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 …

How about the horizon now? Is it pretty well defined for you and no longer hazy?

Yes. We're far enough out now that the—I think the horizon definition variation is lost in the North.