Spacelog Apollo 11

That might be a little more difficult to find out. I'm not sure whether the—whether Mike is ready to admit when he last did the job, but I'll look into that for you.

Well, he'll tell you. He's got a new mower.

Roger.

Hey, ask my chinch bugs how they're doing?

11, Houston. Over.

Go ahead.

Roger. Joan wasn't home right now, Buzz, but Janis reports the grass is getting pretty high, and I would estimate that it's going to be close to your knees by the time you get out of quarantine. Over.

Okay. I'll have to schedule a little discussion after I get back.

Roger. And no reports—no report from the chinch bugs there, Mike.

Well, they're sort of taciturn little fellows. They don't say much; they just chomp away.

Concur on that.

Which is about what we're doing up here.

We concur on that, too.

Breakfast was magnificent as usual. I had sliced peaches, sausage patties, two cups of coffee, and I forget all what else.

That does sound pretty good. As a matter of fact, I'm way overdue for a meal myself, here. I could use some of that.

Why don't you get Milt to give you 5 minutes off and grab a hamburger?

Houston, Apollo 11. We've been doing a little flight planning for Apollo 12 up here.

Roger. Go ahead.

We're trying to calculate how much spaghetti and meatballs we can get on board for Al Bean.

I'm not sure the spacecraft will take that much extra weight. Have you made any estimates?

11, Houston. The medics at the next console report that the shrew is one animal which can eat six times its own body weight every 24 hours. This may be a satisfactory base line for your spaghetti calculations on Al Bean. Over.

Houston, Apollo 11. It was slightly colder in here last night than it has been on any previous night. Does EECOMM notice any change in his data or any explanation for that?

Roger. Stand by just a moment. We've got to check some temperatures.

Up until last night it was—if anything, a little on the warm side at night. Last night it was on the chilly side.

Roger there. We'll run down the temperatures for the 2 nights.

Oh, it's no big thing. Just as a matter of interest.

Roger.

And how'd you like the command module RCS temperatures?

11, Houston. They all look very good. The lowest temperature was 40 degrees, and we're taking a look at your cabin temperatures now.

We agree on the CM RCS. No heaters are going 2 to be required by a country mile.

We think that's correct.

We don't like those heaters, anyway, working off the direct coils.

Roger.

Peculiar thing, Owen, on the platform alignment is that when I really take my time and do a very slow, careful, precise job of marking. I'm getting about the same star angle difference as when I'm doing it in DTC and have to do a hurried rush job with relatively poor tracking. Star angle differences seem insensitive. It almost made me believe there's a very small bias there somewhere in the sextant.

Roger, 11. Perhaps the 3 degrees per second just isn't that much of a bother. Over.

Well, he's really trying to explain why he can't get all zeros.

I think Buzz is probably right. As a matter of fact, one time I made a mark which I thought was a little bit in error, but I thought, “Well heck. I'll go ahead and see how it works out anyway,” and I got five zeros that time. And when I have thought everything was exactly precisely on, I have consistently been getting 0.01.

Roger. Apparently it pays to hurry.

I usually do.

The visibility through the telescope has been very poor. It's, I would say, even worse than the simulator is right now. It requires long periods of dark adaptation which most times are most inconvenient; so it's really a tremendous asset to keep the platform powered up at all times and to keep it tweaked within the capability of the sextant field of view.

July 23.

I'm not sure that we hung around long enough to pick that one up.

Okay. If you've got the entry operations checklist handy, then I'll pass it up to you. Over.

How can you make changes after lift off?

You sure you don't mean June?

Negative. It just came up today. Over.

So, you're the first to get to us. Go ahead.

Okay. On page 6 1 of the entry out checklist down toward the bottom after “MAIN DEPLOY pushbutton,” we have three additional steps we'd like you to accomplish. The intent of this is to reduce the oxygen pressure in your manifold and to eliminate the oxygen bleed flow through the potable and waste water tanks during descent. Over.

Okay. We've got 6 1 out. Go ahead.

Okay. Down at the bottom, you've got “10,000 feet MAIN PARACHUTE DEPLOY, MAIN DEPLOY pushbutton, PUSH within 1 second.” And after that step, we'd like you insert “SURGE TANK O₂ valve, OFF; REPRESS PACKAGE valve, OFF; and DIRECT O₂ valve, OPEN.” Do you copy?

Okay. Down at the bottom, after “MAIN DEPLOY pushbutton, PUSH; SURGE TANK O₂, OFF; and REPRESS PACKAGE VALVE, OFF, DIRECT O₂, ON” Over.

Roger. And then down at the very bottom of page 6 2 where you see “DIRECT O₂, OFF VERIFY,” delete that step completely. Over.

Roger.

And for record purposes, this will be “Change Lima.” Over.