Spacelog Apollo 11

Roger, 11. That's pretty significant. Thank you much, Buzz.

Right.

How far out are we, Charlie?

Stand by. I'll give it to you exactly. Looks like around 130,000, but stand by.

Okay.

11, Houston. The exact range is 125,200 miles, and you're traveling 4486 feet per second.

Pretty far and pretty slow. Just past halfway.

Hey, Charlie, what the latest on Luna 15?

Say again, Buzz? Over.

Roger. What's the latest on Luna 15?

Hello, Apollo 11. Houston. Over.

Go ahead, Charlie.

Roger. Latest on Luna 15—TASS reported this morning that the spacecraft was placed in orbit close to the lunar surface, and everything seems to be functioning normally on the vehicle. Sir Bernard Lovell said the craft appears to be in an orbit of about 62 nautical miles. Over.

Okay. Thank you, Charlie.

And also, President Nixon has reported—or declared a day of participation on Monday for all federal employees to enable everybody to follow your activities on the surface. Many state and city governments and businesses throughout the country are also giving their employees the day off, so it looks like you're going to have a pretty large audience for the EVA.

Houston, Apollo 11. We've stopped PTC. We're in the right position; we're setting up for TV.

Apollo 11, Houston. We have you stopped in the PTC; attitude looks good to us. Mike, I would like to get a COMM check. The last couple of the transmissions from the spacecraft has been garbled from especially Buzz. Could you both give me a COMM check? Over.

Roger, Charlie. Buzz here. How do you read? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

Roger. You are about four-by with a slight decrease/increase in volume, sort of a wavy volume to it. Over.

Okay. I moved my mike around. How about now? Is this any better?

Hey, that's beautiful right there. Thank you.

Okay, Charlie. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. How do you read me?

Roger. You're five-by. Is Neil on?

1, 2, 3, 4, 5; 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

Hello, Apollo 11. Houston. We got the network all configured for the TV. You can start any time you want. Over.

Okay, 11. We have a picture. We see the Earth right in the center of the screen. Over.

Roger, Houston. Apollo 11 calling in from about 130,000 miles out. And we'll zoom our camera in slowly and get the most magnification we can. Over.

Roger.

11, Houston. The definition is pretty good on our monitor here. The color is not too …, at least on this set. Could you describe what you're looking at? Over.

Roger, 11. It's a pretty good picture on clarity here. We're having—can you tell us—It appears to us that there are two distinct cloud- formations trending east/west, one approximately about along the equator, and one around 30 or so south latitude. Could you tell us exactly where those cross the landmasses? Over.

Yes. They cross just south of the lower part of Mexico, probably through Central America. That is the equatorial band which we assume to be the intertropical convergence zone. The other band, which stands about 30 south, correctly appears to join the equator at the far left, or just beyond the horizon on the left edge of Earth, or at least it looks like it's going to join it. We don't have an explanation for that banding.

Roger, Neil. Thank you. It also appears that just to the left of the terminator, up in the northern hemisphere, there's a cloudband trending—a gap in the cloud, trending northwest/southeast. It appears to us that that comes in about over the northern United States, or perhaps the central United States. Is that about correct? Over.

I can see on the monitor the thing you were talking about, but right now I can't get my eye to the window to pick out just where it crosses the shoreline.

Roger.

You guys are doing a good job. It's a real steady picture, here. We're—Clarity is excellent. The color, it's—the clouds are—The whites are distinct. The rest if it looks like, to me anyway on the monitor I'm observing, is a fairly greenish blue is the way I'd describe it. Over.

It appears that the —

Well, we can't observe much green from the spacecraft.

Roger. On this monitor, the landmasses appear to be just a darker grayish color rather than a brown.

Well, it's true that we do not have the depths of color at this range that we enjoyed at 50,000 miles out. However, the oceans still are a definite blue and the continents are generally brownish in cast, although it is true that they're tending more toward gray now than they were at the closer range.

Roger, 11. We've been—I've just been vectored to another monitor and sure enough, the browns are coming in a lot more distinctly on the Eidephor that we have up on our screen in the control center. Over.

Okay, world, hold on to your hat. I'm going to turn you upside-down.

11, that's a pretty good roll, there.

I'm making myself seasick doing it, Charlie. I'll just put you back rightside-up where you belong.

Roger.

You don't get to do that every day.

11, Houston. Could you describe, from your view, the polar cloudcap? It appears to us to extend down the western coast of North America. Would you estimate how far it extends down? Over.

Trying to fit everybody into the window.

It appears that the cloudcap comes down a little bit below the southern extremity of Alaska.

Roger.

We've—11, we've lost our picture here, now.

Okay. Apollo 11, Houston. We've got the picture back now.

Unfortunately, we only have one window that has a view of the Earth and it's filled up with the TV camera, so your view now is probably better than ours is.

Roger. We copy.

11, Houston. If you could comply, we'd like to see a little smiling faces up there, if you could give us some interior views. I'm sure everybody would like to see you. Over.

Okay. We'll reconfigure the TV for that.

Roger.

Apollo 11, Houston. It appears to us that we're seeing a view from outside plus a little of the inside. It appears you've taken the camera away from the left window now. Over.

That's correct. We're moving it back and reconfiguring for interior lighting.

Roger.

We can still see the Earth through the left window, and it appears that we can see a floodlight off to the left, either that or some Sun shafting through the hatch window.

It's a floodlight.

Roger.

Now we're coming in. Can't quite make out who that …

That's big Mike Collins, there —

You got a little bit of—Yes, hello there sports fans. You got a little bit of me, plus Neil is in the center couch, and Buzz is doing the camera work at this time.

Roger. It's a little dark now, 11. Maybe a bigger f-stop might help.

Yes, that's in work.

It's getting a lot better now, 11. Mike, you're coming in five-by. I got a good -

I would have put on a coat and tie if I'd known about this ahead of time.

Is Buzz holding your cue cards for you. Over.

Cue cards have a no. We have no intertions of competing with the professionals, believe me. We are very comfortable up here, though. We do have a happy home. There's plenty of room for the three of us and I think we're all learning to find our favorite little corner to sit in. Zero g is very comfortable, but after a while you get to the point where you sort of get tired of rattling around and banging off the ceiling and the floor and the side, so you tend to find a little corner somewhere and put your knees up or something like that to wedge yourself in, and that seems more at home.

Roger. Looks like Neil is coming in five-by there, 11. Mike, see you in the background. The definition is really outstanding. The colors are good. It's a real good picture we're getting here of Commander Armstrong. We—Buzz, when you take the camera over towards the window where the Sun's shafting through, it tends to blank it out, though.

Yes, Neil's standing on his head again. He's trying to make me nervous.

Roger.

He's disappearing up into the tunnel, of course, as he would going into the lunar module, only backwards.

Roger. We 'can see portions of the LEB now. The systems test meter panel, in the lower part of the picture, or we did have it, anyway.

Okay. And directly behind his head are our optical instruments, the sextant and the telescope that we use to take sightings with.

Roger. Copy. And we see the DSKY flashing with a 651. In fact, we can read registers 1 and 2 quite clearly.

We have the old high gain angles telling us which way the Earth is.

Copy. That's a beautiful picture. Clarity is outstanding.

We can also give you the time of day in our system of mission elapsed time. Elapsed time: 34 hours 16 minutes and umpteen seconds. Can you see that clearly enough, Charlie?

Roger, Apollo 11. We can see it counting up every—every second. We got 34 17 02 now.

Okay. Back to the high-gain angles.

Roger.

Now we have amputated those.

11, Houston. We have a beautiful rainbow there now as you move the camera around. … That looks like the star charts coming into view, now. Over.

Yes. Those are Buzz's two star charts that he is using right now as sun shades over the righthand window, window number 5.

Roger. We see the sun shining in through it behind him and plotting out the equatorial—correction, ecliptic plane, and the stars that you're using for the navigation.

Roger. He doesn't really need the charts. He's got them memorized. They're just for show.

We copy.

While we're pointing up in this direction, we see out our side windows the Sun going by and, of course, out one of our windows right now we've got the Earth. Now right behind my window, of course, we have the Sun, because the Sun is illuminating the star charts that we see. This line represents the ecliptic plane and these lines, vertical lines, represent our reference system that the spacecraft is using at this time. As we approach the Moon, the Moon will gradually grow larger and larger in size and eventually it will be in—it will be eclipsing the Sun as we go behind it, as we approach the lunar orbit insertion maneuver.