Preliminary Gemini 4 Crew Debriefing, Part II, 1965

DECLASSIFIED Authority: 6 5 NW 91526 PRELIMINARY GT-4 FLIGHT CREW DEBRIEFING TRANSCRIPT PART II Prepared By Spacecraft Operations Branch Flight Crew Support Division June 18, 1965 This material contains information affecting the national defense of the United States within the meaning of the Espionage Laws, Title 18. U.S. C. Section 793 and 794, the transmission or revela= tion of which in any manner to an unauthorized person is prohibited by law. Group 4: Downgrade at 3 year intervals Declassified after 12 years NOTICE: This document may be exempt from public disclosure under the Freedom of Infor- mation Act (5 U.S.C, 552). Requests for its re- lease to persons outside the U.S. Government fm, should be handled under the provisions of JERE NASA Policy Directive 1382.2. 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, and concluded at the Manned Spacecraft Center on June 12, 1965, Although all the material contained in this transcript has been edited, the urgent need for the preliminary transcript by mission analysis personnel precluded a thorough editorial review prior to its publication. Errors in this transcript will be corrected as soon as possible and an official transcript will be published at a later date, This document contains a transcript of the second part of the total debriefing. A preliminary transcript of the first part was published on June 16, 1965, and it contains the crew's description of the mission from an operational standpoint. GONARES TAPE TABLE OF CONTENTS Paragraph Page number 8.0 9.0 10.0 SYSTEMS OPERATION 8.1 Platform BRACELET ae aOR TTR Ae RINEE Rieiace rere Ave pene ee laueiace:areoeeretecereer Mere OAMS Sac en mW AB Sy Se a i a wen SSE RCS ace RAS ace eshte inveterate lei ellese ele céte:w olwleleveliela- ternal e eierece tatelncereta ene EE Bnvironnental. Control SYSTEM eaiuie wei eis eeeea eee eee ere Kee BONNET GATTOUA cecimetecnmcurareciees exeayadoluuemaem eee are Ge BIGCULPICET SY SECM: eiseteseecwienwcere-wcesniy wresece: eye averwcee caja nieces Oe COMPUEEST: susecerwaceierw ete eie cede acetetie casi sete Wim 6m iin la fanaa jaca te chicane ance tanalara AER GREW GAEL ON iscnyesece cere ein ewer cere selene tea Ae a Sree eee SN eee TD BE OS MGGE CAC. atecovereisieisseveeiee Mie SMS MCe[esE WON SHEIMLREM NICE eTRTepTRRSLatereceR ou . . * s SO MJ OW Ww Po OoOooomooooan * « OPERATIONAL CHECKS Apollo Landmark Identification (D-6) .....cecceeeeeeeee 144 ADOLLG Yaw OP LSTGAREGN. ieargtedleweweaenws papers epeieewen TOO One Attitude Thruster Failure Check ...-cesssessccveseel ll Horizon Scanner Track Check) 4 wseceseswa ea eee sea eeees Le Horigon: Scanner. CHE scawanawscqewes pesawe ewwewadeey 15 HF Transmission Reception Check ..scseeescseeccecreeees 181 Orbit Navigation Check wawsessawsewws oo oa ck ee ee eawae os 1B! Relative Humldlty Vest isscnscnee ea wwwasa sein coe ee weed 1D S00 acel Tight CHSCK asweeweeaneeew wera caeeen an ea en oe 186 ae) *. hm 09 SO @M 7 OW ew Pp = ISUAL SIGHTINGS SOOT OWED ance erwin pice ececatins a lar dametaciecierete aw aw aries pauiine ao aie era atarietalcaa POWSPSH FIDE DG ape eicaiw eo ae eae ee eee eee once ace elects TOD (OL) SOPODta L. PIE ERE ose ents ene wr Rac deee eee weeem ences wares HO RO: RUE cet acces cea mcmama. ap rere te OR ARN Rn ee. ms RLS mi epNnie Race RTTa DOTS IE ah nash, oocs \O SO SO SO 80 50 40 80 40 *. . 11.0 EXPERIMENTS 41.1 Two-Color Harth-Limb Photography (MSC-10) ......es-e0000217 11.2 Synoptic Terrain and Weather Photography (S-5 and S-6).219 11.3 Simple Navigation with the Sextant ...cccecssvnnvevenceald 11.4 Electrostatic Charge (MSC-1) ....-cceecececceceee cece e 229 11.5 Proton-Electron Spectrometer and Tri-Axis Flus-Gate Magnetometer (MSC-2 and MSC=3) .....cccccccwcccnncsue ce 229 11.6 Radiation (D-8) ...... FG g Sied A nie on dik Mae ern ee ee 11.7 Inflight Exerciser (M-3) ....eccecccerccecveccsesceress230 11.8 Inflight Phonocardiogram (M-4) ......cceeeces ee hoe ee ‘tao’ xtrevehteular Activity: sscsniscned. cote saeneeeeurcew dese l3)0: (Metecelteneous) 4 aw aiw nis eis acbsoin ei b/aie eine 010.0 a°9 a aioe ances dine asaece TWORFRENTAL. 12,0 PRE-MISSION PLANNING 12.1 Mission Plan (Trajectory) ..ccceececerseaeeee ee 3 12.2 UL UA aces M a aicalay wre Messacatcasaneseiecmnermeans Sone eee Ga ce) Co 234 12.4 Spacecraft Changes ........ sonra ierae mca cere eters ecw aca ane ada nae one 239 1224 es OPS eS ae Mececareat actaresaeliasucaneneece ark eee cenemreruent eee 5 soe ee AO 12.5 Experiments .....0+5 PES NIRS AEBS EEC ET eo ee ee 244 12.6 Training Activities ...ses0e00es CET MO LOTT CREECH cha ee re 2A5 14.0 MISSION CONTROL 1334) COVNO GO" emende hens cowsnauns emda Aeneas es ion pA me 249 13.2 PLA and CLA Updates ......ceecees ee, 5...) a 249 1365 <GOVISUTHADLES aecew eases Fe ee ee 249 13.4 Flight Plan —— thc he MM die, ACL se A otinrge la RO en 250 TS eS =SYBTCHIB ere ecieie ee ececwte tna ie eanetn ener ARTES RETA RETICAL CORRE 254 14.0 TRAINING 1401 Gemini. Mission Sim1StOY coscwssawwceness ewe ewe ewe wes 255 122 TV Sa A TLOR J wassreeensterescdicanniw trans Ronnnsa eeeceiearesetvea ate ceod 260 1403 COPE PIEISE cdi aes ew cee aea rae arene nae ees 261 14.4 Transleticn atid Decking TPeine®” cscs wicewortae asowsaeesie® 262 1455 PISHbtarTum. sais ucwsas woes Seca ra ea tk aN LODGE NTA SOW DR WL OEE 263% 14.6 Syaetems BrISMss cacuvwwweweevenas Pe ee 266 We RISB BaperinieGntS! .ccaseeeue sew aw re ee ae 267 14.8 ppacecraft: Syabems TES? veces eae eau eee PTS 14.9 Egress Training ...... ena copearecernuane somimnsnunem te otrete sSiuedewrwerear 274 eI: PePRe MERE ASS x casceae Wie iete ee memes aire ie sanelnetera ie sgsiseiravie Tad ners 265 VAST eR Se BOR aoe re ontescenecenereecnvennuauececet ure ceecaseccec asa tevb rey 5: etcoea 276 14 et2: NEKO SAMOA ED OE cessor tess uence cececeyececerace aucun KPA ace erence 2EE M.45 (ero NE BV eae cee momieve cece cwsay ee ie mana cece (eee ce la ete eee 18 T4<14. -ltehe Plan TEA eS opus deere ceca urwaaces OE cana neat acexesutacace ih 8.1 Platform McDivitt White McDivitt White McDivitt 8.0 SYSTEMS OPERATION Actually, the first portion of any alinement is to cage the thing. The case of caging the thing is much more important than the alinement itself. In the daytime I felt that I could cage the plet- form to a reference with an error plus or minus about 3 or 4 degrees in all axes. Did you think we could do that well? Only in the daytime. The yaw was a little problem. It took longer to get it, but if you kept after it for awhile, I felt that you could get down to just a few degrees. Within a couple of degrees. The big thing is that you have to stop your yaw rates, and then sit there and look outside for awhile and see which way you're going, straight ahead or sideways. If you are going sideways you rotate around for awhile and stop the rate and then lock out again. Right? I felt you could get the thing caged quite well. We. didn't do it BEF at all, did we? We never did cage in BHF. ” White McDivitt White McDivitt I'm not sure. The caging of the thing with small-end-forwerd in the daytime was relatively easy. At night I don't think it would be quite that simple. I think what you would have to do at night time is to point the spacecraft down at the ground pretty much so you can see the track across the ground. I could see which way the land was moving under me, If felt--although I never did this--that if I could do that and then roll around to where I had no yank angle, and face in my yaw direction, either small-end or blunt-end-forward, stop the roll there and pitch up to the horizon I could cage there within plus or minus 10 degrees for sure. It was much less accurate at night, I felt, than in the daytime. You aren't kidding! We both felt that on those dark nights when you really couldn't see anything on the ground, pure star reference for yaw was pretty rough. Pure star reference for yaw was almost impossible to use. That was the only place where that thing we decided not to take with us--the view of the stars through the window--might have been of some TSSNADENTAL,....« White MeDivitt use to us. We knew the stars along our track but you couldn't see enough of them. The quickest way to get the yaw reference was to look down at the ground. Once we got the platform caged, aline- ment was quite simple. All you had to do was just hold the needles at zero and the platform alined itself. Of course you had to have the scanners on. The modes--the SHF and the BEF were identically the same except the spacecraft is pointing in different directions. You tended to null the needles by using pulses and just hold the needles very close to null and the platform alined itself through the horizon scanners. Orbit Rate was a satisfactory mode, I thought. As a matter of fact, it was very good. I liked that Orbit Rate. Yes, because we finally had a reference where we didn't have to look out and see the ground. It's like having the old altitude indicator back in an airplane. The only thing was, we had the wrong orbit rate in the spacecraft because it was set for an orbit rate that was to take care of, I think, a 60 nautical mile circular orbit. This was to take care of the short period of time between White McDivitt werrpintaS” going to Orbit Rate at T-5 and firing the retros at TR, We wanted to have exactly the right rate in there so when we did our closed-loop reentry we wouldn't have an error. As I said, I had the most accurate platform in the world with nothing to do with it. I think the displays were adequate and the controls were adequate. After the first couple of revs I really didn't have any confidence at all in the platform. I had done nothing to establish any confidence in it. I really didn't get the chance to get the thing alined, and I really didn't have the view out the window to check it with. We were hurrying and scurring through there. We finally shut the thing down before I really got a chance to use it very much. When we powered it up there on the third day and we saw that thing coming around there -and cage properly, we compared the out-the-window attitudes and that old attitude reference was right there. That's when I got some confidence in the platform. This is where we lost a couple of bets. That's rignt. We lost a couple of beers on that platform. At retrofire I had a lot of confidence in the platform, but the first two and a half to White 8.2 OAMS McDivitt White McDivitt three days I really didn't have anything with which to establish any confidence. It was just an unknown. Jim did the majority of the work in this area and I think his comments reflect my opinion also. On the pad we did the thruster check that we wanted to. We went around one whole cycle and got nothing. We went around another whole cycle and got nothing until we got to the last one. We were going yaw left pitch-down, yaw right pitch-up, yaw left pitch-down, yaw right pitch- up. When we got to that second pitch-up, I heard the thrusters fire for the first time. You can hear them. It was very distinct, That's right. And then we went around and yawed left and they fired again. We waited 20 seconds and fired a yaw left again, and they fired again, These were the bottom manifold jets. We said, "Okay, we're ready to go.", and that was the end of it. So, it was a pretty straightforward check. The inflight checks--I got my operational checks on the OAMS systems while chasing the booster around. I had Direct, Pulse, and Rate Command in White McDivitt there as I chased it around, and those were the only modes I intended to use right then. Later on, I checked out the Reentry Rate Command and I checked the Rate Command before we thrusted. It did seem to be operating fine. Why don't you go through the next part, Hi? All right. We're going to get into the source temperature and pressure, the regulated pressure, and the propellant quantity. Let's take the temperature first. The temperature of our OAMS was 75 degrees all the way down the line. The initial indications on the pressures were approxi- mately 2800 psi for the source and 320 psi for the regulated pressure. The quantity gage operated all right except that, as I mentioned earlier, the thing seemed to wander up and down somewhere between 2 and 4 percent, depending upon where you were in the mission. You'd read it one time and it would be 60, and you'd read it a little while later and it would be 62, and you'd read it a little while later and it'a be back about 60. ‘The greatest variation in that thing that ever occurred was when I went to sleep one time with it reading 60 and woke up and White MeDivitt White -@6 HEIDEN HAL T we it was reading 56. Another hour or two after that it had climbed slowly back up to 60 again. I had a long time to look at it in the same position. When we ended the chasing-around at the end of the first hour, we were down to 70 percent indicated and we never got below 50 percent in four days. I'll tell you, the position it seemed to stay for days and days was 59 to 60 percent. We fired in Pulse Mode for a long time with the gage at that position, and all of a sudden that one time it dropped down to about 55 percent, But then it came back up to 60. I guess it did, didn't it? The temperatures all stayed fairly constant. If I recall right, they dropped down to around 70 degrees. It seemed to me they continually decreased throughout the flight. I noticed this particularly in the RC5, but I guess we'll get to that later. The propellart quantity though, I think we mentioned earlier, ended up on our gaging at about 43 percent at the end. We got a little bit of ground information on the OAMS propellant. I felt a little suspicious of the gage when it kept staying there at 59 to 60 * McDivitt White MeDivitt White MeDivitt White percent for so long. We were pretty miserly with that OAMS fuel. We set out to save the fuel and we sure did it. I think that in future missions, if they permit the crew to use the Pulse Mode in 4a saving-manner they could do a lot more with the mission--if you could use Pulse Mode instead of just free-drifting around. In other words, line yourself up so you can make some decent observations. Shoot! We were in Horizon Scan Mode when we got the last data, and I don't think we used any more fuel than we were when we were in free drift. That's right. We certainly got more out of the orbit than we did when we were just drifting free. I'll tell you one record that we ought to hold. We've looked at the earth from more different angles than anybody else in the world. Well, maybe not. I guess the Russians did, but we sure got a lot of different views of that earth as we rotated around. I think the ground information that they called up on the status of our OAMS wasn't as much as they could have called up to us, but I'm really satis- fied that our OAMS was staying pretty constant. SST eth 9 McDivitt So did I. The way I felt was that I knew that we had to be as miserly with the fuel as we possibly could, so we got as much out of as little fuel as possible. There wasn't going to be anything to change that velocity. We just went along and I really didn't care how they were plotting that fuel on the ground. I knew that we were starting to get ahead of the schedule, because I was plotting it roughly onboard the spacecraft. I could see we were up above the line that we needed to remain above to handle our OAMS retrofire. White Actually, we followed the profile rather closely. We leveled off there at first, and then when we started using it, we went right down the profile. MeDivitt We were a little below the line and we just held the same fuel level until we walked out across it~ and got up on top of it Then, we went on down above it. White I think the controls and the switches were 211 satisfactory. McDivitt I think so too. The attitude controller worked fine and dandy. We didn't have any trouble with it. The stick forces weren't too high. We didn't get a chance to use it in any other mode besides a 10 White McDivitt White McDivitt White McDivitt Pulse. It seemed to work all right in Pulse. I don't really have any comments to make on the atti- tude controller. As a matter of fact, I didn't use any Rate Command. Didn't you really? We didn't use the Rate Command. I got to use Direct a couple of times. I used Pulse a lot, Everytime you'd go to sleep, I'd really have a ball I could tell that by the wiggling. No. That was really great--flying that spacecraft. That's right, and I think Pulse is the mode. You can do a lot with it. With a little bit of planning you could get to the attitude--if you start out 5 or 6 minutes ahead of time. ‘That's what we were doing. At 10 minutes before I was supposed to be at a certain attitude I'd start, and one or two little pulses and you'd--boop, boop, boop, boop-- the bad thing was if you were in an attitude where you couldn't see the horizon and didn't know where you were. You would give it a couple of pulses and nothing would happen, and you'd have to give it a couple of more pulses. It'd take a long time sometimes before you would get to where you could see. As a matter of fact, if at 5 minutes before - = White WcDivitt White MeDivitt 11 we were supposed to be at a certain attitude we weren't approaching it, I'd start pulsing a little harder. You'd hear a series of about five quick pulses. It was a very economical control mode, The maneuver controller worked the way it was supposed to. What about the deadband? Did you think the dead- bands and breakouts were all satisfactory? Yes, just like the one we used in the simulator. You've got a lot of slop in it when you're making gross maneuvers because you're not fixing your elbow and manipulating around that point. You're fixing your shoulder and your whole arm, and it's just like shoveling coal--you've got about that much finesse to it. I don't think there's much you can say about it. The controls weren't too gross and they weren't too minor. The whole thing was adequate. We did have an inflight mal- function, or irregularity. We were in Horizon Seanner Mode one time and Hd wanted to yaw around. He started to yaw and the thing rolled. The Horizon Scanner Mode fired the roll thrusters to level it back off-- 12 White McDivitt White McDivitt McDivitt I couldn't get the yaw. We had a circuit breaker off. Finally, after you did that a couple of times I looked up and saw we had knocked a circuit breaker off. That was one thing that we didn't cover in EVA that I should have mentioned. Ed was a real hazard to the switch positions in that he was all over with his feet, arms, and hands --. I don't think I threw any though. Did I? Come on now. Youtre not guilty wntil you're convicted, I don't know. You kept putting your foot on the HF Reentry Antenna Switch and stepping on it. Ha. Ha. Ha, As for the attitude control modes--I mentioned the Rate Command in OAMS seemed to be tighter than the Rate Command in RCS, although they use the game electronics, the same gyros, and the whole thing. It might have just been my imagination, put I felt that the Rate Command system in RCS was a lot looser than it was in OAMS. The Reentry Rate Command operated just the way it should. It had a 4 degree deadband, and handled the spacecraft very well during reentry. Direct had a lot more authority than I thought it would, but it was 13 pretty straightforward. I think Pulse was the best mode on the spacecraft for the orbit phase. We were able to save all kinds of fuel, it worked fine, and it was just about what the doctor ordered, We didn't use the Horizon Scan Mode during about the first three days of flight, except for the second orbit when I think I was in Horizon Scan so that I could have the freedom to help Ed prepare for his EVA, The last day we used the Horizon Scan Mode, and I found it to be an excellent mode. There was only one case when it broke lock and didn't recover, Wasn't that it, Ed? White You've got it in the book. MeDivitt We've got in the book and we'll check on that. The Horizon Scan Mode worked essentially for 24 hours without any problem .and I think it's an excellent control mode. It seemed to be very economical on fuel. We were doing a lot of yawing around and right at sunrise and sunset it seemed to get a little nervous, especially if we had the horizon scanner pointed within about plus or minus 45 degrees of the sun. The moon didn't seem to affect it at all. I noticed that, occa- sionally, we would get some thruster blips with the sun weetsHDEN Ata White McDivitt White McDivitt White McDivitt pointed toward the horizon seayiien although we never got an unlock light, We wouldn't get an unlock light, but we'd get a bunch of maybe four or five thruster blips right there. Particularly at sunrise. It would hold. I thought the Horizon Scan-- It was definitely getting some spurious signals through but not enough to break it out all the way. I thought the Horizon Scan Mode was an excellent attitude-hold mode. Did you notice the water boiler venting, Jim? Yes, I did. We kept yawing around to the left, I believe it was left. I did notice the fact that we were yawing, but not very much. We were yawing at rates that were extremely low and it just took a pulse every once in a while to handle the thing. As a matter of fact, when we were chasing — the booster around a lot at the beginning, I never even noticed. It was when we were in the Pulse Con- trol Mode for a period of time, when we didn't do much thrusting in yaw,that I noticed we did start drifting off in yaw. ‘So I did notice the water boiler venting. White McDivitt ee Tee = - I didn't think you noticed it earlier when we were working. Well, I did notice it a little bit in that first orbit, but it wasn't distracting at all. It would just drift off a little bit and I'd whop it and it would be back. At SECO + 40, I used the trans- lation thrusters to damp the booster-spacecraft rates. One of them was a little higher than the other, although they were both down in the order of a half of a degree/second. I did fire one thruster one time or possibly two times to damp the rate. I don't know if it was pitch or yaw. You know, you are working in spacecraft pitch and booster yaw and spacecraft yaw and booster pitch. I was getting my coordinate system transformed around in my mind, going from booster coordinate system to the spacecraft. I don't remember whether it was yaw or pitch, but I did thrust once or twice. By the way, I could hear those thrusters fire. At SECO + 30 I said, "Thrusting," and I started thrusting. "Separate", and Ed punched the SPACECRAFT SEPARATE. We were in Direct and I thrusted straight ahead for about 5 seconds. Then I went back into Rate Command. Separation was 16 White McDivitt just smooth--we didn't come off with a rotational rate. I think one of the things you might comment on, Jim, is that you fired most of those thrusters during that initial time. I'm sure I fired the upward-firing thrusters a number of times. That isn't any more difficult to control than the other one. Actually you can fire these thrusters whether you are in Rate Command, Direct or even in Pulse. When you fire them, you get a rate and you just damp the rate out with the attitude controller. When you are firing the translation thrusters, the things that you really hear are not the translation thrusters, but the attitude thrusters. Those translation thrusters are really tough to hear, but the atti- tude thrusters are very easy to hear. I don't understand why. They must be mounted differently because their location isn't that much different. I think I fired the aft-firing thrusters a couple of times and they didn't make any more noise than the forward-firing thrusters, that I could tell. The up and down and left and right ones were just as easy to fire as the other ones. Our OAMS retro was 127 feet/second which, incidently, happened to come out exactly 2 minutes and 40 seconds. I suspect that we selected OAMS retrofire on the basis of time, rather than on the basis of AV. White Very convenient, wasn't it? McDivitt Very convenient. It was obvious there is no more difficulty in timing 2 minutes 40 seconds during our OAMS retrofire than it is during any other thing. We had no trouble with it. I was convinced that when we got through with it, that was really the proper conversion factor between AV and AT. We had exactly 127 feet/second, and we sure had the time nailed down. 8.3 RCS McDivitt The operational checks that we did on the RCS occurred at about TR minus an hour. When I checked the system out it seemed like I had a lot less authority and a lot sloppier Rate Command than TI had in OAMS. The operational check consisted of pitching up and down, yawing left and right, rolling lef+ and right on each ring in Rate Command and Direct. Direct worked as I expected it to. In Rate Command, however, as I pitched up and down I noticed that my top left yaw thruster was doing White BOnFPERT AS a lot of firing, too. I started out checking the Rate Command, so I thought I might possibly have one bad pitch thruster that was causing a rolling moment that was being counteracted by the yaw-roll jets. When I did it in Direct, however, it wasn't doing that. It wasn't rolling either, so I felt that it must just be a very tight deadband that was trying to hold us in there. So, the operational checks were all right. The only thing we had to monitor on the system was the temperature and the pressure of the propellant, t seemed to hold pretty well. I have some comments on that. I kept a running log of them as we went along. The temperature started out at 75 degrees and 3000 pounds. It held that way pretty well until about the 65th hour, when the temperature gradually went down. The temperature decreased to a point where we started getting the RCS heater lights that we noted earlier. We got about eight series of RCS heater lights. It took about 5 minutes to extinguish the light. It was the A-ring,then the B-ring, and then the A-ring. It seemed to alternate each time back and forth and it came on for about 15 to 20 minute periods of -GONFIDENTHE McDivitt White 19 time. It started right after a night cycle, It seemed rather natural to me that there wasn't really something wrong, but that we actually had a cold RCS thing out there and it did need some heat. After heat was applied it did appear to go away. I decided to go ahead and set up a slow roll rate in the daytime, and I kept that roll rate in for several orbits. Whether this actually helped to get the light off or not, I don't know. We didn't get anymore lights after this time. I think there ought to be one other comment on the RCS, and that is the temperatures and the pressures stayed up pretty well except when we actuated the system. The pressures then went down further than we had expected them to go. They went dow to 2400 to 2500 psi. This was a little lower than I expected to see, I think the pressures in the RCS A and B dropped by about 100 pounds throughout the four-day period. They were slightly over 3000 pounds and they got down to slightly under 3000. The lowest temperatures I noted were in the neigh- borhood of about 63 to 64 degrees. They started out at 75 degrees. 20 MecDivitt White McDivitt White MeDivitt White McDivitt ea inna Let me ask you a question? Yes. When you turned on the RCS heaters, did you turn on the heaters on both rings, or did you turn on the RCS Heater Switch and then turn off the circuit breaker on the other ring? I turned the heaters on and then I checked to see which ring it was that was actually heating up by using the circuit breakers. The first time I went ahead and left them on and then the other ring came on. I felt that one of them was about as cold as the other, so I left the heaters on both rings throughout the heating cycles. Good. They were in perfect sequence--A and B, A and B, and about 15 minutes apart. The regularity was surprising. The temperatures at the time when these lights came on were indicating about 63 or 64 degrees and it seemed like it would come up a little bit, and then come right back down and pop back on again. I felt it was not an actual temperature problen. I used Rate Command, Reentry Rate Command and Pulse control modes, I didn't use Direct. They all COMABEN Td White 21 operated as I thought they should. I've already mentioned I thought Rate Command was a little sloppier in RCS than it was in OAMS. It certainly did a fine job of holding the retro attitude during retrofire. Retrofire attitude control was excellent. We didn't deviate more than about a degree from the attitude we were supposed to hold, and I had plenty of authority there. From my standpoint it couldn't have been any better. I was really happy about it. I used the Reentry Rate Command with roll rate gyro off, so that I had essentially Direct in roll and Reentry Rate Command in pitch and yaw axes. It had the typical 4 degree deadband that it was supposed to have. It did do rate damping as it was supposed to, It performed just the way it should. Ed, you want to cover that heater-lights thing again? I think you've already got that thing pretty much in detail. I have the precise times at which the lights came on. It started at about the 64th or 65th elapsed time hour. At 06:47, the first light, in the A-ring, came on. At 06:25 the A-ring light came on again. That was the last time. During that period of time the A and the B-rings cycled on and off inter- 22 8.4 McDivitt SADE HAtey mittently. During descent, we turned the power off to see if the drogue chute was unstable. It wasn't. We turned the power back on and the propellant valves off and burned up all of the fuel in the manifolds, We had no fumes after impact. Environmental Controi System MeDivitt White MeDivitt White McDivitt I thought the suit mobility was as good in the spacecraft as it is anywhere else. I think these suits are pretty good suits. I didn't find any trouble with them whatsoever in the spacecraft that I wasn't already aware of. The pressure held up good. I did a pressure check on the suit. It bled down about 0.2 or 0.4 psi in about 30 seconds, which really wasn't too bad. The temperature was always good. It ran between about 50 and 55 degrees diring the entire flight except when we really worked hard. I don't think it ever got up over 60. Do you, Hd? No, We had reasonably good temperature control. The cabin temperature got up pretty high one time and then it came back down. Yes, on about the first orbit. Sen h bE Hae White MeDivitt White MeDivitt 23 That's r ght. It got up to about 90. 100, it was. We turmed the cabin heat exchanger on for just a short time and it went right back on down to 80 degrees. It stayed in the area of 82 to 83 degrees the whole flight. The humidity in the suit must have been pretty dry because my foot dried out. I didn't take any wet- bulb readings inside the suit. The CO, stayed at zero all the time. It never did go up except when we'd go to 0, High Rate, when it would bound off the top peg and fall back down again. The comfort and suit controls were pretty reasonable. ‘The 0, demand regulator seemed to work all right. My umbilicals were short. My fingertip lights were lousy. Before launch I only had one that worked. , On my right-hand glove one of the bulbs obviously didn't work. One of them did work. On my left-~- hand glove the switch on the batteries would only turn the lights on if it was in one exact position, woich wasn't full throw in either direction. So I found out I had only one fingertip light that worked. However, during the flight I didn't use my fingertip lights except one time when I used ~ SOnrFDENTIAT— 24 them for a flashlight. I had my gloves off and I reached over and got my gloves and turned the fingertip lights on and shined the gloves on some- thing. I didn't use them a lot. I do want te comment on one thing, though, since we're talking about the suits here. JI launched without the plug that goes in the blood pressure port in the suit. I don't feel we should launch these things with no plug to plug up the blood pressure port in the suit, especially when we're going EVA. I think that was a mistake. The only pressure points I had in the suit were in the helmet. Those were just above my ears where I tended to move my head back and forth within the helmet. I finally rubbed up all the hair so that it was going in the wrong direction. When you press against hair for a long time in the wrong direction it becomes very uncom- fortable. At about the end of 2 3/4 days I took my helmet off for a couple of hours, and it felt a lot better. The only problem is that when you have your helmet off there is no place to stow it. We had the foot wells full of gear, so when I had the helmet off I just let it float around on my lap, and over in Ed's lap. There wasn't any place to CONFIDES - White 25 put it. The micro-meteroid blanket that I had strapped under my right leg wasn't a detriment. As a matter of fact since we had no place to stow it, I just left it strapped to my leg wntil reentry. Then, I felt that if we had to get out in the water I didn't want to have any straps hanging off me that I didn't need. So, I took it off and threw it on the floor along with Ed's sleeves. I don't have anymore comments on my suit. I wore the EVA suit. I think the mobility of the suit was about what I had expected. Actually, I think the mobility in some respects was a little better, and in some respects it was a little less than I had expected. I wasn't able to get into the right-hand aft food box as well as I had thought I was going to be able to in zero g. In fact, the — position that I had figured out to use, which was leaning forward and reaching in backwards with my left arm, didn't work out well at all. I had to actually turn around 90 degrees in the seat and reach in with my right arm, This worked out all right. I was able to get hold of things in the box. The surprise that I got though, was that I could get into the right-hand aft refuse box much 26 McDivitt White White MeDivitt White McDivitt White FOMABDEN FAL easier than I had thought I'd ever be able to. It turned out that I was able to get into that box easier while in orbit, by far, than-- It's a rubber covered box. It's a rubber covered box on the right hand side. I think that box does have the capability of stow- ing refuse in it and stowing some things prior to launch in it, too. Did you try that box during flight, Jim? Yes, I did. I didn't find it easy to get into. I thought the things we had stowed in it were real good things--items that we didn't need at all in flight and possibly might not need-- I used all four defecation bags that I had on my side. I used them up during flight. In fact, you used one of them. That's right, we did have a bag of those defeca- tion bags out. It just happened to be over on my side where you could get to it. You were asleep. I had to get them or wake you up. I pressure-checked my suit. I checked it at 8.5 and it bled down several tenths of a psi. I was satisfied with the pressure-holding of my suit. eT There was one thing though with the suit that I wasn't too happy with. I was hot all the time in the suit. It got so that after a while I got used to the normal temperature as being warm. I could increase the temperature, which seemed rather strange to both Jim and me, by putting out my gloves and closing my faceplate. I could go to sleep. At that time my temperature would go up considerably inside the suit. It seemed like I could stay in there only an hour or an hour and 15 minutes and rest before I had to either open up the faceplate or do something else. So, the temperature got uncomfortably warm in about an hour or an hour and fifteen minutes with the face- plate closed, the sleeves on and the gloves on. The humidity in the suit, I thought, was quite dry. I had quite a tendency for my lips to crack and my nose to get very dry. In fact, I noticed my nose was itching considerably. This was an indicator to me every time I would go to sleep. I would wake up with my nose itching and feeling quite hot and uncomfortable. My lips got to the point where I thought they were going to crack, 28 — arene : and I was trying to be very careful and keep them from cracking and getting anymore uncomfortable than they were. Jim mentioned the CO, sensors stayed on zero, which I was happy to see. I think one thing that I was fairly happy about was that the suit, as bulky as it was, wasn't depres-— singly uncomfortable. I felt that I did have a pretty heavy suit on most of the time, and I was a little bit constrained in my mobility. The idea to have the detachable sleeves that I could take off after the EVA work was, I felt, a very good decision. I felt much more comfortable, and I had a much higher degree of mobility around with my arms in the spacecraft. It was not as tiring to move around as it had been when I was inside the heavy sleeves. So, I was quite happy to take them off. We took them off, I believe, shortly after my first sleep. I slept with them on the first time, and then we took them off. I think they were quite easy to take off. As a matter of fact, I think if you went EVA at a later time you could take those sleeves onboard, and if they were made just a little easier to Slip on and off over the wrist, you could take CORED ESTIAT McD; vitt White them on and off in flight if you wanted to, I don't know. I'd hesitate to recommend putting them on in flight. It might get pretty tricky. I think if you put them on in flight, you'd want to put them over all the harness, rather than under the harness. That's exactly what I was going to say. I think if you took the life preservers off, you could actually make the sleeves big enough so that you could slip them on and velcro them across the back over the harness. This might be for the type of operation of throwing equipment in and out. I think in the future, though, a suit as heavy as this might not be required. The controls and the switches in the suit, I felt, were satis- factory. There wasn't anything that I couldn't get at in the spacecraft. It was easier under weightless conditions for me to operate certain controls. In fact, I think I was able to get down and unscrew the bellows in the gun hose as well and maybe a little easier than you could, Jim. At least initially, I was able to get down there. Of course you weren't really particularly trying to do it at that time. 30 McDivitt White McDivitt White I suspect I probably could have gotten down there as easy or easier than you if I had really gotten around to trying. I don't remember, but, anyhow, I was surprised with the ease which I had in getting down. We were trying to dump the pressure in the bellow before we went EVA with it. Right. The demand regulator was satisfactory. My umbilical ;I thought, was very easy to use and disconnect. I was quite happy to have the micro- dot in there. One comment on the micro-dot--the first time we exercised the micro-dots on our suit, they were pretty hard to operate. Mine got progressively easier to use each time I used it. The fingertip lights that I had were better than Jim's. TI had lights with Lexan tops on them. All my lights worked, and {[ felt that their operation was quite satisfactory. We had decided to put my lights between the first and second joints for several reasons. We thought the EVA gloves would be easier to don and there'd be less tendency to break them. I think, though, the position of the lights was still a little too far forward if it was intended to put them back between BORE Tat “SSE q the first and second joints, because the lights were resting right on top of my first joint. I think if I had worm BY gloves anymore, I would have gotten a very sore first knuckle. If you are going to move them back, I think they should definitely be moved back behind the first knuckle. MeDivitt Where were they getting you, Hd? White ' Right on the top of the knuckle. McDivitt You think they ought to be back? White If they are going to be anywhere, they ought to be back here, and I'm not too sure that is necessary. In fact, I think the best place is behind is fingertip and in front of the first joint. McDivitt But, with the plastic covers over the gloves, White With the plastic cover on the glove, and I think we've got the right position for the lights. I don't think they should be back behind the first knuckle. I think they should be in front of that first knuckle and behind the fingertip. That's a good place for them. That's where we've been using them in the past. I think the Lexan cover on the light bulb is a darn good idea. McDivitt Yes, I think so, too. Shoot! I checked my lights before launch and found out that I already had one SMD EN TIT 32 White of them out on my right hand. I wasn't too happy about it. I was a little disappointed. I think the only discrepancy I found in my suit was that I had no blood pressure plug either. A point that I was pretty happy with was that I had no pressure points from my suit at all on my body, T had one set of pressure points from my helmet pressing down on the front forward part of my head. I knew why this was. I'd had Joe Schmitt adjust my cables so that I could pull my helmet down to a maximum amount for the EVA work. I felt that I just bought this discomfort by having my cables adjusted in this manner. It was pretty uncomfortable though. I checked out the use of the emergency bottles on the EVA equipment and they worked as they were supposed to. I was able to regulate the flow. Incidently, before I went out the reading on the EVA bottles was full-scale, 3400 pounds. I was happy to see that. All in all, I was quite happy with the suit. I think it was a very well designed suit and it met the requirements that were levied upon it. It was a heavy suit and a big suit to wear for four days, but I felt the suit wasn't as 35 bad as I had expected it was going to be. I have one more comment. I'd like to comment on the inner liner. We decided to go with the inner liner. in and I felt this was a good decision. The inside of the suit was comfortable, and I didn't get any pressure points. I think one reason why neither Jim nor I got any particular pressure points from the suit was that we had worn these suits a heck of a lot of time. I had over 50 hours on my flight suit. I don't know how many hours Jim had on his. 34 McDivitt White Actually Hd had just finished talking about his inner liner. I'd like to comment about the inner liner too. I thought about it when he was talking about his. I think that was one of the really wise decisions *- to go with that inmer liner. I felt that it offered a lot more comfort than wearing that rubber suit up against my body, or up against my underwear. I sort of felt that I was really quite comfortable in this suit. I didn't find my mobility limited by my inner liner at all, and I had made sure that it fit. I think that has a lot to do with it. I worked the suit once for about a four~hour period with just the rubber inside. I did no- tice it sticking to me, and I didn't feel as com- fortable. After I got inside the suit with pres- sure on my body, the suit felt pretty darn good. I had the knees cut out of my suits. The knees are still teo short. Having been in it for four days, I know the dimensions are wrong. The di- mension from my knee down to my foot is not long enough. Jt's not just the inner liner, but the +a McDivitt White McDivitt White McDivit- White MeDivitt White 35 link net in itself just isn't long enough. You wouldn't say you had a pressure point though? No, it was just a constant pull on there all the time. Did it bother you very much during the flight? Yes, it bothered me a little bit. So you really did have sort of a pressure point then? Yes, to some extent in that area. I had had that one so much before. It had been so extreme in some cases that it really didn't bother me too much. Both of us should mention something about the visors. I thought you ought to mention something about your visor problem, your EVA visor or the Hie one. Well, I have briefed the visor on the EVA pretty well. The one that I will mention now is the visor that I had on my regular helmet. I thought that the vision through it was quite good. I noticed no distortion at all through it, but I did immediately put a couple big scratches on it CON AB ENS rete 36 MeDivitt Gh EE He in the beginning when I was unstowing equipment. I continued to scratch it throughout the mission. When I finished, the visor was considerably scratched up as you would probably notice if you looked at my suit. I don't know what there is to do about this other than to accept a scratchy visor. If you've got the visors down in front of your face, you don't tend to scratch it up as much. I think it was really worn out because you started opening up your visor and leaving it up over your head a lot earlier than I did. At about the two and a half or three day mark, I looked at your visor and it was really a mess. I took the helmet off and cleaned the visor because it was dirty on the inside and the outside. I looked at my visor and had very few marks on it. I had a few little scratches, but very minor. Then I started putting my visor up more and more be- cause they wanted us to stay open. Because I'm a lot taller than you are, I really started beat-— ing mine up. In the last day, I think I caught up with you and maybe even surpassed you in the White McDivitt White McDivitt 37 amount of marks on it. I'll say another thing. I'm sure glad we didn't go in for those Lexan visors that they wanted us to fly with, cause the distortion would have driven me batty in about the first six hours. I think you must insist on perfectly optically clear visors. That's right. You've got to have good optics. I took my helmet off about three times, and I didn't leave it off very long. I took mine off about two times. I took it off one time for an hour because my hair right above my ears was really bothering me. I didn't bother getting a light-weight headset out, and when any- bedy called me, I had the thing sitting in ny lap and I could hear it. I took one of the ... and pulled it back and I hollered into the mike, Ha, ha!, till I could hear it. I said, "TI tye Zot my helmet off. Unless you've got something im- portant to tell me, don't bother me." Ha, ha! And he said, "Okay." It was one of those passes, you know, where you only talk to one guy for about an hour. Then I took it off one other time for about a half hour to rub my ears. I was quite fot vb | TS Td) A ; 38 White McDivitt comfortable with my helmet on for two days. Do you want to know something that's kind of strange? I was more comfortable with my helmet on than off. In fact, I kind of got used to those pressure points on the top of my head with the helmet on. When I took the helmet off and moved my head around, I felt a little dizzy from not having these restraints. I didn't feel as comfortable as I did with my helmet on. The times I had my helmet off were when I was running D-9. I ran the D-9 Experiment several times with my helmet off so I'd have better use of my sextant. I took it off one other time near the end when they indicated they would like to have every- thing off. I didn't feel particularly comforta- ble with my helmet off any more. I got so used } to having that thing on that I put it on so I could talk better with the stations. They were calling me from time to time, and I thought it would be a little better. Before I forget, I think the portable headset is really a lousy design. I coneur. I think it ought to be thrown out. White McDivitt Sern 5: 39 T've seen the ones they've got in the MCC and they're good plain old headsets. I don't see any reason why we can't get one that stays on your head and stays in your ear. You put this thing on and it pops off about two minutes later. It's not built to stay on my size head and I noticed it didn't stay on Jim's very well either. I think the portable headset idea is 4 good idea, but we ought to have a good headset for it. Okay. As we mentioned earlier the cabin pressure relieved at about 5.5 and held that way during launch. It went back down to 4.9 or 4.8 and this is where it stayed for the re- mainder of the mission. I think that they prob-~ ably overshot their zeal to correct the cabin pressure that John and Gus had had on GT-3 and put ours down so that it was actually relieving lower and sealing lower than it would have been desirable. I was expecting it to seal up around 5.5 or 5.7 like it was advertised. I checked my suit gage against the cabin pres- sure gage and my suit gage read higher than the cabin pressure gage by about .3 of a pound. = i 40 White McDivitt White McDivitt White McDivitt White Yes, mine was right on it though. I know. You checked your suit gage against the cabin pressure and yours read just about on it, didn't it? Was it a tenth of a pound higher or was it right on it? Right on. Okay. So mine was reading a little higher, indicating to me that possibly the cabin pres= sure was higher. But since id's read with it, I don't know where we were. Well, the pressure at which it relieved at went right into the problem of the temperature-pres- sure relief in the cryogenic oxygen system so that those two problems kind of lashed together, The venting in the 0, system was set at around 2 970. 967, I think the poop sheet said. Well, it was about 967 or 970. We had the pos- sibility of losing oxygen in a steady manner out of the spacecraft if we let the pressure rise up above--well, the ground felt 960, and I concurred with that figure. So throughout the flight we had to keep venting our 9, system MeDivitt White 41 down so the pressure would remain down below 960. They initially told us to vent it to keep it at 930 to 960. Then they told us to vent it on down to about 890. From then on, we vented it down in the neighborhood of between 890 and 93, depending upon who was asleep and who wasn't asleep. It sure seemed to be an unsatisfactory solution to two problems--one of the cabin hold- ing at a higher pressure than they wanted it to on GI-3 and also the problem of the 0, system venting outside of the pressure gage. In the oxygen system I think the solution to putting the venting down at 967 was a poor solution to the problem of having a poorly designed gage. I think the gage was again poorly designed and it should be designed to read about 1200 sana. Relief should be up in that area. If they really went ahead and jacked down the relief pressure, to get it on the gage, I think that is one heck of an approach to an engineer- ing problen. I think that's a gross thing to do and if they did that deliberately, I think they deserve a 42 MeDivitt White MecDivitt White McDivitt White McDivitt very black star for that one. They need their heads examined! I guess we beat that one around pretty well, didn't we? Yes. The way that we were venting the cabin was by going to 0; High Rate and venting the oxygen out through the cabin vent or going to cabin repress and using up the oxygen through the cabin and through the cabin vent valve that way. T was quite satisfied with the cabin temperature. It started out and got pretty hot at one time early in the flight and went up to 100 as you ° noted,and then it went back down into the 80's. I think it actually dropped into the 70's a ¢ime or two. That's right. It was in the 70's most of the time, Right. Let's get the data book, The dry bulb tempera- ture was 80; 80, the first time we tood it. Then it was 79, 79, 79. Then it was 75, 75, 75, and then they stayed between 75 and 77,1 White McDivitt White McDivitt White McDivitt 45 think, the rest of the flight. No, here it is down as low as 72. So it got down to around 72 late in the flight, and here we are with a whole bunch of 70's to 73's and a couple of 76's. So I guess that 75 was the average temperature throughout the whole flight. I think our cabin temperature gage was reflect- ing a little higher temperature than these. No, let's see. It was down around 75. It went down to 74 at one time, I remember. Yes, I think 75 was a good average cabin temp- erature for the whole flight. I thought this was a pretty satisfactory cabin temperature. The suit temperatures were also down. They stayed down from about 52 to 54 most of the flight. I thought that was a pretty satisfactory temperature there. I believe that there was a difference in suit temperatures be- tween Jim and me because I was continually hollering about being hot. I think that temp- erature-wise Jim was relatively comfortable. I was very comfortable, and as a matter of fact, when I went to sleep, I tended to get just a 44 White McDivitt White little bit cool, especially if I had urinated all over myself. I don't remember one time during the flight during which I was cool in the suit. I think I was hot most of the time in the suit. I got used to it after a while. The only time that it was not satisfactory, as far as I was con- cerned, waS when I was trying to sleep. The humidity data that we got doesn't go along with what everybody was expecting. No, not by a long shot. No, not at all. Our little gage seemed like it was working properly. We didn't have any visible moisture at any time at any place in the spacecraft. It seemed to be indicating down around 62 to 63 percent relative Hanteey which was a big surprise to myself. With this type of data, I began going open faceplate and open gloves fairly early in the flight, about a day or a day and a half, and continued in this manner just about throughout the flight. We used the wrist dams quite a bit of the time. But I had my faceplate open with my wrist dams '