Gemini 5 Technical Debriefing, Part I, 1965

.. - ,. 19 Y authtrity of E. c 11G hanged by C4?1 •'o <<=­ / GEMINI V TECHNICAL DEBRIEFING (U) Part 1 NOTICE: This document may be exempt from public disclosure under the Freedom of lnfor• mation Act (5 U.S.C. 552). Requests for its re­ lease to persons outside the U.S. Government should be handled under the provisions of NASA Policy Directive 1382.2. THIS MATE RIAL CONTAINS INF'ORM.ATION AFl"IECTING THE NATIONAL OEFENSE OF THE UN I TEO STATES WITHIN THE MEANING OF' TH£ £8P'IONAGIE LAW 5 ,. TITLE 11. U . S.C, SECTION 793 ANO 794 . T HE TRANS­ M I SSION OR REVELAT I O N Of' WH IC H IN AN Y MANNER TO AN UNA UTHORIZED PERSON IS PR OHIB ITED av L AW. GROUP 4 OOWNCiftAOEO AT ) V EAR INTFRVALS, OECLASSI F'IEO AFTER 12 VEARS t " 6()tJF18Er4 T I;\b PRELIMINARY GT- 5 FLIGHT CREW DEBRIEFING TRANSCRIPT PART I Prepared By Spacecraft Operations Branch Flight Crew Support Division September 1 , 1965 This material contains informati on affecting the national defense of the United States within the meaning of the Espionage Laws , 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. Gr oup 4: Downgrade at 3 year intervals Declassified after 12 years PREFACE This preliminary transcript was made from voice tape recordings of the GT-5 flight crew debriefing conducted August 30, 1965 thru September 1, 1965 at the Crew Quarters, Cape Kennedy , Florida. Although all the material contained in this transcript has been edited, the urgent need for the preliminary transcript by mission analysis personnel precluded a thorough editorial review prior to its publication. Errors in this transcript will be corrected as soon as possible and an official transcript will be published at a later date . This document contains a transcript of the first part of the debriefing, during which the crew described the mission generally from an operational viewpoint. A preliminary transcript of the re­ mainder of the debriefing will be published by September 3, 1965. It will cover systems operations , operational checks, visual sightings, experiments , pre-mission planning, mission control , and training. a i eJ~FIDff:!TIAL 9'0Ni;10ENTll(t ~ TABLE OF CONTENTS Paragraph Page Number 1.0 COUNTDOWN 1.1 Crew Insertion. . . . . . . . . . ,1 1.2 Communications . . . . . . . . . . . .1 1. 3 Crew Participation and Countdown. .1 1.4 Comfort. . . . . . . . . . .1 1.5 Environmental Control System .2 1.6 Sounds . . . . . . 2 1.7 Vibrations . . . . . . . . . . . 2 1.8 Visual . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1. 9 Crew Station Controls and Displays 4 2. 0 POWER.ED FLIGHT 2.1 Lift- Off Cues . . . . . 6 2. 2 Roll Pr ogram 7 2.3 Pitch Program . 8 2.4 Aerodyna.mci.cs. . . . . 8 2. 5 Environmental Control System. . 9 2. 6 Maximum q . . . . . . . . . . 9 2. 7 Windshear . . . . 9 2. 8 DCS Update. . . . . . . . . 9 2. 9 Engine 1 Operati on. . 9 2. 10 POGO. . . . . 10 2. 11 Engine 2 Status . . . 12 2. 12 Acceleration g' s . . . . 12 2,13 BEXJO . . . . . . 12 2. 14 Staging . . . . . . . 13 2. 15 Engine 2 Ignition 13 2. 16 RGS Initiat~ . . ~4 2. 17 Fairing Jettison . 15 2,18 GO/ NO GO . . 20 2, 19 Systems Status 21 2. 20 SECO . 21 2. 21 Steeri11g, . 22 I' ...... 3.0 INSERTION 3. 1 Post- SEXJO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 3. 2 SEXJO + 20 Seconds . . . 26 3.3 Inser tion Activities . . . . 30 4. 0 ORBITAL FLIGHT 38 Wf.lE>ENTl~E 5.0 RETROFIRE 5. 1 5. 2 5.3 5,4 5.5 5. 6 !R- 36 Events.. ~R- 256 Events . ~ - 1 Events . .. . 1R- O Events . .. . Retropack Jettison. Communications. 6.0 REENTRY 6.1 6. 2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 6. 8 6, 9 6.10 6 . 11 6.12 400 K . . . . . . . Acceleration profile. Spacecr aft control . 100 000 Feet . . 50 000 Feet .... 35 000 checklist items . Commtmi cati ons. . . 10. 6K barostat. . . . Main chute deployment Single point release . Blood pressure measurements Postmain checklist items . 7. 0 LANDING AND RECOVERY 7. 1 Impact. . . . 7,2 Checklists . . 7.3 Communications. 7.4 Systems Configuration . 7, 5 Spacecraft Status . . 7. 6 Post- Landing Activities 7,7 Comfort . . . . . .. 7.8 Recovery Force Personnel . 7.9 Egress . . 7.10 Survival Gear 7.11 Crew Pickup Page Number .168 . 172 .173 . .174 .182 .183 .194 .196 .197 .197 .198 . 202 .202 .202 . 203 . 204 ..204 . 205 .206 . . 210 . 211 . 211 . 212 . 213 . 214 . 214 .214 .215 .215 1 1 .0 COUNTDOWN 1.1 Crew Insertion Cooper The crew insertion, I thought, went very well . Conrad Yes , we had the suiting thing down on my cuffs and everything so that we got right out t here and, boy, th& Gunter was ready for us and i n we went . Cooper They were all set . There were no delays and every­ thing went exceedingly well on t he gantry. 1. 2 Communications Cooper Communications , I thought were good and no probl em at all on communications, and everything went real well. Conrad Yes , Stoney handled that whole thing real well. Cooper All right, volume was still down on the little comm sets in the transfer van there . That ' s Stoney' s little improvement . 1 .3 Crew Participation in Countdown Cooper Crew participation in the countdown was good. I didn' t see anything at all wrong. Conrad Yes, we weren' t rushed. We felt t hat we had enough time to get the switches in the right position and just everything went real good. 1.4 Comfort Cooper Comfort was real fine . We went on to two suit fans 2 Cooper 1.6 Sounds Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad 1.7 Vibration Cooper right away. I thought we felt plenty cool the whole time. ECS was good. Never any problem with it . Sounds , I thought the only sounds tha·; we had that were abnormal we'd been warned about. When the prevalves opened, they were fairly loud and when the engines gimballed they were quite loud , and both of those we were aware of the fact that they would cause a lot of noise and vibrat:.on. There is something that really dings t he booster too when they start.. . . I don ' t--whet her they drop a platform away. It ' s before they start moving the gant ry. Just before they start lowering that erector. Boy, something really, like it really bangs that booster, I thought. I still don't know what it is , but , of course, we ' d been up there with the erector down twice before that so we were sort of e~tting used to those kind of sounds. Okay, vibrations we already covered tr.at . Sounds , vibrations. 3 1.8 Visual ,. Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad FCSD REP Conrad Cooper / Visual . Nothing.... Oh, yes , wait a minute, I started getting this win­ dow fogging. Well, let ' s cover that under the right area. Well, it was actually in the countdown when the erector went down before liftoff. Well , okay, allright . I mean we still had it later. Well, you want to cover that now then in systems. Well, is that what this means , is visual, or does that just mean something else? Yes, that' s before liftoff. Powered flight is next . Yes , well t lri,s-tra-,:5pened 6e:f'1 Allright, even before liftoff, hat this really is completely unforgiveable. Each window was filthy. Just fogged completely over, and it was on the inside of the outer pane of glass . It was within the sealed unit of glass , and it was so foggy when they lowered the erector that it it was frozen over solid, d neither could Well, it had fogged over before they lowered the Conrad (j()tqflDENTIA[ ,. I I 4 erector and then the guys heated it w:.th hot air to make it go away and that just made th:.ngs wor se when they lowered the erector. Cooper It didn't make it go away all the way. Conrad That I s right it made'"it- ~ actually. Cooper / L my side in my window ~etweer. the inside pane and the two outside panes of\\8-~s , I had a small bee , and I had a fly, and I had\several flecks of things that I had written u~ before and never got corrected, and they were the whole flight, and I 'm sure they will show up on all the films and everything. Now between the outer sealed panes of glass there were numerous little specks and of stuff and throughout the flight as . ..well , we ' ll cover that later, but that was even 7rore the flight started . The windows were not pla/n and were not in good shape to go forthe--f~. 1. 9 Crew Station Contr ols and Displa_ys Conrad I think the Gemini cockpit is a pretty good cockpit. Cooper I think in general that crew stations eontrols and displays were pretty adequate . Conrad I 've got a couple comments on switches and things, but these are. . . . ~FIDENTIAL ­ 5 FCSD REP Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad ,. Okay, how about the time you spent in there on prelaunch. Do you think that this is about right? Yes , yes, I think that this is just about right. I think that if you cut it down too much more than that you are going to be....you could cut it down some more , there's no doubt. .. . It' s that cabin purge cycles when you're not doing anything really, and that ' s excellent time. ... that you can cut it down, but that' s the thing that takes the time for both the ground crews... and that' s lost time. I don' t know. ... I don ' t think you want to rush the crew and now our count that second day went by the clock, boy. We got in there at the right time. We counted down and lifted off on, and I didn' t feel that I was rushed, and I didn' t feel that I sat in there for an excessive amount of time. No , I didn ' t either. I thought that it went just about right , time wise . Long as there ' s no holds in the count everything' s great. 6 2.1 Lif t Off Cues Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper FtE>ENTI L 2.0 POWERED FLIGHT Okay, lift- off cues , CAP COM . CAP CO~ didn ' t come into the act until later . Stoney counted us down thru ignition and lift-off and then CAP COM picked us up at l ift- off. Motion is an excellent clue . There ' s doubt in your mind when you ljft- off. You know, the second you lift- off that yot.' ve lifted. Vibration was very low. It had dropped out almost completely a.t lift-off, felt that shaking was very l i ght. There was very little vibrati on at all . Okay, vibration, very l ow. Noise I thought, was quite low. I was particularl y aware of the noises of goi ng through the max Q regionar y thing. Oh , t his is lift-off again . I thought the noises were very well at l iftoff . You know the engines were running from the outside before, you know, and man they really make a racket, but from where you are it's pretty quite. You know there running. You can here them, there's no doubt about that , but .. . Okay, on visual I don ' t . . . . We had a very cl ear day. There weren't even any clouds in sight on ~ IDENTI~ Conrad 2. 2 Roll Program Conrad Cooper 7 C.(&)Hft0ENTI:,\~~ au, !to our sight as we were lifting off, and I couldn't tell any visual cues to lift- off, could you? You had the feeling that you were moving visually. After you get your roll program you see it visually and you can see the pitch program starting visually, but just at first l ift-off you don't really have any visual cues . Cockpit displays are just l ike advertised. The two stage - one lights go out, and . .. just l ike the simulator. Yes , I watched roll program on the gyro, I was watching for it to come i n on time and in glancing up when the roll program started I was still looking at nothing but blue sky, but I was aware visually as you say that the booster was rolling. Yes , you can have a airplane when you are looking at nothing but blue sky and start a motion and you may not know exactly what the motion is, but you know that you are moving. Now on this cockpit display, something that I got two different answers to from different people on how the gyro and the actual case was going to be set and it suddenly dawned on me that they actually set the gyro so that you are launching down the 90 degrees. You're 8 Conrad Cooper FCSD REP Cooper 2. 3 Pitch Program Cooper 2.4 Aerodynamic Cooper progressing down to 90 degrees line, e. la the simulator, although the booster sets on 85 degrees and when you turn to 72 degrees launch azimuth you are rolling clockwise so far as tr.e crew is concerned. You roll to zero . But you are rolling to is real ly to O on the gyro as precessed around so that you are net really setting on the actual launch azimuth, you are actually setting so that when you stai§'e on over i n yaw then pitch over then in your yaw your on the in­ plane line. You're coming down the zero line . Y01.:. 1re yawing down the zero l ine . That 's right, and I kept getting diffe.rent answers on this and this is in fact the case. Roll program was exactly right on time and ended e>:actly on time. Pitch program started exactly on time. Aerodynamic was nothing new or differE:nt about it. It was just standard. We build up to the noises at max Q; the noise built up to gradual level and the vibration and quantity built up to ma>:~ and then dropped off very rapidly J.1'd:i!Jitely thereafter. FlDENTIAL 2. 5 ECS Conrad Cooper Conr ad Cooper Conrad Cooper 2. 7 Wind Shear Cooper 2.8 DCS Updates Cooper FCSD REP Conrad 9 CONFICtleNTIA~ • Right on the button. ECS was right on the money, no problem at all . Max Q we ' ve already stated. The cabin sealed a little bit high like they said it would. I forget the number. It was about 5.8. About 5.8 or 9 and just gradually dwindled back down . And just after we got in there by the time I looked at it again after insertion everything it bled down on our gage to 4.9, our gage read a little low. I think the actual reading, you will pr obably find the cabin actually was 5.1 1 but the whole rest of t he flight the gage never budged off the 4.9. The gage stayed right there like it was glued. The wind shear, we had none and, certainly nothing that we could tell , but as I understand we ' ve been told that for that day anyway we had almost negible wind shear. DCS updates were right on time. You had two updates? 1 plus 45, 2 plus 25 . 2,9 Engine 1 Operat i on Cooper The engine 1 operation couldn' t have been better, ----~~K)ENTIAL ------- 10 .. 2,10 POGO Cooper Conrad ( Cooper It was beautiful. Just now in between engine 1 operation and engine 2 here we have two items we will insert in here. One was POGO.. At 2 mi nutes and 5 seconds we started picking up POGO and I got a fairly gcod amount of POGO on through, stopping just at abcut 5 to 7 seconds before staging. POGO dropped. cl ean out exactly the same time there that we programmed POGO on the early days. Yes, that one surprised me . We ' d he1:.rd and read tbat both John 8{!.d Gus ' s and Jim and Ed ' s f l i ght that they were hardly even aware of IDGO and boy when it came in on us it was loud anc. clear and, well Gordon, neither one of us could talk hardly; we were really vibrating with it and I was hard pressed to read the displays. By golly , if I had to re__:-t ;--e num;-er on _ · ~- ~r-ays I- think I woul d ad -;-:h- - --:b- _ __ , e a:-i sp ___ .,,. have been hard pressed to do it, because we really had it pretty good. Yes , the rate ... the amplitude of them were such . . . 11 cps frequency and the ampl itude of them was such that you were on -- you were on the marginal 11 i t Conrad RCSD REP Cooper FCSD REP Cooper FCSD REP Cooper edge of reading of any large gage and any fine reading that you had to read, you would never be able to read any numbers. It was exactly like the POGO we did all along on the program up at Ames and as the exact amplitude, I don ' t lmow, but was, . . . . . I think we don ' t want that ~ POGO. It was no par icu ar y upsetting to me , because I really was fai rly familiar with POGO having been through all that POGO program, but this thing kind of t i ckled me that we got it to see that we had still hadn' t solved it , but I don ' t think . . . its something you don ' t want because if you had ot~er things going wrong during that period of t ime it would make it vecy difficult to say what you had wrong or what It didn ' t upset me, but it surprised me , you lmow, because I just wasn't expecting POGO. Wbat g-level would you estimate it to be? Well , we were sneaking right up there. I mean the POGO . Oh, it was right at about 5 g ' s . ·\1• Well , I mean plus or minus amplitude. Well I , my estimate on it was that it was something -- 12 on the order of maybe three quarters of a g. Well, I don I t !mow whether it was that high c,r not. Conrad I thought it was at least a half, if not better. Apparently it wasn't that high. I ws.s really surprised. Like I say, we were really getting the ramrod out of it. Cooper s beyond what we selected as we th~ht should be the cutoff. It was more tr.an wh~ we l had selected at Ames as being max acc7. in this.I passed up ver b • there one of the first things that happened immediately about the time that we got the pitch program was the IGS Stage 2 fuel needle failed in thE full -max deflection position. And it came back on and was reading after staging briefly and thEn failed again during staging. It was intermittent . 2.11 Engine 2 Status Cooper Engine 2 status stayed ... was perfect. There was not anything wrong at all. 2.12 Acceleration G' s Cooper Acceleration g ' s were right on the piofile, were certainly very pleasant. Nothing wrong at all with them. 2. 13 BECO 13 Cooper BECO was right on the money. .. 2 . 14 Staging Conrad Boy, that staging was smooth too. Cooper They told us that BECO was going to occur early, but it was Conrad We did loft a little bit apparently like they said we woul d because, right after staging .... 2. 15 Engine 2 I gnition Conrad Well , Engine 2 ignition, I wasn't even hardly aware of that other than we just started to get a little, yc,11 know, we just sort of went off the peg at 6 g's and Gordo said s t aging OK and Engine 2 is good and I wasn ' t even aware that Engine 2 had lit. You can' t hear it, to speak of, but you can feel the acceleration slowly building up. FCSD REP Did you see anything visually? Conrad No , I didn't see anything. I heard the other guys talking about see the flash at the brig. Never saw a thing and I wasn't aware of any flash out there either. I\ Cooper J didn ' t see anything at all at BEDO. The best clue that I have on my side, is that I see the Fuel and Oxidizer needles start coming down as the engine 14 2.16 RGS Initiate Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad FCSD REP Conrad Cooper Conrad • starts burning. And then they coming c.own fairly rapidly at first, I mean you get a very definite motion on them right at first there and. they kind of settled out. Engine 2 ignition we've already covered. RGS initiate right on the money. I was going to mention that we had l of t ed and that we were expected to pitch down a.nd we did when it picked up RGS. It smoothed in very smooth, and the fading was just right. The IGS needle really deflected and I ~as , you know, I don't think it pitched, it didn't peg- out , but it did make a large dip and then when the booster came down just pitched down very smoottly down to about 75 or 80 degrees, I guess it pitched down almost 10 degrees. What rate did it pitch over? Very slow, but steady, at just It took about 20 seconds I guess to fade it in there. The needle came in and made a big deflection and right after that the booster started pitching and the needle started back and boy the needl e was • 15 CQ~ElDEhJIJA back and thing was right on the money at about 80 degrees. It was a very smooth transition and then do you remember they were telling, us to look for this one cps oscillation? Well, I didn't have rate needl es like Gordo did, but I wasn't aware of any oscil lations at any time. That booster was in pitch and yaw as far as that went Cooper Those rate needles were like they were glued . There was never through boost or second stage was there ever any rate except that one tiny little rate, one teensy little rate just at when we were in POGO we got one tiny little longitudinal rate, ' just one tiny little fleck on a rate, and was the only one. Otherwise it was just smooth as silk, the whole time, rate wi se . 2.17 Fairing Jettison Cooper Fairing jettison. We jettisoned fairings at 3:25 and man do they ever go. Conrad I counted Gordo down to them. Okay, yes, that ' s a good point . Cooper Beside the scanner fairing and the nose fairing go and when the nose fairing went it went with all kinds of debris . There were pieces flying all 16 over. Conrad Yes , and I don't think it went right . I don't believe it went right , because the Rand R can was ripped up in the front , and I can show you on my side the nose went like that and there was some tape or fiber glass that goes around t he . . .. It was fiberglass cloth and it was all broken loose in jagged flaps sticking up t hat, you lmow, had broken loose from along in here when i.hat cover went I had decided impression that the cover went off askew, that it didn't jettison t he: way i t should have. And this could be a good point of putting it back to after insertion. Cooper Well, it ' s supposed to go off askew. Conrad Yes , well, it just di dn ' t go off clean . That 's why this was ripped up, see . Cooper Well, it something somebody might look into, but you don ' t want to recommend that they put back to after insertion , because your taking a weight penalty to carry that all the way up. Conrad Yes, I realize that , but . . . . Cooper It was designed to go off ... . Conrad That was the reason in the first place that they WIDE 17 moved it up there anyhow, because they weren't .... Cooper No , the reason they moved it up there was because they didn ' t have strong enough propulsion on those squibs and spring combinations or whatever they use. We never did get a reading on that, but whatever the total propulsive expulsion system wasn't kick­ ing, the scanner fairing wide enough but what they would come back into the booster. But didn't you have the distinct impression that the nose fairing broke into jillions of pieces when it blast. Conrad I certainly, I certainly, yes . That ' s why wh~n I say askew, I mean something didn't look right. I can't put my finger on it, but -­ Cooper It came off in many pieces anyway. There were many, many pieces and the whole area was just filled with debris. Conrad Yes, and then, I 'm not sure that that's when we got all that gl op on our windshiel d, the spots ... Cooper Well, I noted exactly at that time immediately after the fairing went, I noted about 5 or 6, I saw them hit , 5 or 6 gray splots, just small ones , very small little gray-type splots and I was distinctly looking for that and watching for it and 18 Conr ad Cooper Conrad FCSD REP they were not there before they were t'nere and I ; saw them when they hit. They hit duri:'.l.g all this debris flying around period. I think that you can sti11 f i nd them o:'.l. the windshields . They didn ' t burn off during reentry. But they' re not bad and there are just a few little scattered ones and I think it might be interesting t o compare how many you get there versus and how many you get when you jettison them in orbit. It may wel l be that jettisoning in orbit would be pre­ ferabl e , but I didn ' t f i nd anything objectionable t o jettisoning where they went, they wenm fine. It did add a lot of debris and I agree with Pete there was a big torn something or other out there which may just be a fiberglass thing that is kind of . .. ,. Yes , I want to get down and look at the R and R and and I can tell you what it was , describe it a lot better. We' ll probably have some pictures of it too in the camera somewhere. I know it 'll show up in some film. How l ong was this visible? You say there was a big bunch of stuff out there. ONFIDENTIAL 19 Cooper There ' s a whole fly. Oh, you mean the debris . It was gone. Conrad It was gone like that, but it just looked like the whole darn thing exploded. Cooper It looked like it just flew into a jillion pieces. It was all around you for maybe a period of a second or two. Conrad I didn't think it was that much, i t was just gone. Cooper But it was a defininite period of time when you were aware of all this debris all over and then clear. Okay, enough for fairing jettison. 20 2. l8 GO/NO GO Cooper FCSD REP Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper GO/NO GO: We never got a GO/NO GO beeause we lost our number 1 radio in about 4 minutes sometime just prior . . . let see we got a .8 . . . . Wti got a V over VR of . 8 . We got a GO/NO GO of ,.. You did get a , 8? We got a .8. Yes , that comes much later - that com(!S after the GO/NO GO. Yes, that ' s right , okay, well I don ' t remember ever getting a ... yea, we did, we go·~ MCC GO. Right we got a GO/NO GO , okay, but then immediately after . 8 we never got any·':hing at all from there on until aft er we were insi~rted and gone to UHF No. 2. I think it must be in the antenna problem, I really do . Well , there 's some problem there because the same thing happened on one of the previous flights and we definitely and completely lost radio and I switched over just before we inserted, I switched over to number 2 and then when I call1~d but the IVI's we were back with them then . 21 2. 19 Systems Status Cooper System Status everything .. . . Conrad We did have ... Let me describe the delta P \ lights . Shortly after liftoff I got the number 1 fuel cell delta Plight and I reported i t and just about t he time I reported it, then the number 2 fuel cell delta Plight came on. They stayed on all the way through boost and they were on aft er insertion for ten, fifteen seconds and after that they went right back out again and that) i s it. It didn't effect anything on the fuey e11 operation, the voltages , /thing stayed fine • bein n----tliere was no other way of telling the~ was out of tolerance so I don 't think it is a problem. We expected it. Cooper I 'm glad that we had them changed to orange rather than red . Conrad Yeah, yeah. Cooper Systems status in addition to that I don ' t think we had any systems that were exactly right, except the radio and the acceleration as we had expected it . We were right on the profile. SECO was ... 2. 20 SECO tn currents , other than !Oa!IIAL 22 Conrad Cooper 2.21 Steering Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper FCSD REP Conrad Cooper I think we burned out at, Gordo, 7 anc. 1/4 g's. Right. SECO was exactly on time, just exactly on time and IVI's read 002 AFT. Almost ierfect. Steering was ... there was no steerine· accelerations or velocities that we could tell. Steering was just smooth as silk, apparently they :t.ad us going right down the slot. And when we came off, apparently we were lined up well because there weren ' t any rates because when we came off and wajted our 20 seconds there were no rates whatsoever and it was just setting there just . . . . as smootr.. as As stable as a rock. As smooth as silk so that and when we started thrusting and separating we came off :ust right straight forward . No deviation, no skidding around or anything. Just right straight off, I thought the IVI's were plus 2. That ' s what I haVle written down here. Plus 28 right, 3 t.p. I guess that's what it was. This velocity you read? I was going to cover that in your ... , Your right, plus 2, it was -- that's :r·ight. Plus Conrad Cooper Conrad 3,1 Post SECO Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper 23 ~IE>l!NTtAE 002. I have all the computer readouts . 008 right and how many up? 3 up. MANEUVER CONTROLLER worked fine . We went right through .... Wel l, l et ' s go through t hat. The way we had practice SECO, Gordo, got SECO and Gordo unstowed the CONTROLLER and I armed the BUS ARM Swit ch so that we get the MSC- 1 doors OFF. Brought the propulsion power ON. Brought the ATTITUDE CONTROL Electric Power ON. Went from RATE COMMAND to DIRECT. Armed the switch and hit the computer. Armed t he sep spacecraft thing and Gordo and I counted the seconds down . In the meantime , I punched off address 72 so that it was reading and then in 20 seconds we had SEP s/c .... In 20 seconds I start ed and I called it out and started thrusting and Pete would hit the sep spacecraft ... . Conrad The reason we did that was so that we would have the inertial velocity readout on the ga.ge and that was ·beautiful 25,808 and nominal was S-.lpposed to be 25,807. You can't ask for a better calculation from a computer than that, and a lot of people don ' t have much faith in that thing but, I think that I'll bet that the computed MCC figure isn't more than a foot or two off. I t couldn ' t be because everything was nominal for hours and hours in the past, Day's it went that way where we stayed on the flight plan to the minute, to the second so I know that it was a good computation, and I have the five address readouts that we read, We read out address 72 as 25,808; address 94 which was R dot for gamma was plus 20 feet which is pretty darn small so we must have almost a zero gamma address 97 which is the forward IVI was plus 2 feet; address 52 was perfect, it was zero. So there was no adjustment needed and if there had been an adjustment needed that would ha:ve come at 3,042 seconds on the computer if tbere had been an address . 52 correction and nominal 3,008 seconds so the computer computed the nomi nal thing off only by less than a minute, about a half a 25 minute of what the actual nominal value /een , so I think thats pretty darn good ascent routine in that comput er, and I think hat ( now that we have Math flow 6 in there t his i why I think the guy shouldn't get so darn worried in MCC underspeeds and giving them burn co/rections t his Mickey Movse. I' ve been Cooper Conrad Cooper Cooper Conrad t rying to make tbis pein-t-ewe· since we got associat ed with . . . . I think we had better immediate data avail abl e on board than people have been giving it credit for . That ' s right, and it really pleased me to see it come out on the computer this way. And had we never gotten our communications back we would have known that we were i n good shape because of the data we had on board, we didn' t have to worry about the ground readouts and what to do; we would have known what to do whether we had been under or over or anything else. Attitudes and rates , t here weren ' t any rat es . The thing was steered right down the slot . We came off smooth. Spacecraft separation NflD~NTlAk 26 CONF:10ENT-IA Cooper We separated as smooth as silk just r i ,5ht straight .;; ahead Conrad Well, we counted down and Gordo said h? was ready and I SEP spacecraft and he thru3ted and I went back to RATE COMMAND for them and we came straight off. I didn't even feel it . The first t hing we felt was thrust . Cooper And rolled upright and went to 000 00 -15 which happened to be right on the horizon. As it t urned out that 15 figure was good. It read out the IVI•s . FCSD REP That's, you know on 4 . . . they thought they came off the booster. Conrad Yes, that's why I mentioned that because Cooper That's what we were looking for, too, 3.2 SEGO Plus 20 Seconds Cooper We've already mentioned the IVI displays . Space­ craft separation occurred very smoothly. Thrusting was smooth, nothing wrong at all . Attitude rates were good. Conrad Yes, I don't understand this! I don't understand this guy saying that they can't hear them or they can ' t sense them. Boy, I was easily aware . . . . .. Cooper Conrad Cooper FCSD REP Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper FCSD REP FHID~Nf lAL 27 1/ You can feel t hem almost mo,-e than you can hear them. You can feel them vibrate really, more than you can hear them. I mean, you can hear them too, but the vibrat ion you can hear them too, but t he vi bration you can f eel the thrust. Have you ever heard a high speed hose or high speed water jet. Shhh ... That 's the impression that I had. Yes, that ' s right. Even from the aft firing thruster? Ever y thruster we had on t here. We heard every thruster on the whol e f l ight It never occurred in my mind when the thrus t ers were fired. You can feel them and I can hear them. I couldn't hear them in the sense of an expl osive sound or a roar. It sounded like wat er swishing. Yes , very definitely, more a Shhh. And I was aware of it again when we made the burns later on, you know, we made the reverse coelliptic stuff and all that. How did these noises , the thruster noises , sound compared with the way the last crew set the mission simulator? ' 28 Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Hey, that's another interesting point. They're not very close on pulse. Pulse is a ... • Pulse is more of a thump. That 's the one sound that does sound like you ' d expect a rocket engine to sound. Here ' s a sound just about like this : (knock) Yes , it very definitely sounds like a knock. There is no "shhh" or roar, just a little thud. You can hear it just like somebody knccking at the back of the spacecraft. You can hear it go "tap tap, tap, tap, tap, tap," Really, the simulator doesn I t sound tl:.e right way. It 's a general enough nature and it tl::.e same type manner Yes, it is close enough to give you a good cue. The platform mode for instance , you krow, when i t goes shh, shh, shh, shh ... did the same thing i n the spacecraft except it was all in one thump and swooshes when it was constantly firing the thrusters it sounded like the swish. The air-to- ground communications I thought was excellent the whol e time. I didn't find anythi ng , 29 Conrad .. Cooper Conrad Cooper FCSD REP Cooper Conrad Cooper ONEl0EtslJl~E wrong. We really had good comm the whole flight. There was never a time -- the only time the only fault we find was one or two times through the remote site when the MCC was trying to remote to these sites they would get some fading. I must say the HF worked excellent. When they were ~r~usic, broadcasting music to us, my\ gosh they had us practically the world round on '-----~The music quality was quite _g0od in most cases. I got times on that we can bring out later so that they can correlate how far GO/NO GO , there wasn't any problem on that. They gave us the GO right away. How long did it take them to give this? Oh, heck, immediately. Almost immediately. .> vveaf There was no swivel because there was no velocity ~ correction. There was no velocity correction needed. Orbit quantitites were good, they had those for us. It took them quite a while to read us our experiments but they just said you have a nominal orbit and then mayb_e . . . . . eQNFIE>ENTl~t I Conrad I've got down here the GMT of liftoff. I wrote down ... 13 plus 59 plus 59 which they l ater change to 14 plus 00 plus 00. I have the one A time they got " it up to us okay, which was 10 pl us 11. Then I have the 2 dash 1 they gave us was 01 pl us 27 plus 16 which they later revised to 01 plus 26 plus 27, I wrote those down. 3.3 Insertion Activities Cooper Okay, l et 's start on inser tion activities. SAFE t he swi tches we did that just right for our check­ list . In fact , we are even more convinced than ever that a good, thorough, accurate, checklist is the only thing to have and Conr ad Physically marked them off when they "·er e done. Cooper We followed it conscientiously. The sequential light t ests, we did it j ust by the teE.ts. Stowage:; . we already had modified our checklistE, ·and we already had written on some of it that we would do these i f we decided to. For instance, the D- rlng safety pin, we did install them at right t i me, and there was no problem on those; they wer e nruch easi•~r under zero-g to get in and out than we had thought and I had no 31 Conrad .. Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad .kQt4FIDfNJ1A.L, trouble getting my D-ring in, did you? I waited on mine, remember. Yes , you waited . .. . I s towed my D- ring thing So we closed the cover immediately and I decided I woul d go ahead and see if I could get mine, and I got to i t right away and it went right in, so I put it in. We, of course, got in trouble in the second orbit , but we did not unstrap or put t he drogue pins in the seat or unstow any items of gear other than the flight plan books and the 16mm camera and the Hasselblad. I take it back. We went through the Flight Plan as advertised and then stowed the items. We had D-2 canera out, the Blob out, but we did this in the proper places in the Flight Pl an. But we never did unstrap. We never unstrapped and never put the drogue pins in until after we go to 6 - 4 GO. We got a 6 - 4 GO. But we restowed too , after we got in t rouble. We throught maybe having to go into 6-4 why, we'd put ourselves back into the configuration 32 Cooper Conrad were never up. to reenter lready decided t hat I was not going to launch with th£~ They " are just useless as far as I am concerr..ed, and I as delighted I did not have them; and I didn ' t miss I don't think, I think could remove th€m and - The arm restraints are there for the pressurized case and high altitude ejection. I did go with mine up. I would prefer to go with thEim down, but there wasn't any reason , I didn ' t need to get my hands on the hand control or anything ~.o I left them as they were, but I don' t think tr.ey were necessary. • FtDENTtAL 33 Cooper Okay, belts . I couldn' t ~~ he belts . The harness - While we're on the harness, I don ' t like that harness worth anything. t hink what we need is a simple type adjustable type harness wi th clips on the legs that you can undo legs to get to some of the functions you have to: uri pation and defecation and so on in the spacecy ft . I do ' t see why we have to have a big, expensi/e, custom, made ha~ss that you can' t readily get on off and this on~ you can not readily get and if you had one with on it and snaps like you do on harness, it would be, I think, a hundred times useful as this one . Conrad Let me ask you a ~uestion. Do you really - now, do you r eally - I agree. Let me say this. I agree you should first be able to get your harness on and off, but in zero-g I ' m not convinced that three, especially two leg snaps type arrangement. In other words, a harness that would come completely loose and have many straps that hitch to the other straps would be really good in zero- g. What I think we need to do is to be able to get in and out of that harness that we have, easier. Like, maybe you could loosen the leg straps on it but not have them come apart. Now, I ~ NftDENTrAL Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper took my harness off in flight twice. I took 1 em " off once-­ Yeah, but you wouldn' t even have to step through these :: leg loops if you had - just like on an airplane harness. You could undo that and you wouldn' t eve·'.l. have to worry about the leg loops. Then all you 1d have to do is just slide out of the torso area. Yeah. Well» lets sees that' s what I'm saying. If you unhook both of those leg loops and you throw the whole thing down in the footwell and then you pull it back up again you got a leg strap floating off ever here and you got a- ­ Well that' s no problem. It ' s no worse i.han it is find­ ing your lap belt. Did you ever have i;rouble getting your lap belt back on after you took it off? I always hitched it on the Velcro over on the side. But you never had any trouble ~ ting t o it. I didn ' t . / I let mine float free and I never had any trouble getting t o them at all . Well, I just don 1 t lmow now. I really d:i.dn' t think it was that bad getting in and out of this harness . My only concern was that if- - I stayed- ­ How many times did you get i n and out of it? ~ ( OhJFt0! 35 Conrad Twice. The big problem was having you unhitch the straps on my suit. Cooper That' s right. With the cables to go over the harness. Conrad The harness--the easiest thing was getting in the legs . That was no problem at all. Cooper Yeah. Conrad Where I needed help was getting over my shoulder and getting the straps on the suit hitched back up again, which is a two man operation. Cooper Well, my point is that for normal wearing around the pad area or wearing around when your suited and every­ thing, you' d be much more comfortable if you could have those straps loose where they' re not gouging you in the legs, Conrad Yes, well-- Oh, I agree. Cooper Or where you had adjustments on them . ... Conrad . .. adjustments see-­ Cooper Okay, well . Conrad Where you coul d make the legstraps loose but you' d never disconnect them so you don' t have free floating straps around t here. It was no big problem .... Cooper My suggestion would be to have them exactly like you did in a parachute harness . You have the leg adjust­ Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper ment and on that same fitting you have the little snap " wher e you can unsnap in the places you want to. Oh yes, you dan do it either way. Sure. You cou,Yd either loosen them or--I just thi we've gone to such complex tailoring devices in orde f ovide some company with a great elaborate pro of providing expensive harnesses that they .. . per­ sonally don ' t think they ' re worth a darn for what they're ·ntended for . I don' t think you gain that much. I think'y~u loose a lot of it. ~ stow that harness . The life7 est. Now I disagree wit everybody that ' s ever said that those aren ' t in the way. e were them all the time mainly because we didn ' t hav a darn place to I si ore them and they're a pain in the Ii,leck t o get on and off but they are really in the way. The;r' re in the way @f everything you do. They bump int0 your arms . Tbey' re there to cut down visibilit on ;rour chest and they ' re just a nuisance, Yeah, e didn' t have a place t store them. We didn ' t store them or we'd have taken them off and left them off. I am here t o say t hat I ONFTDENTl~t 37 think they ' re r eally bad where they are. Conrad After the big sweat was over and we got a GO and we were relatively sure we were going to stay there for awhile unless we, you lmow, had some other emergency come up, I would have preferred to take off the harness and the life jacket and stow it somewhere if we ' d have had a place to stow it. Cooper Right. Conrad But the other thing is that maybe that' s just my per­ sonal feeling. I ' m extremely meticulous and we kept that spacecraft as empty as possible. Everything had it' s place and it stayed in it ' s place . Cooper And that harness and the vest--are pret t y big, bulky items - Conrad And I wasn' t going to have it rattling around down there on the floor, loose. Cooper Okay, on the drogue pins . By golly, I thought those new l i ttle things on the drogue pins made them very easy to get in and out. There wasn' t a bit of problem wit h those. Conrad I popped the drogue pins in and out on mine . Coope~ I put mine i n or out once just to ... . Conrad I think Gordo put his own in and out once to see if he could do it and he coul d. That worked real well . Cooper Okay. Fuel Cell o and Fuel Cell Hydrogen Quantity Read. 2 Yes, we read them at least a million times . Fuel Cell • Power Readings . Yes , everything checked out fine on t hose. Bermuda 2- 1 update: fine. Orbital Flight. FCSD Rep You' d better get out your flight plan on this because t his is the original stuff I was telling you about. Conrad Well, that ' s all right . This probably will go fairly.... FCSD Rep All three, if you go the way you did it. 4.0 Orbital Flight Cooper Okay, on 4.0 Orbital Fli ht. Platform Alinement. Conrad There' s our first problem. Cooper There' s our first problem. Our plat orm mode did not work and I don ' t lmow what ' s wrong wit but the darn thing does not zero out on the space­ I craft. It allows a good e to sit in there and won ' t zero it out and it is ex remely sl oppy ·n pitch. The whole thing, I think tb7:r was something ~rong with the whole thing because it d esn' t work at I a \ 1 like the ones in the simulator, an the whole thing ... plu's or minus a half a degree a very, ver y system lucky to be plus or thing really wrong with it. I personall y think that ~pl&f~T A~ 39 \ something was wired up wrong or something in i t because it was not working right. Conrad We didn ' t really get a chance to evaluate it too well because we had trouble with it so we stopped using it and by the time we ' d been able to do anything with it we had other problems, fuel problems and so forth . So we never did get back to using it again. Cooper Well, we had other control system problems which were overpowering, platform problem wise, but we did try one burn on the platform and it was a terrible mistake. The darn thi ng did not have the accuracy to really hold it and we got one foot per second in and out of plane there. Conrad Yeah. That was in those coeliptic . Cooper In one of those, that coeliptic burns and we ~ade our other burns then on Rate Command and man, that Rate Command system is just beautiful. It holds that space­ craft so tight that it can ' t vary. Conrad Yeah. We had a beautiful control system, I thought. When Gordo made any of the burns on the Rate Command or anything l i ke that it really responded -­ well. Coope1: Rate Command has tremendous torqueing. Boy, it ' s strong and it ' s instantaneous and you can just stop it right on the money. Really good. 40 FCSD Rep Okay, on this platform alinement thing. You went to SEF and caged and SEF and Platform Control Mode, Cooper We pitched down to visual when we went to CAGE and then went to SEF and we went to Platform mode and after fid­ dling around with it awhile we decided the Platform mode wouldn' t work so I went to Pulse and then I , just using my needles , Platform needles then, I just pulsed the er­ rors out until we torqued around and got the ... got it ... on a fine line. Conrad Okay, Now, there' s no doubt in my mind that the Primary Scanners , there' s no doubt in my mind now, but we lost on Primary Scanners . We started to aline the primary Scanners and I don' t think we ever got to platform aline correctly because the primary scanners were not working correctly, Cooper Now the primary scanners, The funny part of it is the Primary Scanner was working in such a rr.anner - working just enough, that it checked right because when we checked out t he alinement of it and the tolerances on it it was working fine, but there was something in it on one of the tests that we did later showed thai it was actually driving, tending to drive the spacecraft down. Conrad Continuing to torque you down to about fifteen degrees nose- down, Cooper .. Conrad FCSD Rep Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper 41 • Or more . In other words, it continued to try to aline t he platform at about fifteen degrees . It tried to put the nose on t he horizon is what it did. It tried to aline the platform up at fifteen degrees nose down? Or more. I figured it was about somewhere around-­ Well, one time it alined us at about 40 degrees nose down and it still was indicating in scanner limits . The scanner got worse as the flight went on, but I don ' t think it ever worked correctly. No . I don't think it did, now I look back. That' s the thi ng right there and I think that this- ­ I 'd l i ke to know what they decided from tracking the REP on how we put the REP out because we put the REP out in the proper position, but I don 't think the platform was alined correctly . We had trouble with that scanner in the sunlight on the horizon and this was right when we were using it to aline - just before we put the REP out. Just as we were using it to aline and put t he REP out, the Scanner began to skew all the platform needles off and it skewed off and, --went to ORBIT RATE. 42 L Conrad Now wait til we get the onboard tapes because the tape recorder was working and this all is on the onboard tape; the conversation that Gordo and I had about that. So we weren' t really sure it was working right but it f wasn't that far off that we were going in the dark-­ Cooper . Approximately 30 seconds before we had to pitch around or had to yaw around to eject the REP, I had to go back to CAGE and try getting a real rapid P]atform aline in there, SEF and PULSE and I had the neec.les zeroed and we may not have been so far off but you don ' t know. That isn' t enough time to really get it alined. In other words. I had about the time we did it and got there we probably had maybe, 30 seconds to Plat::orm aline. That' s about all we had. Conrad Well, we were just hoping that if it had been pulled off only in pitch why, you know, we ' d get it right--we'd pull the pitch right back in again. Cooper But the scanner was acting up very badly by that time. FCSD Rep How long did you aline the Platform initially? Cooper Initially, we alined the platform for about 15 to 20 minutes and it seemed to aline allright although at that time Pete and I had a discussion right then that we seemed to be alining nose down. .. Conrad Now, you see. Here ' s something that I've never heard from the other guys . Cooper Now there' s another thing. See, we never had a simulator to show us . Never once did we have any darn thing to show us what out the window should look like. Conrad And when the Platform is alined and you' re zero- zero- zero, boy, oh boy! That' s a , just -­ It's a very peculiar looking situation and it' s not what I expected to see at all . Cooper No , it isn' t me either. Conrad And I ' ve never heard either Gus of John or Jim and Ed say "Put a little gouge out" Now I ' ve got a gouge tha t I can draw for you where I 'm sure that I can put the Plat­ form in roll and pitch within a degree in roll and pitch of where it should be out the window on the horizon and it ' s by using the corner of the window and the RCS thrusters on the front : the front RCS yaw thruster in the lower corner of the window and you can put the Platform-- you can put the spacecraft zero- zero and roll and pitch just, well, like that. We didn' t know that before we went. Cooper This is one of my strongest recommendations if we aren' t going to have any kind of a visual out the window display at least we ought to get some of the great planners to • ----- 44 • Conrad Cooper Conrad draw up on a piece of paper what the window, what the ;: horizon should look like through the window whic~ d requested several times and never got -- to show ~~~) guy what these various things should look like out the ......__ window;'---...We spent the whole darn eight days trying to ~rt=--'l;fl:e-s-0--~~~43 ~ould look like and I'm not sure we were very clear on it to the day we re- entered, Yeah. Now that's ridiculous! And it ' s becau:3e of this odd angle that you sit off in there. It completely fouls up everytning, as to getting these various angles: inverted and right side up and 90 degrees angles and all this . /1think we ought t;=-I ' ll tell you i;~ d recommen­ dation for the guys who are going to do this on GT- 7 with that Hasselblad can take a pound or two of fuel and sit up there and pl:.otograph the camera back inside the spacecraft get the window perspective in this thing. zero- zero- zero, bank right 90, bank lnft 90, at ifferent nose pitches above the horizon, <iOt◄r ,eeNirrXt Really, we sat ther e and had hours worth of discussions in drifting flight when we'd be drifting through, you know, and we ' d say, "Hey, doesn' t that l ook like they'r:e about 30 degrees nose up and roll right 60 degrees?" and then we ' d try to find those lines and match them and see . . . there ' s an awful lot of learning there. By golly, if we ' d have a Platform Aline Gouge, a visual gouge idea, we'd have picked up this trouble right off the bat. We real ly didn't think the platform. was alined right, but we really didn't have anything to tell us t hat it wasn' t . Cooper Now looking at it where we know now after we went to the other scanner finally and we got proper operation knowing what we learned during the flight it appears now like we were--the number one scanner was trying to aline us several degrees down over what it should. Conrad Yeah. FCSD Rep Did you ever go back to Primary after that? Cooper Oh. We checked it a lot of times after that and tried it numerous times and it got worse and worse and worse and it finally was actually driving the spacecraft down to minus 90 degrees and still the scanner, that' s the funny part of it, the scanner wouldn't go off until you were about 60 degrees below the horizon. 46 Conrad It seems to me we ' ve got some data for them on Primary scanner over the states so they could h~ve it on telemetry, They should be able to find out what happened on that, Cooper Yes, something was really fouled up, I think, Insertion Check List-­ Conrad We went through it by the numbers , Cooper By the numbers , Thruster and Control Mode Check - we went t hrough by the numbers. Everything was fine . Conrad Well, we were a little bit late, We get a little bit behind and it was about the time when we were late per­ forming the thruster control mode check because that was supposed to be done before you got to the Canaries and we did it after the Canaries . Cooper That' s right, Conrad We were behind, but we started catchine: up. , Cooper FCSD Rep Cooper FCSD Rep Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad ee,~FID El'<ITIAI!­ Com Systems Check. We were right on the money, on time, on that. Everything checked out okay on that? Yeah. Com System? D-4, D-7, I did by checkoff list and checked out okay over Carnarvon. 6-4 GO/NO GO, well, that was quite late. No. We got a GO for 6-4 over Carnarvon. That's just to get past 2- 1. Okay, Yeak Okay, got the 6-4 GO/NO GO, that ' s right, D-4, D-7 GO/NO GO. Those were right on the money and everything was fine there. Third adjustment maneuver. Was nominal Was nominal end everything was fine there. Power down D-4, D- 7 was nominal. 16mm, 35mm, D-6 equipmert unstowed and mounted and there we begin to deviate a little because just prior to this time we began to get this rapid decrease in the -well- where was it there? It was-let me go into the log-book here for one second because I got some. 48 FCSD Rep Cooper Conrad - This Perigee adjust. Did you do that i::1 Rate- is that the one you did in Rate Command? Or is that the one you tried in PLATFORM? ~ Did that in PLATFORM and it worked fine on that one. Did that one in PLATFORM and it worked ,~eat, but then on some of these other burns we did I tried it in PLATFORM and it really didn 1 t work well at all. That 's why I rather suspect the P::.ATFORM thing. There's something wrong with it . I think i t was better at some times than others . It was allowing a lot of drift. Okay, in the log book I have it at 50 m:.nutes which is just prior to Carnarvon that I found the Fuel Cell o2 and H Heater Circui t Breaker OFF. Now 2 that--I found it off because they told us to heat the Hydrogen not the Oxygen, but the Hydrogen final­ ly drilled down to the 220 and they want ed us to use the heater and I turned the heater on and I noticed that I didn 1t get any ammeter rise and so I looked at the circuit breaker panel and the Circuit Breaker was OFF. So, now in ret rospect seei?hg·the o ON which is on the same circuit 2 breaker burned out, I'm sure that it blE,w when this thing burned out, f .. FCSD Rep Conrad Cooper Conrad FCSD Rep Conrad Cooper Cooper Conrad We were at the power do':m. on the D- 4 and D- 7. Oh Yeah. Well, about that time I think we were getting back on the Flight Plan. We got the 16mm out. We got the 35mm out. D- 6 equipment was Well, it ' s really D-2, it ' s what it was and I had that work so I decided, "I 'll put together in pieces at the blob and the camera put together separately and they had it all loaded with the right film and everything and had it on the floor, and we were ready to go . " Were you pushed for time to do this? We were right on the money. We finally caught up after Canaries and we were on the schedule at Carnarvon. Yeah. We were in good shape at Carvarvon. Radar test #6, at 01: 30, that worked fine . We did bring it on. It worked. Observed the transients on R dot, range and range rate. 6-4 Preretro command load came out fine . Blood pressure on the Command Pilot there past Carnarvon, let's see. Now that was back over the Cape here, yeah. No , you broke the O-ring didn ' t you? Right off the IAL 50 Cooper Conrad Cooper FCSD Rep Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad :JI bat we broke the 0-ring. .. That 's right. That ' s right . That 's the first one. We broke the 0- ring and couldn' t give them that blood pressure. I think that was the one. That 's right. We final ly gave that one up, The 0-ring was broken on that one. Let's see . This first blood pressure that you got an hour... They got that one and then when Gordo-­ When I, When we transferred over to me and I plugged it in the ... 0-ring broke and ,:e didn't have time for that pass again . We had a bunch more 0-rings . I forget when we fixed it but we fixed it.. . Fixed somewhere around there. ...shortly thereafter. M-1 experiment. We turned it on on time. 51 .. .,. Cooper Conrad FCSD Rep Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper FCSD Rep Cooper Conrad FCSD REP Cooper Conrad FCSD REP Conrad Yeah. I got a lot of comments later on that on. That thing is so noisy. Oh, you know, I found out what happened, you know. They went back and recomputed and they found out they had four days worth of air in the bottle--Ha Ha! Four days? Yeah. It ran out. But the thing. You can turn it off and it keeps run­ ning back there. And it goes SMACK- CHOO , SMACK- CHOO , SMACK- CHOO . Yeah, it 1 s pretty noisy. And in a real ~uiet cockpit it really sounds loud. This radar test #6 here at O1:3O­ Used to turn the radar on. Used to turn it on. Used to turn it to standby. Turn it to standby and warm it up. Used to observe the warmup transients . And all this happened, right? Yes, and it 1s on the voice tape. Like Gordo said, you lmow, what the radar needle did, What it does is it has sort of a cyclic thing when you put it in standby and it 1s ready to run why it sits there and the lock on 52 L Cooper Conrad FCSD REP Cooper Conrad Cooper Conrad l ight blinks Green/OFF, Green/OFF. Lock on light will blink on and it will come out R and R dot will go from peg to peg. And they'll settle out when it really is warmed up good and you've gotten past the transient periods and they' ll all come back to zero. I think what they' re looking for are clues to tell you that the set is warming up correct ly. Ba.ck in the early days of TACAN we had warmup problems. In other words, this would be your firnt indication if something was wrong? Purge Section. One and Two. Well, we got our first load, this 6-4 load. The first load that came up over the DCS system and it came up right over the Cape. Purge Section. One and Two . Got that? Yes, no. Yes. That' s when we were getting rushed. Let' s go back to that. Let ' s stop right there. The REP was supposed to go out at 02 :07 and I purg·ed early and I always had been purging early because I purged it about 1+50 and then I went through the check off list and they were all checked off here. I powered up at 1+50, I purged the fuel cells and here I checked them off here. . . . prop gauge experiments and the RAD 1 on and the cold 53 IR on and the power on the exmitter on and the recorder off and I went through these by the numbers. Com­ puter, we went to Catch-Up . We had the hundred feet in the window. We were really getting ready to put the REP out and right then and there was when we came over the hill and we were beginning to get to the dark side you know, and the sun was getting low and that' s when the scanner started going out, Cooper That's when the scanner started dropping out. Conrad And we started getting the scanner light and then now, you got to visualize there ' s part of the problem. We're coming into this "Fuzzy Zone"-horizon and that is the best way to describe it. Cooper Yeah, you can't see anything. Conrad And the spacecraft looks like you're pitched up tremen­ dously when you're zero- zero- zero to begin with and we both had the impression that the scanner was pitching us up. Well, that may not have been true. It just may have been that that's the way the sky got to looking as we approached the dark side zero- zero- ze