Spacelog Apollo 11

Okay.

Okay. We have O₂ heater tank 1 off.

Houston. Roger. Out.

How is EECOMM today? Is he happy with all those good things?

Oh, EECOMM is happy, and after you get PTC set up, we've got a little procedure from EECOMM here to check out the O₂ flow and the O₂ flow sensor in your cabin enrichment. Over.

Okay.

It'll be a while, Bruce. We're just now arriving in PTC attitude, and we're going to our 20 minutes of monitoring thruster activity.

Houston, Apollo 11. Are you going to take control of the OMNI's now and switch us between B and D?

This is Houston. Stand by one.

11, Houston.

Go ahead.

Mike, how about selecting Bravo at this time, and I'll give you a COMP configuration here, shortly.

Okay.

That PTC sure worked well last night.

Outstanding.

11, Houston.

Go ahead.

Okay. Roll for the COMM situation: have S-band antenna OMNI A in Bravo, S-band antenna OMNI to OMNI, high-gain track to MANUAL, and the pitch is minus 50 and yaw is 270.

You may have to repeat some of that, James. We've got a LM guy taking care of the high gain right now.

Yes, and he is eyeballing the Earth.

He's got his head out the window.

I understand, I had trouble on 12 with him, too.

Say again what you'd like.

Okay, The S-band antenna OMNI A switch to Bravo which you have now, and S-band antenna OMNI to the OMNI position, and the high-gain track to the MANUAL position, and the pitch and yaw angles are minus 50 for pitch and yaw is 270.

Minus 50 and 270.

Hey, Jim, I'm looking through the monocular now, and to coin an expression, the view is just beautiful. It's out of this world. I can see all the islands in the Mediterranean. Some larger and smaller islands of Majorca, Sardinia, and Corsica. A little haze over the upper Italian peninsula, some cumulus clouds out over Greece. The Sun is setting on the eastern Mediterranean now. The British Isles are definitely greener in color than the brownish green that we have in the islands, in the peninsula of Spain. Over.

Roger. I understand that the Northern Africa—Mediterranean area is fairly clear today, huh?

Right.

Yes. We see a bunch of roads with cars driving up and down, too.

Do you find that the monocular is any good to you, Buzz?

Yes, It would be nicer if it had another order of magnitude of power on it. Of course, it has a tendency to jiggle around a little bit, and you might want to have some sort of a bracket. I hate to use that word though.

Got an anticyclone going in the southern hemisphere southeast of Brazil, and some—Well, the diameter of it must be over 2000 miles across.

How does the weather look up in the southern part of the western hemisphere, or up in the United States area?

Well, you all are just beginning to come over the limb now. I can see parts of Central America, and it looks to be fairly clear there. The islands in the Caribbean are beginning to come in and rather a few streaming lines of clouds. Looks like there is a system up to the—well, off of Greenland that has some large cloud streamers extending back down to the southwest. The east coast of the U.S. is just coming into view now, and it doesn't look too bad that I can see right now. We may have some pretty good shots later on this afternoon. Over.

Roger. Thank you.

Houston, Apollo 11.

Go ahead, 11.

I've got a comment about the point on the Earth where the Sun's rays reflect back up toward us. In general, the color of the oceans is mostly uniform and it's bright and darker blue except for that region that's about one-eighth of an Earth's radius in diameter; and in this circular area, the blue of the water turns a grayish color, and I'm sure that's where the Sun's rays are being reflected back on up toward us. Over.

Roger, Buzz. We noticed the same thing. It's very similar to looking at a light shining on something like a billiard ball or a bowling ball. You get this bright spot in the blue of the water, and that turns it to sort of a grayish color.

Yes. Is there a Navy term for that?

11, Houston.

Go ahead, Houston.

Mike, are you satisfied with P23 now?

Yes, I'm happy with the last updates we got, you know, in terms of what it did to our state vector. Still not altogether happy with the various procedures. If we could pick stars within the smaller range of trunnion angles so that you could allow P23 to pick its own maneuver and go to that substellar point and then have that star visible, that would seem to me to be the simplest and best way to do it.

How about the —

… correction on that last …

Go ahead, Buzz.

Looks like the best way to get a steady view through the monocular is just steady it out and let it close when it's in front of your eye, and then you kind of float up next to it so that you're not touching it at all. It has a very slow drift, and you get a better—steadier view that way.

Sounds good.

How does it feel to be airborne again, Buzz?

Well, I'll tell you, I've been having a ball floating around inside here, back and forth up to one place and back to another. It's like being outside, except more comfortable.

It's a lot bigger than our last vehicle.

… kept me busy, I'm …

Say again about Buzz -

Yes. It sure is nice in here.

I said it's a lot bigger than the last vehicle that Buzz and I were in.

Oh, yes. It's been nice. I've been very busy so far. I'm looking forward to taking the afternoon off. I've been cooking, and sweeping, and almost sewing, and you know, the usual little housekeeping things.

It was very convenient the way they put the food preparation system right next to the NAV station.

Everything is right next to everything in this vehicle.

Not if you're in the …

Jim, it's been a little warm in the machine throughout yesterday and last night during the PTC. It cooled off somewhat with the windows buttoned up, and we've seen suit temperatures of about—the high 40's and cabin temperatures in the low 60's. But this seems to be still a little bit on the warm side.

I understand that it got a little warm during the day and cooled down a little bit when you put the shades up, but you're still a little bit warm. Do you have any moisture condensation or anything like that on the wall?

No, we haven't been able to detect any moisture anyplace in the spacecraft. It seems to be fine.

One of the hydrogen filters—the one that we've got on the hot water—seems to keep flowing when you remove one of the food bags from it. Its flow rate is quite small, right near the end of one out, and that contributes a little bit of moisture to the atmosphere.

Yes, that hydrogen thing, it's—I'm not sure, but I think it's a backpressure problem. If the thing sees any backpressure at all, like when the bag is attached, well the flow rate will slowly decrease to where it's almost zero, and you wait, and you wait, and you wait for that last ounce. You think you have its and you remove the bag, and then you very rapidly thereafter see maybe a glob the size of a dime or a quarter come out and just hang there. That appears to be true even though the opening into the bag is not restricted.

Understand.

In general, I think they do quite a good job, especially on the guns, in removing a lot of the hydrogen bubbles.

Have the water temperatures been good? Are you getting hot water?

Yes. It seems reasonably warm.

We made three cups of coffee today. The last one—you know when all the plumbing was warmed up, the hydrogen gun and everything, was warmest of the three. I don't know who had that one—Neil, did you have that one? How was your coffee? You didn't drink it till later, did you? Anyway, it's pretty good. It's not piping hot, but it sure beats stone-cold coffee.

Jim, we've been sitting here a little over 20 minutes now, How does the thruster firing activity look? Are you ready to go on with this PTC?

Roger. Stand by.

We're all set to go, Mike.

Houston, Apollo 11. PTC has started and it looks good.

Apollo 11, this is Houston. Over.

Go ahead, Houston.

Roger. If you're free for a couple of minutes, we have a procedure here that will let us verify the O₂ flow transducer and at the same time get some more of our cabin enrichment out of the way. Over.

Stand by.

Go ahead, Houston. We're ready to copy.

Roger. The primary purpose of this is, as I mentioned, to let us check out your O₂ flow transducer. However, we still need about 2 hours' worth of cabin enrichment, so we'd like to keep the vent that we're going to set up going for this purpose. Okay. We want you to install the cabin vent quick disconnect which you'll find in compartment R-6, that is Romeo 6, on the urine connector on panel 251. When this is completed, verify that the waste stowage vent valve is closed, and then open or position the waste management overboard drain to the DUMP position. Over.

Okay. Understand that. Install the cabin quick disconnect out of R-6 on the 251 urine connector and verify that the waste dump valve is closed, and say again the last part.

Roger. And then put the waste management overboard drain valve into the DUMP position. Over.

Roger. Put the waste management overboard drain valve to the DUMP position.

Okay, Houston. That configuration is set up.

11, this is Houston. Say again, please.

You do have the O₂ flow transducer checkout setup accomplished.

Okay. Understand you have opened the drain valve at this time.

That's … It's in DUMP.

Roger. We're not getting telemetry data from you right due to low signal strength. There it comes back. I expect it'll probably take us anywhere from 15 minutes to half an hour to see an increase in O₂ flow due to the size of the cabin and of course of the small size of the drain. Over.

Houston, Apollo 11.

Go ahead, 11.