodal crossing time , it was behin~ ( us by a mile , according to the radar. Now this is all / on radar. And now , mind you, it ' s nighttime and it was right there. We could see it plain as day. Cooper Okay, let ' s see, we were at the-- Conrad Okay, that's when we got to this next screwy thing. --- PAGE 63 --- See, the REP went straight out and kept on going. C Cooper The REP goes straight out and then it just kept on going. It was slowing down very l ittle and just kept on going and going and going and going. Conrad And it never really stopped. What it d:Ld was it sorta, it sorta starting going off this way, you !mow, and it never got out to a node point wh~re you had a definite stopping range and a start back in again. Well , the range rate never got below a foo t per second . Cooper The range rate never decreased. You never got a decrease in range rate , but it just kept- it started drifting slowly of f the 270 line on back out, but it we·nt straight out the 270 line to a- - Conrad Cooper What was the range? Do you remember what the range was when it sti ll was out there? Conrad It went straight like relative motion to us would have looked like it went out looking down a plan form, if we were here. It looked like it went out like this and it slowly started doing this . Cooper Yeah. Conrad. And it never did have a stop to it. It finally crossed behind us back in here someplace. --- PAGE 64 --- eNftOf 59 Cooper We never got the point where it crossed behind us be­ " cause somewhere when it was about the 210 point was when we were out of fuel, of fuel cell o . 2 Conrad Yeah, well , you see, we went by Carnarvon-- Cooper And this was coming down just BALOOM BALCOM BALOOM BALCOM BALCOM. Conrad See, here we go . We went by Carnarvon. Here I was trying to figure out in here what was going on and what we were going to take out and everything and we went by Carnarvon and right here at Carnarvon and that's when Charlie .. . called up and says check your o2 heater switch to AUTO . Now I had seen it fall , had noticed that it had been falling and I had gone to the AUTO position when without even being told -- Cooper You had already gone to nanua.l. Conrad And then I was doing many other things and I decided it wasn ' t coming up and so I'd gone to manual and held it over there a couple times and sort of looked at it and -- Cooper That didn ' t work either. Conrad I must have kidded myself into thinking that I was getting something out of it, and then I forgot it again and then~- --- PAGE 65 --- 60 Cooper :But you did go back to the AUTO. Conrad Yeah . I put ii; back in AUTO , you know , and then I called t hem, I think it was on the tape and I think I told them, I said, the S'f!litch is on AUTO . We're okay. Don ' t worry about it and then right aft er that we got up to this 240 or so in there and we realjzed that something was wrong and the heater was out and I guess we told them--We told them at Carnarvon that t he heater was out . Cooper Well, we checked at that time then on ·~he annneter on and off and on and off t hat on both manual and AUTO and it was obvious . Conrad And that ' s when we-- Cooper And it was coming down so rapidly that it looked like very shortly thereafter we were going t o have fuel cell stoppage.. Conrad We were getting below 200 and falling pretty fast and we had a big discussion between ourselves and we just made up our mind to forget the REP. We felt we were really in trouble. Cooper So we elected at that point to start rowering down because we knew that we were using fuel cells a t a very high rate . Conrad And we secured the Platform and Radar and everything else. --- PAGE 66 --- r ~ ENTI~ - 61 Cooper So we said okay and we ' re stopping it right here and of course about this time we were in the boondocks area away from everybody as always occurs. Conrad We were between Carnarvon and Hawaii . Cooper And--so we just started powering down everything and holding on. Conrad So from there on we were off the Flight Plan. Cooper From here on to the next twenty orbits the REP was right with us. Ha, Ha, Ha ! Conrad That ' s what I cam't figure out . How did it get 375 miles from us when it hung around f or 5 orbits? That darned thing. Everytime we went on the night side- Cooper It was so-- Conrad As a matter of fact, I didn't see it for a time or two and then all of a sudden, the nose of the spacecraft was lighting up ! Cooper We even saw it in the day side . It was so near we could even see it in the day side and at the transit areas when the light woul d be shining on it we ' d be just going into the darkness we could look back and you could even see i; the dipole on it as it tumbled. The tumble rate was very, .. very slow. Conrad And then you guys called up and told us it was 375 miles --- PAGE 67 --- 62 C Cooper That s impossible. 1 That thing wasn't that far away. It hung right in there. Cooper I think that 's the whole things . Cooper But 1 1 11 tell you there were two differnnt night sides we went into. Several- - Conrad Two different night sides- -well , I reaU y-- i t wouldn 1 t have surprised me if it had hit us. Cooper Me either. It seemed to me like it was a lot closer. Conrad That 's what made me think that well, th? platform was aligned and I don't know what exactly happened. I did notice that it sort of climbed on us. So then I had the feeling that maybe it was doing sort of a figure eight type thing. That maybe we had fired it off up or down a little bit yoQ know . .And it was in three dimensions ; a little bi t out of plane working it's way around us , backing up and going a.head and coming back around because the darn thing was always there . It was there until the darn lights burned out on it. Anyti me we wanted to find it if you wanted to move t he spacecraft around you could find it out there . EOl"'lf!ltJEt ◄ =F hA. L --- PAGE 68 --- Cooper It was close enough so that almost any attitude you were in you could see i t shining on the spacecraft. Even if it was clear back out here you could see the nose just lighting up from it. Conrad So I know it couldn ' t have been too darn far away. I mean maybe up to five miles or something l ike that , but it didn ' t get that far away from us . I don ' t understand the 375. I was really surprised that those guys called up and said it was 375 miles away. 1 Cooper Yes. Well , I don't believe that figure. Conrad It will be real interesting to see what they dig out f r om it . Well, all the radar and everything we had is on the tape , isn't it? Cooper Well, that was our first big heart breaker . Conrad We ought to be able to put that all together . Cooper After all the work we did on t he REP , then not to pull the rendezvous out , we sure-- Conrad Well , from there until we got the GO to 6- 4 we just were along for the ride . We just stayed-- Cooper I knew that--I was just so sure of all the time we . put in simulating that darn thing I just had a queasy , uneasy feel i ng that maybe we better put --- PAGE 69 --- 64 in more time on other things . That something was going to go wrong-~ Conrad I felt every problem that we had I felt real good about the fact that we had either t he smarts t o lmow that it was straight forward-- It didn't take too long to figure out that that h1~ater was on one line, both heaters , and that we'd had a single point failure. And as a mat ter- of - fact we t ook the schematics out. Cooper And there's another argument for our ha-ring it;' for when it occured there wasn ' t anybody around to ask advice . Conrad I t was very straight forward to throw t he switches and look at the amp meter to see whethe:c you were getting anything out. There was no dou·:it in my mi nd that it had burned out and the sam,= daml thing with the thrusters. When we finally decided we had a problem with them we went through the ci rcuit breakers just like we did in th= trainer and it was obvious that number 7 was out and 8 went out and then the rest of them started getting sour. So, I think that all the training we had we were pretty well prepared. --- PAGE 70 --- Cooper I do , too . I ' l l tell you- - the launch- -we were perfectly normal and right on the money-- Conrad Yes , we were sitting there waiting to find out what they wanted us to do . I mean we !mew we could go on the batteries long enough to get to a fairly decent re- entry place and we wer e taking bets wi th one another and we were kidding about McDivitt. There must have been real pandamoni um at MCC . They were burning up the lines to every­ where . Because ther e r eally wasn ' t anythi ng we could do after that but just sort of wait . We re- stowed everything and we were ready to go i nto 6- 4 if they wanted us to . We wer e all prepared to go i nt o 6- 4. We didn 1 t want t o. Cooper We really didn 1 t thi nk we ' d make 18-1. Conrad Gor do was the eternal optimist though . I ' d s ay , " 125 pounds" and he'd say, "Well , it ha sn't really fallen anymore . 11 Then it would fal l about another 20 pounds and I'd say, "Wel l , that ' s 100 pounds now ," and he'd say, "Well , that's really not much bel ow what it was before ." I think we had a little more confidence than the guys on the ground , I really do . I r emember old --- PAGE 71 --- 66 1':0 NEIDEbll IAJ. .. Steiner saying don't worry about that liq_uid : going through that heat exchanger . He said it will go through just fine . The one thing that I thought was that we might have dinged the tank with the REP but as long as the q_uantity stayed up there we were in pretty good shape , but I wasn't sure that we didn't just might have sorre sort of a hole back there and were just slowly leaking pressure even though the q_uantity-- Cooper That was one thing--we always worried E~bout that REP with that big diapole hanging out. If it skewed up a little going out what woulcl it wipe out going out . It just happened to be with a lot of that OAMS--fuel cell lines and all 'Ghat type stuff back there and that was one thing that always kind of concerned us about ejecting the REP now and then. So that was one thing we kept running )ver and wondering what i t had wiped out . Conrad Yes. That was the only thing that kept bothering me , but it held to 60 though and that was pretty good. Cooper Okay. Let 's see boresight on REJ?,nodal crossing. We didn't get the nodal cropsing. I · sure wish we toNFll)Et~t1'1L --- PAGE 72 --- COMflDEN I IA[ » could have hung on long enough to find out where i t crossed us behind there . FpSD Rep Let's back up just a minute on your lock on . Cooper Okay . Boy, it just clung right on to it and zap. We got the lock on and the darn range and range rate came right on there . It was moving right out at about 5 1/ 4 feet per second just throttling right down the old line . Conrad Address 69 was reading just fine. Cooper Everything was right on the money. Conrad Address 58, 59-- Cooper The range was moving right on out just like it should and we were sitting right there on our 270 point on the ball tracking right straight out for a long ways out . Then is when the variance came in, when it kept going out . It should have started slowing down on range rate . But , it seemed like it was slowing down awfully slow . It seems like the range rate kept on for quite a ways . Conrad You know I had a 58 ,of -63. 8, and a 59 of a 13~8 at .89 miles and we should have never gotten that far away from i t ever--in the beginning. Cooper See with it moving out at the R that we had, all the figures we had ever run on it--we had our own --- PAGE 73 --- 68 little calculations right here--finally we were off our graph up there, weren't we? Conrad Yes . Well , you ' ve got to realize that the graph ' s = based on out of plane and this was the hypotenuse to the thing, but even so-- Cooper But s t i ll you 've got to-- Conrad It still went away more than it should have . Cooper Because you cosine angles were fairly 13mall in t here . Conrad It still went away more than it should have. Cooper I don't quite understand it. Conrad We 'll know what the platform--I presume they can t ell how well we had the platform al igned . Cooper But there again, there 's the f irst little horse shoe nail that throws the glitch in things. When that darn s canner s crewed up right at the most crucial time . It probably had been screwing up all along , we just hadn 't really caught it . It really threw the glitch in right therEi at a point when it really shouldn't have. We ma~, have lucked out still , and gotten . it out right on the money and it may not have been the problem. I don't know, but anyway with the best we had to work with we got it out the best we could and it looked like --- PAGE 74 --- • it went out in good fashion . I think we s till would have been all right if we had gone ahead and done the rendezvous with no problem even if we had gotten a little out of plane with it we could have handled this later on. But, there again it made it difficult for Pete because it got him completely off his schedule , too . It got him late blowing the doors . Well , we s t ill were reasonably well on top of it . Let ' s see . Conrad We can skip all this REP s t uff . You got anything else you want to lmow about the radar? FCSD Rep It would be best I think to go on through it and say what you did and didn ' t do so we can stay on this . Conrad Yes, well-- FCSD Rep Use your flight plan. Conrad Well, we got as far--let ' s see, it says when on bore- ­ sight read and record address 58 , 59 , and 69 and this was just before 2: 51 when we were supposed to have a reading to give back on the ground. This is the reading I got: 58 read -63. 8, 59 read 139 . 8 . The distance was-- address 69 was .89 miles and I got that at the t ime that it was supposed to --- PAGE 75 --- 70 be gotten, Cooper Why don' t you bring the flight plan over here " and let's start down it. We might as well s kip what he has in the flight plan here because it varies so from there on. Conrad From here on you can for get this flight plan . Cooper That ' s right . Conrad Right here . Cooper Where 's our little book of the fl i ght plan? Conrad I've got i t right here . Cooper Oh , okay . Conrad Okay. All this time we sweated out getting home and that ' s when we wound up-- here is where we s t arted on this flight plan, at 1 day a nd 02 hours, so that's 12 hour s after lift- off. Cooper We finally got back on A f light plan ani -- Conrad Yes , and that ' s the first thing we started to do was to power back up . FCSD Rep One day. That's 24 hours . Conrad No . That one day remember we-­ Cooper We star ted that one day-- Conrad We went CEl' to 2400 Zulu and then tha t became day 1 , 00 hours and lift-off was 1400 Zulu. CO N·rrD Et ◄ ifI,A. L~ --- PAGE 76 --- Cooper From lift- off until 2400 hours the day of launch was elapsed t ime and s t arting a t tha t t ime we started calling it day one and then GM!'. Conrad Okay. So , we went through a l i ttle deal here where we started to power up and they let us tum- ­ we'd been drifting hadn ' t we? Cooper Yes . I ' ll say. Conrad We turned up the AC , ACME inverter on and the ACME bias power on OAMS attitude on and we went t9 pulse and we were supposed to power back down again at 02 + 27 + 25. We were supposed to have this H 2 purge a t 02 + 45 + 00 . Tha t was the first thing, they were just going to let us purge H we 2 didn 't purge the o:xygen. Everybody was worried about that . Then we were on the flight plan and they gave us an update time for our first medical pass and we stayed- - ! think we took these vision tests , didn ' t we? Cooper Yes, we did . Conrad We just stayed right on the fli ght plan , had the vision tests , and I have a comment in here that at 01 days 04 hours and 32 minutes we saw our first meteor r e- enter . Cooper ~an , we saw a lot of those meteorites re- enter --- PAGE 77 --- 72 €Orle time - Cooper That was the normal sleep peri,:,d and we just barely have things all sq·.lared away so then we both powered down - ·- Conrad Go thru this terrible 50 minut,:s with both of us like this - we ' d uh- uh, oh, yeah - hi --- PAGE 130 --- 125 there - laughter . Cooper Yeah, ok, everything 1 s fine (snoring) (1a,1g~+.er) . Conrad Talk about lonely--that •s when it really got bad. You really knew you were out in the no place. Cooper We just discussed one thing while you were out, was this window situation. You couldn't even begin to see out of Pete' s window when we launched. It was really terrible and it was in between those outside panes and glass . And my window between the outside sealed units and the inside unit of glass there was a bee - Conrad Oh, yeah , yeah, that stuff is on the inside of the outer pane. I ·don' t know how that got there. Cooper And inside these two outside units on my side in between those and the inside pane of glass there was a little bee and a fly and a whole bunch of flecks of dirt and odds and ends in there. And my window wasn ' t as frosted over as his. --- PAGE 131 --- 126 Over the period of time, they both got a certain amount of little frosty scum on the outside of them and when we fired the scanner covers there were about foUT or five little gray flecks of etuff and debris just flew everywhere right in that period of time and four or five· little gray flecks came on the window. Conrad Heck, that's before launch isn't it? Oh, I didn ' t know that. FCSD rep . Did it ever clear up? Cooper No . I think it was just unforg:i.v eable. I think if they can I t do bette1· on windows than that they ought to just qt.it trying. I could see maybe having some El.lllount of debris-and then when you use the thruster s the debris would all show up again. We were on--here we are up here--t his med data. Day 4, 16 hours and that data - did . Cooper 16 hours 28 minutes - D-4, D- 7 , D-6 , 423b. i' Conrad Yeah that was the second missi:.e - which we didn I t get any track on -- ue saw - --- PAGE 132 --- ONFl0ENTIA[ 127 Cooper HF test 4 then at 417 , 4:17:40 med data was done. HF test 4 ended on - down there - OK, day 4, 19 hours 44 minutes was S- 7 which was completed . Conrad Yeah, both the ·s- 71 s were completed. Cooper Then there's an S- 7b, 21 hours , 9 minutes and 50 seconds storm Doreen - we completed, Time of closest approach was at 21:09:30, They had us tracking this storm - you see Conrad Oh, yeah. Cooper We estimated the eye was approximately 250 miles left of course - Conrad Have you got the orbits - yeah, here it is . This thing is the greatest thing in the whole world . It 1 s the simplest - cheapest thing in the spacecraft and - Cooper It is - it is great. Conrad We would have been lost without this thing. This orbital update map. Boy, it really- well, the orbit was really good as far as - Cooper You really don't know where ~ou are at- --- PAGE 133 --- ,,, 128 Conrad But this is a good little map t oo . It really has the right things on it. There wasn't anytime we didn ' t Look down and know exactly where we ·Here. This thing is really great. Probably the cheapest thing in the spacecraft. Cooper That 1 s one Jerry Jones made up. We tried out a long time ago and I said I liked it and I wanted to take one like that rather than this big elaborate one - Conrad Yeah, it really worked great. Conrad Yeah, I just saw all these map star updates we had here. Cooper Yeah. One thing they could do . They could put about 3 or 4 more orbi ts on it and not have t o update it so often . Might be a little handier. Just a tr.ought - but it 1 s good the way i t is. CK, l et's see , we ' re on day 4, 22 hours en d 20 minutes - we did a cabin l ighting survey. Conrad We did the radar test 10 . Cabi n lighting S-7 , MSC-1. Cooper And med data. ~tf>fNT=IAL --- PAGE 134 --- ~ ffDffiTIA[ 129 Conrad Apollo landmark 207- that was at 07 :14:25 must be day 5 , Cooper No , not that far along - We did UHF 6 we did at 2 hours , day 5, 2 hours and something. Conrad You said you had an S-7 that was again during my sleep cycle and you said missed while discussing Cryos with CSQ. Cooper Right. Conrad And then you had an MSC 1 at 05 :40 and you got that done. Cooper Now you're ahead of me--hold up just a minute . We 're down here now - let~ see - here's the S-7. 05 :40 MSC- 1 that was done . Conrad You got your Apollo landmark - Cooper Apollo landmark at sequence 207 at 7 hours and 14 minutes. Conrad What was 207? Cooper Lake Titicaca Conrad That was the Canaries - Cooper Oh, yeah , all right. Then we had SAD- 13 - vision tests on both of us which we did together instead of separately. And then --- PAGE 135 --- 130 NFl0Etsl:TIAt '4 at 5 day , 10 hours and 20 mim:.tes we had Apollo No. 208 , which we g'Ot . We had S- 502 which we got . We had D- 4, D- 7, sequence 414 which we got and we had the platform tests which ·Ke did . Conrad Yeah then we got the radar teet run - Cooper And Pete has a note here "Get serious," it really starts getti ng thick and heavy.-- Conrad Well , I don't know--they were really getting wild - Cooper We had a platform aline - plat form test, radar test , this is day 5, 11 hours and 35 minutes - We had D- 6 , D- 4, D- 7 , platform aline, radar test - Conrad That ' s where they were off the·ir rocker. Cooper But we got them. Those were s.ll in the day 5, 11 to 12 hours - Conrad Listen, there ' s a lot of sloppy things in there - I mean we got thine:s done but we missed little subtleties -· like we were supposed to run the 16mm camera along with some part of the I R gear and I wouldn I t get that on - and E. bunch of .Iii 0NF-IDENT.IAL --- PAGE 136 --- G0MF-IDFiNTl~"t 131 little things . Again, we were always man, they had stuff thrown at us as fast as you could say Jack Robinson, Cooper Let ' s see--S-B , D-13 at Laredo--do you have one of those right in that period- day 5, 13 hours - Conrad Day 5, 13 hours - no . Cooper I don ' t have it either . Conrad I have this all scratched out for some reason , Cooper D- 6 - This is where we really began to have trouble with something -- what was it we were really having trouble with? Conrad The O.AMS systems cut out. Cooper That ' s right. The O.AMS systems pooped out . Day 5, at about 11 hours when we were cranking up for this is when we found that our OAMS systems was really getting bad, and we already had discovered that we had one thruster out and a partial otrer one out but this is the time when we found out we had about 3 others that were just about out. Conrad Yeah, I have a little note here - report - ~ NFIDENilAl --- PAGE 137 --- 132 • to fl ight ~oi ce tape out - num·oer 7 yaw left thruster out and OAMS heat er light turned ba ck on again. Conrad And so we were supposed to ask 7 Keywest and D- 8 S- 13, SAD- 13 about 6 : 22:50 - Cooper OK - From ther e on for a while things just got scrubbed i n the flight plan on that day five , the l atter part of the time on entries there . Conrad Yeah, that ' s when they got us into this minimum power down - voice cont~ol - 1 suit f an - 2 coolant pumps , 1 a,Jq_. aid , UHF r eceiver, DOS receiver , PCM - Cooper That ' s when they decided the hydrogen wasn I t going to l ast at the preoent electri cal rate . Conrad That ' s what I wrote down - Houston hot dope - drift for three days - r icky, tieky. (Laughter) Sorry - Cooper But at day 5, 19 hours and 25 minutes we did get a fix on Doreen - wher e she was ther e . Conrad Yeah, everything happened that day. That --- PAGE 138 --- IDE1'1TIA - 133 was when the PC02 started to read for some reason. Cooper PC02 came off the scale and was reading way up there for a while. We broke out one of the co tapes, and it showed that 2 we were still all right . We figured the gage was its usual reliability. Conrad Okay, now, I think this is good for the recorder right here. At that time, as of 5 days 21 hours 00 minutes they wanted to know what our experiment status was. So on the UHF , we had completed tests 1, 2, 3 and I said 6 just so that if they were still trying to keep that number under their lid. That's what it sounded like because they kept mentioning it. We ' d done D- 1 , 1, ~, and 3 which had completed D- 1. D- 2 we had done nothing, because we didn ' t get the REP. D-6 we'd taken 72 pictures . D- 4 , D- 7 we ' d had completed 405, 408, 409, 410, 410a, 410b , 411, 414 , 420 , 422 , 423a, 423b , 424a , 425a. We had 16 minutes and 8 seconds of Jeo~~f6i~tW on. ~ --- PAGE 139 --- 134 Conrad On S-8, D-13 we completed all tests although we didn ' t see the targets several times. On S- 1 we completed it. S-5 and S-6 we'd taken three maga­ zines for a total of 210+ pictures . S-7 we had 23 pictures or 8 groups that they had ~anted plus we had taken cal card picture. The M-1 broke at 4 days and some odd hours, and I don ' t know the exact time . M-3 didn't make any difference. MSC-1 we did on day one , three, and four. Apollo-we got Landmarks 207, 8, 12 1 and 13. We'd done 4 cabin lighting surveys. The humidity sensor we read at least once a day, and the 16mm film we had one and a quarter magazines shot up which is general stuff. That was what we had completed in 5 days. Then from there on, we went through this big drill of sending up of all kinds of experiments but don't expend any fuel on them. An so we were pretty well restricted to S-5, S-6, and S-7 type phJtographs which was about all we got. Cooper Catch as catch can. Conrad We marked down all this other stuff. W1~ did catch a D-4/D-7 occasionally if it was the ri1sht sort of thing-if we were sort of pointed in the right --- PAGE 140 --- FJD~TIAL ~ 135 direction. Like I got a--in drifting flight I got 417 and 418 at 6 days 8 hours 41 minutes . I don ' t remember what that is . Cooper From here on , we just-- we drifted through this period of time and the only time we ever powered anything up was when the drift rates got up pretty high. We would power up, damp the rates , and power right back down , and hope we- - and did manage to keep somewhat attitude so we could get occasionally some pictures . For instance on--we did continue doing MSC-1 experiments which incidentally-- even in times of minimum power when they wanted us powered right down to our eyeballs they still left MSC- 1 on. I don ' t know how much fuel i t takes , but it always erks me if we had to have everything off why could they manage to leave that one on. Day 6 , 8 hours, 41 minutes we got D-4/D-7 417 , 418 , and 414 . Conrad Yes , on that one day, Day 6 , when they had the HF tests in Houston--0roadcast HF- - we had Houston on HF till 15 hours 59 minutes 00 seconds and this included the remoting through Ascension,and the remoting through Ascension was beautiful . That --- PAGE 141 --- was really good recepti on. And then tl:.ey were playing 'Never on Sunday' and that faded out at 15 hours 08 minutes. Cooper That was the best HF test we had . Conrad Yes , and we started receiving the music again coming around the other side of the wo1·ld at 15 hours 49 minutes. This must be 16::9. 14 : 59? 14 : 59, I got the wrong number in here J think . I'll just make a note to check it. No, thi~ is 15:08, 15:49 which is about right half way arcund the world and this number may be wrong. Cooper Is that day 6? Conrad Yes, check it and see if we got a note in the Flight Plan. Day 6 at 1400, almost 1500. Then we did some of these radar tests and for the 1ikes of me to underst and do you know what was ~ome of the discussion on why the radar didn't work after that . Gee, it locked up so beautifully the first day on the REP down there. Cooper The one REP pass we had, man, things Jt;.s t worked like a charm. Conrad And it just never did work after that. We always got a lock on. --- PAGE 142 --- 137 • Cooper And I read analog. My analog read beautiful , but he couldn ' t read out digital and that ' s impossible because the analog data comes from the di gital da ta . I could even tell where it was . It was s i tting out on Meritt Island, wasn't it? I ' ll bet--it wa s accurate enough--I ' ll bet you that you could almost t ell what building it was in. It looked like it was r ight out here in the south part of the complex here . Conrad Where wer e we receiving music f r om? Cooper We got a little Chinese HF br oadcast every now and then. Peoples program. Conrad We went through these radar tests just drif ting around out there . Cooper Oh, yes , they were trying to jam our r adios . Everytime we went over the China area . Conrad I had the decided impression that they were t r ying to jam our UHF. So it was either that or--oh, yes , where was it where we heard the radar on the r adio . Cooper China. Conrad No , we were along the fringes of Russia , but we went over China. We were over something like Indi a . Cooper We wer e coming right over the Tibet- - the hi gh Tibet QWflO --- PAGE 143 --- 138 area there , and we were just on the south edge of China. Conxad Have you ever t axied close by radar? You can hear i t on radio , i t goes "beep , beep, beep, beep," and you can even clock the antenna sweep , and you can get about three pulses . . . . "Beep ,beep ,beep," and then , "beep, beep , beep" , and you can see that old antenna down there on the ground going around and we could hear the UHF as big as heck and we were way up in the middle of no place, and I know darn well it must have been--Russian radar. Cooper We were up on the high of southern China. High plains area. Conxad Okay, then we ran another eXPeriment summary, and this eXPeriment summary was for the sixth day . And on the D- 6 we did not see 135 which was the Laser. Laser out of White Sands . Never did see that darn Laser . And the D-4/D-7 we caught a 417, 418, and on S-6 we ' d taken five more pictures . On S-5 we'd t aken 43 more pictures and on S-7 we ' d taken one more storm or two pictures . On S-8 , D- 13 I have no- - we didn't get to mark the targets , but we may have gotten the 70mm pictures of them that --- PAGE 144 --- EM=FfAL 139 they wanted . I had to point--I may have all spacecraft in the picture . I don ' t know-we were just drifting by this one . And then at 11 hours 30 minutes on the sixth day , we went through this crank up this number 2 fuel cell again after it had been shut down for 20 hours . They wanted to bring it up by warming up the coolant loop so we went through this drill of shutting off the Primary Cooling Valve Circuit Breaker and opening the Rad Flow to BYPASS so that we could bypass the SECONDARY LOOP and let it warm up a bit . Then we went through the purge procedures and brought the fuel cell on the l i ne . And i t came on pretty good . Conrad We never got any of the rest of the experiments on that day . They wanted general photos of the U. S. and so forth , D- 6 1 s and we just were never in position . We were always pointed straight up or something like that . Then we had another UHF test leaving the States and on the seventh day and we lost HF on the seventh day at 16 hours and 27 minutes and 00 seconds . I had the Squelch set on 4 , and I brought the Squelch up higher and .. --- PAGE 145 --- 140 ~ NFl0ENTIAL and we got them back again and lost it 3 minutes later at 07 days 16 hours and 30 minufos . Then we did a MSC- 1 . Cooper I have a note here 7 days and 20 minut(~S was that large storm where we located the depre:3sion on it . Take a look at it , and see just where :Lt was , and weather breaking off from it . Conrad And then when they came up with their :1ext ground t est whi ch-- Cooper Had two S-7 eXPeriments . Conrad . .. which I think we could have done without and that ' s when they had us warm up the solenoids for ten minutes . The thing that got to us was that we had turned-- They had us shut off the Propellant Valve and what we should have done wa s dumped the Propellant by rotating through all control posi tions on the handle , but what they had us do was go to the full yaw left position and dumped the whole load of manifold pr opellants out through the the mal­ functioning left yaw thrusters and man did .that couple up into a couple of beautiful rates, and we were doing it at night, and we didn ' t realize until it wa s too l ate and all of a sudden there were the --- PAGE 146 --- 141 stars going by , and we were just going through the world every which way , and we were supposed to hold it that way f or ten minutes and we were--okay , we were well aware .. . . Cooper Where were you? This day 7? Conrad Yes , and I just got to this big set of procedures on that test and it didn ' t work . Cooper I have a note here at Day 7 , 3 hours and 19 minutes only 22 more r evolutions to go . Same length as MA- 9 . Conrad Okay, now , here are the comments of the degregation of the other thruster s . Now left roll only with the roll logic switch in pitch. We had no right yaw . Right yaw only with the roll logic switch in yaw position. No left roll. Then if you had the roll logic in yaw , pitch up and down were okay in yaw right gave right roll also . Pitch up , right roll , pitch down you a lso got a right roll . You ' ve got to figure out which thruster s were weaker than the other ones . Cooper Roll right gave yaw right . Conrad Right , and then r oll logic and pitch rolled right okay. Roll left okay . No left yaw. So and the --- PAGE 147 --- 142 CONFIDEJ\ITr other thing is is when you hit the thrusters you can very definitely tell from the sound that some were putting out· more than others. Cooper I think that ' s what was giving us the yaw roll off was that in pairs of thruster of one would be strong maybe and one weak and would give you couplings . Conrad That was exactly what was happening. ~'.hey were cross coupling. Cooper It was really messy. Conrad And then I 1ve got down here the roll.. I have nothing else in the book until we start talking about retro here and the change s that we decided to go into 121- 1 instead of 122 . And t here would be 27 minutes over Carnarvon instead of 36 and all the power up sequence . Now , I ' ve got one comment . We came up over Carnarvon and when I hi:.d-- when we left the Cape on the Rev going into retrofire a transmitted a val id load up t o the sJacecraft and I called McDivitt and I said , "I ' m putting the Computer into Reentry ," and we came up over Carnarvon and the guy says , "Stand by. I ' m going to update you computer with a new load . Boom!" GE>NFH:)ENffA L ' --- PAGE 148 --- 143 ,,. And the computer was in reentry and I said, "Golly," and I swi tched that thing to pr elaunch and he said the loads in and va lidated , and I didn't get a DCS light . And I ' d gotten a DCS light everytime . Cooper We never f ailed to get a DCS light . Conrad And I was never reall y convinced even when we checked the two cores that the l oad wa s r ight that he put up there , but I guess it was . Tha t ' s been checked out . We did have the right load in the computer. Cooper That procedure is r eal ly poor , very , ver y poor . Conrad I don ' t understand . ... Cooper We had agreed and agreed and agreed that nobody would send a DCS load or anything without permission f r om you first --t i ll they cleared with you first . And he just right out of the clear blue sky with 12 minutes-- something like that to go to retro . Conrad 27 . Cooper 27 was it? Well , anyway , it ' s getting down darn close . Here we were all l i ned--all set up to go and everything all squared away and what we thought ::. was a real proper load out of the Cape . Had gone into reentry and here we wer e a ll set . Then here -CQNElQ f=.W+tAL --- PAGE 149 --- 144 this gu.y just says, "I ' m sending a DCS update , " and WHAM! her e it comes . No warning. No nothi ng . Before you could even tell him to wait, t he darn things i n reentry . Conrad He didn ' t check his ground information, becaus e if he ' d looked at his boar d , he would t.ave seen that the computer was in r een try . He could have told us to put it in prelaunch. It all happened so fast . Boy, my heart r eally sank , because we had that thing-- we were all set up . We were rea~y to go and everything and that was a bi g· blitz.· Now , after 121 orbits and we'd left the Cape after stateside track. Why, after 121 orbits did they have to update that thing between the Cape and Carnarvon? I mean they should have known where the heck we where . I just don ' t understand it . Cooper I don ' t either and if they are going to play around with that , boy, my feelings r ight now on i t is that that DCS circuit breaker oug~t to be off all the time. I felt that way befo:ce , and I deci ded well , those guys worked out so well that maybe it would work , but after that one time , that just convinced me that you ought to just --- PAGE 150 --- 145 turn that darn thing off and leave the DCS circuit :z breaker off . Conrad Okay, the next thing before retrofire . Cooper I had one note here, just a second, at 7--Day 7 , 22 hours, and 30 minutes. We were on that real black night side way down there somewhere on the South American area . Remember we saw those tre­ mendous series of thunderstorms . Just fantas tic , you could-- Conrad The brightest lightning I ' ve ever seen anywhere . It lit up the inside of the spacecraft . Cooper - - see hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of miles almost as far as you could see in any direction out the windows you could see lightning just lighting up-just blossoming everywhere . There were hundreds of miles of thunderstorms of which you could probably see at one time-you could probably see 20 or 25 thunderstorms light up at the same time . Conrad And I've got somewhere on the 16mm film . I opened the stops up, and I took pictures of the lightning. I don't know whet her it came out . Cooper They would just light the whole spacecraft up. --- PAGE 151 --- Boy, I ' ve never seen such fantastic big areas covered by .thunderstorms . Just , tremenious ! And they were big, each individual CB lookei like it was maybe 50 to 100 miles across and just whole columns of them stacked around. They must have really been. ... Conrad Okay , about the only other thing that I can think of that we did in the test nature there--was wanted to and did fire the oams Squibb on the regul ator , and you can ' t hear it . And every other Squibb--every other thing that we ever fired we could hear . But that one we couldn' t hear. Cooper That simulator was really good on that SEP OAMS , SEP ELECT, and SEP ADAPT . Simulator could be a lot louder on the SEP ADAPT. That thing really takes off . Conrad How do you want to cover the reentry phase? Because that's about it. I ' ve got one other comment, but this one is written after landing. It ' s the . HF whip antenna didn't deploy. FJDENTIAt --- PAGE 152 --- FIDENT ~L JI 147 Conrad Well , why don't we get ourselves down on the water? Stowage wise when we left the United Stat es on the last Cali fornia- Guaymas pass which occurred at-- it occurr ed around 7: 18: 40, something like that. We started our reentry stowage right then and there . Very early i n the game , because we wanted to make sur e that we had- - that was almost 20 some hours to reentry. Cooper First of all , at least once a day, we went through the entire cockpit and br ought everything up to completely clean configuration . Everything stowed and we had about a 2 day basis . We planned what meals we were going to need for the next 2 days and we would get these meals out , get them stowed in an easy- to- get- to place--around the footwell areas-­ generally i n the footwells back in our feet area and would restack and restow garbage and try and get it completely caught up on a day- to-day basi s , so that we didn ' t have a lot of garbage sitting around . Conrad We always did i t right after that California­ Guaymas l ast pass over the States starting out into the boondock area and this conflicted with the Pilot ' s naptime . That was my scheduled napti me . Of\lFIDENTI --- PAGE 153 --- 148 .€>MFt0ENTt. We never- - we always ran late on that . I ' d get the nap, but I'd get it much later and that would cut a l ittle bit into Gordo ' s sleep per iod and that would wind up overlapping into my sleep period and then we would both catch a nap . . . Gor do's napti me which was just before Carnarvon . Cooper I don ' t think we ever came over Carnarvon but what we were asleep. Conr ad The next morning we would both be asleeip . . . . but Gordo ' s right. The meals--if we wc,uld like to stop and talk about that . We did not E?ven get into the left food box until the fourth day. We ate the meals that were in the footwell . There! were two stowage footwells to start with and th1:.t gave us the two garbage bags that we always hac. out . In other wor ds we always had two silver be.gs, food bags , open that we could put garbage ir.--any kind of garbage-- and we always kept two of t hose out, - ­ one on Gordo I s side and one on mine. ~'h en we ' d actually collect more- -we ' d eat more me•als , but we always ran with two of those out at least and we ' d wind up with maybe two in each foctwell and that's when we would restow at the end of that day . What we did was put as much of the garl:,age as ' --- PAGE 154 --- 149 possible back in the r i ght hand box. We completely emptied the right hand box at the beginning of the fl i ght and stowed the articles around the cockpit in those red bags that we had built for the back of the seat and they really worked well. On the top of the seat . I kept two meals always stowed i n the area that led to the right hand stowage box over my left shoulder . I kept my two meals there . Gordo normally kept his two down on either side of his helmet in the footwell area. We kept our garbage bags--our silver garbage bags down in there and the reason I say silver garbage bags is because those green ones that McDonnell made just didn ' t work at all. We never used them in the whole flight. Cooper They are no good at all . Conrad They tore up . Cooper They are hard to get into . They tear . The top-­ the way it puckers up there you have a hard time getting anything in and out of it . I finally used one over there to fasten that camera- -that 200 millimeter camera, that 35 mm camera. We put the lens down there so that it would hold--so that the L --- PAGE 155 --- 150 bag would hold it in. Keep it from floating and then fasten the velcro upon the back of the maneuver controller. Conrad Now there was one thing that one green bag that I had originally had the REP plan stow in it. The REP plan was never taken out and I never took the bag off the wall. Then, the other green bag had the Poleroid light filter in. I took that light filter in and out so many times that ihe elastic on the top of the bag broke and the bag ~ot completely frayed from my right leg rubbing agai:n.st it. My pressure suit actually wore that clott all through. You can see that on that bag t hat came out of there . So they didn' t work at all . We kept s.11 our food garbage and all that little sort of tl:.ings in the silver food bags that we opened and wl'..en we filled one we would wrap it with tape and stew it down there until it was time for our daily housecleaning. Cooper I might add for stowage two items that we found were extremely important were rubber bands and tape. " Conrad We actually ran out of tape on the eighth day pack­ ing the last of the garbage. We used every bit of tape that we could lay our hands on. We took the tape off of the bags. ftBEN,T"'L • --- PAGE 156 --- ~GNaDENTIAL 151 Cooper And I had a whole pocketful of rubber bands. Conrad And Gordo had a whole pocketful of rubber bands . We found that was the only way to handle the food. After we ate a rehydratable package or even a few solid packages that we opened. We always resealed them again wi th tape and rolled them up as small as we could get them and used the tape to wrap them with for stowage. Cooper To keep them very small and compact. FCSD Rep Did you get all this stuff where you originally planned to put it? Conrad I have a copy of our reentry stowage here which shows what varied from the way it was. Now the big items, there was only one big item that didn't go . There were only two i terns that didn't get stowed i n the place that it was called for that I remember right now. The S-1 camera went over in the right food box rather than the left food box and the urine device we kept out until the last minute and we restowed it in its original stowage place which was in Gordo's left box. Cooper And then there were two partial bags of defecation bags and an empty bag and one bag full of about a half of a meal , paper and wrappings from one meal --- PAGE 157 --- 152 that went in behind my ejection seat. I managed to work around the side and get clear down around to the back and manage to shove it down in behind the seat. Conrad Then I had a little bit of miscellaneous trash like that in the right lower wrap around reel pouch that was over the seat for reentry. It connisted of several things which we hadn't planned t o stow any place . The cardiovascular cuffs that :: cut off were one of them. Some loose paper trash Lke the top round paper ring off the defecation bags. This was j ust a convenient place to put light trash and I saw no reason to remove it from there . And that was about it. I forget--they'll have a list of the other items that were in there but they were all minor paper things . Cooper Yes, I had a few pieces of paper and th ings in the outboard back wing. Conrad But we pretty well had everything s towed in its proper place before reentry. Very l i t-;le exception. Well, let me look right now. I marked what we had stowed in the right place. Okay, in the two left--they ' re called left and right food box extensions . The back ones that had thEi rubber coveTs ~0NFI L --- PAGE 158 --- 153 on them. They had originally had the-- in my side the blood pressure reprogrammer , the hose intercon­ nect adapters and the pilot's personal preference kit . Gordo's side it had just the personal prefer­ ence kit and the hose interconnect, right? There wasn't anything else in there , was there? Cooper I don ' t think there was . It calls out here for a blood pressure reprogrammer but we only had one. Cooper No, we only had the one on board. Conrad Okay, I removed those three items and Gordo removed his two items just prior to reentry . Cooper The hose interconnect--! had Conrad Yes, that's what I sai d , the hose interconnect and the pilot's personal preference kit . The two kits we stowed in our leg pockets and the two hose things we stowed up in the green pouches during reentry so that they would be handy on the water to connect the hoses up . We filled those wing boxes with food trash from the last days worth of meals because we had completely filled the right hand food box with trash and we had completely filled the left food box. Let ' s see in the left food box we did stow the 16 mm J:lDEN --- PAGE 159 --- 154 camera and we di d stow the 17 mm lens and the 18 nnn lens and the 75 mm Hasselblad. We did not stow the urine receiver there . We stowed that up where it had started out in the left side food box. We did stow the mirror sight there and we did stow the r i ng sight and we did stow the 18 voice tapes. Now the 18 voice tapes cartridge holder was entirely unsatisfactory. We had to take the 18 voice tapes and take them in groups of three and wrap them with tape so that we had something that was a little handi er to work with than stuffing that box. Cooper Yes , that thing is just too big. Conrad We stowed them in groups of three in that box, but we got it all in there and the reason we didn't get anymore in was that that box was still half full of food . Matter of fact, you didn ' t hardly get below the level of the lid. Cooper I got just to the bottom level of the lid. Conrad Yes, there was a good three days worth of food left in that box. Everything else went where it was supposed to go . Except we only stowed two 16 mm film bags in the center compartment and I left two in the original right hand box because they were not exposed. We spent so much time in drifting ,eawflQEblJlAL I ·• --- PAGE 160 --- 155 f l ight and everything that we just di dn ' t ever . shoot up the 16 mm film . There just wasn ' t that much to shoot it up on. FCSD Rep How long for reentry? Starting stowage for reentry? Would you estimate? Conrad We did it in three steps . 20 hours before reentry we started really really thinking about the big stuff . You know the thing that we thought mi ght cause us a problem. The one place that we were worried about was getting all the stuff in the left hand box . So that ' s when we got t o looking at the tapes . We got all the gear out that we had to stow in ·there i ncluding the Hasselblad and sort of got an idea how much room it was going to take in that box and that was when we decided we had to tape the cartridges . Now when I say tape 18 car­ tridges, heck , that sho t an hour r i ght there . I mean, you just don ' t do anything fast up there , and so we were ready for reentry 6 or 7 hours before reentry. We could have come in anytime , because we took care of our major i tems very early. Now , this doesn ' t mean that we couldn ' t afford to pull that camera gear and run experiments because all that stuff was still in the same place and we --- PAGE 161 --- • could have laid our hands on it. We didn't actually stow the Hasselblad till the very end. Cooper We stowed it about 4 hours . Conr ad And so we were prepared by working constantly through the night but not steadily. We worked on and off . We took little rests. Then we went back and-- Cooper To give a time estimate though for purposes of planning I would say you should figure on it taking you at least a minimum of about 4 hours to really thoroughly restow. And this depends 0:1 how messy t he cockpit is . If its really messy it will take longer than that . If the cockpit is r,~asonably squared away and reasonably clean you ;,hould figure on it taking about 4 hours to rHally complet­ ely thoroughly stow everything and get ready for reentry. Conrad Now we were really conscious all 8 dayn- - we would say to one another, "Boy, it's time to stop and stow things right now," because the si·;uation is getting out of hand and you'd be surpr:.sed at how fast you can build up trash in tha"; cockpit and not realize that it is in there, ycru see . • --- PAGE 162 --- 157 Realize that if we had to reenter shortly or even if we pack it t ightly , but I think the bottom of the box I think I wasted a--1 1 11 say I could have put another silver bag or two worth of trash in there by stuffing the lower part i f I had known about it in the beginning. But it didn't t ake us much past day 2 to realize that we had a trash problem and we had to keep on top of it every single day if we were going to ever have it cleaned up at t he end. And we were in good shape. We were as clean as a whistle when we came in . .. ONFIBENi lAL --- PAGE 163 --- 158 .. FCSD REP How about the power up? Cooper I think that the power up went just r :Lght straight forward. Conrad Yessir, I've the checklist right here. Just like the insertion checklist we went by the numbers and I actually marked it off as we did it and you can see it right there. I went through power off check off list and we went right down the thing we had. Our checkoff list is wrong and we had changes in it right h,~re. We had Attitude Indicator with FDI, Computer :?ower-ON, Computer to PRELADNCH, Platform- CAGE, Scanners :?RIMARY, Rate Gyros­ ON and it should read Attitude Indicator with FDI Rate Gyros-ON, Computer in the PRELADNCH MO:)E, Computer Power-ON Platform, Scanner etc. Cooper The arrangement of it was wrong. Conrad Yes, the arrangement was wrong. But w,~ did it just by the numbers right here. And it was completely straight­ forward. Interesting note on the Plat.form, we went for many days with the platform powered do,.;n to that it got as cold soaked as it was ever goi~~ to get and the platform took the maximum time. Heat dxop out took exactly 25 minutes and then it was a l :Lttle slow coming in. On the cold starts it took 28 minutes to get the --- PAGE 164 --- €0NftDENTIAL 159 attitude light. It took 3 minutes after the fast heat drop out . And then I noticed after that was the first time after we did that- powered it up two or three times why the platform came in at 25 minutes of a f a st heat drop out. And then ;x ~gat after tha t it would start to cage up and you ' d get the Attitude Light on and you ' d be in business with the Platformt but that platform performed beautifully. Cooper Well ~ I might make just one remark on the platform. Some­ thing that I thought was extremely interesting to me. People have talked about the bad platform drift and everything but we had one occasion we had our platform powered for some 18 or 20 hours . Conrad Let ' s see t why did we do that? Cooper Because they wanted us to- Conrad Oh, it was after we tumbled up there with that OAMS check which they really didn't think out too well and they thought we might lose our gas volume. Cooper We were about to lose the gas volume by starting to vent again so they wanted us to power up , bring the power up to a pretty high level to keep below the vent pressure on the hydrogen. Conr ad Yes , to keep the platform warmed up incase we had to- --- PAGE 165 --- 160 Cooper So they wanted to keep the platform warmed up also . So we went for some approximately 20 hours with the platform warm-running- up. Conrad In drifting flight . Cooper In drifting flight. So what we did- we caged the platform, brought it up to cage and the~ we just went to orbit rate. Left it in orbit rate and we caged it at a time when were just guessing pretty close to o o1 o 7 and then went to orbit rate . Some 20 l'..ours later drifting all around, - tumbling all over the sky, -·a ll over t he places- Conrad It was amazing how close the pl atform 1,,as . Cooper The platform was almost right on what cur attitude was after that many hours of orbital rate errors and drift etc . etc. added in to there and it still was a good relative attitude indicator I thought it was really good. Conrad In all three a.xis it stayed on. I was pretty surprised. Cooper I really thought that was quite good. That platform really behaved well and it really took a l ot of abuse. Dif- ferent times we powered it up- in drift- did all kinds of things. You couldn't have mistreated it more if you tried. Alining the platform very straightforward. We alined it in BEF. First of all , we went right to --- PAGE 166 --- -, our old platform position which was BEF and started right from there in lining in a fine line by BEF position going out just- lining from there and we found that we had quite a yaw error in it. We noted that- Conrad That showed up in roll real fast . Cooper So we noted then that our yaw- what we figured was our yaw star one of them that we remember as our yaw star was a little bit over to the right about 10 degrees. So we just went to cage. Eased it over about 10 de­ grees, uncaged it in BEF and sure enough then we went to platform position in BEF showed the needles weren't very far off. Right away they began to aline. . . . very closely and we had it alined very shortly. Conrad Yes, I can't say too much for that star chart either, boy, it was real comforting to have those yaw stars and it turned out that Scorpio went right down the middle of the tube for us. We just always knew that we had the platform in good alinement be for retrofire. We knew that we were right on in yaw all the way down that line and we could just name the stars and we knew that they were just going to come right down the middle by watching them go and it worked real well. FCSD REP How long did you aline the platform? --- PAGE 167 --- 162 FlDENTIA Conrad One and a half orbits. We really aline•d in about one and a half orbits. Cooper We powered up two and one half and thei:. actually, we were actual ly alining for about an cr bit and a half before retrofire. And we were on all the aline­ ment and everything was done on the RCc system. FCSD REP How about the preretro checklist? Cooper Let me say this on this alining. We fcund t hat we coul dn't even see any decrease at a ll jn RCS after an orbit and a half. The way we were doirg this we were doing it i n Horizon Scan BEF then using· the Rllse MJde in the H')rizon .Scan. To really keep tl:.ose needles real ly closely centered. Now, you can do the same thing in Tu.lse BEF, - but the Ibrizon Scan if you ne­ glect it for just a minute, the lbrizon. Scan would hold it in there real closely and wouldn't let you wander off anywhere in pitch. 00 F-t0E-N:f:t~L .... --- PAGE 168 --- Conr ad I can't sey too much f or that star chart either . Boy , it was real comforting to have those yaw stars , and it turned out that Scorpio went right down the middle of the tube f or us and we alweys knew that we had the platform i n good alinement before retrofire . We knew we were right on in yaw al l the wey down the line, and we could just name the stars and knew that t hey were just going to come right down the middle of the pipe , and watch them go . It worked real well . FCSD Rep How long did you aline the platform for r etrofire? Conrad Well, we really alined it about 1½ orbits . 1 Cooper We powered up for~ and we actually were alining for an orbit and a half before retrofire . All the alinement and everything was done on the RCS system. Let me sey this on this alining. We found that we couldn 1 t see any decrease at all in the RCS quantity after an orbit and a half . We were doing it in horizon scan , BEF, and then using the pulse mode in the horizon scan to give you the fine control within the horizon scan to really keep the needles closely centered. Now you can do the same thing just in pulse , but if you neglect it for just a minute, the horizon scan would hold it in there real close . It wouldn 1 t L -- --- PAGE 169 --- let you wander off anywhere in pi tch and roll . You had to watch the yaw very carefully, of course , but you could concentrate on doing other things for just a few seconds time and you didn ' t get your errors built up into it . You still have the iulse correc ­ tion within the wider band of t he horizon scan . We found that little teensy little blips to make your correction and I don ' t think we were u:.:irig any fuel at all . FCSD Rep Did you get any reading on how much yoi. did use? Conrad I checked this morning and it ' s not i n yet . I don ' t know how much fuel . We used Ring A sir.ce we powered it up at 2 orbits , over Carnarvon the fir st time . What I r ecall from the preretro checkl::.st - - it commenced at Carnarvon one pass before r eentry. In other words , we went an orbit and a ha:.f on the RCS system -- Ring A. Most of that time wEi were alining. Cooper We used dual ring RCS rate command for r etrofire only. Then we turned Ring B off and d:_d the whole reentry on ring A. Conrad Pulse . FCSD Rep You operated Ring A all the way? Cooper The last I saw of Ring A in the r eentr;;r, down before --- PAGE 170 --- we went to drogue chute out, I still couldn't see any decrease in Ring A. Conrad Well, I'm not sure that Ring A wasn ' t out of fuel , somewhere around between 100 000 on down. But the other ring wasn ' t . I know darn well it wasn't . Cooper What do you mean it was? It wasn ' t out before we put the other ring in at all. Conrad No . I know it wasn ' t out before we put the other ring in . Cooper Did you take a look at it around 100 000? Conrad Yes . I know the thrusters were firing. It was firing. Cooper Well, the gauge indicated it still had all kinds of fuel lef t ir1 it just before 100 000 . ! Conrad Well, thats regulated pressure . Cooper Yes , it ' s pressure . Conrad It's not going to tell you anything in the way of fuel usage . You have to see source pressure to find out what -- we don't have that . Cooper Well , you would - - Conrad I'm not sure that Ring A didn't run out of fuel, but if it did , it did it somewhere around the time we put the other ring on , because we never got any --- PAGE 171 --- os cil lations or anything. The rings were f iring -all the time . Cooper I ~ never was out of f uel before we put the other one on , 1 1 11 guarant ee . I know because I was sitting there controlling with it and I know that we had control . Conrad I know that both thrusters were physically burning inside - - you know , the throats were burning when I shut the propellant off. In other words, t he pro­ pellant was shut off and there was no fuel f low going to them, but both Ring A and Ring· B thrusters t hat I could see had throat f lames i n them. Cooper That ' s just from residual fue l . Conrad Yes , that ' s what I mean. So , I had the impression that t hey r an al l the way down , and then i f Ring A did run out of fuel at all , it did it a.t the very end , you know . I think that you ' ll find that there was f uel in both RCS rings and there sr.ould have been plenty of RCS B fuel left , because we didn ' t even turn on RCS B until l ess than 70 000 . We wer e at 50 because Cooper Yes . Conrad - - Gordo put the drogue out instead of turning the ring on. 0Nft9ENTt'A~ --- PAGE 172 --- OONffl:) erqTf AL FCSD Rep Why don't we pick up on page 26? Cooper Okay . --- PAGE 173 --- 168 • 5.0 RETROFIRE 5 . 1 ~ -36 Events Cooper TR- 36 Conrad TR-36 is not right . There ' s no aft- f i rjng thrusters verification . That ' s for OAMS . And thEre was no TR- 22 either because that was for OAMS , nor was there a TR- 13 or 12. What we had was a TR- 27 clock set over Carnarvon . FCSD Rep You started your event t imer at TR- 27? Conrad That Is because we changed from 122- 1 to 121-1. We went r ight down the pre- retro checklist before that by the numbers , and we had what we call a ~R-36 which was nothing more than pick up the event timer . So we had the pre-retro checkli s t complete before Carnarvon . That ' s when t hey glitched us , and I 1 m going to complain about this one . We had a valid load in the comput er and a valid TR when we left the States on Rev 120, and I see absolutely no reason if those guys don ' t know what the heck our orbit is aft er 120 of them up there , that they had to go ahead and send a quick up- date over Carnarvon -- Cooper Yes . Conrad -- I f elt that screwed us . I still want to know what happened. --- PAGE 174 --- ~t0EN,-IAL Cooper And we told McDivitt -- Conrad We didn ' t get a DCS light . Cooper We told McDivitt when we left Houston that everything was all square and that we I re going to Reentry Mode on the computer then. We did , and then at Carnarvon the CAP COM, before he even gave us a warning or asked us about anything or even checked to see what mode our computer was in, sent an up- date . Very , very poor. Conrad He said , "I'm sending you a new load and a new TR. Stand by." Boy, we were all over the thing trying to get it back to PRELAUNCH . I never got a DCS light on either the TR or the load . I quizzed him and I told him I didn't think the load went in. He said , 11 No , the load was valid. " We r ead out a couple of cores and checked TR , but I don I t understand why we didn't get a DCS light . Now I won ' t understand it because we should have gotten two DCS lights . Cooper Yes . One for TR and one for - - Conrad I didn't get one the first time when he sent the TR, and I didn ' t get one when he sent the load . We were in the process of switching the computer to PRELAUNCH, and I think the el ectrpns got lost in the shuffle there . I gather that they took the computer --- PAGE 175 --- 170 ONFl[;)ENTIAL out yesterday and that the load in it was valid . It 1 s just that they computed the wrong place to land , in Houston, and sent the wrong load , period . Boy , that was a heck of a thing to do, and I really that darn DCS! I 1 m going to do just what I said I was going to do. I f I ever fly again , I ' m not going to fly with that DCS circuit breaker on. That ' s just exactly what I was afraid was going to happen, and they couldn ' t have done it at a worse time in the flient . They just absolutely couldn't have done it wcrse . The one thing that I had forgotten many times was putting that computer from PRELAUNCH to REENTRY. I had it underlined 50 times on the check- off liflt . I was going to make sure that it was in REENTI'.Y . When they told me leaving the Cape we had a valid load and a valid TR , I called McDivi tt and I said :: 1 m putting the computer in REENTRY. The next thin/~ is , at Carnarvon the guy should have seen on h:.s board that the computer was in REENTRY and should have told me instead of sending a load like he did . We moved as f ast as we could when he said he was sending loads to put the darn thing back to PRELAUNCH . That really screwed us up and I 1 m really mad about that . That ' s the only gripe I have against them, but it's a major one . --- PAGE 176 --- =- 171 Cooper Yes . It 's major enought that , by gol l y , my recom­ mendations exactly like Pete ' s . From now on my rec­ omendation is Conrad That did it . Cooper -- that the DCS circuit breaker is left in the OFF position. Conrad Yes . The next time I ever go for the reentry and we put a valid load i n the computer, I'm going to turn the DCS off so they can ' t screw it up again without me turning it back on . Coop_e r Absolutely. Turn that circuit breaker to the OFF position. Conrad That's right . I 'd rather miss a load and go with the earlier one. I still can ' t believe that after 120 orbits they didn't know exactly what our param­ eters were for orbit . I don't even know why they needed that track over the United States the last pass . They 'd been tracking us all night long. They ' d been tracking us for 8 days, and they ought to know where the heck we were . If they want to do it at the last minute, then let's plan on loading the computer at Carnarvon and not load the computer at the Cape . This loading it at the Cape and then chang­ ing it again at Carnarvon has got to go . GON.flDENTIAL --- PAGE 177 --- 172 Cet-ctftDEt~rrt~ Cooper And t hen saying this is your final load. Verify - ­ Conrad Bad news. I 'm r eally mad about that ! Cooper Then unscheduled and everything else - - Conrad I don ' t blame that guy at Carnarvon because he wasn ' t expecting to send us a load either . I hlame Houston. Houston sent it down to them at the las·; minute , obviously, and he was doi ng the best he could and he got rushed . The whole thing we wanted to do on r eentry and the reason we stowed early md sat there with nothing to do was to make sure that we were never rushed . We weren't until the guy sent that l oad . And there we were , 27 minutes fr:>m retrofire , and I r eally wasn't convinced we had th~ right load in the computer even when we left Carnar von. Boy, I Im really mad at that ! Cooper I Conrad Okay. Ive got some recommendations. I think we ought to rewrite our TR- 256 check- off list because there are too many things that happen en it at TR- 5 and TR- 256 . We changed the procedure in f light I knew I was going to do it that way ar.yhow , in t hat I brought up the main batteries early. I brought them on at 7 minutes . I verified the computer in --- PAGE 178 --- 173 REENTRY again, of course, and squib batteries . We were already on the RCS system, so we didn 1 t have to bring-them on, but I did bring on the other ring at that point . At the 256 , we wanted to go platform to ORB RATE as late as possible, so we did that after we got TR- 256 function light -- the attitude indicator light -- and that showed we had all our clocks were in sync ..just perfectly. There wasn I t a clock in the spacecraft that wasn ' t in sync . The TR was in sync with the event timer and they were in sync with our back- up watches . There was no doubt in our minds that everything in the TRS system was working right down the line and that we were working right down the line. Cooper We went to retro attitude punched the -- Conrad Went to retro attitude, set up the whole thing for • the reentry , and at TR- 1 -- T -1 5 . 3 -=-It- Cooper TR- 1, SEP OAMS, SEP ELEC , SEP ADAP, four squibs on - ­ Conrad At TR- 30 seconds -- Cooper Arm retro. We already had that . Conrad I've al ways made it a procedure to arm auto- retro at TR- 5 seconds Cooper Let's see -- SEP OAMS , SEP ELEC, SEP ADAP -- we did a t0NilQE i L --- PAGE 179 --- 174 CO~EIDENTI L I Lets see, retro rockets squib all four armed at TR- 3O, arm auto- retros at about TR- 5 seconds Conrad Ye s . TR- 5 . And I absolutely positively go on record that the manual retro- fire button was pushed, because I pushed it four times at one second ani the COMP l ight went green at -- FCSD Rep One second after auto? Conrad No . One second after the retros actual l y fired. 5.4 =-R- T -0 Cooper At TR- O' spacecraft attitude was right on the money. Ther e were no rates . Control mode was dual RCS Conrad I've got a couple of comment s about the retro s . There ' s no doubt in my mind that the number 3 retro stopped firing at l east a half a second before the number 4 retro started t o fire . Cooper It sure did . Conrad And there was another one in there -- Cooper There was no overlap . Conrad iI I m pretty sure that between the second and the l t h ird , there was no overlap -­ Cooper Between 2 and 3 . Conr ad -- but they were much closer together than between 3 and 4 . --- PAGE 180 --- ., 175 Cooper Number 1 was firing and it was just tailing off when number 2 took in . It had the proper sequence on i t . Number 2 had completely stopped and there was an interval ther e of , it seemed like , several seconds . It wasn 1 t , but it seemed like there was a definite distinct -- Conrad Between 3 and 4 was the one that. really seemed l ike an eternity. Cooper There was a definite distinct separate interval there where there was no firing going on. Then 3 fired . Then there was an even longer interval in there involved and then 4 fired . Conrad Yes . That was long enough between 3 and 4 fo r me to think maybe the fourth one wasn ' t going to f ire at all. FCSD Rep I think we ought to get some comments on the night Conrad Oh , we weren ' t even aware of it . Cooper We had the lights up bright in the cockpit -­ Conrad We went with the lights bright Cooper We decided we ' d play it just like we did in the simulator , just like we were going to be in the simu­ lator , you know , with all the lights up br ight and not even worry about what was going on out the wi ndow. However, I did sneak a little peaky or t wo and you fJBfNIIAL --- PAGE 181 --- G~El0ENTIAL , look like you were sitting in the middl11 of a fire barrel . Boy! When those retros go off , the whol e spacecraft ' s enveloped in flames jus·; looks like the whole place is burning all over bac:c there . This flame comes all the way back over che spacecraft and all the way up -- Conrad At SEP OAMS , electr ic and adapter, though , we didn 't see much of anything. Cooper No. I saw a flash at SEP ADAP. I Conrad I saw a l ittle flash , but I thought maybe we d see a lot more f lashing- type f l ame . Actual l y , no big prob- 1 l em in that night retro , but I 11 tell you one t hing , you I re not ever going to do it out t he window. Cooper You ' re never going to see anything out the wi ndow i n a night retro . You ' re just completely enveloped in f lames. Conrad Those RCS ' s are firi ng away like mad and there ' s al l kind& of light outside and everything, so night r etr o is an instrument- type thing. Cooper It's purely instruments . If you don ' t have i nstru­ ments , you 1 re just not going to shoot :i. t . Conrad But otherwise , I don ' t think t here was any di ff erenc e . Cooper No . Conrad We were completely in the dark f or a l)ng time . We --- PAGE 182 --- 177 didn't have a horizon for 5 minutes after retro- fire , We were in the middle of the United States bef ore we saw the groU.Ll.d. Cooper The first place we saw was White Sands . Conrad White Sands -- Cooper Just past the terminator Conrad -- was the first place I saw when we CaJlle out of the terminator on the ground. Of course, by that time, we had a sort of what you might call a discernable horizon, but it was so fuzzy. There is no such thing as a horizon at sunrise, looking the other way. Looking 180 from the sun you I re looking into a gray , black, fuzzy -- boy, there's no discernable horizon . You ' re looking at the terminator. It's not a usable horizon. I don't call it usable. We were on gauges all the way and not until we got past the Mississippi River did we get what you would really call a horizon. That's when the reentry started getting different than the ones in the simulator. The reentry was much dif­ ferent in ball attitudes, in that we were much steeper on the ball. We were looking at more and more white that I ever saw before. I was hard pressed -- if we didn't have the bank angle index on the ball you couldn't tell what your bank angle was. f-lDEWJ~L --- PAGE 183 --- 178 €>MFl0ENflA~ .. Cooper Yes . Conrad There was no horizon. The black part of the ball was gone. It was gone for the rest of reentry. We l ost it awful earl y. FCSD Rep Do you remember a point, say 400 000 .fee t, •:,at what pitch angle you were on the ball? Conrad 400 000 feet - - the trim hadn ' t begun to affect you too much and Gordo was at about 30 degrees. Cooper · About 30 degrees . Yes. Conrad Yes. But he was still flying the spa~ecraft, just holding attitude there . FCSD Rep Okay , how about when you hit the atmosphere? Conrad 280 K. Cooper At 280 K we were -- Conrad It seemed to me that's when t hings started to steepen up. We started to really trim up . We were beginning to get g -- Cooper By the time we got to 280 K, we were at about 50 degrees pitch, roughly -- 50 or 60 degrees on t he ball. We were quite a way down. From there on, we were moving :: right on around on the ball. FCSD Rep Were you able after retrofire to roll i t up and put the horizon on the top of the window and hold that? Cooper Yes , on the ball, but we couldn't see t he horizon. FtOEM --- PAGE 184 --- L 179 Conrad Yes , those lines were useless as far as the horizon on it , because there wasn't any horizon out there . GCSD Fep You had to use the 8-ball entirely? Cooper Yes. Conrad That was a pure instrument retro. Cooper You're darn right, boy. I I 11 guarantee you anytime you fire retros at night, you'd better have instru­ ments because you ' re not going to have a visual out­ the- window, because those RCS thrusters out there will just blind you. Conrad Yes, and this t alking about doing this stuff on rate needles and no ball and everything is a bunch of hog- wash. You'd better have the whole panel. Cooper You're darn right. Conrad Or you fire them in the daytime, with a good horizon . FCSD Rep Let me see now. You rolled it upside down , and what did you hold? You held 20 degrees -- Cooper 20 , degrees until it s t art ed trimming out . Then, I'd } switch between rate and attitude . I ' d just hold that attitude and when I'd see a little tiny rat e creep in -- I was on single-ring pulse - - I'd just pulse that rate out. Of course, _: that was establishing my trim ./ angle right there. You'd see it on the rate. You'd --- PAGE 185 --- 180 see the pitch rate needle start to mo're just a l ittle tiny bit . That was showing you that you weren ' t quite on trim. Then I'd tweek it and it would sit right there, and it would just start trim- ming itself out on the ball. FCSD Rep When it trimmed out you damped the rates. You were in single- ring di rect? Cooper Well , at 400 KI went to single- ring direct . Conrad Yes , we were in pulse Cooper Yes, single- ring pulse . Conr ad Single- r i ng pulse to 400 K -- C0oper Then I went to RATE COMMAND on the attitude control selector and took the ACME RCS switch to direct -- one to direct,! the other one was to off. Then I used , ) single- ring direct throughout the ree'.ltry , until very late when the oscillations got so rapid that 1· had to concentrate too much on them rather than the attitude . Then I went into ACME just put the RCS switch to ACME and then flew the attitude with the stick and allowed the RCS to damp the oscillations. FCSD Rep Still one ring? Cooper Still one ring. Conrad We di dn't go on dual- rings until below 70 000 feet . --- PAGE 186 --- 18 1 Cooper We had the drogue out before we went on dual- rings. FCSD Rep Was there any problem? Conrad The thing was steady as a rock all the way. Cooper Yes, it was beautiful. Conrad I ' ve been hearing 40-degree oscillations on the drogue and all that sort of stuff . The only oscallations we had on the drogue were high­ ~requency low- amplitude oscillations, where the drogue was stable, sitting above us steady as a rock, pulsing longitudinally like this Cooper It squidded super-sonically for we were about 112 -­ Conrad And then the shrouds -- Cooper Did you hear about the Mercury tests where the drogue was a few times? Col').rad The shrouds on the spacecraft had a high frequency 1·ow amplitude oscillation, but the nose was like 5 degrees , it seemed to me . It ' s just surprising. We were as steady as a rock as far as I was concerned. Cooper Well , I think the whole Conrad The oscillation was there, but I think the Cooper I think the whole retrofire and reentry is so much easier than Mercury that I can ' t believe it. It is really a piece of cake . L • --- PAGE 187 --- 182 Conrad At 30 000 we shut off the propellant valves to the RCS. It was still working away merrily there trying to steady it down on the drogue. As :: ar as I know, there was propellant in both Ring A and Ring B when we shut them down. 5. 5 1 Retropack Jettison Cooper We jettisoned the retropack right in retro attitude -­ FCSD Rep You didn't see the retropack burning up or anything? Conrad Yes, I saw it reenter behind us but nowhere near like those guys did. It was miles behind us when I saw i t . Cooper I thought I saw something way back thEire burning. I guess that was it. Conrad Yes. Up and on the left side of where? I was looking . I saw it burn up behind us . But it was miles behind us by then. You see, it had been chaf:ing us in the dark so we never did see it close up. We never saw anything like pump packages blowing O\;.t when we set the retros. • --- PAGE 188 --- t1'EITTIA7: ~ 183 5.6 Communications Cooper Communications were good throughout the whole re­ entry. We went into blackout right on time . Conrad Right on time. Cooper Yes, just right on the second when they said we' d go into blackout. We came out just exactly when they said we would.. The only thing was, when they asked us what our over - shoot or under-shoot was I ' ll be dam if I could t ell them at that point . I sure as heck didn't know with this computer t ell­ ing us one thing and yet it not doing the right thing. FCSD Rep We'd better put the retrofire IVI readings in here . Conrad 269 aft , 010 l eft , 181 down . And that comes out amazingly close to a nominal combination . As a matter of fact, it shows that we should have had about a 60 degree bank. angle, and if you compensate the 6o degrees for the off- set it would have been 54 or 53-- Cooper Yes. Cooper Almost completely nominal. Conrad I think this chart's a handy gouge . It agrees with what the ground gave us. We didn' t fly it, of course, We flew the computer, but-- --- PAGE 189 --- 184 Cooper Well, this is the bank angle we flew until we got cross, and down-range at 280K. Conrad We went from full lift at 400K to 53 degrees, which was the given bank angle by the ground which we agreed to use. We went to 53 degrees until guidance came in, and it came in at 280K. The needle showed that we were high. It showed that we were very high, that we were going to over- sho,)t by a large distance, and-- Cooper This is the first normal indication. The computer is supposed-- Conrad · ·• do anything which is what you're supposed to do. We sat there to watch the trend. No,;hing happened. The needle didn't come up off the peg. I looked at the high scale and it didn ' t look to me like the high scale was pegged out. Cooper It wasn ' t pegged. I went to the higl:. scale and it was about half way down. Conrad Less than half way down, indicating that we were up around a 75 mil e over-shoot, which just told me we were humping a little bit to get down into the target. Cooper Right. Conrad And, in fact, at that time we were G>NFIIDENTIA --- PAGE 190 --- 6NFIDENTIA[ . 185 Cooper •.• to get on down to it because it told me-- Conrad We were just sitting there waiting for the needle ------- to come up like we had seen it do a million_.:t.ime in the same situation. -- - It never came off the peg. Then , we got in a little discussion, you know. I fel t that we ought to go to full lift because I thought something was wrong with guidance . Gordo agreed that something was wrong with guidance but he reall y t hought maybe we really had over- shot . I'm sure the retros were on time and they were nominal , almost. So , we final l y wound up going back to the nominal l ift vect or- - Cooper I went back to the nominal bank angle, which we had agreed we ' d go to i f anything happened . We had agreed with FOD that if anything happened throughout re­ entry--something was wrong with guidance-- Conrad We flew-- Cooper --we would go back to the nominal bank angle , that we wouldn't take any great abnormal- type situation. We woul d go back to t he nominal bank angle, so that in the event they lost communication with us or something screwed completely up in the reentry, they would know that we used as near as possible to the nominal bank angle. --- PAGE 191 --- 186 Conrad Now , what really hurt there though was that he sat there at the nominal bank angle of 53 degrees .. until we got to, say, 2 1/2 g's , which is a fair .long time through the guidance ... . When he elected to roll to the 90 degree bank angle, that' s when we were getting the most lift. Boy, we dug in-- I 111 tell you we shot up there to 7 1/2 g ' s in nothing flat. It was at about that time that we rolled back out again, you see . We ' d lost the main lift that we were going to get out of it, but, as it is, I don't think we did so badly ·Ninding up 83 miles short. I understand they were targeting 240 miles short . Cooper That's apparently what the load they had in the computer turned out to be--erroneously put in a.t 240 miles short . Conrad Yes , they were off by a factor of 240 miles . Cooper So , if we had followed the computer e:icactly we'd have been a lot further shorter than we were. Fortunately, we recognized that somet:1ing was amiss. FCSD Rep Did that down-range needle ever do an;rthing? Conrad No, I don ' t think it moved at all, Cooper I don ' t think it ever really moved. I think one time it moved a little, but I really don ' t think ElQENllAt • --- PAGE 192 --- 187 it moved much. Conrad I think we were hoping to see it move, you know, but it was just one of those- -that's a fast time situation there, and it was jus~ one of those things where we made the right decision in the end to go back to the nominal bank angle. Everything in the computer indicated--the time to 400K and roll needle initiate were within a second of one another. What the ground gave us- - Cooper And the time to 290K was exactly right . Conrad And 280K time, roughly as far as we knew and every­ thing- -BANG! in comes the guidance initiate down­ range predict on the needles. Everything up to that point--the computer had come on green, the IVI's read nominal, we saw the kind of thing we expected to see . We were completely suckered on that, because the computer worked just like it was supposed to-- Cooper And the down- range needle indicated exactly what it always will do and exactly what we'd briefed with FOD. They had agreed that what we should see on the computer is just about the maximum deflection on the low scale when it first comes on. Conrad And that's just what we got. O NEIDE~ JIAL,. --- PAGE 193 --- 188 I Cooper Because that ' s exactly the way things arE' all set up in the math flow. You' 11 get that anc. then very shortly thereafter if you hold the nomim.l bank angle it will take a little bit of time End it will start easing on up. Conrad And you ' ll get an idea by the rate of ea~ing up . Cooper If you roll to the 90, of course, in thai position you ' ll get to it in a big rush, but you \\-ant to be careful not to overshoot . Conrad You'll never get back. Cooper But, then when I held the nominal bank angl e and it didn ' t come up and didn't come up , then I rolled to the 90 to see if I was going to be able to bring it up. Of course, by this time I realized that when I didn't see it come up something wa.s really wrong. I then went back to the nominal . Fortunately, that period that we held at the nominal is what carried us down as near as it did. The short period that we were at 90, of course , is where ~e were really digging in-- Conrad It cost us 83 miles, probably, because I think if .. we had flown the nominal bank angle all the way that we'd have really wound up real close to the darn carrier. --- PAGE 194 --- --- Cooper We'd probably wound up 45 miles from the carrier-­ Conrad That going to the 90 degrees for the time period that we did cost us 80 something miles . Otherwise, we flew the ~ Cooper The,.....wholy ning is if we hadn't tried following the computer we would never have known ,,/ Conrad Yes, and I'll tell you one thing. I ' m still con­ vinced right now sitting in this room that computer will bring you right in to where you want to go if you have the right load in it, because it just \worked magnificently. It came in just like it was supposed to and it did it on boost, too . I was really sold on it. I think the computations in that computer are accurate enough for the kind of work that a guy can do onboard the spacecraft, and··it ' s a darn fine piece of equipment and it was working well . We're the first ones to get a good look at 7 and it worked just l ike it was supposed to . If it had the parameters in it we'd have split the ship right up the middle . Cooper I think so. I think it's just a dirty shame. FCSD Rep What was the cross- range needle doing? Cooper Cross- range was showing that·we needed left bank in there--that we needed to move to the left. In other --- PAGE 195 --- / / 190 <;ONFtDENTIA [ . words, you're flying opposite. You're flying your needle to. In other words, you' re flyir.g back course ILS on lateral and you ' re flying a standard ILS on the glide slope--front course IL~,. The cross-range needle was showing off to the right, which indicated that we needed to bank Jeft , which is exactly right , That's just exactly right. We hit 10 miles short. We never did get t he cross­ range--cros s-range was coming in--cross--range did move in on us. Down-range, I don't believe, ever really moved . Cross-range did move in ~1ome on us, and that's when I went back to the nominal. I thought, well, we're past the time to rEiverse bank angle. Maybe I ought to roll right. So, I rolled over to the right side and said, no , by golly, I'm still going to follow the cross- range. At least it's giving us the proper indications, l believe . So, I rolled back in to the left bank, ,rhich was smart because we still hit slightly to t he right. Were we off to the north or the south, Pete? I had it all figured out one time. Cooper I don't really know Gordo. I didn ' t pa;i, any a tten­ tion to the cross-range needle. Cooper Anyway, the way I had it figured out here the other --- PAGE 196 --- 191 day the cross-range needle was indicating properly. FCSD Rep The down-range needle , when it came on, stayed in the same place all the time--all the way through? Cooper Yes. FCSD Rep Full- scale. Cooper Full- scale . Right . Just about full-scale on the low range . FCSD Rep Okay. How about any of the up- dating done during reentry? Conrad We got all the times . We got a ll the times just fine and I wrote them all down . They gave us enter blackout at 16 : 14, out of blackout at 21:20, reverse bank at 19:25, bank left 54, and bank right 68 . The drogue time was 22+05, and the main time was 23+48 , They were all good times. I had them all written down. No problem. They got the up­ dates in before blackout and in plenty of time be­ fore blackout, as a matter of fact . We whistled right in there. No sweat on the times . I guess maybe we went to the 90 degree bank or something like that , but from about the time of lg to the time of guidance locking out, which is roughly 100K and t he altimeter coming· off the peg, man , I don't knov whether it was just because we did it for real --- PAGE 197 --- 192 ~hJEIDE~TlAL .. but everything else worked like the Eimulator timewise, but that time period seemed extremely short to me in comparison to simul ator reentry. Cooper Yes, it sure did to me. Conrad Yes. Now we can go back and look at the times and see what the actual times were to these-- Cooper Maybe just in real time- - Conrad This might have been the real - time case to make-­ FCSD Rep How about the altimeter? Conrad It worked very poorl y on lift-off. It had been very jerky and jumped all around but it was smooth as a bell. Boy, it came off the peg. It locked up at 96 000. What was it? It did it in the alti­ tude chamber. Cooper 96 800 feet or something like that. Conrad It didn't ever run to 100 000 and it never had. It didn't do that in the altitude cha.rlber, and it quit where it always quit- -96 800. I t came off the peg smooth and just wound right on down. No jump­ ing or jittering. Cooper It was right with the barostats comine: down . Conrad Yes, it was right with the barostats coming down. I called the altimeter off the peg to Gordo and he put the landing arm on, which was roushl y at --- PAGE 198 --- 193 100 000. Then, I said, "Stand by for 70 000." I was going to tell him to go attitude control RCS A and B to ACME , and he punched out the drogue. So , we qualified the drogue at 70 000, and then I got the rate command, both rings on, and we were some­ where below 70 000 when we put Ring Bon. ~NFIE>EMTIAL --- PAGE 199 --- 194 6 . 0 REENTRY 6.1 400K Cooper By the time we hit 400K I was at fuL lift positi on from Retro Jett until there. Roll command gave a roll right and a roll command the bug just as it a lways does . Time correlation was r t ght on the money. 400K occurred right to the s econd when it was supposed to . Guidance initiate e>ccurred just at 280K at exactly the right time anc. it indica ted we had a right .... the azimuth needle indicated right and the down range needle indicated full scale it was well up into the thing. I would sey maybe half deflection. Conrad Yes . That was full scale . High sca]e was not - ­ Cooper The bank angle was 53 degrees left bank which was our nominal bank angle which I went to a t guidance initiate and held 53 degrees l eft . ~he rool needle at this time the roll needle indicated off full right and vecy shortly thereafter then . . .. before I even got suspicious that we weren't getting down on this , the roll needle then crossed over the middle position and held there indicati ng we had the r ight bank angle there for a minute and then crossed full scale over to t he other s ide . . . . OhJEIDENTIAL --- PAGE 200 --- <;GNFtf>EMftA1. ,, 195 which gave me one little old tweak of suspicion there that something was wrong right there on the roll bug. At that point then, I rolled 90 to see if I could get on that too , the down range needle. The cross range needle moved in some from the right. It had been out . . . not completely full scale, but ' I quite a ways out . It moved in slightly but not much. Down range needle, let's see , I don't believe it ever moved up · from there on and then at that point when I saw that the 90 wasn ' t going to hold it in there, I said I was going back to the nominal bank angle. I went back t o the 53 but then put in 60 . . . . 67 degrees bank right, to see if I can get the roll bug to change . It didn ' t change at that time so cross range was still indicating that I should be banked left so I went back to my bank left to see if I can kill off the cross range. I knew at that point that something was really seriously - 0llg and I was just trying to hold it as nominal as possible . I shoul d have probably at that time since I was already passed the time of reverse bank angle, I probably shoul d have gone ahead and hel d that , but that was a mistake, I probably should have gone ahead and held that 67 degrees bank right, and • --- PAGE 201 --- 196 GNr;l0ENTIA~ held that on in . It probably would have corrected us out a little better cross- range- wise, but the period of time that we were at 90 degrees trying to get the glide slope, to get onto the glide slope there, is what cost us that 86 miles. Had we held the nominal bank angle all the way ani ignored the computer, I think we would have hit v3ry, very near the carrier. But, we ... .at least we 1save the com­ puter a try. I think that if it had had the right values loaded in it , I think it would have done very well by us . The spacecraft behaved very well . Ionization, we got into that ionic layer. After the 280K point, we began -to really ionize quite a bit and got into a typical fire ball E•ffect back there although it didn ' t seem to me l1ke it was as much of a fire ball effect in this as it was in Mercury. It seemed a lot less . 6 .2 Acceleration Profile Cooper Acceleration profile, I noted the g ' s very early be­ f ore we got the 2g's on . I noted the g ' s felt pretty strong in there. I could feel them fairly severe now. I never felt at all from there on . I n ever even felt like we had any amount of g's on us until I noted we had seven and a ha:.f and I could ~0MFl0EI\JTIAL • --- PAGE 202 --- ONFIDEITTIAL 4 197 hardly believe it. So , I didn't have any trouble controlling or ... I just didn't think about having f j I I it on there. Pete noticed the g's more t han I did because he wasn ' t as busy, I guess , as I was. 6.3 Spacecraft Control Cooper Spacecraft control was beautiful . There was no problem at all. I was on single ring DIRECT and then had gone fairly late down in the guidance program there when the oscillations got to be often enough in there that it was taking a little concen­ tration to damp the oscillations as well as to watch the guidance. I just went over the single ring ACME or RATE COMMAND ACME and let the RATE COMMAND damp the oscillations and I was doing the steering, with the RATE COMMAND also . Still single ring . 6.4 100K Feet Cooper Let ' s see, at a 100K the altimeter ca.me off the peg very shortly thereafter . I was going to arm both RCS rings, bringing on ring B to ACME .at 70K and instead I deliberately, calmly, cooly, and del ibera­ tely deployed the drogue chutes . And it worked beautifully. Most stable drogue chute I ever saw. It squidde~ just like a supersonic drogue test that were done in Mercury that I saw. In fact, 70 was --- PAGE 203 --- 198 the point where he put the Mercury d:t'ogue out . It squidded a couple of times very nicely and stabilized out and was just beautiful . . . .We nev,3r had any oscillations on it or anything. It was just as nice as it could be. 6.5 50K Feet Cooper By 50K we had both RCS rings .ON, jus·: letting them feed on out and then were blipping away out there and the spacecraft just came right s 1;raight down . No oscillation or anything. FCSD Rep What kind of oscillation on drogue dnployment . . . . what would you estimate the Cooper I don 1·t think we had any at all . I c.on ' t think we had a single oscillation real ly, wher. we deployed the drogue, do you? Conrad Oh yeah. It oscillated but the . . . . . it was sort of high frequency and low amplitude . Cooper That's just what I say. I mean it was just kind of like .. . .. It was just kind of like -- a little quiver on the line. Like when you pluck a bow string, you know , the string . . .. the spacecraft would kind of go like this but not any- amount of -- Conrad These guys were talking about 40 degr3e yaw angles --- PAGE 204 --- 199 and stuff like -- Nothing like that. ,. Cooper I bet you couldn't make it any more than 2 or 3 or 4 degrees. Conrad Yes , I would say 5 at the most . Now I don't have any horizon or anything to reference this to . All I ' m doing is watching the drogue . But I didn ' t have any physical sensations , or -- Cooper There were no physical sensations of any kind of oscillations. Conrad The frequency was too high to ever get any amplitudes that big. We were just sitting there and the drogue looked steady to me , see, and all I could see was the nose and the shrouds zacking back and forth like that . Ob, sort of around, and , you know . They were both at pitch and yaw .. .but I felt comfortable all the time . I didn't have any idea that we were really going to -- Cooper It was well stabilized. Stable as a rock Conrad Now, I'll tell you that RCS was really working. Now, we were in RATE COMMAND not REENTRY RATE COM­ MAND, we were in RATE COMMAND. So , it would . I mean, it was firing full time . Cooper Yes, it was really working. Conrad We were outside the rate command bands . --- PAGE 205 --- 200 CQNFIDENTiAL FCSD Rep You don ' t use the reentry command? Conrad Heck no! Cooper No, no that's useless . Conrad We had fuel up the kazoo . Cooper We had all kinds of fuel . We figured to just go into RATE COMMAND. That ' s exactly what -- Conrad to see how smooth a reentry you could make . Cooper The only thing we deviated from our very carefully calculated preflight plan was that I , ins tead of going to dual ring RCS, I put the drog~e out at 70K. Conrad We just had that step backwards betwee:1 50 and 70K . Cooper There must be a hold over from Mercury there some­ where , too , still getting to me . Conrad Okay , now the next most important thing was that at 50 000 or shortly thereafter, we went ·;o repress . Gordo turned on the REPRESS and I hit ·;he o2 HIGH RATE , and as we planned you know , we wHr e not going to vent the cabin or open the inlet snorkel , and man , going through 27 000 feet that neEidle hit zero faster than you can say "Jack Robinson." That cabin came down from 5 paid to nothing and I said "Holy Christmas" ; it came down so fast t hat I was really humping to get the ... . . I wanted to get the --- PAGE 206 --- 201 ll' vent open and I opened the vent and opened the in- ,. let snorkel and set the recirc at 45 degrees in pretty fast order . But, all the fancy calculations by the ECS people are dead wrong , because there isn ' t enough in that repress or the o2 HIGH RATE to keep up with that differential drop off. We got fumes too, but not many. Cooper Boy, I dind't think they were hardly noticeable, at all. Conrad It was noticeable . Cooper Just a musty smell, Conrad But it was noticeable . I 'm suxe it helped to have the o2 HIGH RATE and the REPRESS on all the way down . Cooper But then the one thing that we did do then at 2000 . We closed it back up . Closed it back up and left t he REPRESS and o2 HIGH RATE on , s o that I expect that we had a little bit of delta pressuxe in the cabin when we touched. Conrad Oh, we did . We had about a pound. It was very s l owly coming up . Cooper It was up ..... CQnrad We had about a pound. Cooper Now I think this kept a l ot of the fumes out . --- PAGE 207 --- 202 '" Conrad Then we sat there in the water, very leisurely. It was still building up . I went and cy~led the o 2 HIGH RATE handle OFF. .. 6.6 35K Checklist Items Conrad Before you leave that let's just say that at 35 000 feet for the check off list we uncovered our D-rings. At 30 000 feet we turneci off the RCS I propellant A and Band they ran out shortly there- after. We 6.7 Communications Cooper We . . . communicated with the recovery forces . Tal ked to them at that point twice on the wa;)' down and they asked us for a short count. Conrad We gave this here. Cooper We gave this a short count, They sai6. "Roger, reading you loud and clear . " and they had us fixed at 270 degrees at ..... Conrad 289 , I think i t was. Cooper 289, was it? Well, some .... ,I know you had a degree and a bearing and a range on us at that point, Conrad We managed to get all the way through our post main check off list, too, 6.8 10,6K Barostat Cooper Then at . . ... the baros t a t came on, deployed the --- PAGE 208 --- CQNf;Ur>ENTI~[ 203 • drogue just as the barostat came on. It came on right at 10.6 , right on the money. I punched the main , deployed the main just as the baros tat came on. As we have already said , the main deployed ..... Conrad There seemed like an awful long time to me though from the time you punched the main for it to go through the sequence . It seemed like an eternity for the Rand R can to blow . Cooper Well , you could see the sequence going on out there, all this thing trundling out and all the long lines going out , and all the sequence happening, and then the main coming out . Conrad It was really pretty though . Cooper Well, I guess I was anticipating. Conrad It was just like in that picture . Cooper You see all this stuff coming out, you know , that drawing where it shows all the cy~les of the stuff coming out. Just like advertised. 6.9 Main Chute Deployment Cooper We reported when we had a drogue, when we had a good main. The main came out nominally. De- reefed ex­ actly on time .... . Conrad Beautiful thing. No gores out, no nothing, rips or anything, nothing. It was just nominal all the way. tG©Nft0ENltAL 4 --- PAGE 209 --- 204 Cooper It was a real pretty main, and we wer,~ very stable on the main . We weren't oscillating a.t all , I mean obviously. It looked like we were ju:3t coming straight down. Conrad Yes, the whole thing damped out. That is another reason the water landing was so smooth . Cooper And when we touched in the water, as :: said, we went to the 2000, we went to -- 6 . 10 Single Point Release FCSD Rep Okay, single point release . How about that? Cooper Single point release. It ' s there . I mean it's really a jolt when you go to single point release, but being aware of it we were both brc,ced like this when I hit it, it oscillated us a couple of t imes and then that is all there is to it . Conrad You hit the end of the strap and then you see-saw a couple of oscillations . That ' s exactly what it felt like .... . Cooper As long as you lmow what to expect there is no prob­ lem. I can see why Gus and John woul d lmock the heck out of themselves . Conrad Not expecting it. 6.11 Blood Pressure Measurements Cooper Okay, we gave a blood pressure at Guaymas after r etrofire and I told them I wouldn' t put the programer O~F-IDENT.IA --- PAGE 210 --- GGNFIDEf';ITIAL 205 ON until we were on the water and I gave them three ,. blood pressures and I don ' t think a:ny of them worked, I don't think the bowl bled down. 6.12 Post-Main Checklist Items FCSD REP Okay, we g-ot the rescue beacon without lights and the suit fans and ACME BIAS power OFF. This is post main check list and landing attitudes . .,. E@N~IDENTIAL --- PAGE 211 --- 206 ~GNFl&ENTIAf , 7,0 LANDING AND RECOVERY 7,1 Impact Cooper Impact, was very very soft . We just hit . We hit .. very easy. We didn't go under water at all . We didn ' t change attitude one bit from t he time we hit the water. We went bloop. Conrad We just pitched down a little bit Cooper The nose pitched down 8 or 10 degrees but the water didn't even come over the windows. lhe main hit parachute relea se, the chute drifted off in front just slightly out to the right of us md just sat out there in the water on the right fJr a long time. Conrad We did skip this one thing here with this 6. 13 post main check off list . We got all the way through that and I wanted to say that I had the decided impression that we got to the post main and got back over here on this 2000 foot check list pretty fast. I mean that time happene,d faster than the simula tor but it took us a little while to get our heads unlocked, and after we went to 2-point and get back on this check- off list, and boy, we • hadn ' t a:n:y more gotten through this when we were 0NFIBENTIAL --- PAGE 212 --- G0NFIDEI\ITIAL 201 over there to the 2000 Kand I was . . .. Cooper One thing that took a little bit of our time there though, Pete , was the fact that the AIR BOSS called us twice there and we were actually busy answering that. Conrad We were talking on the radio and a little talking to Houston on the radio too . FCSD REP Why don't you talk a little bit more about the 2000 foot that pressurized in the cabin . Conrad Yes, well then we went the D-ring safety cover. We covered our D- rings but I can't put my D- ring pin in so I didn ' t put the pin in until we were on the water. I can't put that pin in , in flight, strappen in the seat. I can't reach down there. Gordo , can. 'Gordo can reach down and get it. I can't do it. So, I didn't put mine in. Then I went to cabin vent UP and inlet snorkel UP and then left the recirc valve at 45 degrees, and of course the repress had been on since 50,000. So had the o2 HIGH RATE, or some altitude shortly thereafter. The cabin seemed to be coming up very slowly. It doesn't even with repress on. That's a, I guess, a lot of volume in there or something, but it just doesn ' t come up fast. So we were about a pound when CONFtDENTIAL --- PAGE 213 --- 208 CONEIDENJIAl we landed. F'CSD REP Never got over a pound? Conrad Never got over a pound I don ' t believe. Cooper Then we ca.me OFF on the repress and we opened .. our face plates, Conrad Then we opened our face plates and tcok a sniff in there. It didn't smell to bad . I had a little smell of RCS fumes. Now mind you we were s ealed off at 2000 so I know it didn't come in on the water. The RCS fumes that were in there came in there at 27000 when we opened the vent and the inlet snorkel so I ' m stil l -- if the structure would take jt, I really think you should come in and leave that inlet snorkel and that vent closed. If you did that you would ha-re a clean, cold cabin when you.hit the water. Okay, now . Cooper I didn't really think it was as object ionable . Conrad No, it wasn't objectionable. Cooper It was cool. One thing we might add ,:ight here right now, that we didn ' t cover back :.n the pre­ retro area was trat we went the full cold on everythi ng. We had that cabin so cold , and we went to cabin fan and so that the cagin wae1 about, wha t , 40 degrees, 50 degrees. --- PAGE 214 --- G0MFIDENTIAL 209 Conrad No , the cabin was a bout 53 degrees . Somewhere in there. It was a little over 50 , and the suit was rll!llling Cooper The sui t was rll!llling about 50 on reentry so the whole thing was pretty cool. Conrad It was never hot at any time. Cooper When we opened our face plates the cabin was still cool, the suits were still cool , and the snorkel and vent when we did open them and both fans came on after we went OFF of o HIGH RATE, Repress and 2 both fans came on. We were getting nice cool air through . .. . Yes, we have been hearing everybody say, you know, boy you've got to get those suits off, you really get hot in there. You see and Gordo said "Well come on we are going to be here for awhile, we'll get the suits off" and it was perfectly obvious that we were getting a good flow and I said "Well, why don ' t we put our neck dams, on and we ' ll leave the inlet snorkel open here and get this fans running and see, just see , just sit here for a second , because you get awful hot getting out of the suit period. And by golly we were in good shape. We could have stayed in tlut --- PAGE 215 --- 210 spacecraft 2, 3 hours. As a matter o.f fact the longer we stayed •.the cooler we wi~re getting because we were just sitting back letting -- .. Cooper We really debated seriously about wait ing if the carrier had been an hour or so nearer we would have waited for a carrier pick up rather than go with the choppers. Conrad Because we wer ei in good shape in theriuand we didn't feel bad and the smells weren't bad and what little RCS fumes where in there from picking them up a t 27000 went right out . Cooper Of course we had -- let 's f ace it thotgh , we had an ideal day on the water. It was like a. mill pond out on the water. It was nice and smcoth and sunny and everything was i n good shape , witb t he space­ craft. Conrad I t was early in the morning and the air was about 80 degrees - air t hat it was pulling in the air­ craft pumping in our· suits, see. But we were in good shape. 7. 2 Checklist s Cooper Check list . I thought our check lists were very good with a few minor things we hav e m,~ntioned CONFIDENTIAL --- PAGE 216 --- tfYENifP! 211 here that we might .. . we would suggest ma;ybe reshuffling a little there . 7, 3 Communica tions Cooper The communications were excellent all the way , all the way down until impact and from there on we were hearing everybody in the whole darn world but nobody apparently was hearing us . Conrad Now , Houston read us twice on the water, but .... Cooper Houston read us twice . Conrad We transmitted both on UHF and we transmitted on HF. Cooper Our HF antenna never did extend on the water. They don't lmow whats wrong with it at this point, but we went through the right procedures several times of extending it . Point: · of impact, we found out fairly shortly what our point of impace was by hearing the discussion in the air on where it was. Status of recovery. We were kept well informed of that because our radio receivers were working fin e . 7, 4 Systems Configuration Cooper Systems configuration,ECS was excellent . No probl em at all. Electrical was good, control was good , aeromedical - - what does a eromedical have to --- PAGE 217 --- 212 do with it here? FCSD REP Biomed records and all that stuff. Cooper The gear worked. The one thing was, the blood pressure bulb wouldn ' t bleed down and Pete never could get a proper blood pressure there when on the water. Conrad I took the bulb up to the helicopter .md gave it to the doctor and told him to check it right away and find out what happened because it wor:£ed fine a ll flight. 7.5 Spacecra ft Status Cooper Spacecraft status . There was a faint odor of fumes in there but I didn't personally cons:Lder them objectionable at all . Conrad It cleared out once we got the fans running. Cooper Ma.in chute was excellent. The windowii - - visibility was doggone good out the windows . .. ue were fogged over just a little bit. Conrad They steamed up a little bit. I coulc. see out of t hem all right and could see the airplanes flying overhead. Cooper They steamed up a little bit. After ~-e sat there ,. they steamed up more than they were when we first landed and they . . but we could see outside very NFIDENTIAL --- PAGE 218 --- C0~61DENTIA~ 213 well and I guess the guy outside probably couldn't .,. see in as well as we could see out . They were fogged a little. There were no l ea.ks that we cou ld tell. Electrical Power , everything was nominal . o was fine. 2 Conrad Electrical power, we,we, we, did not power .down the squib betteries after we got on the water and we went through the landing check list and powered down all electrical equipment except the radios and the beacons and a biomed recorders and the blood pressure. Cooper We took a complete power down check list. We followed check list right on the money. Sea condition was 2 to 3 foot easy swells. 7.6 Post Landing Activity Cooper Post landing activities . Let's see, we proceeded to continue to try and contact and answer somebody. We heard all the activity around and over and around us. The firs't thing we finatly heard in the way of communications was when one of the swimmers plugged in this outside phone jack and talked to us. He wasn't r eal clear but he was coming through pretty well . He wanted to know if we ,, --- PAGE 219 --- 214 C..ONFIB~Nft~t wanted to wait on the carrier or if we wanted a chopper pick up. I asked him how fal' the carrier was away and he went ahead and told t:.s about 75 miles at that time. We told him we relieved we wanted to take the choppers. 7.7 Comfort Cooper Comfort was fine in the spacecraft. EDSD REP How long were you in the spacecraft in your suit? Conrad 35, 40 minutes . Cooper About 35 or 40 minutes I . . . Maybe a little bit more . 7. 8 Recovery Force Personnel Cooper Recovery f orce personnel and communications . As I say they did communicate with us with the telephone. First of all one of the swimmers came up and looked in the window and held up his thumb and we held up our thumbs okay, so that took the sweE.t off them. Floa tation collar, they had slightly more trouble than usually getting it around but not a great deal. It probably took th~m maybe 10 or 15 minutEtS to get it around there and inflated . 7. 9 Egress Cooper Right after they got it inflated we told them we were coming out for the chopper. I opened the left --~ ONF-IDENTIAL --- PAGE 220 --- CONFIDEf\lTIAL 215 side hatch. We did have our . • • we saw that they had the floa tation collar around there and the sea was calm and there was no problem getting any water in the spacecraft and we decided we weren't going to go in the water ourselves . We did have our neck "'1ams on but we did not have our gloves on. We left our helmet and gloves in the cock- pit and decided well if we did go in the water for unforecast reason we had our water wings and our wrists are tight enough to hold your arms above water and not get much in. 7.10 Survival Gear Cooper So, we didn ' t fiddle with any survival gear or anything. 7,11 Crew Pick Up Cooper We just stood out on the nose of the spacecraft. In fact .•• then I moved from the nose over into one of the liftrafts. Pete came up out of the hatch and stood on the nose and he took the first . . . horse co~lar came around. He got the ho~se collar and went up to the chopper first and they lowered it again and I went in behind him. FCSD REP Oh, one thing we didn ' t mention here . How a bout cutting the chute, the main chute? CONFIDENTIAL --- PAGE 221 --- 216 Conrad Oh, you mean jettison? Gordo jettisoned about 1 second after we touched down. Cooper About 1 second: after we landed I hit Hand away it went. Conrad It sat right there beside us and float ed around for quite a while . Cooper It sat there about 30 yards off to the• f ront and slightly to one side of us. RCSD REP Okay . --- PAGE 222 --- _,., ✓ 10 cJ ZS' 33 .7~ 38 44- ~ 5:,- ~ S7 7 Z, ;eteP S~P 8 1 --- PAGE 223 --- \