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.

Understand, Mike.

11, Houston. Checking your temperatures, it does look like the spacecraft may have cooled down perhaps 2 or 3 degrees in the last 24 hours, and that sounds to be consistent with your report on the comfort level there. Over.

Okay.

Is that a LM off phenomenon?

11, Houston. It looks like we'll have to think a little more about that, as to whether it's a LM off or some effect of being out of Lunar orbit. We don't know, so we'll have to puzzle before we can give a better answer.

Roger. We'll think about that and see if there aren't some other tests to be usefully performed here.

11, Houston. I'll be turning things over to the Green CAP COMM at this time, and see you on the ground tomorrow.

Okay, Owen. I want to thank you and the whole Purple/Maroon group there for a good job helping Apollo 11.

Thank you, sir.

Thanks from us to all of you. It was really appreciated.

Great job, you guys.

Apollo 11, this is Houston. Over.

Go ahead, Houston. Apollo 11.

11, this is Houston. With reference to your subjective evaluation that it felt cooler in side the spacecraft last night, we reported earlier that we did indeed see a drop of about 3 degrees over the previous night. Looking back, it appears the crew of Apollo 10 reported similar feelings during the translunar and transearth coast phases. We're wondering if you could give us any indication of the relative amounts of free or condensed water in the cabin last night and the night before from which we could infer humidity. Over.

Roger. That might be a little bit difficult to do. We'll take a look at the tunnel now. It does seem as though, between the dirt, we had a little bit more moisture in the tunnel. Of course, the LM hadn't been vented when we did translunar.

Roger. We were more curious about the relative amount of moisture between, say, last night and the night before, both of which would have the LM missing.

There's more moisture in the tunnel now than there has been at any previous time. Subjectively we have been unable to determine any change in—any buildup in humidity. There appears to be no moisture any other place in the spacecraft. For example, the windows are not fogging or—and various other cool spots around the spacecraft—all of them appear to be completely dry.

How are all the “Greens” today, Bruce?

Oh, the Greens are in good shape. The actual Green Team has been here for several hours. We're dogging the watch down here to position Ron for entry. Over.

Roger. Understand. Did Dave Reed get to explain the lunar … at the press conference?

No, but your comments about Bill Shaffer and the explanations were quoted in the paper last night.

Oh, oh.

Do you want to say anything more while you're on the line?

He's right. He's absolutely right.

How's old White, Bruce? Did he ever let you go get a cup of coffee when we were over on the back side?

Oh, things have been going pretty smoothly down here. He's really not that hard to get along with.

Oh, he must be mellowing.

We've only got two of them back here right now.

He always used to make me sit at the console through the back side passes, just for training.

Well, the word we have here is—that was because whenever you came back, you had to be retrained.

Houston, Apollo 11. Out of curiosity, on those 70 mm cameras, we figure we exposed around 300 in the LM and around a thousand in the command module; and both cameras—or all the 70 mm cameras worked just fine.

Apollo 11, this is Houston. Over.

Go ahead, Houston.

11, this is Houston. Do you all have “Change Lima” for your entry operations checklist dated July 23? Over.

Dated when?

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.