CLASSIFICATION CHANGE to_ _ _ _ _ UN C LA SSIFIED _ _ _ _ By authority of Eq //6 <2., & -/“0 1 Changed by z^X^^a^Date NOV 2 fl 3 8 19 7 3 i PRELIMINARY GT-4 FLIGHT CREW DEBRIEFING TRANSCRIPT PART I Prepared. By Spacecraft Operations Branch Flight Crew Support Division June 16, 1965 This material contains information affecting the national defense of the United States within the meaning of the Espionage Laws, Title 18. U. S. C Section 793 and 794. the transmission or revela­ tion of which in any manner to an unauthorized person is prohibited by law. Group 4s Downgrade at 5 year intervals Declassified after 12 years NOTICE: Th is d ocum ent m a y b e exem pt from pub lic d isclosure und er th e Freed om of Infor­ m a tion Act (5 U.S .C. 552). Requests for its re­ lea se to persons outsid e th e U. S . G overnm ent sh ould b e h a nd led und er th e provisions of NAS A Policy D irective 1382.2s PREFACE This preliminary transcript was made from voice tape recordings of the GT-4 flight crew debriefing conducted aboard the recovery ship, the USS Wasp, on June 9, 1965- Although all the material contained in this transcript has been edited, the urgent need for the preliminary transcript by mission analysis personnel precluded a thorough editorial review prior to its publication. Errors in this transcript will be corrected as soon as possible and an official transcript will be published at a later date. This document contains a transcript of the first part of the debriefing, during which the crew described the mission generally from an operational viewpoint. A preliminary transcript of the re­ mainder of the debriefing will be published by June 2J, 1965- It will cover systems operations, operational checks, visual sightings, experiments, pre-mission planning, mission control, and training. •WfWhffW. TABLE OF CONTENTS Paragraph Page Number 1 .0 COUNTDOWN 1.1 Crew Insertion........................................-..1 1.2 Communications......................................... .2 1.3 Crew Participation and Countdown...................... -..6 1.4 Comfort..................................................7 1.5 Environmental Control System ............. 9 1.6 Sounds ........ 11 1.7 Vibrations ......... ....... 15 1.8 Visual ...................... 15 1.9 Crew Station Controls and Displays ...... 15 2 .0 POWERED FLIGHT 2.1 Lift-Off Cues ..........................................17 2.2 Roll Program ............. 19 2.3 Pitch Program .................. 19 2.4 Aerodynamics ........... -..20 2.5 Environmental Control System ...........................20 2.6 Maximum g .............................................. 21 2.7 Windshear............................................. 21 2.8 DCS Update .............................................22 2.9 Engine 1 Operation .................................. ...22 2.10 Engine 2 Status ......... ........23 2.11 Acceleration g’s ...... 23 2.12 BECO ...................................................24 2.13 Staging................................................25 2.14 Engine 2 Ignition.......... 25 2.15 RGS Initiate .......................................... .26 2.16 GO/NO GO ...............................................28 2.17 Systems Status .................. 28 2.18 Acceleration ........................ 31 2.19 SECO....................................................31 2.20 Steering...............................................52 3 .0 INSERTION 3.1 Post-SECO ............................................. 34 3.2 SECO + 20 Seconds ..................................... 35 5.3 Insertion Activities .................................. 58 4 .0 ORBITAL FLIGHT 4.1 Station-Keeping....................................... 50 4.2 Extravehicular Activities .......................... -..87 ’6€>NFIDENTIAL 4.3 Other Orbital Operations ............ .................J86 4.4 Preretro Preparations .................. 250 5 .0 RETROFIRE 5.1 T -36 Events .......................................... 259 5.2 1^-22 Events .......................................... 260 5.3 Tp-13 Events ..........................................260 5.4 Tp-12 Events ..........................................261 5,5 IE-5 Events ....................... 265 5.6 7 -1 Events ........................................... 270 5.7 TI-0 Events ........................................... 273 5.8 Retropack Jettison ........... 280 5.9 Communications ....... 281 6 .0 REENTRY 6,1 Reentry Parameter Update ...... 282 6.2 400 K.................................................282 6.3 0.4 g.............. 284 6.4 Acceleration Profile .......... 290 6,5 Spacecraft Control .................... 296 6.6 100 000 Feet ..........................................296 6.7 50 000 Feet.......................................... .299 6.8 Main Chute Deployment .................. 302 6.9 Communications ....................... -•303 6.10 Single-Point Release .................. .305 6.11 Postmain Checklist Items ..............................306 7 .0 LANDING AND RECOVERY 7.1 Impact .............................................. -.310 7.2 Checklists ............................................313 7.3 Communications .......... -.314 7.4 Systems Configuration........ ..................... ...316 7.5 Spacecraft Status ......... 320 7.6 Post-Landing Activities ............................... 325 7.7 Comfort ................. 325 7-8 Recovery Force Personnel ..............................326 7.9 Egress ............................................... .327 7.10 Survival Gear ......................................... 328 7.11 Crew Pickup .................... ..328 OeW tD ENTtAL COblFIDEMTIAL. 1.0 COUNTDOWN 1.1 Crew Insertion White The only problem during insertion was that I fogged up again in my suit before we got the fans on. I think I'm just going to always fog up in that suit of mine. We turned the fans on quick, but with the visors closed it doesn't go out. McDivitt We did have a problem with crew insertion on the Wet Mock and I think we had that probably pretty well taken care of. They put us on the suit loops and didn't turn the fans on. Normally you wait for a clearance from the Spacecraft Test Conductor before you throw any switches. Well, after we almost "died" of carbon dioxide poison­ ing during this test, we got this matter clarified. As soon as we got in the spacecraft and one of us was on the suit loop, we would go ahead and cut the switches on to put us on two fans. We did this during insertion in the Wet Mock. It really went well. White We really went for a long time in Wet Mock. I was beginning to wonder if I was going to have to open my visor. I was really uncomfortable. eOMFIBEMTIAl 2 1,2 C ommunica Hons McDivitt But everything worked out okay on this one. White Yes. McDivitt The timing was excellent, I thought. I didn’t think we had any problem at all. White No. I don’t believe they missed a stroke on the insertion. the engines were going to gimbal and when they White I think the communications were pretty well worked out, Jim? McDivitt Right, One thing, the last three minutes or four minutes, we got a little confused about who was talking to who. I was getting the Spacecraft Test Conductor, the Booster Test Conductor and the CAP COM at the same time. White We got a split count, too, on lift-off. McDivitt The first three or four minutes I was hearing the Booster Test Conductor. I heard what was going on on his loop, and I was listening to him get checks in from all of the guys. I really wasn't getting a clue as to what was going on. I was supposed to be getting the booster clues from the test conductor. I was supposed to find out when 5 were going to open the prevalves and stuff. I wasn't getting it from him. We were getting a lot of other information that made a lot of sense to the Booster Test Conductor, but not an awful lot to us. There were call-outs likeVSequence 05003 complete." Well, this just didn't mean any­ thing to us. On top of this we had the Spacecraft Test Conductor calling out the times, and super­ imposed on all of this was Al Shephard, the Cape CAP COM, calling out events that he was reading off that went on at certain specified times. He called out','Stage 1 prevalvesVand we could hear the fuel gushing downstairs and the whole booster rumbling. He called out','Stage 2 prevalvesVand you could hear the same thing all over again. I thought that was a lot more meaningful than the ‘ test conductor comments. White I think that was wrong,the way they were doing it. I think we weren't supposed to be on any loop except CAP COM at that time. McDivitt Well, I think what happened was that we got this thing over-coordinated. Al was going to give us all this information, but then as a result of GT—3, (Gus and John said they didn't get enough ^eWIDENTIA'L 4 White McDivitt information about the boosters) they put this in­ formation on the test conductor's loop too. We had too many guys talking. I think if just CAP COM talked from three minutes on down we would be all right. This is the way I thought it was going to happen, and then from three minutes on down it really got busy with the yak, yak, yak of everybody talking. I don't know whether we got off the Booster Test Conductor's loop or not, but at final countdown, Al gave me 2 minutes, 1 1/2, 1, JO, 20, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5t 4, 3. 2, 1. I got a similar count from the Spacecraft Test Conductor but it turned oi t that they were a second out of sequence on the countdown and Al was giving me 10 and our Spacecraft Test Conductor was giving me 9. So it went ten-nine, nine-eight, eight-seven. They were at the same time. All I knew was that we were getting close to engine ignition and then it started. So, we got a little over-communicated there. I think they kept us adequately informed on the hold. As a matter of fact, I'd say we got over-informed there at the end. We had too many guys keeping us informed and I think the pendulum go that we were algo getting his countdown. I CONFIDENTIAL 5 swung from the GT-3 flight where nobody got in­ formed of anything over to our flight where we got informed by three different people about the same event. White On our flight, too, we were really more aware of the problem than those people were. We could sit right here and see the gantry come down and stop, that was really the only problem they had in the whole count. McDivitt I don't think radio discipline is a problem. Each guy was disciplined on his own channel. They were conducting their tests on their own channel. But we were listening to three different communica­ tors at the same time. We should have had only one. I think probably what we will need to do is to get to about T-3, and then just cut in the CAP COM. White That was the way it was planned to be, I thought. That's the way Al planned it. McDivitt That's correct. I think, because there had been some lack of information on GT-J, that it some­ how had been written into the SEDR so that we were also on the Booster Test Conductor's MOPS, 6 1.5 Crew Participation and Countdown White think CAP COM, alone, would have been sufficient. One further comment, I had to turn my DHF volume all the way up to hear anybody. I was at max. There we were sitting right on the pad, talking to a guy two miles away, and there I was with the volume full up. It didn’t give me much confi­ dence as to reception I was going to get when I was 200 miles away, or three or four or five hundred miles away. I thought that the volume control on the radio was inadequate. We were wondering what we were going to have when we got up a hundred miles. McDivitt 'That's right. At max volume we didn't have enough and at minimum volume it didn't shut it off. We will cover this later. participate in anymore of the countdown than I McDivitt I think it was just about right. I don’t think we were over worked and I think we had enough to do to keep us busy. White Actually, all we really made was a check of switches. There wasn’t really too much else. Having the back-up crew run that midcount was the the right solution. I wouldn't have wanted to COMHDCMTIAL i did. McDivitt That's an excellent point. The flight crew's participation should he the final count, not the midcount and precount. It doesn't tire the prime crew out doing a lot of chores that they don't really have to do. I think this is a good pro­ cedure. 1 .4 C oEfcrt White Initially, the first 20 or JO minutes, I was squirming around and I felt a little uncomfor­ table. But after I had been in for JO or 40 minutes I didn't feel there was a real restric­ tion on staying for several more hours. I would have been very disappointed if they had said, "Well you have been in there long enough and we will work on this gantry and try it again tomor­ row." I would have been happy to stay there several more hours while they fixed the gantry instead of pulling me out. After an hour and 40 minutes,which is the end of the normal countdown,! didn't feel uncomfortable. We sat in the simulator and were a lot more un­ comfortable than this. I didn’t feel uncomfor­ table. I had a chance to take a couple of little CONFIDfMTiAfr 8 COblFIDEWtAL naps. I noticed Jim was napping too. McDivitt Yes. I concur with Ed, although I don’t want to get carried overboard. We shouldn’t scrub due to crew fatigue. White I think it is up to the crew. If the crew is un­ comfortable they should come down. But I don’t think he should say, ’’Okay, two hours and 30 minutes. You cut this off.", because it is an operational procedure. McDivitt When I first got assigned to the crew I always felt one of the toughest things to do would be laying back for an hour and 4-0 minutes or so prior to launch. The time we spent in the simu­ lator laying on our back, I thought to be a very uncomfortable position. As we went through all the training and testing at McDonald, and again at the Cape, my back got more callouses on it. I got used to laying with my feet over my head. At launch time I wasn't a bit tired from laying on my back. White This is brought out in one of our last simulations, where we ran the whole four hour simulation and we forgot to have them tilt us up to JO degrees. We just got used to running that way. COW ENTIM 9 McDivitt That's right, I just don't think we should scrub the flight because of fatigue.I don’t think we should do that. We weren't approaching this point. White We had a long way to go. 1.5 Environmental Control System McDivitt I think we ought to get this water management panel squared away and everybody figure out what we are supposed to do with those switches. I don't think we should be arguing about where the switches are supposed to be on the launch pad. If I hadn't asked somebody where the waste manage­ ment switches should be we would have probably launched with it in EVAPORATOR. I knew that it wasn't supposed to be in the evaporator. At one of the ten thousand briefings we got on it, we were told it shouldn't be there. We ought to get this kind of stuff squared away before launch day. Thirty minutes before lift-off we were arguing about where that switch was supposed to be. White I wasn't confident that they knew where they wanted that switch to be. McDivitt Well, I didn't think we should have it in the eva­ porator. So, I think that water panel could have cost as much as a weeks slip on our launch because 10 CONFIDENTIAL ous of all. they didn't know where to put those valves and it's only got three valves on it. It ought to he made much simplier than it is. I think they should get that squared away before the next flight. Ed and I knew where we wanted it. We wanted it off and the other two switches in NORMAL and leave it alone. That's what we flew with. That's the way it ought to be fixed. White We can get canned, though, for not flying with it in the right position by the checklist. It didn’t say that on the checklist Every check list we got was different. McDivitt That's right! Each one was different. Finally we decided we were going to do it as w.e did and left it through out the whole flight. Every­ thing worked fine. We had ECS briefings by a multitude of peoples from MAC including the guys who designed it. Everyone of them dis­ agreed. It probably started out to be one of the simplest things in the whole spacecraft. By the time they got through confusing us with it, I got the feeling nobody knew what was supposed to happen to it. I consider this the most danger- 11 1.6 White I was convinced of that, too, after the mix-up in putting all the water in the lithium hydroxide tanks. McDivitt There would have been about a JO minute four-day mission. McDivitt The people that built the thing don't know how it is supposed to go. They had better decide this and let us know. I felt that George Roe at the Cape knew what was going on except the Cape personnel got the valves in the wrong position and almost lost the lithium hydroxide canister full of water with no water in the tanka. I'm not pointing a finger at George Roe • I think he's pret.ty knowledgeable about the system. Maybe somebody just wasn't following directions. But somebody ought to find out about the water management system and make it clear to everybody how it is supposed to be operated. Sounds McDivitt You can hear the prevalves, both first and second stages. The prevalves and the fluid gushing are very loud noises comparable to the engine gim­ baling. I wasn't really aware that they were going to be that loud. CONFIDENTIAL 12 White I got that feeling when I read Ous and John's debriefing. McDivitt Did you? I didn't. I got the impression that it was going to be a much quieter noise. White Well, the whole noise level of the engine gimbal­ ing was louder tlian I thought it was going to be. It surprised me. McDivitt Yes. Engine gimbaling was much louder than I heard before. We heard this during Wet Mock and during precount and at midcount. You can hear those engines gimbal around; they really shake the spacecraft. But, I really wasn't prepared for the big noise that the prevalves make, and such a long noise as that fuel gushed down to the bottom. I guess that was what it was. I didn't like the sounds and vibrations we got when they raised and lowered the gantry. White It shook the whole spacecraft. McDivitt It shook the whole spacecraft—did you notice how it never came up straight? The spacecraft was supposed to line up kind of like this and then wham! I had visions of them knocking us off and laying us flat on the ground before we were launched. G G HRBfW M' €€>NFIDENT4AL 15 1.7 Vibrations White Those are closely associated with the sounds. McDivitt Yes. I think that the engine gimbaling makes a tremendous vibration in the spacecraft and pre­ valves on opening and make a tremendous vibration. The gantry going back and forth vibrated the spacecraft. I don't think there is anything else, do you? White No. 1,8 Visual White Well, you can sure see the gantry lower and the white room disappear. That is about all you can see besides the sky. McDivitt That's pretty impressive. That’s when I sort of got excited, when the gantry went down. That's a new realm. White I thought they were going to launch me. McDivitt You're sitting there by yourself then, instead of all those people milling around. I do want to make one other comment on this visual thing. We did Wet Mock about one or two o'clock in the afternoon. The sun was shining right in the window, almost straight down, such that the sun came across my visor from about just at the 14 'CONFiDENTIAt bridge of ray nose on down. I had a tremendous amount of reflection inside the helmet, and I had a great amount of difficulty seeing the instru­ ment panel. As a matter of fact, I'm not sure I could have seen the instrument panel at all. Those first few seconds there are extremely cri­ tical on launch. You have to be able to see those tank pressure gages. We ought to keep this in mind for those late afternoon launches. White That is a problem, but the g loads are so small at this time you could almost forget about look­ ing up. McDivitt Did I fly like this for awhile during launch? White I don't think so but you could have. The g load is so small. McDivitt I'm not sure whether I did or not. White "his is what we had to do during Wet Mock, We had to put our hand up and cover the window to look down at our instruments to see them. McDivitt I'm not sure I didn't launch that way. White I wouldn't be surprised if you did. McDivitt I don't think I launched that way, but as we tilted over and we got in the sun, I think I put my hand up for awhile. CONIID LNIIW eONIW ftAt 15 White Well, if the g’s are so low that— McDivitt When sun gets in your face you can't see the in­ strument panels because they are just too dark. White The sun gets in your eyes. The point that Jim was making is towards a late-in-the-day launch, which we might have later in the program, there might be a bit of a problem of seeing the instru­ ments during launch. Unless they put something up, which I really don't think you want to do. You are just going to have to put your arms up and shield the sun out and concentrate on your in­ struments or you won’t see them. They are just gone. There is probably a point even in an early morn­ ing trajectory as you start to pitch over where the sun will come right in your window and you won't be able to see your instruments unless you shield your eyes. 1.9 Crew Station Controls and Display White I found the switches all where they were supposed to be and the cockpit all set up. McDivitt So did I, except the comment I made on the water management system. They didn't have the control where it was supposed to be. At least, they had <-eeHFID ENTI AT 16 WNFIDENTIAt it in the place where everybody was arguing about whether or not it should be. White I certainly appreciated the work the backup crew did getting the cockpit all set up for us. Every­ thing was ready to go when we stepped in. That's the way it should be. CeNriDENHM 17 2.0 POWER FLIGHT 2.1 Lift-Off Cues McDivitt CAP COM gave lift-off, about as good a cue as you can get. White Wasn't any question either. Boy, you could feel the first little motions of the booster as it went up, It was really great! McDivitt I think you could feel the acceleration at re­ lease. There wasn't a doubt in my mind that we were loose. White That's right. I don't know if I could feel the bolts or hear them. McDivitt As a matter of fact, it seemed to steady out a little bit. The vibrations seemed to decrease a little. Pretty impressive! Not much vibration at lift-off. Very low. White Very low. I got vibrations later on, though, didn't you? McDivitt Yes. Noise. There wasn't much noise, was there? White No. There was less than I had expected. McDivitt Noise wasn't a cue to lift-off. Noise was there 18 -G Oh W ENTIM if you were bolted down all day long. I don't think the noise changed a bit at lift-off. White You could see the visual cues out the window. You were watching your gages, Jim. McDivitt Were there clouds out there? White No, but I could see it in the clear blue sky. McDivitt Could you? White Yes. I could see the motion, McDivitt Okay. Well, I couldn't. White I was looking out, McDivitt I saw a little cloud go by and then I didn't see any more clouds at all. White It was beautiful! McDivitt The event timer started just like it should. Of course, that's the best display inside the space­ craft for lift-off. The event timer starts, and it did. White We got both clocks started with the time hack. I had a watch hack on lift-off and the ... handle going. I knew when the engine ignited, within half a second accuracy. Three seconds later I was waiting for the lift-off and it came right at three seconds. McDivitt We could tell ignition, too. We could hear the feet/second and that would have been fine. Don't you? McDivitt I cut it short. I only burned about 5 seconds, and I stopped. White You have been doing that in all your simulations so I knew you were going to do that. You can even cut it less. It was amazing to me the separation you get immediately. McDivitt It almost seemed like we had a posigrade rocket on the spacecraft and a retrograde rocket on the CONFID ENTIAL- 74 "booster, the way we separated. Well, anyway, we told Guaymas that we had to get resolution imme­ diately if they wanted us to continue to chase the "booster "because we had used a lot of fuel and we weren't getting any closer and it was still pulling away from us. If they wanted to go for it they had to make up their minds and we would really go after it. But I didn't think it was wise. They confirmed this and said,'Knock it off'.' For closing rates at rendezvous, I think you could handle 20, JO, 40 feet/second if you are coming at it, not if you are going away from it. You see we never got a chance to do a rendezvous. We never rendezvoused with it. The "best thing we ever did was to get close enough to it where I could at least say I was at the same altitude with’ it for a change. It was the first time I had gotten "back to the same altitude since we left it at insertion. You just can't equate it. You don't do an optical rendezvous with the "booster below you. You try to put it above you so you have the stars and the sky background. It was below us. You couldn't do any line of sight nulling because there wasn't anything to null the G ONfID ENTtAL 75 White line of sight with. On the other hand I found that if the sun was on the window you couldn't see beyond the nose of the spacecraft. This satellite that I saw over around Hawaii—I saw the thing and we were closing on it. We might have had a better rendezvous with it than with our own booster. We were closing on it and I was concerned enough that I checked to see where the a.c. Power Switch was to see if I had maneuver capability at the time. The - sun came across the window and I lost it just like that. It might have been 5 * miles out. I don't know, it might have been then. It might have been 50 miles out, but I had the im­ pression in the JO or 40 seconds I saw it that it was auite close because I could make out the shape of it. Shoot! The sun came across the window and that was the last thing I saw out the window. I never saw another thing out the window until we were gone and until the sun finally came off the window. So, if you are doing an optical rendez­ vous and you've got the sun on the window, I don't know what you’d do. And if you have as dirty windows as we had— our windows had a white film of material on the CONFID ENTIAL- 76 outside , which made it very difficult to see out when the sun's rays reflected on these particles that were on the outside of the windshield. McDivitt To just summarize this thing, I think that we came off the booster with a fully unknown relative velocity which was much greater than what we anticipated, and it didn't seem to be an inplane relative velocity. It didn't seem to be an inplane local horizontal relative velocity. It was out-of- plane and it looked like the booster headed down, with respect to us because it started separating from us so rapidly. It also had less total velo­ city. I think that this was the first sur­ prise. It started tumbling and immediately the rates built up in just a very few minutes to something very high—40 to 50 degrees/second— but it never got any higher, at least the best we could tell. When we last saw it over Mexico or over southern United States it was still tumbling at about the same rate, I guess around 40 or 50 degrees/second. I felt that I got down to it all right and I was in reasonably good shape prior to Carnarvon, and from that time on until we came out of the darkness I lost it. And I think I lost it CONFID ENTIAL 77 ■because looking at a single light at night doesn’t give you any depth perception at all. You just don't know where the booster is. I think that summarizes it. Ed, you want to add anything? You weren’t -watching it as much as I was, but you saw enough of it to know exactly what was going on. White Well, you see I wasn't able to put the pieces quite together because I was either looking out, and I couldn't see when you were thrusting,or I was looking in and watching you when you were thrusting and listening and not looking out. I tried to interject my thoughts as we went along and I agree with what you said. I don't believe I want to add anything else. McDivitt Now that we've covered the tracking and the losing of the booster, I think we ought to go back to the very beginning at insertion and we will go through the checks that we went through as we proceeded along and the things that Ed and I were both doing aside from tracking the booster, the things that we were either doing to prepare to come back in at area 2-1 or to stay in orbit and proceed with the EVA as we had planned. In looking over the flight plan that we had and the briefing guide on Tonfid entia i 78 White KcDivitt page six,1 have already covered the things on platform alinement. I did not have time to aline the platform. I tried to get it to somewhere near the local horizontal so that in case we had to do a retrofire I'd he able to do the strofire. I brought the spacecraft up to a pitch attitude that I hoped was zero, but I never got the spacecraft alined to see that it was zero. So we really went into this thing without my ever having seen a zero pitch attitude on the spacecraft. Obviously I didn't get a chance to see the JO degree pitch do™ on the retrofire attitude. I didn’t really have time to look out the window and do a single thing that would have prepared us to reenter at 2-1 because we were so busy keeping track of— You know another thing I'd say also is that we were eternally optimistic. We felt we were going to aline the platform and watch the booster at the same time. As a matter of fact, while I was trying to get the alinement it became apparent to me that I could not aline it, I even thrusted vertically— G G NHMNfiAL CONFID ENTIAL- 79 McDivitt I was in. a horizontal position and. I thrusted down using my top thrusters, so that I would try to keep the booster in my view. Thrusting, chasing the booster, and alining the platform all at the same time—those are the kinds of things you have to do. So, I never did get the platform alined. I did not have time. I got it somewhere near local horizontal. If I was within plus or minus 5 degrees in the axis, I think I did a reasonably good job. The Thruster Control Mode Checks that took place at 15 minutes I didn't do as such. I would just throw it into a different mode and thrust. I just did it with a catch-as-catch-can. I did check out the different modes. White Everything seemed to be working. You weren't getting any thrusters that weren't firing, and your modes all seemed to me to be working properly. McDivitt It looked pretty good. White I had one comment on the Communications System Check. Remember we lost good communications with No. 1 UHF and we switched to No. 2 and seemed to have good communications with it CONFID ENTIAL 80 contra mi cat ions ware so lousy that we might have from then on? Now this wasn't representative that we lost UHF No. 1 because we used both of the sets at different times throughout the mission later on. But at this particular time, UHF 1 didn't give us good reception and we switched. McDivitt I thought comm ini cations through the first lay of the flight were atrocious. They were terrible. Finally we switched to th? deentry Stub Antenna and that seemed to fix the problem Didn't you think so? But you know we went back toreentry antenna over Carnarvon one time. We got just as good reception off of it that time as we did any other time. White I remember when you were making your Communications Check. That was when I was asleep. You were checking the two and you ended up with the reentry antenna. McDivit t Yes, later on in the flight, as I said, at the end of the first day or so. White We seemed to get better communications. McDivitt Coimnunications wore better. As a matter of fact, I was a little concerned that the 81 to come back in, because we were really losing communications. We were trying HF and all kinds of things. Information just wasn't getting up to us. White That was after EVA. McDivitt Right. Communications just weren’t getting up to us. White I figured we didn't have any communications with the ground during EVA. McDivitt No, we didn't. Our VOX blocked them out. White I know it. McDivitt But the Communications Systems Check that was supposed to be performed at 15 minutes— we sort of already accomplished the thing, because we'd used UHF No. 1 and No. 2. White I made the check with them. McDivitt Did you make the check? — that's right you made the check but we didn't use the HF because we weren't going to put the antenna out until after EVA. We didn't do anything with the urine bags except keep them right where they were. White At this time we didn't pressure check both suits, because we did this later. McDivitt We didn't aline the platform, as I mentioned. 'CONFID ENTIAL 82 The Control Mode Check was a catch-as-catch- can. You did unstow, the equipment that we were supposed to unstow. The blood pressure bulb, the Hasselblad camera and its packs, and a 16 mm camera. During this time when I was chasing the booster, I did manage to get to reach back behind my seat and pull out the bracket for the 16 ram camera. You tracked the booster while I smoothed the thing out. White That1s right. McDivitt We didn't get out the urine nozzle. How about the utility cord? Did you get out that fancy utility cord, the three-axis utility cord? White Yes, I knew where it was. I didn't give it to you because you didn't need it. McDivitt No, I didn't need it. That's right. As Ed said, we did not pressure check our suits at JO minutes like we were supposed to. McDivitt There's this little thing here that says measure all AV’s. All I did was put the computer Ln Catch-Up, hit the Start Comp button, and just let the numbers fall where they would. At the time that we stopped chasing the booster around, I had about 60 feet / second in one window, ^NFID ENTIAL 85 50 in another, and JO in another. I never really cane to a position to try to null all these things out to see what the total AV was. I was putting in the thrust with mostly the aft thrusters and the down-firing top thruster. I don't think I used the left and right thruster, at all. I don't think I used the bottom thurster at all. There was no difficulty controlling any of them. I used the forward­ firing thrusters once or twice to try to slow down, to take out total velocity. McDivitt Then there was the Accelerometer Bias Check which was another one of those things. I don't know how I let it get into the flight plan. White We both joked about that one, huh, Mac? We were really going to get an Accelerometer Check when we were trying to track the booster. McDivitt I was putting AV 's on the IVl's at a rate of a foot per minute at least. We ended up with over a foot per minute, I think, over that period of time. We couldn't have checked anybody's accelerometer bias, so I just didn't even fool around with it. We were supposed to take a blood pressure. Did you take that blood eeNFID ENTIAL 84 CONFID ENTIAL pressure, Ed? White Yes. McDivitt You did take the blood pressure. White I think I did. I had it out, I don't know whether they asked for it or not. McDivitt Okay. White I don't remember on that. McDivitt Okay. We got the Quantity Read off. I guess we got a time hack somewhere in there. White They called up I believe. I remember them calling the Quantity Read-Off, and I turned it OFF. McDivitt That'a right. McDivitt Then it says at one hour we were supposed to unstow and assemble the maneuvering unit in its 15 mm mount. I don't think we had that stuff out by then, did we? White No. McDivitt You see, this whole flight plan was based on me being able to track the booster without using any thrust, and essentially having the space­ craft stationary near the booster, without any maneuvering at all, where the station­ keeping was a matter of just looking out at the thing and controlling your attitude with pulse. CONFID ENTIAL 85 White McDivitt White McDivitt White We thought that if the booster was stationary we could get in close to it. We could essentially fly a formation by it with more attitude control than translation control, which left me then free to help Ed assemble all this stuff for the EVA. Well, it turned out that I didn’t dare take my eyes off the booster for half a second. So all tne things that we were supposed to do together up until the time we finally said goodby to the booster, Ed had to accomplish himself. I was completely unable to help him. The only thing I managed to do was to unstow the 16 mm camera bracket and put the 16 mm camera on. I couldn't quite get at that one. No. I could hardly get to it. So we were probably behind at the hour mark. Right? Yes. Not by an awful lot. I knew we had a problem with the booster, and I was more concerned with our problem with the booster than getting the gun and stuff out then. I felt that they were both tied together and once we lost the booster we didn't have a eeNFID ENTIAt- 86 sweat time-wise on making oar EVA. So, I was trying to be of what assistance I could to Jim on watching the booster during these first critical periods. McDivi ht Yes. It wasn't unappreciated because this booster was becoming a speck on the horizon, and if you blinked your eyes you could very wall lose the darn thing. White Wien we were out that second day, I think you said One time you did lose it for a minute. McDivitt That's right. White I was lucky enough to still be seeing it, until you started picking it up again. McDivitt That's right. So, l’m saying it really took two pairs of eyes constantly looking at that booster to keep it in sight. It's just one of those things that just took so much time thxt we hadn't planned on. It was almost unbelievable. McDivitt In our flight plan from an hour to an hour and twenty minutes we don't really show anything. Although, here again, we were busy with the booster. So, when we got around to closing with the booster, there wasn't any closing. We finally got clearance over the United States to stop CONFID ENTIAL-* fooling with the booster. I think this was in extremely wise decision. McDivitt I got to Guaymas and I said the booster was pulling away from us. We’d already used about 100 AV to stay with it, and I recommended that we just give up on it. We had to get a decision immediately because I couldn't stay with it and not use fuel at the same time. They came back from Texas. I talked to Guaymas and got their confirmation from Texas, which was only a matter of a couple of minutes, saying leave the booster. That was about the only thing tney could say. 4.2 Extravehicular Activity Wnite And this was the time I went after the gun. McDivitt Okay. At that time we reverted from station­ keeping, which we were both attempting to do to EVA preparation, which we both had to do. That's when Ed went after the gun, and we started our jreparation. We weren’t really far behind at this time. All we had to do was get the gun out and get the maneuvering unit. The cameras were- already out. You had the Zeiss too, didn't you? 87 -CONFID ENTIAL 68 White Yes. The Zeiss came out with the Hasselblad, from that same package as the movie camera. And the storage certainly was a lot easier. What do you think? McDivitt That1 s rigiit. White Particularly getting it out that center thing. You can just zip them out of there with no problem at all. MoDivitt So, at about 1:J0 we started to assemble the gun. If you look at the checklist, you see that we probably got the gun assembled in nothing flat- White It’s no problem to assemble the gun. McDivitt We started our egress preparations essentially On time. As a matter of fact, I think we even got started a little earlier. White Then, we weren't worrying about anything else. McDivitt Then, we weren't worrying about staying with the booster. We probably started it about 1:35 or 1:40. Over the States we started our egress preparation. We went to our ether checklist. White You were over Ascension, calling off the check­ list. McDivitt I started reading the checklist off to Ed and eeNFID ENTIAb 8? we went through it. He unstowed everything. Why don't you tell them what you did there, Ed? I just read the checklist off to you, and you went ahead and did it. White Okay. I had to get back into the right-hand box, and I unstowed the items there. The first time I went back in there, I took the first items out, and I did not unstow the full box. I remember I toll you, "it's all coming out, Jim. I'm going to bring them all out on the lanyard." Remember? McDivitt Right. White We’d take them off piece by piece if we need it. At that time I pulled the whole lanyard out and the cockpit was full of little bags.I was quite happy that they had prevailed upon me to put a lanyard on all this equipment. I had thought at one time that it would be more desirable not to put a lanyard on. We'd been working a lot in our simulations without the lanyard and it seemed pretty easy. But looking at it now, I highly recommend that everybody keep that stuff on a lanyard. McDivitt We would have really had a mess if we'd had all -CONFID ENTIAL— 90 C ONFIDENTIAL— those thlags floating around. It was bad enough as it was. Wnite Yes, eight or ten of those little bags, and I was glad they were all tied on to one string. I could control them in that manner. They were quite simple to unsnap. I thought the snap attachment made it pretty easy to unstow, and selectively pick out the items that I wanted. I unstowed the pouches that I needed, and then we got ready to take the long umbilical out. I had a little difficulty. It took me about three trys to get it out. It’s fairly big package to come through a small hole. It was a good thing that we had taken the velcro off of the batch, because there was no tendency for anything to hang up as we removed it. On the third try I got it out. McDivitt I thought you did an extremely good job getting the bag out. You got it out a lot quicker than I'd ever seen you do it in the Crew Procedures Trainee in Houston or in the simulator at the Cape. White You didn't know it. It took me three trys. McDivitt Well, maybe it did, but it sure looked like it •WNriDfNTiAL CONFID ENTIAL 91 came out a lot easier. I thought you got it out in a big hurry. I didn't notice that it took you three trys. I saw you start, and then just a short time later, it was out. White Well, it did come out pretty easy, and I think the storage was satisfactory, but I d certainly recommend that nothing be on the outside to keep it from coming out. It's a real tough— McDivitt Yes, we need the velcro off of there. We're pretty well sure of that. White The rest of the oquipment- the "y" connectors, the bag that contained the "y" connectors, and the attachments for the chest pack, I handed to you. I think you were keeping track of most of those things until the time I needed them. McDivitt Yes, I was. Wnite The storage of the ventilation module from the floor came off pretty easily. That's when I started going ahead and putting it all on. You read the checklist off to me. I had gone ahead .and done a few things anyhow. As you read them off I checked them off to be sure that I had done them all. I think we had ^CONFID ENTIAL 92 CeHHD EMIIAL everything out without meh problem at all. I think it took us longer actually to put it all together. McDivitt That’s right. It did. We started going throng the checklist here and patting the things on and we started getting more and more rushed. We were supposed to start the Egress Preparation Checklist at about 1:44- We probably started it at about 1:35 or so. We started it about 10 minutes early, roughly, maybe five to 10 minutes early. We were supposed to be ready to start the depressuraza- tion at 2:JO over Carnarvon. White I think I could have gone through and hooked everything all up, but I felt that we should go through fairly close to the procedure we had set up on the checklist. McDivitt That's right. White I think this slowed us down. McDivitt Well, we set the procedure up so that when we finished with it, it would be right. I think this helter-skelter thing that we were being forced into was for the birds. So as we got farther along, it became apparent to me that eONriD ENTtAL -CONFID ENTIAL « the thing to do would be to stop. White Right. McDivitt Go ahead with the assembly of the stuff. Why don't you comment on that? White l've commented in my Self Debriefing about the equipment and the assembly of it. I thought there was no difficulty at all in connecting the "y" connectors, the hoses, and the chest pack. I thought the connection of the chest pack to my harness was a good one. With the velcro I could move it in and out whenever I wanted to so that I could make my connections on the inlet side of the EOS hoses. It went along pretty smoothly, as a matter of fact. I think as we progressed along in it though, we felt that we had everything done. I didn’t really feel that we had everything done in a thorough manner. And I think you had that same feeling. McDivitt That's right. Wnen we got to Kano or Tananarive --I think it was Tananarive--'! called whoever I was talking to and said that we were running late and I thought that we would probably not do the EVA. on this particular rev. I knew that -eeNflMNTIAt 94 CONFID ENTIAL' we had mother rev on which we could io it. It looked to me like we had all the stuff hooked up, bat we hadn't really had a chance to check it. I also noticed, Ed, that you were getting awfully hot. You were starting to perspire a lot. I didn't like the way you looked to start this whole thing off. So I told them over Tananarive--I believe it was Tananarive—that we would go ahead and continue on, and I would let them know whether or not we were going io depressurize at the next station. We went on ahead and it looked to me like you were all hooked up and about ready to go except for one thing. White We forgot the thermal gloves. I did not have my thermal gloves on. McDivitt You did not have the thermal gloves oa, which is sort of insignificant, but we hadn't really had a chance to check over the equipment to make sure tnat Lt was in the right spot. White Well, we talked and you said, "What do you think?" We talked it over and I had the same feeling.I thought it sure would oe smart if we had about 20 minutes to just sit here real still CONFID ENTIAL -CONFID ENTIAL 9 5 before we go out. McDivitt I think we were in a situation where it would probably have gone all right. We had completed about SO percent of what we really should have had done as far as the checking went, and I just didn't feel that we were in the right shape. Ed didn't think we were, and besides, I could see Ed. He couldn't see himself. Ed looked awfully hot, and he looked like he was getting a little pooped out from playing around with that big suit. I thought that the best thing for his sake, and I knew he wouldn't admit it, was to let him rest up for another orbit. White I agree that was the best judgment. McDivitt So, when we got to Carnarvon—I guess it was Carnarvon—I called them and said we were not going to come out on that orbit. White It was Carnarvon. It was just before we depressurized. McDivitt So, we postponed it until the next orbit. As a matter of fact, after that we just sat there. We didn't do a thing for about 10 minutes. I let Ed cool off a little bit. We were on two- eONFID ENTIAL. 96 CONFID ENTIAL' faa operation at the time. We pst sat there and we were cooled off. We went around for about twenty minutes then. Whits Okay. Then as we went back around, I asked you to go through the checklist again, and we went through item by item this time. McDivit t That's right. I might add tnat wo went right back to the beginning checklist, the Egress Preparation. Checklist. We started at the top one, and we did every step on it again. We verified every step to make sure we hadn't left anything out. White We actually went in and checked this time. Another thing we hadn't really positively checked was the position of all the locks on all of the hose inlets and outlets. This time we actually checked all those locked. All of them were locked in, but it was a good thing to do, I believe. McDivitt You want to make sure. We did do our Suit Integrity Check before we started all this stuff. Waite That's right. We started before we actually went to the unstowing of the stuff from the right­ hand aft food box. We went to the Suit G eNFID ENHAL CONFID ENTIAL 57 Integrity Ch eck. McDivitt Well, I don’t know where it is, but we did it when we were supposed to do it. McDivitt We did the .Suit Integrity heck before we started tne Egress Preparation Checklist, That's when we did it, over the States. White I think we did that just about the time you decided to give up on the booster. We did the Suit Integrity Check. Both suits checked out all right. It went up to 8,5 and it leaked down to about 8,5 or something like that. McDivitt Sams thing with mine. It went up to 8.5 and leaked down just a little bit. Not enough to be concerned about. White No. Oh, one thing that we did do on that extra orbit that we went around-- I disconnected the repress system and we went back on the— McDivitt Oh, yes. We never even got on the repress system, did we? White Yes, I believe we were, but then we turned it off. We were already to depressurise and then we went back on the spacecraft EOS system, full, and went through and reverified the whole checklist again. The only things that I would G G NFID ENTIM 98 CONFID ENTIAL say we hadn't done to my satisfaction the first time was to check the inlet and outlet positions of the locks, and 1 didn't have my thermal gloves on. It turned out I didn't need them. McDivitt Also, dining this period of time I alined the platform, which was completely mlsalined. It was probably alined within a couple degrees, but as we went around in Orbit Rate it got farther and farther out of tolerance. So, I managed to al Ine the platform. Here again, I might comment on the fact that our initial flight plan was so optimistic that it was almost unbelievable. The both of us worked full time on doing nothing except preparing for EVA, and we didn't quite get the job done. I can't believe that we could have possibly flown formation with the booster and taken pictures of it and all the other things that we had scheduled, and still prepared for this thing and even come close to completing it. White Well, the way we would have had to do it, would have been without a checklist. I would have had to just go ahead and hook everything up. I think w*; could have done it satisfactorily in CONFID ENTIAL CONFID ENTIAL 99 this manner, but it -wouldn't have been the way we would have wanted it. McDivitt Yes, that's right. I don't think that's the way it should be done. It was just too bad that we had a time limit on it, but when we did get rid of the booster, or the booster no longer became a part of the flight plan, then the time limit vanished. We found out that we really needed that extra orbit,or probably could have used another 20 minutes. White Yes. We went back. And I remember as we came over Carnarvon, we had about a 15 minute chat back and forth—kind of a rest period. We were all hooked up at that time, and that's the time we went on the repress flow, ready for the depressurization. I think they gave us a GO then for our EVA. McDivitt That's right. We depressurized the cabin and got down to 2 psi to check our blood pressure. We tried to put our blood pressure plugs in the blood pressure plug port and found out that we didn't have any blood pressure plugs on either suits. This was quite a surprise. An unpleasant one, I might add. Well, we decided CONFID ENTIAL 100 that from our past experience and our knowledge of the suit that even if we did spring a leak in the blood pressure cuff the size hole that we had in the suit would not be catastrophic, and we decided to go ahead with the EVA. White It was within the' capability of the system we were using. McDivitt At Carnarvon we not only got the go-ahead to start the depressurazation, we also got the go- ahead to open up the hatch, the go-ahead that we weren't supposed to get until Hawaii. So, ———----—— -- — we went ahead and did that. \ White Yes. I'm kind of curious of the whole time. We were out nearly an orbit, I think. We didn't get it closed back again till we got back around to Carnarvon. McDivitt We were in a whole orbit depressurized. White Yes, I don't think people quite realize that. McDivitt We'll remind them. As we got to the hatch opening thing, we had our first difficulties with the hatch. The gain gear, I guess you want to call it—actually I call it the ratchet- didn't want to engage into the UNLOCK position. •eeNFID ENTIAl 101 White We fooled with it a few times and it finally engaged in the UNLOCK position, and Ed was able to go ahead and start. The first indication of trouble was when I unstowed the handle to open the hatch. The handle freely moved up and down with no tension on it at all. I knew right away where the trouble was. It was up in that little spring on the gain pawl. So, I went up and manipulated it back and forth in hopes that I could break the lubrication loose in the spring to get it to work. We must have spent several minutes with the hatch. I thought perhaps it might have been stuck in the manner that the hatch got stuck in the Wet Mock, where it just was stuck. You could ratchet it open, but the hatch itself wouldn't open. It was pretty apparent the trouble was in the gain pawl. I jimmied it back and forth, and then I decided to go ahead and try the technique of actuating it in sequence with the hatch handle. If you actually replaced the operation of the spring with mechanically moving the gain pawl up and down, you can do the same work that the spring does. 102 G eHHD EMTW McDivitt Your fingers sort of take the place of the spring and drive this little pawl home. White This is the first time we actually tried this in a suit. It requires you to press up with your left arm to get at the gain pawl, and at the same time hold yourself down. And I think later on this was a source of some of our problems which I brought out now so that we can find out later on. I felt it start to engage, and start to ratchet the lugs out. Jim also verified that they were coming open. I backed them off, and I remember Jim saying ,fOcop! hot so fast!", and at that time it popped. The hatch actually popped open, jumped open about 5 or 4 inches. McDivitt I was expecting the hatch to come open with a bang. Although we had the cabin to vent and it had bled on down to where there was nothing indicated on the Cabin Pressure Gage , we still really had the repress valve on. He was bleeding right into the spacecraft. We never got down to a vacuum and even though we had a cabin pressure of only a tenth of a psi, we spread it over the entire area of that hatch, CONFID ENTIAL --CONFID ENTIAL- W5 and. that puts a pretty good, size force on it. I had a real tight hold on the hatch closing device, and when it popped open I was able to snub it. White It didn't really open with much force, did it? McDivitt Well, it did. It opened with a fair amount. It popped and I couldn't stop it the first inch or so. Then, of course, as soon as it opened that much pressure bled off. I just sort of snubbed the thing to keep it from flying all the way open. Now if I hadn't been holding onto it, I don't think it would have gone open more than two or three feet. White This is another point too. There's more force on the hatch actuator than I thought. I didn't just flip the door open with my hand. I had to actually forcibly push it open, similar to the force with which I opened the hatch laying on my back under one "g". That's about the force that I had to put on the hatch to open it. McDivitt This extra force that we are talking about is due to the 0-rings they put in the pyros that are used for jettisoning the hatch. This is something that they put in just before the eONFID ENTIAt 104 White flight. Something that we'd gone out to the spacecraft to feel. We knew just about what the force was, but it was pretty high. Okay. At this time I had certain things that I had to accomplish. I had to mount the camera on the back of the adapter, and mount the umbilical guard on the edge of the door, I elected, as I had planned, to go ahead and mount the camera first and then the umbilical guard. I mounted the camera and it went on without too much difficulty. The three little lugs on the bottom are a good mounting scheme. I think I would make a little easier engaging device for working out in a hard suit. I had familiarity with it, and it did lock up there all right. The umbilical guard for the umbilical on the side of the door took me a little longer to mount. Back to opening the hatch—I had the thermal gloves on when we were opening the hatch, and because of the fine work I had to do with the little gain and the drive lugs up there, I had to remove the thermal gloves so th *t I could actually actuate those small levers. I couldn't do them with any precision CONFIDENTIAL C ONFIDENTIAL 105 with my gloved, hand. So, I took the thermal gloves off at this time and. I handed them to Jim. When I got back out I didn't notice any temperature extremes. I felt quite confident that there wouldn’t be any heat since we just came out of the dark side, so I decided to do the actual work in putting this equipment on with my plain pressure suit gloves. I had much more feel with them. Let me get back now to the umbilical guard on the door. It went on pretty well. It took me a little longer and it took me four or five trys to get the little pin into the hole that actually snubbed the guard down on the door. I did something then that I hadn't planned to do. The bag had floated up and out of the spacecraft and now it was above the point where the hose was going through the umbilical guard. I had planned to keep it down inside. I left it there for two reasons: (l) I figured it was there already and I would have had to take the umbilical cord off again and scooted it back down, and (2) I also felt that Jim might have had a better view if it wasn't sitting right in front of him on the hose coming CONFID ENTIAL 106 up from the r 'press valve. I elected to go ahead and leave the bag there. I then reported to Jim that I had everything all mounted and was ready to go. I had planned to take a short series of pictures. Since we had gotten out early, I had a little extra time at this time, so I went ahead and turned the outside EVA camera on. I took a short sequence of pictures that actually gives the egress up out of the seat. I kind of went back down and came out again so they would get an actual picture of it, and then I turned the camera off again. I mounted the camera and I turned it on while it was on the mount. I took a short sequence when I asked Jim to hand me my left thermal glove, which he did. I put the thermal glove on while the camera was running. I turned back around. I wanted to be sure the camera was off, so I took it off the mount and I turned the camera off and actually visually took a look to see if the switch was off. McDivitt Did you knock it off one time? I thought you said the camera fell off. G G NFID ENHAL €eNFID ENTIAt- 107 White By golly, I did. So I must of mounted it four times. That's right, I knocked it off one time during this time when I was out there. I got the picture of the egress, and then I asked you to hand me the gun. At this time the camera wasn’t running. I had the glove on my left hand, and I went ahead and took the gun and made sure that it was ready to go. I had the camera on at that time and the valve was on. I checked the valve to be sure it was on and I was essentially ready to go. I don't know how long this took, but it took me longer than I thought. We had had early egress and it wasn't too much before I got the GO that I was ready to leave the spacecraft. McDivitt I'm not sure whether we got that GO from Hawaii or Guaymas. I sort of suspect that we got that GO from Hawaii, not Guaymas as we had originally planned. White Well, it sure seemed short from the time I was mounting all that stuff out there to the time you told me go. McDivitt That's right. I'm sure we were talking to Hawaii, and they said you're clear to proceed •CONFID ENTIAL 108 -CONFIDENTIAL with EVA. White And that's when I went. I bet we went out at Hawaii. McDivitt I think we went out at Hawaii. White I delayed from the time you gave just a minute, long enough to actuate the camera on the outside. This was kind of interesting. When I actuated that camera, I had my gun tied to my arm with the tether. It floated freely to my right. I turned back around and turned the switch ON on the camera, and listened and made sure the thing was running. I knew it was running, and put it down. I think you'll see this on the film. I wanted to be sure it was running when I mounted it back there. I actually took it off and turned it on, and I remember it jiggling up and down when I was trying to stick it on there. It ought to be a funny looking film. And it might even show the gun floating beside me as I was mounting it. That's when you said, "Slow down. You're getting awfully hot." I was working pretty hard to get that on. I mounted the camera again and this is where I tried to actually maneuver right out .CONFID ENTIAL (5G RFID ENTIA 109 of the spacecraft. I knew right away as soon as I got up— I felt even before — that the technique of holding on to the bar in the spacecraft and sticking a finger in the RCS thruster wasn t going to work. I mentioned that to Jim before — that I didn’t think I would be able to do it. McDivitt I think that you and I both knew how you were going to do, and everybody else was planning for us how we were going to do it, but without any real experience in it. People who didn't know a lot about it were planning this sequence aid it wasn't the way it should have been. White I couldn't have done that. I didn't have three hands. I couldn't hold the gun and put a finger in the RCS nozzle, and hold the handle at the same time. I thought it would be more desirable anyhow to actually depart the space­ craft with no velocity, other than that imparted by the gun. This is exactly what I did. I thought that I was free of the spacecraft, and I fired the gun. I realized that my legs were still dragging a little bit on the side of the seat, so I pulled myself out until I could see that my feet were actually out of the €©NFID ENTIAb 110 gun really worked quite well. I believe that I spacecraft. I think you called me and said I was out of the spacecraft. McDivitt I called and told you that you were clear. That's right. White And that's when I started firing the gun and actually propelled myself under the influence of the gun. I don't believe I gave any input into the spacecraft when 1 left that time, did I? McDivitt No, you left as clean as a whistle. White Later on, I gave you some pretty big ones. McDivitt You were really bouncing around then. White Now at the time, I left entirely under the influence of the gun and it carried me right straight out, a little higher than I wanted to go. I wanted to maneuver over to your side, but I maneuvered out of the spacecraft and forward and perhaps a little higher than I wanted to be. When I got out to what T estimate as p cob ably one-half or two-thirds the way out on the tether, I was out past the nose of the spacecraft. I started a yaw to the left with the gun and that's when I reported that the ^eNFID ENTIAT 111 stopped that yaw, and I started translate''^ back toward the spacecraft. It was either on this translation or the one following this that I got into a bit of a combination of a pitch roll and the yaw together. I felt that I could have corrected it, but I knew that it would lave taken mor f xel than I had wanted to expend with the gun, so I gave a little tug on the tether and came back in. This is the first experience I had with tether dynamics and it brought me right back to where I did not want to be. It brought me right back on the top of the space­ craft, by the adapter section. Jim was calling me and said that I was out of his sight. I told him that I was all right, that I was up above the spacecraft, I looked down and I could see attitude thrusters firing, little white puffs out of each one. I wasn’t very close. They looked just like what Chamberlain's report told us. It looked just like about a foot and a half or maybe 2 feet of plume from the space­ craft and certainly didn't look ominous to me at all. In fact it looked kind of like the spacecraft was really alive and working down CONFID ENTIAL 112 there. I knew Jim was doing his job holding attitude for me. McDivitt Let me comment on the attitude-holding right now. Initially we started out in blunt-end- forward, banked to the left about JO degrees or so. This happened to be the attitude we were in. We wanted to be blunt-end-forward for the sun, and they told me it didn't make any difference what attitude that we were in when we opened up the hatch. We had originally planned on opening the hatch toward the ground. I was called by some station that said it didn't make any difference what attitude I was in when I opened the hatch. We opened the hatch. We opened it in that particular attitude, and I held the attitude for the first portion of the time that Ed was out. When you had tha gun you managed to stay reasonably well out in front. I held the spacecraft essentially stationary with respect to the local horizontal. After you ran out of fuel in the gun you were on top of the spacecraft all of ths time. I felt that unless you rsally had to have the thing stablized, to maintain your sense of balance or CONFID ENTIAL 115 whatever you want to sail it, I wouldn't fire the thrusters. White You asked that already when I was out. McDivitt Yes. I asked you if you needed it and you said no. So, then I felt it would be better not to fire the thrusters, because you were drifting back up over the cockpit. I could see that you were going up over us. I couldn't see back behind me, but I could see by the motions that you had when you went by me that you were going to continue on. I felt th’t it would be a lot safer if we just let the spacecraft drift unless it got into very high rates. I fired the jets a couple of times just to k-iook o^f the rates. I let it start drifting when you got on the tether so that you wouldn't get back there on top of one of those thrusters when I fired them. From about the time you ran out of fuel until you got back in I didn't do much attitude controlling. I did some. Everytime the rates got up pretty high, l'd knock them off. You were able to maneuver around the spacecraft when the spacecraft itself had rates of say plus or minus 2 degrees/second in a S eNFID ENTIAL 114 G 0 NHD ENT+AL White I couple of the axes at the same time. Here again before the flight we discussed the axis system. Ed selected the spacecraft as his axis system. It didn't appear that he was having a bit of trouble with it. He was maneuvering with respect to it, regardless of what the earth, sun, moon, and stars were doing. It was pretty obvious to me that was exactly what he was doing. Well, when I came back the first time to the spacecraft with the gun— I had used the tether to bring me back—I did go back up on the adapter area. This is the first time it had happened. I sail, "All right. l'm coming back out again." This is one of the most impressive uses of the gun that I had. I started back out with that gun, and I decided that I would fire a pretty good burst too. I started back out with that gun, and I literally flew with the gun right down along the edge of the spacecraft, right out to the front of the nose, and out past the end of the nose. I then actually stopped myself with the gun. That was easier than I thought. I must have been fairly eG NHD ENTIAR 115 fortunate, because I must have fired it right through my CG. I stopped out there and, if my memory serves me right, this is where I tried a couple of yaw maneuvers. I tried a couple of yaw and a couple of pitch maneuvers, and then / I started firing the gun to come back in. I I think this was the time that the gun ran out. And I was actually able to stop myself with it out there that second time too. The longest firing time that I put on the gun was the one that I used to start over the doors up by the \ adapter section. I started back out then. I probably fired it for a one second burst or \ something like that. I used small burst all the time. You could put a little burst in and the response was tremendous. You could start a slow yaw or a slow pitch. It seemed to be a rather efficient way to operate. I would have liked to have had a three foot bottle out there— the bigger the better. It was quite easy to control. I feel that with the gun there would be no difficulty in maneuvering back to the aft end of the spacecraft, and this was exactly what I did later on, just on the tether. I got G ^HFID ENTIAb 116 G ONEID ENTIAl, all the way back. So, I ran out of air with the gun and I reported this to Jim. I didn't attempt to take any pictures while I was actually maneuvering with the gun. The technique that I used with the gun was the teohniq ie that we developed on the air-bearing platform. I kept ray left hand out to the side, and the gun as close to my center of gravity as I could. I think that the training I had on the air-bearing tables was very representative, especially in yaw and pitch. I felt quite confident with the gun in yaw a?a pitch, but I felt a little less confident in roll. 1 felt that I would have to use too much of my fuel. I felt that it would be a little more difficult to control and I didn't want to use my fuel to take out my roll combination with the yaw. We divided our plan so that I would have a part of it on the maneuver and a part of it on the tether. I don't know how far along we were when the gun ran out. McDivitt Right on schedule when the gun ran out. We planned four minutes for the gun portion of it. We were just about on schedule. G ©NFID ENTIM -G eNFID ENTIAL- 117 White I bet we used a little more than four, because I think we came out earlier than we thought. McDivitt No, I started the event timer to time it. White Well, this is where my control difficulty began. As soon as my gun ran out I wasn't able to control myself the way I could with the gun. With that gun, I could decide to go to a part of a spacecraft and very confidently go. I think right now that I wish that I had given Jim the gun and taken the camera off. Now I was working on taking some pictures and working on the tether dynamics. I immediately realized what was wrong. I realized that our tether was mounted on a plane oblique to the angle in which I wanted to translate. I remember from our air-bearing work that every­ time you got at an angle from the perpendicular where your tether was counted, it gave you a nice arcing trajectory back in the opposite direction. You're actually like a weight on the end of a string. If you push out in one direction, and you're at an angle from 'he perpendicular, when you reach the end of a tether, it neatly sends you in a long arc back eCNFID ENTIAb 118 ’CURFlD ENTIAE- in the opposite direction. Each time this arc carried me right back to the top of the adapter, to the top of hie spacecraft, in fact toward the adapter section. One time I rfas so close to the thrusters back there that I called Jim. I said, "Don't fire anymore.", because I was right on the thrusters. I was even closer than that foot and a half which I had noted to be tne length of the thruster plumes, and I didn't want to sit on a firing thruster. “CONFID ENTIAL CONFID ENTIAL 119 White We were discussing the EVA and I was spying that I spent approximately 70 percent of my time, it seemed, trying to get out of the area back above the spacecraft in the adapter area. McDivitt Yes, you intended to go toward the position that was directly over the cockpit. You always arced passed it because you were coming from the front. White This was exactly right because that's exactly where my tether was connected. Chris had been very emphatic that he wanted me to stay out of this area, and I had agreed to stay out of there. I tell you, I was doing my level best to keep out but the tether dynamics just put me back there all the time. McDivitt Let me interject something here. When we were talking about the control modes and how we were going to control the spacecraft, we decided on the Pulse Mode rather than the Horizon Scan Mode, or anything like that. The Horizon Scar Mode would leave me free to use both hands to take pictures of you and that way I wouldn’t have had to control the spacecraft. But since it CONFID ENTIAL. 120 CONFID ENTIAL- was an automatic mode and it fired whenever it felt like firing. It didn’t give us any flexibil­ ity, and this is why I felt that the best mode to be in was Pulse, in case you did get back there• White That's exactly what happened. McDivitt I didn't have to worry about the thruster going off in your face. I didn’t want the thrusters to fire and they didn’t fire because I didn't touch them. It was a wise choice. White I think this was good. When you look at it from a picture-taking viewpoint, it gave a wider spectrum of pictures. You got different views of the earth and the horizon. I'm glad we weren't held to a specific mode. McDivitt I think that the picture we did take or the attitude that we started out, which is shown in the newspaper, is just about right. McDivitt I guess we banked over to the right, I don't know, White That must have been just as I came out. McDivitt I don't remember, but it had enough of the ground in the background so that it was certainly CONFID ENTIAL CONFID ENTIAL 121 worthwhile. White On one of my passes back to the adapter area I got so far back that I was about 3 or 4 feet from the adapter separation plane, perpendicular to it. It was rather jagged. There did appear to be some sharp edges but it really didn’t look very imposing to me. I took a picture of it. That's one picture that I believe was good and should come out. McDivitt The trouble is it was probably set on infinity and you were up about 5 feet. White No, I set the camera to about 15 feet or so. It might be a little fuzzy because it was too close. White No, I didn't see the far side of the adapter. It didn't go all the way around. I think I could have pushed off and gotten back that far. McDivitt No. Better to stay away from it. White Well, I felt that if I got going I could hase swung all the way around and had my umbilical right on the edge, without anything to hold on to or any gun to control myself. This didn't seem like it was at all safe and I had told Chris that I wouldn't go behind the craft. So I didn't go back there. -CONFID ENTIM 122 -G ONHD ENW M McDivitt That must have been just about the time I told, you to come back in. White No, I would estimate this was about two-thirds of the way and about this time I was after pictures. I knew this was a part of the flight plan that I had, in my mind, fulfilled satisfactorilly. So I tried to get some pictures and this is where I really imparted some velocities, trying to get away from the spacecraft into a position so I could take a picture. I went out to the end of my tether cord quite a few times doing this. I seemed like every time I would be completely 180 degrees to the spacecraft. I'd have beautiful views of the ground but I couldn't see the spacecraft. It was a definite mistake to mount the camera on the gun. That made it very difficult to use the camera. I had to point not only the camera but the gun with the long thrusters mounted out on the little arms. I'd want to take a picture of an object like the spacecraft, and there were too many loose items to get tangled up in and block the camera. I know my tie-down strap was floating loose. I had left that out intentionally so that I could •CONFID ENTIAL -CONFID ENTIAL 125 get it later on anytime I had to pull my helmet down. Occasionally when I got in close to the spacecraft, the bag and strings associated with the bag were tangling up around the vicinity of the gun and the camera. And it seemed like the umbilical was right in front of the camera all the time. So, I think the pictures will verify that I was flicking my right arm quite a bit in the latter part of the flight, trying to clear things out from in front of it to get a picture. Whenever I was in a position to get a picture it seemed like I was facing away from the spacecraft. I took a couple of shots in desper­ ation and I think I might have gotten a piece of the spacecraft. But I never got the picture that I was after. I wanted to get a picture of Jim sitting in that spacecraft, through the open hatch, with the whole spacecraft. I know that I didn’t get that. In fact, as time went on I realized that I wasn’t going to get much of a picture. I was trying everything I knew to get out there and get stabilized so that I could turn around and get a good picture. I just couldn’t do this. This was at the time when I was looking CONFID ENTIAL., 124 CONFID ENTIAL- a little into the tether dynamics, and I actually kicked off from the spacecraft pretty hard. I remember Jim saying, "Hey, you’re imparting 2 degrees/second rotational velocity to the space­ craft when you depart." I was pushing the space­ craft quite vigorously. I wanted to push off at an angle of about 50 "to 40 degrees to the surface of the spacecraft. And anytime I pushed off from the surface of the spacecraft, my main velocity was perpendicular to the surface. It shot me straight out perpendicular to where the tether was attached. Again, this wasn't in the position that Jim could take a picture of me, and it wasn't too good a position for myself. I usually ended up facing away from the spacecraft. McDivitt Let me interject something here. In desperation • I took the Hasselblad camera and stuck it over out through Ed's open hatch, and asked him if he could see the camera and if he could tell me which way to point it. He couldn't see the camera so he never really did tell me which way to point it. White No. This was the time that you said, "Hey, get in front of my window." It just so happened that CONFIDENTIAL G eHfID tNTFAL 125 I was right up close to the spacecraft and that's when I came over. Do you remember me coming over and actually looking about a foot from your window, Jim? McDivitt Yes. White Looking right at you. McDivitt Yes, I think that was the time the movie camera wasn't going and I was fooling around with it, trying to make sure that it was running. White Oh, that would have been a very interesting picture. McDivitt I'm not sure it was going, Ed, because, as you know, we had so much trouble making the left hand one run. We had that trouble throughout the remainder of the flight. You pushed a switch over and it seemed to run sometimes, but sometimes it wouldn't. I kept worrying about whether or not it was running so, I would grab a hold of it to see if I could feel it clicking over. I switched the ON-OFF switch on a couple of times to make sure I could tell the change in the feel of it. I'm afraid this time is one of the times that I didn't have the camera going, because I was trying to make sure that it was ^ONFID ENTIAt— - 126 OeW FlPENTIAL- going. I'm not positive. I hope I got Lhe picture but I'm not sure about it. White That was the time that I came right in, and I couldn't have been more than a foot from your window, looking in. I could actually see you sitting there. McDivitt That's probably when you put a mark on my window. White I think the way I did that—I could actually see you in there and I pushed away with my hands a little bit. I think this was the time that either my arm or my shoulder contacted the upper part of your window and you called me a "dirty dog" because I had messed your window up. You know, as you look back in retrospect, I wish you'd handed me a kleenex and I wish I'd cleaned up the outside of those two windows.I think we . could have done it. McDivitt Yes. We'd have never gotten to the kleenex at that time, but I think we might have done some­ thing about it. White I think I might have but we might have smeared them so irrepairably that it might have—. McDivitt That's right. When you looked at that window of mine from the inside while the sun was shining ^MHD EW TAL CONFID ENTIAL. White McDivitt White McDivitt White McDivitt it looked like it was a black paint smear, such as if you'd take a piece of white linoleum and a black rubber soled shoe and made a mark on the linoleum. It had that kind of consistency. It was absolutely opaque. Just as black as it could be. Yes, I could tell. When I hit it I could see from the outside that it turned white. It turned black from the inside. From the outside it was white. From the inside it was black. When I got the thing turned around a different way with the sun on it, it was perfectly clear as if you had taken the coating off, and what I was seeing was through a perfectly clear surface. So, I don't know really whether the thing was black, • that you placed something on the window that would make it black, or whether you'd taken something off that was very white, very thin. I smeared the film that was on your window. I'm quite confident that is what happened. I looked at our spacecraft windows after they got it onboard, and I could still see that little hunk of window. It looks to me like what -CONFID ENTIAL- 128 eeNriDCNw White McDivitt White you did was remove a layer off the window, rather than put something on it. You took something off it. Except I can't possibly imagine why it was so black and opaque with the sun shining on it at certain angles. I’d like to comment on the ease of operation outside on a tether. If you’ve ever tried to hang on the outside of a water tower, or about an 8-foot diameter tree, you can visualize the problem I had out there. The decision to leave the hatch open was probably one of the very best that we made. I had nothing outside the space­ craft to stabilize myself on. There just isn't anything to hold onto. I think Jim will remember one time when I tried to hook my fingers in the RCS thrusters. I think Jim could ■ see because—. I could see. I was right out in front of Jim's window. This gave me really nothing particularly to hold onto. Tt didn't stabilize me at all. I had nothing really to hold onto , and so if you have ever tried to grasp an 8-foot diameter tree and shinny up it, you know the kind of feeling that I had __ CONFID ENTIAL. 129 outside there. There just wasn’t anything for me to hold onto. One thing though that I'll say very emphatically— there wasn’t any tendency to recontact the spacecraft in anything hut very gentle contacts. I made some quite interesting contacts. I made one that I recall on the bottomside of the right door in which I had kind of rolled around. I actually contacted the bottom of the spacecraft with my back and the back of my head. I was faced away from the spacecraft and I just drifted right up against it and just very lightly contacted it. I rebounded off. As long as the pushoffs are slow there just isn't any tendency to get in an uncontrollable attitude. McDivitt It seemed Ed did hit it pretty hard at one time. I think that was after he pushed off violently; he went out and it seemed he came back and bashed it pretty hard. I remember a pretty solid thump. It seemed it was over the right hand hatch or just right behind—. White I know a couple of times I kicked off with my feet, and I think I know the time you are talking about. I came in with my foot. It wasn't so much the contact with myself--. -eeNFID ENTIAfc- 150 McDivitt What hid you do? Contact and pushoff? White I contacted and pushed with my foot. McDivitt I heard a big thump and I think I called you at this time to take it easy. White I believe that was on the front end of the R & R Section on my side where you couldn’t see me. McDivitt It was a position that I couldn’t see. White One of the pictures that I saw last night in the movies, I think, was made at that time. I was coming in fairly rapidly and I wanted to get back out, so I kicked off again with my foot fairly hard. It was a very good kick. I felt that i certainly could have controlled myself without the gun out there if I had just some type of very insignificant hand-holds or something that I could have held on to. I believe that I could have gone on back to the adapters with a minimum of several hand-holds to go back there, going from one to the other. I was actually looking for some type of hand-holds: out there. I remember that the only one that I saw was the stub antenna on the nose of the spacecraft. I could see the ceramic covering over it, I believe it was ceramic, or some kind of covering over it. peNH&ENTIAL W S QNFID ENTIM m McDivitt Yes, it's white. White I felt that this wasn't quite the thing to grab onto, this was at the time when I wanted to get out at about 10 or 12 feet directly in front of the spacecraft. I certainly had the urge to hang onto the antenna and push myself out. But I didn’t and there really wasn't anything to hold onto. You really need something to stabilize yourself. I worked around the open hatch. McDivitt Let me ask you a question? How about putting the hand-hold inside of the nose cone? A fairing is up there for launch, just the fairing.We could mount a hand-hold right inside. White I think we could have really made some money if we had had an attachment for the tether out there right on the nose of the spacecraft. McDivitt Strung the tether out there and then attached there? White Right. Have a seoond attach point and put it right out there. It would give you something to hold onto out there. McDivitt Yes. White There wasn't anything to hold onto on the R & R Section, -eONFID ENTIAt— 152 McDivitt I know it. White It had smooth corners and the only thing I could have grabbed was the antenna, and I didn’t want to grasp that, we thought one ti:.e of holding on out there and thrusting, but—. McDivitt There isn’t anything to hold onto. I think you probably could have gotten a hold on the antenna and held onto it without hurting it. I examined it pretty closely before the launch, and it look­ ed pretty sturdy. White I thought this was something we needed and I didn't want to fool with it. McDivitt As it turned out we really needed that antenna because that was the antenna that we used the whole flight--that stub antenna in the nose. Wn ite Yes. McDivitt When we opened up the spacecraft the hatch came open with a bang. The air that we had inside was obviously of greater pressure than that out­ side, and we had a great outflow of things inclu­ ding a piece of foam that we had used to pack our maneuvering gun in it’s box. It was the first thing that we put in orbit. But then throughout the time that Ed was out, he wanted the door wide ^NFID ENTIA-t- 155 open. It was pretty obvious that the flow was from the spacecraft to the outside because part­ way through his maneuvers his glove floated out and floated away from the spacecraft with a rea­ sonably good relative velocity. The entire time he was out, even after we had the hatch open for 20 to 25 minutes, we were still getting particles floating out through the hatch. It was the flow. The streamlines were very obvious. It was from inside the spacecraft to the outside. I guess the spacecraft was out-gassing at a sufficient rate to cause a reasonably large pressure differ­ ential from inside to outside, and it was cer­ tainly relieving itself. I noticed this even as we were trying to get the hatch closed. There was still a flow from inside to outside. White Okay. I think that pretty well covers most of the things that we actually did while I was out there. McDivitt Now, as for getting back in—. White Yes, let's go all the way back through and come back in. The time really did go fast! I had watches with me, but I didn't look at them. McDivitt I was watching the time. I noticed my watch ££>NFID ENTIAI? 154 around 4 minutes and 6 minutes and 8 minutes. And t’ an you got involved in floating around as we were trying to get that last picture. White The time really flew! McDivitt You kept getting behind me all the time and I became distracted from she time we were on VOX, completely blocking out the ground. Our VOX must have been triggered constantly, because whenever we ware on it they couldn't transmit to us. White That's where the time got away from me. McDivitt That's right, and it was 15 minutes and 40 sec­ onds when I looked at my clock. So, I thought that I had better go to the ground. I said to the ground, "Do you have any message for us?" because I knew it was time to get back in. And they just said,"Yes. Get back in!" White Right. I remember hearing Gus say,"Yes, get him back in!" McDivitt This is what all the fuss was about. They might have been transmitting to us to get back in but we were on VOX and couldn't hear a thing. White I did a few things after this time that I wasn't doing to deliberately stay out. But I was deliberately trying to do one last thing. I was G G MF4D ENTIM 155 trying to get that last picture. And this was one of a couple of times that I kicked off the spacecraft really hard, to get out io the end of the tether. And I wasn't successful in getting the position so that I could get a picture. I felt this was the one part of the mission that I hadn't completed. Everything else was successful and I wanted very badly to get that picture from outside. I spent a moment or so doing this. This was also the period of time in which I called down to Jim and said, "I'm actually walk­ ing on top of the spacecraft." I took the tether held onto it, and used it as a device to pull me down to the spacecraft. I walked from about where the angle starts to break be+ n the nose section and the cabin section. I walked from there probably about two-thirds of the way up the cabin, and it was really quite strenuous. Could you see me walking along, Jim? McDivitt No, I couldn't see but I could feel the thumping on the outside. White That's when I got to laughing so hard. This was when Jim was saying to come in. McDivitt Yes, I think this is when I got a little stern G ©NF1D ENTIAt 156 and said, "Get in here!" White When I was walking on the top and was Laughing, Jim probably didn't think I thought he was serious. But it was a very funny sensation. Now as far as delaying, there were certain things that I had to do before I came in. And there wasn't anything in the world that was going to hurry me up in doing them. We had just agreed that we'd do things in a slow manner and this is the way we'd do it. McDivitt Let me talk about the time here. It is implied in the papers that Ed didn't really want to come back in, and didn't. I think one of the things is that we didn't hear. We didn't have any transmissions from the ground after he stepped outside until I went off VOX at 15:40. They said, "Come back in.", and I told him to come back in. I think that he probably delayed about a minute or two minutes. White I think so, trying to get the pictures. McDivitt And at that time I got a little irritated and hollered at Ed, too. Then he started back in. White But when I came back I had things to do. McDivitt Yes. I know it. That's what I'm trying to say €ON44E>EMT1AL CW ft&ENW AL 157 to get this thing in its proper perspective. White Yes. McDivitt We were 5 minutes 4$ seconds late getting started back in because we just lost track of the time. I couldn’t see Ed any longer. I was trying to keep track of what he was doing without being able to see, and I lost track of time. Then I think he delayed probably a minute or a minute and a half before he started back in. White That's right. McDivitt So, those are the two delays. We’d agreed on that he’d start back in after 12 minutes. From then on all the time was spent just trying to get back in. White I had certain things to do. I had to disassemble the camera that was on the spacecraft. I did this very slowly. I had to disconnect the elect­ rical connection to it and hand the camera back in to Jim. Then I had to go out and disconnect the umbilical, and this really went pretty well. The little tether that I had them put on the ring, a pull ring, to disconnect the pia worked pretty well. I disconnected the umbilical and discarded the umbilical cord. €eW ID ENnAt~ 138 €6h HW fflAL McDivitt That was the last thing Ed put into orbit. White Right. I put that Ln orbit. Earlier, it was really quite a sensation to see the glove float­ ing off. I asked Jim a few minutes before about the glove, or Jim had asked me, "Hey, do you want this other glove?" About a minute later, I saw it go floating out of the hatch. McDivitt All I can say. Efl, was about a half hour later I was sure thankful that we had gotten rid of some­ thing. We had so much other junk that we didn't want. ^hite I saw the glove come floating out of the right­ hand hatch, and it was a perfectly clear picture of the glove as it floated out. It floated out over my right shoulder and out--it looked like it was on a definite trajectory going somewhere. I don't know where it was going. It floated very smartly out of rhe spacecraft and out into space. McDivitt I think this had a lot to do with that out-gas­ sing. There was a definite stream—. White Yes. It was following the streamline right out of rhe spacecraft. McDivitt It went out perpendicular to the spacecraft, •W NFtD ENTIAh CONFIDENTIAL •whichever direction that is. White Back to getting back in the spacecraft--I had the one thermal glove on the oner hand, my left hand. I always wanted my right hand to be free to op­ erate that gun and the camera. The way the cam­ era was mounted on there, I had to use both hands— one hand to actually stabilize it with the gun and the other hand to reach over. Again, I think dynamics played a little bit of a role there. Everytime I brought my hand in from a position out on my left, it tended to turn me a little bit, which is exactly what we found happened on the air-bearing tables. I think that the camera should have been velcroed to my body somewhere and used independently of the gun. McDivitt Yes. I got that same impression. I got the impression that what you really should have done was--. White Dropped the gun. McDivitt Unhooked the camera out there floating around and just thrown the gun away. I don't think you ever should have tried to bring it back. White Well, what I should have done was fold the gun and handed it to you. G QUEID ENTIAL 140 McDivitt That would nave just taken longer. It would have taken precious seconds out of the very few that we had anyway. I think you should have just unhooked it and thrown the gun away. White This was probably the thing that I was most irritated with not completing. I didn’t feel the pictures were satisfactory with the camera out­ side. But I think the reason was that my camera was not in a position so I could use it adequat­ ely. But coming back in was the last thing. As a matter-of-fact, before I dismounted the movie camera and dismounted the umbilical, I folded the gun. White I took the lanyard off with the camera on it, and handed Jim the gun and the camera. McDivitt And I stuck it down between my legs. White That was the first thing that I handed in. Then I handed in the 16 mm camera, and then I threw away the umbilical. This was where the fun started. I found it was a lot more difficult coming back in than I had remembered in the zero- g training. It seemed like I was contacting both sides of the hatch at the same time, much firmer than I had in the zero-g ai cplane. -eeh JHD ENftM 141 McDivitt You mean you were hitting the hatch on one side and the hatch opening on the other side. White Coming back in, I was contacting the side of the spacecraft on both sides. McDivitt Yes, that’s right. McDivitt You weren’t really hitting the hatch on both sides, you were hitting the hatch opening on both sides. White Yes. I was coming down through there. I felt a much firmer attachment wedging in there than I'd remembered from the zero-g training. I think this might be associated with the extra 7/10 or 8/10 pound of pressurization on the suit. I just might have been a little fatter. I did notice that the suit was a little harder. I felt this type of suit before during my pre-work, so this wasn't a surprise to me at all. But I did feel like I was a little fatter getting in and wedged a little tighter. McDivitt I really don't think Ed was any fatter. I think that link in the suit holds the suit to whatever volume it's going to go to. And I don't think a couple psi are going—. White Well, I felt like I was hitting a little more as 142 CONFIDENTIAL I came in. McDivitt Yes. I think what happened was he was stiffer, and he wasn't bending his legs and his arms any. White You mean with the harder suit I was stiffer? McDivitt Harder. And your arms were stiffer and you weren't bending them around as much. It looked a lot more rigid. White This might have been. McDivi 11 Not semi-rigid—Ed was rigid. White All right. This might have been. McDivitt And that looked to me like it might have been the problem. Waite This might have been part of the recontact on the side of the spacecraft that I noticed. But as I came back in, I noticed that I had to work a little harder, and I hoped the tape was running • because I think we had a very good commentary. We were both talking very clearly back and forth to each other during this time and I was telling Jim that I was going1 to come in slow because it was a little tougher than I had thought. We were talking back and forth about being slow and tak­ ing it easy. McDivitt I actually helped push Ed down in there. I don't .eeNFIDENTIAL 145 know whether he felt it or not in that suit. White No, I couldn't. McDivit t I reached over and I steered his legs down in, and I sort of got him settled in the seat a little better than what he was getting himself. White Yes. Right. I was kind of free wheeling my feet up there. McDivitt Yes. It looked to me like Ed was holding on to the top of the open part of the hatch and just swiveling around that part. It looked like he didn't have enough mobility and strength in his arms to actually twist his body down against the force of the suit into the seat. White After awhile, I reached my left arm underneath, the same technique we had used in the zero-g training)and actually I had my hands all over the ’ circuit breakers. McDivitt Yes. Ed was a real hazard to the switches. White Yes, and I pulled myself down in and that's when I really started coming in—when I gut hold of the underneath side of that circuit breaker panel and palled myself in. That's when my first real progress was made toward actually getting down in. McDivit t Because, while I could steer Ed from where I was -rONHD ErtTtMr 144 CONFIDENTIAL I really didn’t have the strength to pull him in. McDivitt It was 90 degrees to the way that he really- wanted to he pulling. I could steer. I did do a li tie bit of pushing, but not a heck of a lot. I wasn't really contributing much to the effort there except--. White You were guiding me down into the footwells. McDivitt Yes. That was about it. White But once I got my hands up underneath the instru­ ment panel, I was back pretty well in familiar grounds—the work that we'd done five dozen times in the zero-g airplane,and I knew the technique pretty well. McDivitt 10 000 times! White does check pretty well. White I really did it a lot. Maybe the suit was stiffer, or maybe I was fatter, but I wasn't going in quite as easy as I had before—getting into the initial position to pull myself down into the seat. So it took me a little longer. If you recall, I had to go back out again one time. I got back down and started to wedge my­ self down and I got two fat cramps at the bot­ toms of my thighs in both legs, where the muscles started to ball up a little. C-eNFIDENTU.L 145 McDivitt Oh? Did you get it in your thighs or calves? Whi te Both of the muscles in the back of my thighs balled up in a ball and I thought, "Well, I have to go back out and let them straighten up." So, I straightened my legs out. McDivitt We had that problem before in the zero-g air­ plane . White This is the time Jim said, "Hey while you're up, why don’t you throw the visor out?" I hesitated a minute because I thought, "Well, you son-of-a-buck, you might have problems here. You might have to be spending an orbit or so trying to get in." McDivitt No, as a matter of fact, I don't think that is when you did throw it out. I think you threw it out when you came back down and you started to close the hatch. You were having trouble. It wouldn't close, and you said, "I'm going to have to take this visor off so that I can see these things." And I said, "Listen, if we get this thing closed we're not going to open it again. Throw the visor away." White That's right. That was when I got the cramps, went back up again and then I came back down G ©Nfti3fNTtAL 146 enough to close at that time. I reached up and again, and said, "Hey, I can't see them. I'm going to have to take the visor off." McDivitt No, it was a little bit later than that. You had all ready started to try to close it and you were having difficulty closing it. White Okay. Let's get the sequence out. We came down in. I got up to straighten my legs a little bit, went back up, then I came back down--. McDivitt --with all your equipment on—. White I hadn't held the handle yet, had I? McDivitt No. You hadn't done a thing with it. White So I got back down into position- -. McDivitt ^-with all your equipment on and pulled the hatch down. White The hatch was down far enough to close at this time. McDivitt I thought it was. White I did, too. I felt it was down far enough. I can tell by looking right straight down at the edge—. McDivitt Yes. I can tell by looking up underneath the right-hand side to see where the dogs are. White Okay. So I thought the hatch was down far 147 got the handle, but I don't know what I said to you. McDivitt You didn't say anything. I don't know whether you said anything to me or not, but you didn’t have to say anything to me. I saw you move that handle and I saw how easy it was going and I saw that the dogs weren't moving. White I think I said something. I don't remember what I said. But I said something and you knew right away what had happened. McDivitt You didn't say a word. I was watching the dogs and that lever and I knew what the trouble was. White Right. So I guess that’s when I said, "I'm going to have to take the visor off because I can't see." And then we went back up and Jim said, "Well, we're not going to open the hatch again. Why don't you throw the visor out." I hesitated for a minute to throw it out because I thought that we might have a problem. McDivitt Actually, we had a little more difficulty than we had explained. We fooled around for a min­ ute or two or maybe even three or four with the handle. It was pretty apparent to us that we weren't going to get the hatch closed with nor- eetm efNi+Ak 148 COHFIDEHTIM mal straight-forward techniques, and that we were going to have to start going to of er things. While we say that we came down and moved the handle once or twice, it was over about a three or four minute period, at least. White The normal method of closing the hatch is for me to come down and wedge myself down, hold onto the little canvas handle up there, and actually apply a downward force on the hatch to help close it. Then with my right hand I use the hatch handle to ratchet the hatch down. This is nor­ mally our technique we would .always use, and never in the past, has Jim had to help me with the hatch closing device. This wasn’t the case this time. As soon as I had gotten up there to operate the gain lever, 1 couldn't operate the canvas handle anymore. I couldn't apply any torque or pull there because—. McDivitt Not only that, but you were actually pushing yourself up off the seat. And I'm not sure that even the first tire that we had the hatch closed far enough. It looked like it was closed far enough. As a matter of fact, later on when we got it down to that position it looked like it S eNFID ENTIAt CONFID ENTIAL w was closed fine. It really wasn't closed far enough "because you never did get those dogs out until we--. White No, the dogs came out, Jim, the first time T got torque on it. Those dogs started out, then it closed. McDivitt Did they? Okay. White Yes. I think we had it down far enough. McDivitt It looked to me like we did, and I couldn't understand why they weren't coming out. I knew that the ratchet wasn’t engaged, tout I got the impression that it was from watching your hand when you came down one time. You had the ratchet engaged and the little tit pin that sticks in the door that doesn't allow things to come closed wasn't there. White No, tha ratchet wasn't engaged. There was nothing on the handle at all. It was free, completely free. The situation hadn't changed at all. Another thing I'd like to point out now, too, was the chest pack was in the way of bringing the handle down to a full-crank position. And I wanted definitely to do this because you can interrupt the sequence of the dogs if you don't -eeN^D ENT4AL 150 j&eNHfrENTIAt fully stroke the handle each time. White Ve went back up so that I could actually see and observe the levers. This was the time Jim said to throw the visor out because we probably would­ n’t open the hatch again, once we get it closed. And this seemed like very good sound advice to me. The only thing I was a little questionable about was that at this time I had the inkling in my mind that we might spend quite a bit of time getting this hatch closed, and I might want the visor when. I was back out again. But I thought the judgment to throw the visor out was best and I threw it out--opened the door about a foot and a half and threw the visor out. The next time we came back down, I was still having the little bit of problem with the cramps, but not nearly the problem I was having with the gain lever. McDivitt One superseded the other. White That's right. Oue problem became of much higher magnitude than the other. So this was the time that we started working. I knew what I had to do. I knew I had to work the gain lever in sequence with the handle again, just like we had when we G eNF+D ENTIAt 151 opened, it. We both had. an inkling that thia was going to happen when we opened, it the first time. But this posed the problem of when I reached up with my left arm to work the gain lever. It takes a great deal of force. This isn’t the direct­ ion that the suit is designed to reach in. And it takes a great deal of force to lift your arms up in the vicinity of your helmet to operate something there. In so doing it pulled me back up out of the seat. And I think this is the time that Jim noticed that I was up higher than I had ever been before, and he actually felt that my helmet was up against the hatch. I tend to agree that I was up in that position. McDivitt Yes. I actually pulled Ed down in the seat by pulling on the—. ' White I think so. McDivitt I did it in steps. I’d pull down and Ed would come down. Then I’d pull some more, he’d come down some more. White I was actually pushing up with my left hand and ipy helmet was wedged right up against the hatch. I had a little bit of area in which they actually see the dogs that I was working with up there. ee-NHQENTIAL 152 CONHDEHHAL McDivitt You could see them though? White Yes, I could see them. At least I could see what positions they were in. I could see the little lever operating under the spring—where I was actually operating the spring on the gain lever. This is where I think we got some very good team­ work, because it was necessary that Jim pull down in conjunction with the time that I pulled down on the closing handle and operated the gain lever. I just hope that the tape worked because I can remember I was in there. Jim was talking to me, and then when it came to the point when we really had to make the big pull T felt a little torque on the handle. I knew that we had it at that time if we could only get the hatch down close enough so that the dogs would engage. And I can remember giving the old--I think I was yelling HEAVE! HEAVE! Is that what I was yelling? McDivitt I think so. White And it was in perfect timing, because I could see Jim or I could see the hatch come down each time that I was yelling OVE! I think it was probably the mast—. McDivitt The most interesting moment of the flight. €D NFID ENTtM- mind then. And. I remembered that I felt I was jeONFID ENTIA-L 155 White Yes. It was the most interesting moment of the flight, but I think it was probably the most, if you want to say, dramatic. I don't know the right word. But it was probably the most dramatic moment of my life. About those JO seconds we spent right there. The dogs started latching. I could feel them going in, and then I could feel them come over dead-center. Jim called out that the dogs were in. McDivitt I knew that once we got them moving we'd be all right. White Yes, once they started coming in. As long as we got those dogs to engage, with the little lever that permitted them to come out and lock, I knew that we had it hacked. McDivitt Yes. So did I. Even if e would have had to reenter with the hatch in that position, we'd have been all right. I don't think that the heat leaks were that tremendous. Whitw I knew we could continue and dog it on in all the way. It seems like whenever you know you're right on something, you want to be darn sure that they fix it. This was going through my 154 right in that the bar and the attachment on that bar and lanyard were not strong enough. I re­ membered that and I knew how hard you were pul­ ling on that thing. I think, if nothing else, they ought to he sure. How many times did we break that attachment at the bar? McDivitt We broke the attachment about three or four times on the zero-g airplane. Everytime they kept telling us it wasn't made out of the right kind of stuff and the stuff we were going to have in the spacecraft would be the right material. Well, it didn't break in the spacecraft. Just coin­ cidently, or maybe because we both had doubts about the strength of that particular piece. The same thing crossed through my mind. I was thinking that the success or failure of this hatch closure depends on whether this hatch closing device stays hooked onto that space­ craft and doesn't break off. White We would have been flat out of luck! McDivitt We would have been in deep trouble! I'm not sure we wouldn't have been able to get the hatch closed, because we had put that canvas strap on there and I might have been able to pull you -eeNBD ENTIAL 155 down that way. But I had about all the pull I had in me on that last— White I know you did. McDivitt —on that last thing- and I had a lot of mechanical advantage over it. When we went to that canvas strap we would have had. to go with no mechanical advantage. As a matter of fact, a mechanical disadvantage. White This is one thing that didn't fail, but I recommend that it be made stronger. McDivitt Stronger anyway! White I think so. McDivitt For nothing else than a psychological purpose. White Right. I’d like to take the spacecraft now and see if I could break it, because I had the feeling that I never had been confident that that • attachment nor the bar nor the lanyard were strong enough. McDivitt When I say I was really pulling as strong as I could, I really had some pull left in me, but I guess what I should have said is that I was pulling about as hard as I dared pull at the time. I guess I could have pulled another few pounds, but I hated to apply more than was needed on — CONFID ENTIAL 156 jSONHD ENTIAT” there because of the lack of confidence in the strength of it. White Everything I had was in it over there. I was pulling down with my legs as hard as I could and operating. I was pulling on the handle. I remember one; time you said, "Hey don't pull on that handle so hard! You're going to break it!" McDivitt I was cautioning you to take it easy, which you don't usually have to do. White This was when we were yelling HEAVE! I was heaving on the handle as I was pulling it down each time. It felt like to me that the handle was giving. But I didn't give a darn! If it broke, it was going to break. So ore of the points we learned out of this was we'd like to see the bar and lanyard strengthened. White Let me say one thing about the decision to go ahead and open up the larch. If we hadn't done so much work together with this hatch and run through just about every problem that we could possibly have had, I would have decided to leave the hatch closed and skip the EVA when we first starred having trouble with it. We had encountered just every conceivable problem that we could possibly CONFID ENTIAL have with that hatch. If it failed we'd, know exactly what it was. McDivitt That's right. I personally had disassembled this cylinder and piston and spring combination up at McDonald prior to the altitude chamber, so I knew exactly what it was made of. I am sure the problem was that the dry lubrication coag­ ulated, or whatever a dry lube does, and was causing the piston to stick. I knew how we could do this thing. Carl Stone and I had dismantled it and put it babk together, cleaned it out, put it back together, relubricated it, put it back together, and it operated fine. I figured out how to make the thing work with it not working properly by using your finger as the spring. White That's the exact technique we had used. McDivitt If we hadn't had the training together that we had, and had not encountered all these problems before, 1 know darn well I would have decided not to open the hatch. White Maybe we wound overdramatic about the effort we made getting me back in, and I'll honestly say it's one of the biggest efforts I ever made in my life, but I don't think we were all done then. CONFID ENTIAL. 158 teotiFiPCMBAL McDivitt There were a lot of things we could do. White We could have gone around several orbits working on closing the hatch. That wasn't the last time we were going to get a chance to close it. So, there were things left if we understood, and other procedures we could have used to go ahead and close it. When we got it closed back in, I was completely soaked wasn’t I? McDivitt Yes. You were really bushed. White Sweat was just pouring down. In fact, I could hardly see. It was in my eyes. McDivitt So I told you, "Just sit there and I’ll get a repress. Don’t even move for 50 minutes." I just left the repress valve where it was. I closed the vent valve and we had a lot of in­ structions from the ground to close the water seal and a whole bunch of other things that didn't make any sense to me. I knew that the spacecraft was repressurizing. I watched. There wasn’t anything else that we had to do right then, and we were both bushed, especially Ed. He was perspiring so that I could hardly see him inside the fact plate. So, I just said,"You sit there and I'll sit here and we'll just coast around. CONFIDENTIAL 159 When we get the thing repressurized., we'll start doing something." That was exactly what we did. I did finally extend the HF antenna and try to call somebody on HF and let them know that we were back in safely and that the thing was re­ pressurizing. I didn't get any response until we got to Carnarvon, which was about three minutes later. I called and told them that we were re­ pressurizing and had the hatch closed. White You know, that was some pretty good gage reading that we saw when we got the first 1/2 psi. McDivitt The first 1/2 psi. Ha! Ha! White That was really a big one. Since we've described the whole operation we'd like to go back now and specifically point out the pieces of equip­ ment that we used and our opinions of them, a few • features that came out loud and clear to us in operation, general conclusions on EVA as an operation, and what we have to do to make it an operational procedure. So the first thing 1111 do is go down through the equipment. As an overall comment on the equipment, I would say I felt very confident the equipment would do the job. And without question the equipment performed "^ONFID ENTIAt 160 as it was advertised. It performed just exactly as it had been designed. There wasn't one thing on them as far as the VCM, the umbilical, the gloves, the gun, and the visor that didn't perform just exactly as it had been designed, ■'ll take them all one piece at a time, and dis­ cuss them a little. I'll start right with the visor. The visor was a rather controversial piece of equipment from the beginning. And I, for one, doubted a little bit the necessity for quite the protection that we were providing, although I had helped right from the beginning in the design with some of our ideas on the visor. It turned out though, and I commented on this during the time that I was out, that I was very happy to have the visor, I was able to look directly into the sunlight, f did so in instal­ ling the camera on the back of the adapter. I felt that the vision out of the visor, was about as it would be on a normal sunny day. This is because it is so bright up there in space. I felt as if my vision was what I would consider normal. I was looking at the different parts of the spacecraft and down at the ground, and I^DENTIAL 161 McDivitt the view that I received at this time was what I would expect on a normal sunny day. I was cer­ tainly glad to have the visor and I left it down throughout EVA. I think on a later flight we might recommend going ahead and lifting the visor and observing any changes we might see in visual acuity when looking down at the ground, the ground vision through the visor really didn't seem to me to be degraded at all. Eviden­ tly just the intensity, and not what I was seeing, was cut down. Let me comment a little bit on that visor. I didn't have a visor and the bright sunlight that was in the cockpit didn't seem to bother me. I imagine that the visor turned out just like a pair of sunglasses. You go outside on a normal d^y and wear a pair of sunglasses. If you don't have them, you’re squinting. But if you start out without them you tend to get accustomed to it. I think I was accustomed to what light there was coming through the space­ craft, admittedly much less than, that outside. Ed was accustomed to the sun visor and it turned out just like two people with and without ’C QMft&ENTlAL 162 COMFI&6NTIAL White McDivitt White sunglasses. They both could have adapted. I didn't look into the bright sun straight ahead. Well, the first time I looked into the bright sun, the first thought I had was, "Boy! Am I glad I've got this visor on!" I know you mentioned it on the radio. —because I was looking right straight into the sun. I had to look into it to attach the camera onto the adapter section. I don't normally wear sunglasses. As you know, Jim, I have never worn sunglasses very much, and I didn't notice it from then on, through*; the time I was out. I had no impulse whatever to lift my visor. My vision was as clear as I could have expected it to be without the visor. There are a few design points in the visor that we could make better and ’ I'll briefly go into them right now. When you are seated in the spacecraft one visor slips up underneath the other and back along the back of your helmet, so that instead of resting on your helmet on the headrest you're resting the visor on the headrest. You certainly don't want to do that. The visor should be restrained in some manner from slipping up along the back of the ^CQNHOChniAL CQNRD ENTUL- ^ helmet. Also, my visor was quite difficult for me to raise and lower. Once it was down it fit quite snugly, for which I was happy. But it was difficult for me to raise and lower. It was actually a two-handed operation, which is one of the reasons why I didn't raise it outside; although, I had no impulse to raise it when I was outside. I think that we might be able to design them to be raised up and down more easily. McDivitt Let me make a comment on that visor. I never did see any need for the little lexion visor. White That’s exactly the point I was going to get to next. I think that one single visor made as close to the helmet liner as possible, providing the maximum amount of headroom and a minimum amount of interference, is what we actually need. I don’t believe we need that lexion outer visor. As they pointed out to us, it doesn’t really protect, because it bows in and it doesn't really give you the protection that it should be affording. I would recommend one visor, one sun visor only. It’ll be simpler to operate. McDivitt I think so, too. White Okay. The vsntillation Control Module, I can say €©NFIB£NIIAL 164 ■C0NFIBCNT1 AL without qualification, worked exactly as it was planned to work. There was not one complaint that I had with it. It provided me with the proper flow. The flow was less than with the normal ECS suit system, but it was adequate to keep me cool and ventilated, except for two times during the flight. Those times were when I attached the camera right before departing the spacecraft and reentering the spacecraft. But I think it performed without fault. White The umbilical was another item that I thought performed its part of the flight quite well. I had no complaints about it. I did tend to get it tangled up with the bag and the strings that were attached to the bag during EVA. White I am very thankful that we decided to design the gloves in the manner in which we did, the two- piece glove that was easily donned or doffed under pressurized conditions. As it turned out, I took them on and off twice while pressurized. I was quite happy that we had them designed in this manner. As it turned out, the heat on the side of the spacecraft, or the cold on the side of the spacecraft when we came out of the dark £D NHBENfiAL 165 White side, were not noticeable to the touch at all. I didn't use a right hand thermal glove at any time during the flight. I took it off when I was opening the hatch and, as I pointed out earlier, it floated off during the EVA operation. I didn't have opportunity to use it again if I had wanted to. Coming back in we had difficulty closing the hatch, and I, at this time, removed my left hand glove and used the plain pressure suit gloves for this operation. The pressure suit gloves were comfortable. In fact, there were no sen­ sations of either hot or cold through my gloves. The gun, I think, was an outstanding point in the flight, a highlight of the flight. It worked just as we had felt it would work and it was, I felt, simple to operate. The training that I had on the air-bearing platform provided me adequate orientation in the use of the space gun. I think that now that we have a little more time to prepare ourselves for the next time we use this gun, training with it on zero-g flights would be appropriate. I don't believe we will have any trouble using it in the zero-g aircraft. ■CONFIDENTIAL- 166 White One mistake lhat we made on our EVA equipment was the mounting of the Contarex camera. This camera should have been attached by velcro to nt-, so that I could use it independently of the gun. It would have been easier for me to use and I would have had a much higher probability of getting satisfactory pictures with it. It was a case of lumping too much together—putting the gun and the camera together. White The attachment of the VCM to the harness was a good type of attachment. It was easy to dis- conner the two velcro attachments and move the chest pack in and out. I hai to do this both when I opened the spacecraft hatch, so it would clear the hatch handle, and I had to move it out of the way when I closed the spacecraft and pumped the hatch handle. White Now we can get into some conclusions. While I was out, I decided to put a piece of velcro strip on the side of the adapter to see if later on we might use this as a method for attaching items on ths outside of the spacecraft, if the velcro was still there and if it was in good shape. I think the velcro could be madeintou very useful item for *eeMffD ENTIM- 167 a type of tether. I think you might even be able to do something along the line of just having some female velcro on the gloves and pieces of the male velcro at points along the adapter. This might provide us at least some attachments so that we could maneuver ourselves back to the adapter section. This would be about the sim­ plest kind of handle that we could use. I do believe that we need some type of handles on the outside of the spacecraft. Jim suggested one on the nose and in the cover on the R & R section up there. I think this is an area that we cer­ tainly have a possibility of using. I certainly would have found it useful. I would still be a little hesitant, though, of breaking the an­ tenna. You would want to be sure that this wouldn’t be broken during EVA. I think the feeling I had out there, again, was like holding onto an 8-foot tree. There wasn't any­ thing to hold onto. You definitely need some kind of hand-holds. The decision to leave the hatch open was one of the best decisions that we made. It provided me with a center of oper­ ations for my work. I was able to stabilise my- eeW I&ENTIAU. 168 ^eNftD ENTIAb self by holding onto the hatch. It was also surprising to me how much force it took to open the hatch the first time against the preload and the actuaters, due to the seals. One other very good decision was to have me wear the heavy suit and Jim the light suit. I think this was one of the things that made our operation easier. It certainly made my getting back in the spacecraft and Jim’s assistance in closing the hatch much easier for him. Also, I was handing him things in and out. He was performing quite a bit of coordination in the operation with pieces of equipment that were going in and out of the spacecraft, and I believe that by being in that light suit he was able to do this much easier than if he had been in a heavy suit. McDivitt I might make a comment on that suit, too. When we opened up the hatch we were in a vacuum. I noticed that the temperature of the suit dropped slightly so that the suit was a little bit cooler inside. I was wondering if I was going to get too cold through the suit, but the rest of the time we were out the the temperature never changed. I don’t remember looking at the suit ■CONFID ENTh At CeNffD ENTh M. inlet temperature, but the suit itself stayed reasonably warm. I had sun in the cockpit and I had the cockpit open without the sun in it for a relatively long period of time, four or five minutes at a time. This didn't seem to affect my temperature inside the suit. White I think you felt the temperature more than I did. McDivitt I felt the temperature go down, rather than up. White I felt that also while outside. I would say it was ery comfortable figure. I figure that I was probably at 68 degrees temperature out there inside the suit, which was cooler than I had been anytime during the flight. It wasn't a cold feeling, just a very natural comfortable temperature. McDivitt •blit inlet temperature was running about 55 degrees daring most of the flight. It got down around 5-» so it probably might have even been cooler than your 68. White Well, it was cooler inside the suit when I was outsiie the spacecraft than at any other time during the flight. It wasn't uncomfortably cool there at all. White I think that we can go on with some conclusions. (<^H Fl D ENT LAL 170 J^W iNUAL Some conclusions that I had were: 1. I didn't notice any extremely hot temperatures on the outside of the spacecraft. I also didn't contact surfaces for any period of time to transfer much in the way of a heat load to any part of my suit including the gloves. 2. There's a definite requirement for some type of hand holds outside the spacecraft. J. We should think a little more on where we want to operate during EVA and where to attach the tether. The tether was not attached at a point that would provide me the capability to operate in the area that I wanted to. McDivitt You couldn't get to the nose. It provided great operation for directly above. White Straight above. McDivitt I just don't know how you would get the thing out there. You would have to run it along the spacecraft, then attach it somewhere at the front. White It would preclude operations in other areas. You would either have to accept where we are going to operate or—. W b lRb tNtlM W NFID ENTIAL McDivitt "ou could have multiple attachment points around the spacecraft. White Of course, now, if you have a gun with a good air source, I wouldn't particularly care where it was attached. I think you could go ahead and, maneuver to any point you want if you have a gun. Again, when you're pushing off of surfaces, you tend to go perpendicular to the surface from which you push off. I found when I pushed as hard as I wanted to I’d still tend to go straight up above that hatch instead of out toward the front. I think this is a fairly obvious con­ clusion, but it proved out. Everytime I pushed off I went straight up instead of at an angle to the surface where I wanted to go. McDivitt Something that you should bear in mind is that ' you were pushing off from the front which tended to make the front go down as you went cut. White Yes. Everything was working against getting where I wanted to go. Everything I did tended to put me up. McDivitt When you started you went in a straight line forward and tended to push the spacecraft down. eeHFID ENTlAL at ion around, the attitude thrusters, particularly, 172 CONFIDEHTIM I think, initially, where I was holding the attitude, you didn't have that much trouble. Of course, you weren't pushing as hard either, be­ cause you had the gun. White No, I wasn't. McDivitt Later on, when we started free drifting, you were back behind me where I couldn't see. White Did you feel me stomping around back on the adapter and hitting the adapter. McDivitt Well, I felt you hitting things back behind me and once you went behind the line that was dir­ ectly overhead the spacecraft. T couldn't see you through your open hatch. White I never really had a good contact with the adapter back there. McDivitt Just as well. We wouldn't want to disturb those ’ radiator tubes too much. White No. Well, now that we're back, we'll have some conclusions on the adapter area. I made it a point right from the beginning to take a look at the thermal lines, the thermal paint on the adapter. It looked like it was in good shape. It was all there. There was discolor- ■ -eONFIDEHlW 173 from the thrusting. The color of the thrusting is just like the RCS thrusting--nice and clear plume. It looked like from outside, though, that I could see a lot more of the plume than I could when I was sitting inside the spacecraft looking out at the RCS thrusters firing. Again, the camera was not attached in an opportune manner to operate, McDivitt ’Which camera? The camera on the spacecraft? White I'm really after that camera on the gun. That one wasn't attached good. The camera on the spacecraft was okay. It was a little difficult to attach because of the attachment on the bottom of it. You can't have it at any angle to make it engage. It has to be perfectly flat with the mounting plate on the bottom. A big conclusion that I came to—and I'll see how you feel about this one, Jim—I feel that storage in the back of the adapter section was certainly a very high priority for later missions. I feel that we can adequately store equipment in the adapter area, particularly larger pieces of equipment that we don't have room for in the crew station or pieces we don't 174 ^r^NTIM^ have particular use for in the early part of the flight. If we can lick the problems in opening and closing of the hatch, we can store equipment in the back of the adapter section as a routine operation. McDivitt That's right. I think the extravehicular activ­ ities have proved to other people what we all ready knew a long time ago—that EVA is quite simple. I think the thing we've got to iron out is the hatch opening and closing. This is really our problem. I don't think you or I will ever have any doubt about the extravehicular activity. That was, I thought, going to be pretty straightforward. It looked like to me it was pretty straightforward. White I felt that I could operate equipment out there. I could assemble equipment. I could put pins in, pull pins out, and screw things in. I did all these things during the flight. I turned the gun on, and I put in the pin to operate the um­ bilical guide. I attached the camera. I don't think you could do these operations very effect­ ively with big heavy gloves on. Although my gloves operated satisfactorily, I think that for CONFID ENTIAL- GOMriDtHflAL ns assembly of items you want to have—-you ought to look into the glove area a little more thoroughly and try to get a piece of a glove with some type of a surface that will give us some heat protection and gives us a high sensitivity of feel through it. The big conclusions, the final conclusions, that I’d like to draw are that EVA can be made a normal routine operation if the following modifications are made to the space­ craft : 1. The highest priority is that the spring back there on the gain lug has convicted itself and I don't believe that that's a good design. There should be some way that either the lub­ rication is made foolproof or the spring made stronger. McDivitt I think what we really want to say here is that the locking mechanism is inadequate as it is, completely inadequate. Until it is fixed, I think we should take it easy. White That's right. I think we almost had a bad experi­ ence with that gain thing. We knew about it ahead of time. We thought we had it fixed, but it's not fixed. I think it convicted itself and it's 176 eeW lD ERTTO. guilty and it has to be fixed. 2. I recommend that at least the egress kit on the right of the crew compartment be removed to provide more room in the spacecraft. I see no reason for it being in there. I think it would be worth the effort and the addition­ al money to provide the extra room in the spacecraft. So, my second recommendation on EVA is to remove the egress kit, at least from the right-hand side, to provide more head room. McDivitt Yes, that’s good. I might add that it's a good thing that we had that egress kit modified to the minimum height, because without that we would have been in deep trouble. White That's right. White Yes. You and I had been telling each other that that was the biggest thing we did on our whole nine months prior to the flight—to get that thing cut down. 1 think it sure paid for itself on our flight. J. My third item is to make the bar and lanyard completely foolproof in strength. That was a device that provided us with the added force ^'ONHDW M. tn we needed to close the hatch, just as we sat there and said we might need during the SAR of the spacecraft in St. Louis. I think the attachments of the bar and the cable to the spacecraft should probably be at least doubled in strength, so there just isn't any question in the pilots' minds or the engineers' minds. I guess the engineers were convinced that you didn't have Jim and I convinced that those two attachment points--. McDivitt We've seen it break too many times, I think. White We've broken the bar and we've broken that attachment point. I had actually physically twisted the attachment right off the spacecraft up in the zero-g airplane. I certainly wouldn’t have put my full strength into it if I knew my life depended on that attachment. It should be made absolutely foolproof. McDivitt Well, that was the point I was trying to make earlier when I said I was pulling as hard as I could. Then I said that I really wasn't pulling as hard as I was capable of. White You didn’t have confidence in that attachment. McDivitt I didn't really think that I should pull on it -eeHF+BENTIAt— 178 ■eONHD ENTfM ary harder. White No. I think that should be the third recommen­ dation and it should be corrected. McDivitt I think we could spare a couple of extra pounds of weight there, just for the pilots' peace of mind. White That's right. Take the time it takes to put a new attachment on there. They told us they didn't want to do it because they'd have to re­ rig it. I think they'd better re-rig it and take the time to put a good attachment on there. 4. The final thing really doesn't fit in with the first three recommendations, but I would sure like to have the opportunity to use that gun again with about a 10-times supply of oxygen in a great big canister. I think that maybe this is one of the items we could carry in the back of the adapter. We could use a small supply to provide the means to go back there to get a great big canister. Then we'd have a unit that we could actually do some maneuvering with. McDivitt That's right. I think that, in essence, we proved the usefulness of a self-stabilized or a COMF1 EX ENTh M. 179 man-stabilized, maneuvering unit— White Yes. McDivitt --rather than one that is gyro-stabilized, with automatic stability features. I think that al­ though you didn't burn up a lot of fuel, you certainly proved, the feasibility of this type of maneuvering unit. White We had an awfully small amount. We just had the 6 feet/second— White We proved, in my mind, that I had the capability to go from Point A to Point B with that maneuver­ ing unit. McDivitt Let me ask you this question, aid be honest about it. Would you detach your tether and go without it? Don't be too optimistic, because other people's lives may depend on it. White I think that we probably have not done enough investigation to do that at this time, but I feel we are progressing toward the point. We made the first, say 50 percent, of the step toward being able to detach the tether and go. I don't believe that I would detach the tether and go with that 6 feet/second--. McDivitt Oh, no. I didn't mean that. I mean with that 180 type of a unit. White If I had some more AV in a unit like that I think that I would be ’"Liling to detach myself on the next flight, right now, from the space­ craft and go. That’s combined with two things, you see. You have two things working for you. You have the capability to maneuver yourself, and if you should get out of control the space­ craft still has the capability to come over and get close enough so that you could get yourself back in control and get in the spacecraft. White I think that 43 or 50 feet/second would be a minimum. I had 6 and I'd like to see, probably, a capability of about 10 times that. That may be a little--. McDivitt It's difficult. I would think it would be difficult to fix a number on it until you fixed the job. White Yes. McDivitt If you wanted to go to something that was 13 feet away and come back, you'd probably get by with 20 feet/second. White If I wanted to get out of the spacecraft and go along to the back of the adapter and get in the W Nft&ENTtAt 181 adapter without being attached to the space­ craft, I'd only need two or three time the amount. I'd he happy to go with that. McDivitt There are some problems in the capability to aline one's self onto an object. I think chasing the booster around points this out. You say you'd be willing to go away because the spacecraft can come and get you. Admittedly it can, but keeping in mind the difficulty we had with the booster. I don't really anticipate us ever get­ ting into the situation tike that because you'd never get so far away that you're in different orbits, like we were with the booster—. White What I visualise is a 25 to 50 foot operation where you're going out to investigate either another spacecraft or another satellite up there, or making a transfer similar to the type of trans­ fer that we visualize as a backup mode for Apollo. I think with the gun I had, if the LEM and the Com- ihand Module were there, I’d be satisfied >.a depart the Command Module and maneuver over to the LEM situated 10 to 20 feet away from the Command Module- I feel I could do that at the present time. I don't think it would be a very smart ^eeHFlD ENHAl- 182 eewENw thing at the present time to go maneuvering off 200 to 300 feet away from the spacecraft with this type of device. I think this device is designed and has its greatest usefulness in close operation around the spacecraft. McDivitt That's right. There is no need to maneuver off about 400 or 503 feet away because if you want to go that far, use the spacecraft. This gun is for a close working job. White I think it's a valuable tool in this manner. McDivitt Okay. That's the same conclusion I came to. We'd be willing to do it at close range. White I'd be willing to do it right now. I might not go tell somebody else to go do it, but I'd be willing, with the training that I had with it, to transfer 15 or 20 feet without a tether. But, I think we should spend some more time with the gun. McDivitt I think so, too. White I also think it would be of value to go in the zero-g airplane with it. McDivitt Yes, I think so, too. White I think the work that we might do in the zero-g airplane doesn't necessarily have to be done in CONFIDENTIAL x^G NHD ENTIAL^ 185 White full regalia, with all the pressure suits in a pressurised condition. I think we can go up there and learn a lot about the gun without pressure suits on, in a plain flying suit type operation. Perhaps polish the training off with a little work in pressurized suits. If you work in the zero-g airplane with a pressurized suit it * s pretty awkward. In pitch and yaw I felt I could maintain effect­ ively zero rates. I don't know how it looked to you Jim, but it looked like I could establish a rate and take the rate out without too much trouble. The yaw is the lowest moment of them all. Pitch was very easy, just to pitch the thing up and down. I'm still a little suspicious of roll. That's the area that I would like to look into a little more. I think that you could get yourself into a kind of balled up situation with pitch, roll, and yaw all coupled up. It might take a little bit of fuel to get yourself straightened back out again. But just in translating from Point A to Point B, you could care less if you rolled, as long as you kept pitch and yaw straight. And that's why I say I think you can CONFID ENTIAL 184 here. I don't believe we did that, did we, Ed, at 56 hours and JO minutes? White I was asleep and I can't tell you. 216 G eNflD ENTIAb McDivitt We didn’t do any of the Orbit Nav Checks with fuel so it was just a matter if you could see the ground you did one. They called up some more S-6 information for me, but I wasn't to use any fuel on it. They said I was to pass Typhoon Babe at 06:06, point of closest approach, and there was a new storm brewing. I'd have my closest approach to it at 06:13. Oh, yes. I also have a period that Ed slept here. White Which time was that? McDivitt Well, you got up at 08:15, Zebra time. That's about 40 hours and 30 minutes elapsed time. I drifted around to where I could see Typhoon Babe, but there wasn't anything to take a picture of. There was just a mass of clouds down below; smooth tops and nothing worth even a frame. I got another update that said: "Over Cairo on the 26th Rev I'd have my closest approach at 07 13 37* It would be 90 miles slant range on the closest approach. Don't use any fuel. We were just supposed to look at it. We did pick up Cairo and Alexandria both. I think you were awake at that time, weren't you? White It was the tail end of my sleep cycle. •CONFID ENTIAL CeNFtD EMTIAt 217 of was pretty difficult the first time. Later on McDivitt Well, you weren’t awake then. White What time was it, Jim? McDivitt It says 07 18 57. You should have teen asleep then. I have in my notes that you slept to 08:15. White Well, I was like you were. I wasn’t sleeping very good the last—quite often, I had my cover up watching out the window. You could always hear everything that was going on the radio, so you knew pretty well what was going on. McDivitt Well, anyway, Cairo and Alexandria were Doth clear, but this was the first time we'd seen them and it took a long time to find the targets— the particular target that we were looking for. We could find the Red Sea and we could find the Mediterranean, obviously. You could see the Suez Canal. You could see the river. I had difficulty finding the town of Cairo. How about you, Ed, with Alexandria? You were looking for Alexandria. White I found that one. McDivitt You found the town all right, but finding the airfield that we were supposed to take a picture 218 -eeW ID E-NTIAU when we’ll discuss the experiments, we'll comment on that. It looks like I was asleep here for awhile because I don't have any notes. White Okay. I have a set here. I was given the first time to take a look at some of the D-6 targets. I had No. 1, No. 12, and No. 13, and I had all the times for them. I think No. 1 is Tripoli. We'll go over these in a little more detail when we go to the experiments, Tripoli was covered by clouds. Alexandria was pretty good, and I was able to follow it pretty well. McDivitt Did you take any pictures of it? White Yes. I took some pictures. Actually, I think we should go back and look at these. I got several passes. This was the D-6 Experiment. No. 12 was Tripoli and it was covered with clouds. No. 13 was Alexandria, and I took manual pictures with the 20 mm Contarex. I didn't actually see— McDivitt The 50 mm Contarex? White No, the 200 mm Contarex. McDivitt The 200 mm. Hand-held? White No, I had it mounted. I didn’t actually see the airport but I had seen it before. I was .CONFID ENTIAL ENTIAk first clue that the THS was ahead of the ground time. White This is an area where I particularly watch the time. This is an area where I'm making a time check to start the elapsed timer going in order to get our time after retrofire. I was watch­ ing it pretty close. The indication on my watch was that the TRS was about a second or so early. I felt we had a good Greenwich Mean Time hack. We checked it several times and I thought we had a good one. With my time refer­ ence it was approximately a second to a little better early. At this time I had about half of the checklist completed before we got to the time for it. I verified it several times. It's not a hurried time at all, from j6 down, I don't believe. There's no time in there when you're really rushed unless it— McDivitt Yes. It is not hurried, provided you have everything else completed and you're not doing anything else but preparing for the retrofire— you have nothing going wrong during this period. At T -5 the sequence lights came on a little CONFID ENTIAL G OMR&EN-TIAf 267 it again. It didn't seem to do it, "but on the bit early and that's where Ed got his first clue tiat the THS was ahead of the other thing. I didn't notice it because I wasn't watching my event timer that closely. Ed got his GMT stop - watch started. Why don't you go ahead with the electrical, Ed? White I turned the main batteries on, verified them on, and verified they were taking the load. They were in good shape. McDivitt This is where we turned the CAMS off and the RCS on. Let me talk about the checkout on the RCS now. We had armed the RCS prior to the Tr-JS Checklist, and checked out each ring. When I was checking the rings out, I felt that I might have a thruster out. That was because when I pitched up or down, my top left yaw thruster was firing in one ring. I felt that I might be generating a rolling moment by having one of my pitch jets out and the yaw jets were having to take out this rolling moment I checked it in one ring. I don't remember which ring it was. I went to Direct and did 268 other hand, it didn't seem to make the space­ craft roll either. Then I turned That ring off and went over and ddd it on the other ring. Identically the same thing happened. I thought I might have trouble with the roll gyro. I turned the roll gyro to SECONDARY. That didn't seem to make any difference. We went back to PRIMARY. I remember commenting at that time that the RCS was a lot looser in control than the CAMS. It seemed to me that the CAMS held the spacecraft attitude better. It seemed like it controlled to a rate deadband that was smaller than the RCS deadband. I don't know why you're using the same gyros and the same electronics. The only thing that could be different would be the attitude drivers on the RCS might be activiating slower than they are in the CAMS. It seemed like the rates were such a—seems like there must be a lag in the whole system. It seemed like the deadband in the RCS was twice what it was in the CAMS. It operated properly. There's so much difference between looking at that ball on firing retros CONFID ENTIAL ^-CONFID ENT I At 269 and looking- out and actually seeing the nose of the spacecraft moving around out there. There's no comparison with the simulator. You just can’t simulate this. When I looked down at the hall and did the retrofire, it was just like the simulator. When I was looking outside and actually seeing what the spacecraft was do­ ing as I controlled it, it seemed like it was a lot sloppier with the RCS than it was with the CAMS. White We must have fired over New Mexico or Texas. McDivitt Our retrofire? White Yes. I could see the old Drown sandy earth down right under us. McDivitt Yes, Guaymas gave us our countdown, so we were over northern Mexico. White That's the area that I thought we were over. Actually, it may even look almost a little like west Texas. McDivitt It could have been. Then I did T -5. I went to our retro attitude. We reported our T -5 R Checklist complete. I don't know exactly when Guaymas came on the radio. -eeMfiD ENTIAL 270 CW FID ENTIAP 5-6 T -1 Events McDivitt Yes. At T„-1 there wasn't really much that we IL could do in advance, but whatever we could do, we did. There weren't many steps. White We just waited for minus 1 minute. McDivitt All you have to do is really just prepare your­ self mentally, but at T^-1 I told Ed, "We're at a minute.", and I guess Ed already knew we were at a minute. White Yes. McDivitt Ed did it just exactly as we'd briefed it many times. You punched the SEP OAMS. We heard the bang. He followed with a SEP ELECTRIC, rather quickly afterward as we had planned. We heard the bang. Then we waited a short time as we had planned, and fired the SEP ADAPTER. Then there was a great big bang. The tendency is to punch those buttons 1, 2, J. We decided that we didn't want to go 1,2,J. We wanted to go 1, 2, (pause) J. That was exactly what we did, and there wasn't any doubt whether the equipment adapter separated. White I had no inclination to look around. I knew it eONHD ENTIAb 271 was gone. McDivitt That’s when Ed hollered, "There go the pump packages! I see two pump packages out there. Just exactly what John Young said!" White They separate right off to the left side. Jim couldn't see them because of the position of his head. I could see them. McDivitt That's right. I never saw them at all. White I could clearly see the two pumps together on the mounting and mounted together. They were right together. And I'll hack John up to hilt on that one. I saw them too. McDivitt We got the adapter separated with all the at- tendent flying pump packages. White Quite a flourish, isn’t it? McDivitt Right. It sure is. It was a tig hang. There's no douht about it. At T -JO, the T -JO Sequence Lights came on, and at that time Ed said, "The sequence lights came on about a second or a second and a half in advance." So, I armed retro squibs, and we discussed whether or not to punch off the Auto-retro Button or not. If the TRS was fast, I didn't •CONFID ENTIAL- 272 CONFID ENTIAL want to punch it off ahead and have the retro­ rockets go off early, hut I figured that it ■ wasn't in a hurry that much. But if it came on much earlier than that, it was really going to make us short. So, I finally decided that we'd go ahead and arm the Auto-retro Button at about three seconds so that we weren’t going to be any more than 15 or 20 miles short as a result of the retrorockets going off early. We'd still get the auto-retrofire - signal through, so that if something went wrong with the manual retrofire signal we'd still get the retrorockets fired. I felt that three seconds early would be better than a possible 15 or 20 second one in case we had to go through some non-nominal method of firing the retros in case the manual button didn't make it work. I told Ed to arm the auto-retrofire, and he did this at about three seconds and it fired automati­ cally at between two and one seconds, I think, in the count. White Yes. McDivitt I felt that we got a one-plus second early eeNFID ENTIAl eONRD ENTIAt- 275 White McDivitt 5*7 Tp-C Events McDivitt auto-retrofire. Right. I did too. We went through the little discussion there from minus JO down, and I knew what Jim's point was. I think I distrusted the system a tad more than Jim did, but I thought his logic was good. We had two systems work­ ing to fire the rockets. I was in full agree­ ment. We went through and saved fuel for four days so we could do an CAMS retrofire. I felt if we're going to adopt that sort of philosophy and go through that long of a lean fuel period, then we could afford another few miles of in­ accuracy thrown in by an early retrofire if we got the redundancy that you would get from a double-firing. So, I elected to go ahead and have Ed push it. Although it probably con­ tributed on the order of 8 to 10 miles to our miss distance, I don't think it really hurt us that bad. I had the spacecraft in the retrofire attitude, and when the retrorockets fired, I— 'W NFID ENTIAt* 274 ^OHFID ENTIAL- White I had also pushed the manual button on time. So, it was about a second after they actually fired. McDivitt Excellent. The spacecraft was in the proper retro-attitude and we got a real good push from the retrorockets. There are four distinct pushes, and I never felt a pause between any one of them. Did you? White Yes, a little pause between each one. I think my cues were tuned up in a different manner than yours. Yours were working on the controls. Did you feel that you could actual­ ly see the acceleration? You weren't looking out the window. McDivitt I was a little bit. It looked like we were actually turned around and started back the other way. Ila, ha! White I really could feel the g's. nothing that was uncomfortable, but I felt each one of them and I also felt looking out that I could see the spacecraft slowing down. I know it was such a pityingly amount compared to our velocity, but I was looking down on the ground when they fired. €©NFID ENTUl .CONFID ENTIAL— 275 Your view of the ground is considerable at minus 30 degrees, and it did seem like I could see the spacecraft actually slow down. McDivitt I don’t know what the magnitude of the g's was during retrofire. We were super-sensitive, I'll tell you that. We'll get to that later. As a matter of fact, later on when I was debating about whether or not the g meter worked, I stopped and hit the reset button, and it did acorns down. It came down .from something less than one to Zero. White I'd say between 2/10 of a g and 1/2 g during retrofire. McDivitt I'd guess something about that order too. It sure seems a lot. Whits Your cues are really uprfor the g's. McDivitt You've been at zero g for so long, anything feels like it’s a lot. McDivit- I was at zero rates and in the proper attitude. I was in Rate Command when the retrorockets fired. I maintained the attitude very well. It was very easy. There were no deviations at all. Ed was standing by on the roll rate gyro -6G NFID ENTIAL 276 €^MR£ENTfAt- in case it looked like I was loosing control in yaw. He could turn off the roll rate gyro and get all the authority that I needed in yaw. As far as I could see, it never deviated more than a degree from where I was supposed to be. I don’t think it ever got off that center bar in yaw, and it never got a dot- that little dot—away from the JO degree mark as far as I could tell. Could you see any, Ed? White I was sitting there watching it and enjoying it at that time because the attitude was stay­ ing right on. McDivitt Yes. It was right on. We got the AV in the right direction. Now, the IVI’s didn’t read out, because we didn't have the computer on, so we really couldn’t tell. White It was as steady as a rock. You could see the decelerations and looking out the window, I couldn't detect any movement in attitude. I was looking right down on the ground several times during several of the retros, and I think you could detect motion fairly well. I didn't see any. QW 4W BENTIAL. CONFID ENTIAL 277 McDivitt I'll tell you. I was really happy after that CAMS retrofire and the retrorocket retrofire. I figured that we had exactly what we were supposed to, and I was positive we were going to come down on that cotton-picking carrier. I was really quite happy after that, "because I don't think even ix. the simulator we ever had one tha; easy. White Shall we make our admission on OAMS retro at this time, Jim? McDivitt Yes. As a matter of fact it might "be appro­ priate. I'm probably one of the "biggest an­ tagonists to the OAMS retrofire that there possibly is at the Manned Spacecraft Center, because I think it’s a fuel wasting maneuver and a lot of other things. I still think it is. I'll still say one thing—after I fired the OAMS retrofire and I knew I was going to come down, I was a lot more relaxed than I had been before I got there. I'm going to have to tell Dr. Gilruth that, but I still think we can get by without it. White It was nice to see it work. It was nice. ■CONFID ENTIAL 278 eeNFID ENTIAl McDivitt It was, and. I was real sorry we didn’t have a computer because after those two things, which I thought were done certainly as good as I could possibly do them. I felt sure that we could have landed right on the cotton-picking carrier’s deck if we just had a computer to tell us where to go. I would have liked to have tried the guidance. I worked hard enough on that reentry guidance and I didn't get to use it. White Jim, I think there is one thing that we left out —the reading of the percentage of OAMS fuel left. I think we called out "3 or 4 per cent. McDivitt That's right. I had 3 or 4 percent remaining on the gage . We called it out and it will be on the tape. White I wrote it down at 3 percent. Here it is. 3 percent of the fuel left after OAMS. McDivitt Yes, and it was a little hard to read down there and parallax was pretty bad. I estima­ ted that it was 3 per cent. White I read off the quantity on the gage and it was a little over 1100. CONFID ENTIAL ^ONFID ENTIAb - 279 McDivitt 1100 psi? White Yes. McDivitt I’ll tell you one thing about the out-the- window view at JO degrees pitch-down attitude. You're really pitched down at JO degrees. White That's another thing that I noticed. I was looking out the window, and I surely wasn't observing much in the way of a horizon. I was looking at the ground. McDivitt The top 2 inches of the window has the hori­ zon in it. So, if you really had a bad retro and you got screwed hp a little bit, you could lose your horizon. White You could lose your horizon, but I think you've got a good enough view of the motion of the ground and an object on the ground. I think you could do a very effective job. McDivitt If I really had to do an out-the-window retro I'm not even sure that I'd look out and use the horizon. I think I'd pick a spot on the ground. White That's the point I was making. You'd put a grease pencil on your window. McDivitt You'd have to use both. eeNFID ENTIAL 280 ^eWIUENTIM? White X 'hink you’d find a spot on the ground, and hold it. McDivitt Because the spot on the ground is going to move. White Yes, it's going to move during the fire. That's exactly what you do on an attitude ball you know. You have a horizon and you have a spot and then you fly that spot. So, it sounds kind of like the thing I think you can do. McDivitt The retrorockets fired, as I said, in the order 1, 2, 5, 4. We got the manual fire out— button punched. Ed got that. We had said that because we're getting a countdown we were going to fire the Manual Retrofire Button exactly when we got to zero. We weren't going to wait around a second after that so that we got the computer and all that jazz on the line. We didn't have any computer to get on the line. We weren’t going to read out anything on the IVI's or anything else. All we were concerned with was firing the retrorockets. 5.8 Retropack Jettison McDivitt I waited 45 seconds. I started rolling over at this time. When 45 seconds came, I had the CIMID ENTIAk zeeNFID ENTIAb 281 retrojett squib on, and. I punched off the retro--- White The light came on and. you punched it. McDivitt That's right. The light came on at 45 seconds and I punched it. There was a real solid hang, and I knew we separated from the retropack. No doubt there either. As we went on down, we finally saw the retropack come on around behind us. McDivitt Do you have anything else on the retropack jettison? I guess not. That's pretty simple. 5.9 Communications McDivitt We got the com from the ground. White I thought we had good communications with the ground. McDivitt No problems with the communications. I was a little concerned with the communications earlier in the flight, because we weren't get­ ting anything. We weren't getting retrofire times or any other information. But towards the end of the flight communications were ex­ cellent. 5.10 Update -S eNHD ENTIAb 282 McDivitt The update was awful, I think. As I mentioned earlier, they updated our TRS but the TRS was obviously not running with the ground. 6.0 REENTRY 6.1 Reentry Parameters Update McDivitt We really didn’t have a reentry parameters up­ date post-retro. We went into black-out pretty quick. There wasn’t anything to update. We were going to start rolling at 400 000. Re­ gardless of anything else, we had a pre- 6.2 400k White pro granule d reentry. We were at 40OK before you got your 5 - Minute Update. McDivitt That's right. At two minutes and $8 seconds we were through 400 000 feet. We got there in a hurry. I rolled upside down, and I flew down to 400 000 feet, which was to be at 2:58. How­ ever, I thought that we'd retrofired a little early, so I wasn't in any great rush to start my rolling reentry. I delayed about another 50 or 40 seconds. The only reason I delayed was because I knew there wasn't any rush to get €©NFtD ENTIAJ. 285 CeMFID ENTIAI, White McDivitt White McDivitt over, because if we were going to be anyplace, we were going to be short. I just wanted to get over and get in a good attitude. So, I rolled the thing upside down, got the— One thing—on the Post-retro Checklist, we decided this time to use Reentry Rate Command rather than Direct. That’s right. That's a deviation on our checklist. When I got the thing upside down, I was still in Rate Command. I held the lift vector up, heads down, until I got down to ’ about 3 minutes and 15 seconds. I got my 3 minute time hack from the ground. I got my clock counting up a 3 minutes. At about 3 minutes and 15 seconds I started the roll. What I did was,I put in about 15 degrees/second, and then we turned off the roll gyro. I just left the thing rolling. I controlled the pitch and yaw inside the rate deadband, which was plus or minus 4 degrees, just as you would in Direct. I still had the rate deadband to take care of any wild pertubations that we got into. 'CONFID ENTIAL 284 6.3 -04 g White We didn't even have a time for .04 g’s did we? McDivitt No. We didn’t have anything like that. We started rolling reentry at 400 000 feet, except that I didn't start it until about 45 seconds after that to make sure that I had good at bi bide I started the thing around the way I wanted it. Just about this time, we saw the retro adapter start floating back past us. I figured the other day that thing was small-end-forward rather than blunt-end-forward. White I'd say it was front-end-forward too. McDivi tt We saw the spherical end of the retrorockets. Remember? White Yes. All four of them. McDivitt All four of them. We didn't see the nozzle. It had done a 180-degree turn small-end- forward and it was as stable as a rock. We could see the whip antennas sticking out to the side. White Exactly the position it should go to. That’s the heaviest end, I would presume. McDivitt It would tend to trim that way too. Except that CONFID ENTIAL •€©NFID ENTIAf 285 I didn't think there would be any aerodynamics at 400 000 feet. But it was turned around 180 degrees and was perfectly stable with the whip antenna sticking out, which at that time was up to the right. White Yes. McDivitt We were upside down. It sure was a funny lookA ing sight. White It sure was. It was really pretty. McDivitt And it was as stable as a rock and very slowly drifting behind us. As a matter of fact, for a while I thought that our opening velocities were too slow, and I thought it would just come back and hit us. But, it just stayed out there, and we started our rolling reentry there. We were coming on down and we were rolling around and before I got any noticeable g's at all—Isn't that right—before we got any notice­ able g’s it started burning? White Okay. We saw the reddish pink layer come a- round the spacecraft— McDivitt Well, didn't we see the retropack start burning before the—? -eeNFID ENTIM 286 W W 4T+Ai White Whichever way we saw it, it's on the tapes, because we discussed it pretty thoroughly. McDivitt That's right, as we were doing it. But I sort of vaguely recall that watching the retros after us as we spun around, it started glowing a little bit and then you could see this big spray come off the front—shock or something. It looked like it was just melting and coming away. It just looked like a great big orange mushroom back there, and that's when it really started falling behind us. McDivitt We hadn't felt any g's at all. Had you felt any g's? White Not that time. McDivitt l’m sure that I hadn't felt any g's. White I was wondering why we were so light. We were looking down at Florida. We had watched Florida go by and commented on it. McDivitt Shoot, we really made a low altitude pass across the States. We should have probably filed a DD- 175 to get clearance. White We had to come through the control zone, you know, at Eglin. They're kind of sensitive about G a NFID fNTIAt -CONFID ENTIAL 287 lower altitudes. McDivitt . . . started, glowing and burning and it was as stable as a rock as long as I could see it. Did you ever see it tumble? White No, never did. McDivitt Okay. It was behind us and it looked like it just ate the front tight off, and I guess when we first saw it, it was on the order of 200 feet, maybe? White Yes. McDivitt And the last time I saw it, it looked like it was about 5/4 .... White That was about the position that I saw the booster for the first time. McDivitt I think you're right. I guess we could see the dome on it and all that stuff. As a matter of fact, it was a pretty good reentry shape. It looked stable as a rock. White It stabilized right out. McDivitt So, we finally saw it drop behind us and burn up. As it finally started drawing behind us. White We started to get — McDivitt The first thing I saw was the orange flame—the -CONFID ENTIAL 288 -G ONFIG ENZ IAU orange or pinkish flames coming out. It looked like the flame was coming up around my side of the spacecraft like this. Was it doing that on your side, too? White Yes. It looked like it was almost coming from three points. McDivitt Okay, Probably what it was doing was coming around both sides because of the angle of attack and going out this way. But I definitely could see the orange fire come up around the left­ hand side of the spacecraft and cut in front of the window, and pretty soon I saw some green fire-— White Coming out of the ton — McDivitt Oh, is that where you saw it? I didn’t. I saw the green fire down close to the left-hand side coming up over the nose inside of the red fire, and then it was all swirling around there. Then while we were coming down, we were coming down in a roll, but with our relatively high L/D, we were in a great big roll with a big wallow. I guess this is really indicative of how much lift we had. G ONFID ENTIAt J20 NFID ENTIM 289 White McDivitt White McDivitt White It looked to me like we were getting a lot of lift out of it. It looked to me we were getting an awful lot of lift out of it. It was really whipping around there. And we were going around at a pretty good rate. The needle was off to the left. That's right. It moved Out slowly, slowly and got out to about 2 degrees and it just held there. The spacecraft was as stable as a rock. I damped the thing a couple of times in pitch and yaw and it just stablized right on down there. I don't think I even touched the pitch again. I think I maybe touched the pitch four times all the way down and the yaw maybe six or seven times. What I was looking at was just a huge portion of the sky. I could see the ground, then I could see the sky, and I really saw a lot of the country as we came rolling by. What surprised me is how much it was. I knew why it was doing it but I thought it was — eONFID ENTIAL 290 eewiD fNTiAb arc was that this thing cut out. That thing was a real lifting body. You're really getting a lot of lift initially, and if you roll around there, you'd kill it all off; and your aero­ dynamics is such that you really can't tell, because the stability is so loose right there. White You know you're going to get some lift if you have an offset CG, but you couldn't tell where it was going. McDivitt You're in the area where you're getting a lot of lift so if you do a roll, you've lost that range right off the bat. We came down on this J great big spiral, and here I think we ought to get into — 6*4 Acceleration Profile McDivitt — the acceleration at retrofire. I called down on the ground and told them that we had four rotros. We got automatic. We got auto- retro. We got all four in sequence. We got auto-retro. Auto-retrofire appeared to be about a second and a half early. In the acceleration profile I said, "Well, here come the g's, Ed,” and I felt the g’s going up. He said yes. eeNFID ENTIAb — CONFID ENTIAL ^ White I said, "Yes. There are two of them, aren't there?" McDivitt Yes, and then we waited a while longer and— White I said, "Gee, there's nothing on the g-meter." McDivitt I said, "The g-meter must be broken ",so that's why I reached up and reset it. It actually went down a little bit. So we went a little while longer, and I said, "Ed, I feel a lot of g's ", and he said, "So do I." Then he said','We must be up between three and four." White If felt like that. McDivitt And I said, "Yes, I think we're up about that high too." And the g-meter was still reading zero for all pratical purposes. Pretty soon it started building up slowly. It went up to 2, J, 4, and I called out at 2, and I called out at 4, and I called out at 6, and I think I called out at 7- White About the time you called out the 2, I knew we had been had. McDivitt Yes. It's just that we were super-sensitive to g's and the load pulling us into the seat was on the order of a tenth of a g. White It's true. -CONFID ENTIAL 292 eewt&ENTiAk McDivitt So, we had 1/10 g and we thought we had J. And we both felt this way. The g's went up to a­ bout 7 l/2. They told us we would probably get 8 g’s coming down. When we got the instrument positions back from the spacecraft, the post landing switch positions, they had the g-meter marked at 7 V? g’s, and I suspect that's probably about as high as it went. Now, I'm telling you this was really a piece of cake. I thought that maybe 7 V^ g’s after being out there for so long would be tough, but I didn't even have to breathe hard to get any air. I just lay there and relaxed and enjoyed the whole thing, and I really got a big kick out of that reentry. White We chatted back and forth. We talked through the whole g-load, and I was watching outside and inside. I was looking out quite a bit of the time when things were going so smoothly, particularly the g-load. When you get to the high g's, you might as well look out, because you're not going to do anything about it, and I noticed no dimming in vision. Everything was as clear as a bell. Not a speck. I could see -eONFID ENTIAL" .CONFID ENTIAL 29 5 everything on the instrument panel, and I could see things very clearly outside. McDivitt Things were going so smoothly on the inside that I looked out too. I enjoyed the scenery on the way down. White Once you get in that position and you get the high g’s you're not going to do anything inside. McDivitt In the amplitude of the oscillations, —all the simulations show that they tend to decrease as you get to high g's and the frequency picks up. So the only thing you could do is hurt things if you start screwing around with it, except we didn't have any oscillations anyway. It was just as stable as a rock. White I think at this point I'd like to put something in. I'd like to find out when they analyze the data whether the upper right-firing thrusters on my side were firing a whole magnitude more than the right-hand upward-firing thrusters. In fact, they very early in the profile became a cherry red and just stayed red hot, even a little bit white hot all the way down. White There was no frequency to it at all. It appeared to me they were firing continually and I think CONFID ENTIAL — 294 G W RD RNTIAb maybe this might associate itself in some way with something in the system prior. McDivitt I think it was prior, because we were in Reentry Rate Command and we started the roll. Then the yaw needle drifted on out and it looked to me like it never got over about J degrees/second. I was trying to road the 0.1 degree/second scale. It might have gone on to 4 degrees/second with the roll rate we had in there, and the jets just kept right on firing constantly. What I had done when we started was to leave the roll gyro on, and I rolled the thing over till I got almost full deflection on the needle. Then I put the roll gyro off so I'd have 15 degrees and we wouldn't tend to overrate the thing so that the Reentry Rate Command was firing all the time. What I think happened was that as we went on down, the yaw rate needle tended to drift on out. I don’t know if you noticed it or not, but it tended to drift out. It started at around 2 degrees/second, and it drifted on out slowly until it got to about 4 degrees. I thought it never got out to more than 5 degrees/ second. Later on, when we started oscillating S OHHD ENTIAL -^©NFID ENTIAt 295 around like we did, if the thing were out at J degrees and started banging back and forth at all, the yaw thrusters would be on constantly; and also that’s the side that they'd be on. It would have been on the right-hand side. Are you sure that it was red that high up, or did it get red when we started getting down where we got all those oscillations? Because there I’m sure it was firing all the time. White It was red for a long time, Jim. McDivitt Was it? I was actually watching it, waiting for one of them to bust loose, because it was really firing a lot more than I thought it was out there. Jim asked me about the frequency of it, and I could­ n't tell whether it was on or off. It was red all the time. The other one was hardly heated up at all. McDivitt Shoot. There wasn't any need for any kind of firing then. White It would be interesting to see if the other yaw thrusters were. McDivitt Well, it'll be interesting when they cut these things apart to see what kind of life cycle — ©©MtlD ENTIAL 296 -QONFID ENTIM 6-5 Spacecraft control White It really had a good workout. 6.6 100 000 feet McDivitt Spacecraft control was like a dream. A good engineering description. There weren't any oscillations. It was as stable as a rock. I don't think we need to say much more about that. It wasn't like any failure simulation we've seen. It was the easiest thing to control, easier than any simulation I've seen. Shoot! A baby could have done it. McDivitt We started getting oscillations around then and the Reentry Rate Command fired a few times and I damped it in pitch and yaw. There really wasn't any control problem to it at all, I didn't feel. Did you think there was? White No. I would have been watching closer if I had thought there was. McDivitt The altimeter was at 96 700 feet throughout the entire flight. It started on down,and we were still at about 5 or 6 g's when that thing started on down. It went on down to about 92 000 feet, and then the g's started off, and the altimeter started back up again. CONFID ENT! At 297 It went all the way back to about 96 000 feet again, and then it started down again. The second time it started down, it really started down in a hurry, and I was sure that we were still at 100 000 feet. McDivitt So, I waited until the g level got about 3, which is around SO or 90 thousand feet. I started slow­ ing the roll rate there. I wanted to get the thing to a zero roll rate by the time we got to 40 or 50 thousand feet, certainly by the time we got to 40- We started gyrating around some more, but I didn’t think it was exceptional. The Reentry Rate Command started firing. As a matter of fact, I saidJ'Here comes the Reentry Rate Command, and then I was firing on top of it so that we really weren't oscillating too much. Then we got to 40 000 feet and I put the drogue chute out, and that'a where things really got exciting. 6.7 50 000 feet McDivitt I put the drogue out at 4° 000 feet. We were nice and stable as we went down. We were a heck of a lot more stable than we were when we put the drogue chute out. 298 G€>MriPEHTIAL^ White That’s right by several orders of magnitude. McDivitt When we put the drogue chute out, we were concerned about the thing destabilizing rather than stabilizing. So I intended to put the drogue out and leave the control at Reentry Rate Command. This I did, and we oscillated all over the sky. We estimated plus or minus 40 degrees, and I think we were at least every bit of that. White We were, and when the drogue chute came out, I was right in the sun so I couldn’t see it, and I didn't know whether we had one or not. You called it out, and about the time you called it out, I could see it up there gyrating wildly around. McDivitt I never could tell whether the thing dereefed or not. I had a lot of goop on my window and the sun was out, and all I could see was the shape of the drogue up there, and it really was fluttering around. We were plus or minus 40 degrees to it without any doubt, and I wouldn't be a bit sur­ prised if we weren't plus or minus 60 degrees to it. ty-e were really getting tossed around. It was just jerking all around. White It was fast, but I don’t think it was that big a •eONFID ENTIAt w McDivitt White McDivitt White White McDivitt White White McDivitt magnitude. (McDivitt is making a noise to des­ cribe it.) About like that. I was really surprised the thing held on there, to tell you the truth. So was I. I was expecting the drogue chute to fall off any minute. I was, too. It worked all right. It held us together. If I went through it again, I'd be perfectly happy sitting there riding through it, to tell you the truth. The way I looked at it, it was rather interesting. I hadn't quite expected that. Neither did I. I know that Gus said that he had a pretty wild ride and he thought the thing was destabilizing him. He had a scheme where he just turned off the propellent valves to stop the propellent flow. That meant that he had to wait about 10 or 15 seconds to get the propellent valves back open again to get the jets firing. Well, I wasn't going to do that. I thought the thing to do was to turn off the electronics JOO CeNFIDENTIAL and see if the thing was going to become unstable. This is what I did. I turned off the RCS elec­ tronics. The thing was that they didn't get any worse. It didn't get any worse. I watched it. I could see enough of it to tell that we weren't becoming unstable. White It was unstable to a point and then it stabilized out in this oscillation. McDivitt That's right. It was really gyrating around. By that time we were down to 20 000 feet and I called, ”20 thousand feet. Pull down the handles", or something to that effect. White You called out 26. McDivitt Is that what I said? And then, I pulled the propellant valves, as I had planned to do, and turned the control mode to Rate Command rather that Reentry, because I wanted to burn up all the fuel that I could out of those manifolds. As a matter of fact, I was interested in burning up all the fuel I could before I got to the ground. White I have a question. I thought you put it in Rate Command before you turned off the valves, and it pretty well damped itself out on the eeNFfDENTIM JOI drogue. McDivitt No, I don’t think 1 did. White Okay. McDivitt I don’t think I did. I think I left it in Reentry Rate Command until I turned it off and then turned off the power. I went from ACME to OFF on both rings. It didn't get any worse. I think what I might have done is I might have gone from OFF to ACME to Rate Command, to turn the propellant valves off rather than going from — White Well, I know it damped out there in the end considerably. I think it was when the Rate Command, or whatever it was, was firing. McDivitt Well, Reentry Rate Command was going all the time. We were going at a heck of a lot faster rate than 4 degrees/second. White Well, we cut down our oscillations considerably after you did something over there. I thought you had put it in Rate Command. McDivitt I did put it in Rate Command, but I didn’t leave the propellant on. This was why I wanted to get rid of all the propellant onboard the spacecraft if I could. But I didn’t want -eeNFID ENTIAT-- 302 j€G ihOlENUM_ to let those thing’s fire for a long- time and maybe eat up the drogue chute, and find ourselves without propellant and without drogue chute, too. So, once we got the drogue chute out, I let the things fire for a while and turned the electronics off. Maybe I turned it back on and went to Rate Command, and off with the prop­ ellant valves. I'm not really sure. White I think you had it in Rate Command for a little while —Probably while you were firing out the fuel. McDivitt Yes, that's what I did. I went to Rate Command and let all the fuel fire out, just as we had planned. So that I was sure that the rates were high enough that we were going to fire out the fuel without disturbing the thing on the drogue. ' So we fell on down. Ed got the snorkel on the vent valve about 28 to 27 thousand feet. We • came on down. I watched the altimeter go through 11 000. . . 6.8 Main Chute Deployment McDivitt At 10 600 I punched out the main chute. I saw it go out with a lot of crap and corruption flying off the nose. It went out and came out in a reefed condition, and I saw and I said we had a good reefed chute. I don't guess you «OW-H)LNIKL 305 6.9 Communications could see that too well, could you? White No, I couldn't see the chute out. I saw it finally when it deployed. McDivitt I saw the thing hanging up there just the way it was supposed to, and then the thing dereefed, came billowing out just the way it should, and I ’said, "We've got a good chute". One edge of it collapsed and came hack in and collapsed about a third of the chute. We've seen a lot of movies of these chutes coming out, so I wasn't really worried about the thing collapsing. It went in and came back out. we couldn't have heard anything anyway. McDivitt There weren't any communications that I could tell were there? Maybe we received some trans­ missions on the drogue, but I'm not really sure. As soon as we -deployed the main chute the antenna came off. So we couldn't talk to anybody after that. White I don't think we got anything on the drogue. McDivitt I'm not really sure that we did. White I don't think we did. McDivitt Shoot! We were getting thrown around so that 504 COMriDENTreL White McDivitt White They tried to communicate with us a couple of times after we came out of the blackout and before we put the drogue out. I didn't hear exactly what he was saying. He wasn't hearing anything I was saying either as far as I could tell. He wasn't acting like he heard what I was saying. He gave us our blackout times of 5+23 and 9+21, and there really wasn't too much we could do to check these out. After we got the main chute deployed, I told Ed, "Quick! Take your blood pressure." The chute came out around 7500 feet or so, and when we finally got the thing dereefed we were floating down nice and gently. Ed started taking the blood pressure, and it seemed like it took an eternally long time. By the time we got down . around 5500 feet or so, I said, "Ed, get the blood pressure done because at 5000 feet we're going to go to a two-point attitude." He fooled around and fooled around and fooled around. Finally we got down to 5000 feet and I said, "Ed, you've got about three or four more seconds, and we're going to two-point attitude." It was a little slow. I don't know why. 505 McDivitt I didn't want to trust that altimeter. Ed kept fooling1 around with that blood pressure without getting any air out of it, and finally I said, "Okay, Ed, we're going to go to two- point." I guess by then he had the blood pressure completed. White I think we got a good blood pressure. McDivitt So, just like we'd always practiced, I said, "5, 2, 1, MARK " grd punched the single—point release. 6.10 Single-Point Release White We both had our heads braced up on our arms. McDivitt We had our arms up on the windshield and my head wasn't exactly on my arm. Was yours? White My head was on the arm and pressed over to the side of the spacecraft. I was well wedged in, I felt. McDivitt So was I. My head went forward a little bit, back a little bit, then back up forward again, and it didn't hit anyplace. Did yours? White No. I had my head pressed on my arm the whole time. I don't believe it left the arm very much, because I actually had it wedged from behind, too. McDivitt So, I thought going to two-point was a lot less violent than the ride on "the drogue. 306 ^eewcHflAi 6.11 Postmain Checklist Items White I agree with you. I think we've got a good operational procedure of bracing your head on your arm up against the window—a satisfactory procedure for this. White We took the blood pressure on the main chute, too. I went through what I call the reinforcement items on the checklist that I wanted to get off right away, and then I sat back and pumped off another blood pressure. About this time you were making your calls to the recovery force. McDivitt Right. I started calling the recovery forces as Ed was taking his blood pressure. We got some response from Omnibus right away. White Good old Omnibus. McDivitt Yes. And we went right on down. We stowed the D-ring covers. We stowed the D-ring covers between deploying the main chute and going to two-point, just as we had planned. We didn't want the D-ring to flop around there, and once you go to two-point it's too late to eject anyway. White I called Jim to unstow his D-ring at 35 DOG feet and he took his out at that time. I pulled his eONflDCNTIAt WNriDCWIAt- 507 right arm lift up and. I saw him pull his left one UP* McDivitt No, I didn't get my left one up. I made three passes and I said to heck with it. White I thought you got it. I struggled with mine and finally got it up. I had both of mine up, and you went on and completed the checklist. McDivitt I knew Ed wanted me to get my D-ring out because I was the guy that was going to have to bail us out. White Again I'd come down with this big bag of stuff resting on my legs up against the bottom of the seat, and as we approached 55 000 feet, I pulled this up in my lap, and just held it. We had agreed that Jim would do the ejection if we had to, and I would just take the ride. I didn't unstow my D-ring. I just sat there. That's why I made pretty sure that Jim got his out. McDivitt After we got on the main, we went through and turned off all the switches, just as we were planning on doing it. I turned off all the switches on the middle circuit breaker panel except the ones on the last couple of rows. I OeNFID ENTIAL 308 turned off the IMU, the rate gyros, the horizon scanner, and those switches on the center pedas- tai. I didn't turn off any over on the left hand side except the Landing Attitude Circuit Breaker. White May I ask you a question? Did you think it was a shorter time from 7500 feet down to the ground than it was in the simulator? McDivitt Yes, as a matter of fact I did. White I thought it was a considerably shorter period of time. McDivitt Yes, we went from 5000 feet to the ground in nothing flat. White You’re not kidding—nothing like we go down in that simulator. I would be curious if we have any data that tells us what our descent indicator was telling us on our descent? McDivitt It was jumping around. It was between 30 and 40 feet/second like it does in the simulator. White xt seemed like we went down awfully fast. I would already finished turning off everything in the simulator with quite a bit of margin, but, of course, I did take the two blood pressures in here. I got all the essential ■G OHHBEffflM 'WWWfflAl 509 switches off and started turning' off nonessential ones when you called out a thousand feet. McDivitt At a thousand feet I said to get ready to pull out the water seal. White That1s right. McDivitt You got the water seal out at about ?00 feet? White I pulled it about 500 feet. McDivitt We pulled it lower than we usually do because usually we're sitting there waiting to go through a thousand feet. White Right. McDivitt We got down to about JOO feet, and I said let's prepare for landing. White Right. 310 eewm cMfiAL 7.0 LANDING AND RECOVERY 7.1 Impac t McDivitt We got down to about JOO feet, and I said, "I guess we ought to get ready for landing." But as John Young says, "How will you get ready for landing this thing?" So as he did, we just sat there, and we went through zero feet, I believe, on the altimeter. White We hit very close to the water with zero on the altimeter. Here we had an altimeter that we hadn’t set for McDivitt I think we hit at about minus 100 feet or so. Any­ way, we really plunked down in the water. We hit ten times harder than I expected to hit. The altimeter -was set at the lift-off setting. I didn't fool around with setting it. White That's an interesting point. They ought to give you an altimeter setting for the landing area. McDivitt I don't think that would do any good. I wouldn't trust that altimeter within a thousand feet. White No, but I'd rather have my reading on it that much more accurate. You've got a ship sitting out there that could give you the exact altimeter setting. 511 four days. I hadn't thought about this. McDivitt The last time that altimeter does me any good is when I go through 10 600. Well, I guess I use it down .to about five or six thousand when I'm trying to get the two-point suspension. It's useful there too. White It was a good indication that we were coming up to 1000 feet and to get ready for landing, Jim. McDivitt Yes. Like I said earlier, how do you get ready for landing? All we did was sit there. White We've got to stop throwing switches. McDivitt Yes, I guess so. White I think it would be a good procedure to go ahead and get ar. altimeter setting. McDivitt I suppose it would. It only takes you a second to crank the thing in. White Yes. It's there. We ought to use it. McDivitt Well, we hit the water with a real wallop. Then I sort of felt that we went into about a 150-degree roll to the left and were dragged backward. We were almost upside-down going through the water backwards. Now, the CAG here saw us hit. He saw us from about 100 feet on down. He said it looked like to him that we came down and hit the water COHrm^TIAL 512 and tilted the thing up over the top. He said we were going blunt-end-forward, but we were actually tilted over the top. We then did a pxtch-down maneuver about 180 degrees in the water. I was surprised that we were being dragged backwards, but I got the sensation that I was going backwards and almost upside-down. White I had the kind of feeling that we went in and touched over a little bit, and that's about all the feeling that I got. I don't believe we got dragged very much. McDivitt No, but I just felt that was the way that I was going. I was being pressed back in my seat like I would be if I were being dragged, and I was thrown over to the left like I would have if we had rolled over this way. White I got the left roll and I also think that I had less water in my window than you did. I had a lot of spray and stuff. Did you have solid water in your window? McDivitt I really didn't look that closely. I didn't look at the window to see what I saw there. I saw nothing but water sloshing all over the thing. We really seemed to hit hard, harder than I thought COMPtDtNTIAL -CONFIDENTIAL J’? •we would, hut it really wasn't too hard. White To put everything in a comparison, the ride on the retro was more than I expected, the drop to a two- point suspension was less than I expected, and the impact was not as much as I had experienced on the drogue, but more than I had expected. In other words, the biggest surprises I had in order of magnitude were the ride on the drogue, the impact, and I didn't think that I had much surprise at all in the two-point. I was expecting a big jolt and got not as much as I had expected. 7.2 Checklists McDivitt We'd gone over the normal Water Egress Checklist in flight before we came down. We did this in that three-hour period while we were preparing for retrofire. I read it over to Ed while he was stowing things, and we went over it in detail again as to what we would do. Also we went over the emergency egress in case we had to do that. So we had it fresh in our minds. White We turned everything off that wasn't needed after landing. McDivitt Ed had the Post-Landing Checklist and he read it out to me—the things that I had to do. The only CONFIDENftAL 3U White McDivitt White 7.3 Communications McDivitt White thing that I didn't do was to take my helmet off and stow it. I did get my arm restraints down. I didn’t put my drogue mortar pins in until I was getting out, and I never did put my seat pin in. It doesn’t say on the checklist to put it in. I put your seat pin in. Ed put my seat pin in for me. Now, we'd got all the switches in the right positions, I think, except one. I forgot to put my EDI to the OFF position. I think all other switches were all right. All our pyrotechnics were safed. I talked on UHF. I talked with Omnibus, and I finally was talking to Inkspot 64, the helicopter. I talked to him and I heard him, and we established excellent UHF communications. I heard Ous coming through the auto cap two times, I think—very weak, almost unintelligible. I think he was asking how we were, or if they had us yet. I kept making transmissions in the blind to him. I don't think he was ever getting any of them. Ed operated the HF, and what do you have to say about that? Okay. I put the antenna out and turned the HF on. CONFID ENT! At -^Oh W fMTrAt- 315 I went through one call, and. then I went through a short count on the HF. I heard nothing and received nothing from anybody elae. This was about 5 minutes or so after we had been on the water that we actually made the HF check. Maybe it wasn’t even that long. As soon as I got all the switches where I wanted them, I went ahead and— McDivitt I saw you put the antennas up, and you went ahead and put in a transmission pretty quick. White Right. I didn't make another check on the HF. I hadn't been too impressed with the operation of the HF up to this time, and things were getting pretty busy. Five or 10 minutes later we had the recovery people on- I guess we're going to get to that. I heard them say we had a helicopter almost overhead, McDivitt They called just after we retrofired, I think, and before we got to blackout--called and said that they should have a helicopter over us in 5 minutes. We didn't get any onboard data. The ground information that I got was, as I said, from Gus. Then right after we hit, Omnibus said, "I got them in sight. I'm 48 miles out on TACAH radial., ".something or other. So, I figured we 316 ■eeNriDCHTiAU were 48 miles from the ship. Well, anyway, I ’was pretty sure we were 48 miles from the ship. Then I heard them calling back and forth saying the helicopters were only 15 or 20 miles away, and they were there in just about nothing flat. We had a good status report on where everybody was. They were on our frequency, and I could hear them dumping their swimmers into the water and standing by and throwing smoke bombs out and seeing the dye markers; and we had more activity than the fourth of July. 7-4 Systems Config-oration McDivitt Okay, as we hit the water, Ed closed the inlet snorket to make sure we didn’t get any fumes in as I punched the Parachute Jettison. Shortly after that when we decided for sure that we wouldn’t see any fumes—we sort of talked about it a little bit and I peeked out and I guess you peeked out. Didn’t see anything but steam coming out of the thrusters and then saw the dye marker out there— I reached up and re-opened the inlet snorkel. White 'That’s right. McDivitt I put the recirc valve at 45 degrees. White Actually, shortly after we got on the water, I €OWIDCNTIAL take out the motions. The rates were terrible -COMRBS 4TIAL- ™ noticed the acrid smell that we were to have for the rest of the time we were out in the water. On the ECS system I could, actually feel the relief that the pumps and the snorkel-open position were giving us. It did provide some flow. I really didn't think that the heat was oppressively hot, to tell the truth. McDivitt No, neither did I. White It was uncomfortably warm—I'll put it that way— and very stuffy, but I wouldn't say it was over­ bearingly hot. It wasn't as hot as I thought it was going to be in the spacecraft. McDivitt I thought the worst thing about the whole thing was the smell. Whatever was burning later was the heat shield, I guess, because I went out and smelled the spacecraft later on when I was onboard' the carrier, and it smelled the same way. This terribly nauseating acrid smell was still all over the spacecraft, and it seemed to be worse at the heat shield. So I assume that's what we were smelling inside. White How was the control, Jim? McDivitt Spacecraft control in the water is lousy! I couldn't 318 ^^^^^^^^B^^^EX—1 ^^^^. CTiNrlDtNTWL uncontrollable! Why don't you discuss the electri­ cal. It was over on your side there, Ed. White Well, there wasn't really much to discuss about it. I turned off the No. 1 and 2 squib batteries and left No. J on and the main batteries on, and everything performed as designed. We also had carried along two adapters and about the time Jim said, "Hey, where's my adapter?", I realized where it was. It was stowed underneath a whole pile of trash on the right-hand side. So we went to Plan Bravo, which was our original plan before Chuck Berry sneaked on the extra adapter on the last day before the flight, which is a rather sneaky thing because we'd agreed at breakfast that morning that if the adapter were on the spacecraft, we wouldn't kick about it. But Chuck conversely agreed that if the adapter wasn't on, he wouldn't kick about it either. We later found out that he ran to Chuck Matthews and— McDivitt No, as a matter of fact, he didn't run to him. Chuck Matthews said that he decided that on his own. Chuck Berry never — White All right. I'll have to apologize to him because I have been falsely accusing him ever since. 519 Anyhow, we had an extra one on, and it was stowed very neatly under a great deal of trash on the : right-hand outside stowage box; and I felt that we could more readily use the time of switching back and forth. So we switched the aeromedical adapter back and forth, and with the microdot con­ nector it was a pretty easy operational procedure. I don't think we missed any radio calls, and I think we got probably more blood pressures there than one every 15 minutes. McDivitt Yes, we would probably get one every 5 or 6 minutes. White We were back on the carrier in 45 minutes, and I'm sure we had two or three blood pressures there on the water. McDivitt You even got the lightweight head-set on. White That's right. I very dutifully put the lightweight headset on with my helmet off. I felt better with my helmet off, and I think you felt better with your helmet off. McDivitt I felt a lot better with my helmet on and my visor closed, because I didn't like the smell of that stench there. White I was so hot over there. I felt better with it off 4€€)NFIDENTIAL - 320 CQMFIDEtfftAL McDivitt We did a lot of work when we first landed. We were fiddling all over and getting things out of boxes and stuff like that. We probably did more concentrated manual labor in those first 5 minutes after we got on the water than we had done at any other time during the flight except trying to get the hatch closed. White I think at this time I was completely drenched with sweat. I said it wasn't hot earlier, but with the combination of the suits and the fairly •warm climate that we were in, I was sweating pretty heavy. I looked over at Jim, and he was pretty sweaty too, I think. 7-5 Spacecraft Status McDivitt We didn’t have any ROS fumes. We didn't see any RCS colored smoke, which is supposed to be red and purple or yellow or something like that. We didn't see any fumes at all. I saw a little steam. White I saw steam. McDivitt I saw a little steam coming out of the RCS thrusters and I was sure that there wasn’t any RCS propellant in those manifolds, because at the rate we were gyrating around with that tight deadband on Rate Command, if we hadn't burned all that fuel up by CONf'IDENTIAL 321 from us. then, we never would have gotten it out. White But we turned the RCS thrusters off at about three or four thousand feet. So they definitely weren’t on. McDivitt That's right. And we turned all the circuit breakers off on the RCS thrusters, so they shouldn’t have been firing from shorts. The prop valves had been off at about 25 000 feet, So we had everything the way it was supposed to be, and we didn't see anything leaking. I'll comment on this window. White I saw the main chute floating right to the left of us. I think my window might have been a little clearer than yours. McDivitt I just was going to comment on the windows. Xy window was terrible! I couldn't see at all. Remember the helicopter was hovering around in front of us about 200 feet away and I never even saw it. You said, "Look at the helicopter!" White He was a lot closer than 200 feet. He was right smack-dab in front of us. McDivitt I never saw the helicopter. I couldn't see through the window. White I'd estimate he was not farther out than 50 feet 322 WNriDENTtM McDivitt I had a couple of little holes right down at the bottom where I could see swimmers down there, and I could see the nose, but I couldn't see up at all. We were talking about the main chute there. I saw the drogue chute floating down right next to it— drogue chute and the pilot chute with the R & R can floating down right next to it. They were coming down through about—let's see. We were on our backs then, weren't we? We still hadn't gone to two-point? White I don’t remember. McDivitt I don’t remember either. White I was so busy taking blood pressures. McDivitt We had the drogue chute and the pilot chute floating down with us for a long time just off to one side going down about the same rate. I thought that they were supposed to go down slower, but I guess it doesn’t. I guess what probably happened was we saw them at single-point, but when we went to two-point, we lost sight of them. Okay. We didn't have any leaks that I could tell. We had electrical power. I didn't check to see what the secondary Og pressure was. Did you, Ed? White No. I didn't. ^ONflDCNTIAL 32? McDivitt We turned, off all our electrical equipment and couldn't read the gages. We left the hatches closed. We were in moderate seas, hut I wasn’t about to open those hatches up and take the chance of any water getting in that spacecraft. So we elected to stay in the spacecraft until they got the collar on, and kept all the hatches battened down. White Okay, we both discussed this together and decided that the way we'd like to leave the spacecraft was in our suits, and we felt that rescue was coming pretty quick. We decided to go ahead and stay in our suits. I think this was a reasonable decision. eOMriDENTIAL 524 McDivitt We both took our gloves off to get the things out of the spacecraft that we wanted. I left my helmet on and. Ed left his helmet off. When we got ready to leave, we decided that we would put our gloves back on, take our helmets off, put our neck dams on, inflate our May Wests, and then get out. That’s what we did. The sea condition was just like they said it was—three to four feet. Three to four feet in that thing is like 2000 foot waves to an aircraft carrier. We were bobbing around but we had a lot of experience bobbing around before, so it wasn't that bad. I might add that the egress training in the Gulf of Mexico really made me feel real confident when I was out there in that water all by myself. White When we get to that training, I’m really going to give some gold stars out. ■eetwertTrsi CeNftD fNfiAt-' ’» McDivitt Yes. 7.6 Post-Landing Activities McDivitt As I mentioned, we stirred around the cockpit and got out a bunch of little bitty things that we needed. We did a lot of work but we were doing all right. We got awfully hot. I guess we really can’t say much about the post-landing activities. It went long as we expected it to, just the way we want it to. Ed, do you have anything? White I think we've covered it. 7.7 Comfort McDivitt I was hot. I think Ed was hot. We were both perspiring a lot. I think we could have lived in it for a lot longer than we did. Don't you? White Yes. Did we cover the point where they called and asked what kind of rescue we wanted? McDivitt No, I didn't. Why don't you? I was just plugging in the b. io-med connector and I heard them call you. White We could either have a heliocopter pickup in about 20 minutes or we could have a pickup by the carrier in the spacecraft in about an hour €eNft&ENHMr $26 CONFIDEMIM and 40 minutes. To me it was very clear. McDivitt It took Ed a long time to decide—• about two or three milliseconds. White That's right. I felt that I knew my buddy well enough and made the decision that we'd take the heliocopter pickup. I saw that he was actually on the radio at the time and he rogered the decision. So we waited for the heliocopter pickup. 7.8 Recovery Force Personnel McDivitt We had good communications with the recovery forces. They were on our frequency. We heard all the transmissions that were going back and forth. Shoot, we probably knew more about the recovery than anybody else around. They got the flotation collar in the water in a hurry and came over and put it right on. I saw this thing around the spacecraft and I saw it start inflating. I was really elated when I saw that thing pumping up. White I had the first contact with the real live man. McDivitt That's right. He looked in Ed's window to see if we were alive, I guess. 327 7-9 Egress White Very good sight. The best sight, boy, was seeing that yellow thing around the spacecraft. I guess I knew we were going to be able to file out pretty quick. McDivitt As I mentioned earlier, we had decided to go out with our gloves back on and our neck dams on. I stood up in my seat, disconnected our survival landing gear (my other hoses were disconnected so that I could stand up), inflated both of the May Wests, snapped them together in the front, and I just jumped right over into the life raft. I landed right on my can, just like I had planned it. It was so good to get out of there. Ed got out. He jumped in too. White When I got out I actually leaped in before I inflated my May West and I think either you or— McDivitt I told you. As a matter of fact, when we talked it over in the spacecraft about getting out, Ed said, "Aren’t you going to inflate your May West?" And I said, "Okay", and then he got out without inflating his. White I was so happy to see that raft I jumped right -m NFID FNTIAI _ 328 over the side. 7.10 Survival G ear McDivitt We didn’t use any of our survival gear. We didn't pull it out. We just left it exactly where it was. I disconnected the lanyard so we wouldn’t inadvertly pull it out. 7-11 Crew Pickup McDivitt As soon as Ed. got into the life raft a heliocopter come over toward us and I motioned for Ed to get into the sling and go on up. He didn't want to. He wanted to be the last man up and I wasn't going to leave my sinking ship. White He wasn't getting up with the captain going first so he went up last. McDivitt No, Ed got into the sling and got a nice pickup. I got a Gulf of Mexico pickup. He dragged me out of the water, bumped me up against the heat shield and the spacecraft, but it was a good pickup though. Shoot, I was so happy to be out there in that nice cold salt water blowing in my face, I was dipping my hands in it and slinging it over my head. White Did you notice the stability of that heliocopter? .cewoEpmAL j2’ I never knew they were so stable. McDivitt Yes. He must have had a good stabilization system. They got us picked up safe and sound. zeeNFtDENTlAL^