Spacelog Apollo 11

Okay. Understand. It's not our monitor. It must be the transmitter or the system.

Roger. I guess so, Buzz. We'll have them look into it, and see if they can suggest anything.

Hello, Apollo 11. Houston. We've lost our command interface with Goldstone. We'd like you to switch to OMNI Delta. Over.

Roger. Going to Delta.

Roger.

Hello, Apollo 11. Houston. We'd like you to terminate the O₂ purge if you have not done so already, and the TV camera people say that the lines are inherent in the camera, Buzz; and it's something that we expected. Over.

Roger. Understand about the camera. Say again about the O₂ purge.

Roger. We can terminate the O₂ purge at this time. Over.

Hello, Apollo 11. Houston. Please select OMNI Bravo on board. Over.

Okay. Going to Bravo, Charlie.

Roger.

How's everything going down there? You guys happy with the spacecraft systems?

Roger. Affirmative. Everything's looking really good to us. Over.

Okay. Same here.

Charlie, how far out can you pick up TV off the OMNI?

Stand by.

Hello, Apollo 11. Houston. We're just about to the limits where we can get any kind of picture at all on the OMNI's on the TV. It—The picture, I guess, would be just almost zero at this point.

Okay. Well, for this TV program coming up in a couple of hours, you might give some thought to how you want us to stop PTC, if you do, for the best high gain angle; and also it would be nice if you could stop us at such an attitude that we'd have the Earth out of one of our windows.

Roger, 11. We're thinking about that.

Hello, Apollo 11. Houston. We got some PIPA biases and general drift updates for you if you give us P00 and ACCEPT. Over.

Okay, Charlie. Stand by one.

Roger, 11. The —

You've got it.

Okay. Thank you much. Our biggest drift on the GYRO's is 0.03 degrees per hour with—on the X-GYRO. On the PIPA's, the Y-PIPA's the biggest and it's 0.006 feet per second so … trying to tweak it up. The biggest we have is about one sigma on both GYRO's and accelerometers.

Sounds good.

The system really looks good to us.

Glad to hear it, Charlie.

11, Houston. You can go back to BLOCK. We've got the load in.

Okay. Roger.

Boy, you sure get a different perspective in this thing in zero g. Right now, Neil's got his feet on the forward hatch, and he can with his arms reach—all five windows, He can reach down into—the LEB where the overboard drain is. He can practically reach over in the cockpit.

Sounds like Plastic Man to me.

I'm hiding under the left-hand couch trying to stay out of his way.

Houston, Apollo 11. You got a cloud over the Houston area right now?

Roger. We just had a really big thunderstorm here about a hour ago. Couple of storms around the area … Over.

Yes. I see one fairly large and isolated one. There are couple of more off to the left, but this one looks fairly good size. It could very well be the one that just passed over you.

Roger.

Yes, and it looks like the Cape has been having a little bit of rain, too.

Roger. The one we had here came in from the west and is moving east—or nearly so, as far as I could tell.

That view through this sextant is fantastic. I can see Alaska right up—right up along the LM, and I'm running the crosshairs right now down the coast of California, the west coast of Mexico, Yucatan Peninsula, up around the Gulf, Florida, Cuba, down Central America, and I'm running into the stop right now, on the sextant.

Roger. It sounds like a pretty fantastic view.

The guys in the weather office at Patrick wanted a report on the tops but I guess all we can say is we're above them.

Roger. We'll pass it on to METRO.

11, Houston. Do you see any predominant weather systems as far as frontal type or any buildup of tropical-storm type? Over.

Not any large ones. There are a couple of smaller disturbances. Well, there's one maybe 300 miles north of Cuba, but it doesn't look cyclonic.

Hello, Apollo 11. Houston. We got a TV attitude for you and also an update to your CMC erasable load and your alternate contingency checklist, if you could break that out too. Over.

Okay. Fine. And I would guess go RATE COMMAND and roll first and then followed by pitch and yaw.

Okay. That sounds good if—And when you get to the roll attitude desired, just go RATE COMMAND at that time and it'll stop us right on.

Yes. I agree, Charlie. That sounds right.

Hello, Apollo 11. Houston with some more words on exiting PTC. Over.

Go ahead, Charlie.

Roger. Mike, when you were playing with the P37 a while ago and we collapsed the deadband back down, the DAP assumed that the deadband was centered around the new attitude that we happened to be at, at that time. Since then, we've drifted out a couple of degrees in both pitch and yaw from that attitude such that if we did the procedure as we called it up to you of going ACCEL COMMAND, turning on all of the AUTO RCS SELECT switches and then RATE COMMAND, it would attempt to fly back to the pitch and yaw attitude that it had when the deadband collapsed. We can prevent that by—just immediately prior to going to RATE COMMAND on the MANUAL ATTITUDE switches, if you cycle the SPACECRAFT CONTROL switch to SCS, then back to CMC. Over.

Sounds like a winner.

Okay.

I'm not going to let these LM guys play with my DSKY anymore.

You sound like you'd better protect it. It looks like just about anything that you do with that DSKY is going to collapse that deadband back down.

Charlie, we just STABED to 261 degrees roll, and it looks like whoever figured it out did a good Job. It's right there, dab-smack in the middle of window number 1.

Looks like Houston's still got a little smog over it, Charlie.

We've got a constant overcast here in the room. We'll be right there. Stand by.

Of course, a little cloud from up here probably covers 8 or 10 states.

11, Houston. Some of our guys just came in from outside and said it's pretty clear over the center here. It's cleared up completely. All the storms have moved on.

Oh, yes, Charlie. I can see it through the sextant now, and I can see the coastline is clear. Those clouds are just inland a few miles.

Okay. We copy.

Looks like the southeast part of the country is all socked in.

California looks nice. The San Joaquin Valley shows up as a real dark spot with a lighter brown on either side of it. You can't tell that it's green. It looks just sort of dark gray or maybe even real dark blue.

How does the Mojave look? Is it clear?

Yes. As usual.

Roger. The—around -

It looks like there's some clouds just to the west of the Sierras, northeast of Bakersfield a little bit; and crossing over into the Mojave from Bakersfield looks clear; and then as you get on further to the southeast of there, there's a few clouds.

Roger, 11. Can you pick out Edwards in the sextant? Over.

I can see a 104 taxiing out for takeoff on the runway.

Hey, man. That's super.

These dang bastards almost always have a 104 taxiing out for takeoff.

11, Houston. Could you pick out anything around Edwards, a dry lake or anything? Over.

Negative, Charlie. I just—I don't have that resolution. But to give you some idea, I can—on the lower Texas coast, I can see—knowing what I'm looking for, I can see Padre Island. I can just barely make out the fact that there's a thin spit of land and then there's a little dark zone which is the Laguna Madre between it and the mainland.