Apollo 17 Onboard Voice Recorder Transcripts

Eric Hartwell - January 19, 2006

NASA recorded the onboard dialog and the air-to-ground transmissions of the Mercury through Apollo missions. The NASA Mission Transcript Scanning Project produced PDF scans of 80 transcripts totalling nearly 45,000 pages of text covering every US human space flight from the first human Mercury mission through the last lunar landing flight of Apollo 17. These transcripts are available on a two CD-ROM set, or can be downloaded from the Johnson Space Center: Communications Transcripts: Mercury Through Apollo.

The material in this section is my attempt to create a single timeline for the Apollo 17 mission. I have compiled the text from three sources:

• AS17 CM: Apollo 17 Command Module Onboard Voice Transcription Recorded on the Data Storage Equipment (DSE) MSC-07633, January 1973, 746 pages.
• AS17 PAO: Apollo 17 Spacecraft Commentary, 1,964 pages.
• AS17 TEC: Apollo 17 Technical Air-to-Ground Voice Transcription (GOSS NET 1) MSC-07629, December 1972, 2,461 pages.

The Onboard Voice Transcription contains transcripts from different downloads covering the same period. Where there is an overlap, the onboard transcripts and the PAO and Technical transcripts sometimes disagree on the wording, the speaker, and/or the exact time. I've chosen one transcript as the "Primary" and listed the conflicts to the right, identified by source.

We start with MSC-07633 - APOLLO 17 COMMAND MODULE ONBOARD VOICE TRANSCRIPTION (U) RECORDED ON THE DATA STORAGE EQUIPMENT (DSE):

Introduction

This document is the transcription of the Apollo 17 flight crew communications as recorded on the command module (CM) data storage equipment (DSE) and subsequently transmitted (dumped) to Manned Space Flight Network stations. Magnetic tapes containing dumped voice and onboard-recorded ground elapsed time (GET) were forwarded to the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center, Houston, Texas. Transcription of these tapes was managed by J. L. Gibbons, Test Division, Apollo Spacecraft Program Office, to whom inquiries regarding this document should be referred. The transcript is divided into three columns -- time, speaker, and text. The time column consists of four two-digit pairs representing days, hours, minutes, and seconds (e.g., 04 22 34 14). The speaker column indicates the source of a transmission; the text column contains the verbatim transcript of the communications. The time used by Mission Control Center (MCC) and indicated as GET in the flight plan may be updated to both the spacecraft and MCC computers but will not be updated to the telemetry downlink pulse-code-modulated bitstream or other time-recording devices. This GET updating will be performed only to correct significant changes in flight-plan time occurring as the result of delayed lift-off, midcourse corrections, or spacecraft burn-time differences (trajectory dispersions). Should these updates occur, the Apollo elapsed time (the true mission-elapsed time) may not agree with flight-plan and MCC times. Users of this transcript are cautioned to apply the appropriate time-update deltas for the updated periods. The Apollo 17 mission was flown December 7 to 19, 1972; lift-off occurred at 05:33:00.60 GMT (12:33:00.60 a.m., EST.) on December 7. The CM was designated America and the lunar module was called Challenger. Index The PDF transcript has 746 pages. Automatic OCR has been performed. The hyperlinks in the table below go to my combined version. Tape pg MET 17-03407 60 0:0:0:03 to 4:54 17-03404 46 0:0:2:26 to 8:43 17-03409 53 0:0:5:48 to 10:49 17-03456 5 0:0:9:40 to 11:54, 15:24 to 50:44 17-03407 60 59:51 to 1:17:34, 1:22:38 to 1:27:49     0:1:27:49 to 1:21:30:19 - no transcript 17-03412 82 1:21:30:19 to 33:18, 1:21:33:36 to 39:39, 1:21:40:24 to 40:31, 1:21:47:48 to 49:21, 1:21:51:15 to 52:45, 1:21:54:56 to 1:22:00:12, 1:22:00:22 to 03:27, 1:22:04:09 to 09:27, 1:22:09:29 to 14:18, 1:22:14:31 to 19:46, 1:22:20:21 to 24:36, 1:22:24:52 to 24:52     1:22:24:52 to 2:17:27:26 - no transcript 17-03403 94 2:17:27:26 to 2:18:46:57 17-03419 108 3:09:23:50 to 3:10:08:05 17-03420 123 3:10:08:08 to 14:32 17-03408 124 3:10:07:15 to 07:19, 3:16:42:21 to  48:21 17-03402 129 3:15:55:39 to 3:16:44:38 17-03405 172 3:18:10:49 to 25:17, 3:18:25:28 to 33:44, 3:18:33:48 to 54:58 17-03401 202 3:19:59:39 to  3:20:48:44 17-03427 214 4:07:21:54 to 4:08:13:04, 4:09:26:33 to 54:54 17-03429 226 4:08:09:56 to 4:08:13:05 17-03430 229   17-03468 235   17-03466 241   17-03418 244   17-03410 247   17-03437 249       252, 255, 261, 268, 274, 278, 283, 285, 287, 289, 291, 297, 303, 305, 310, 344, 351, 358, 370, 378, 383, 407, 413, 416, 430, 437, 448, 473, 487, 513, 526, 531, 545, 562, 564, 570, 585, 588, 599, 602, 610, 616, 645, 651, 660, 673, 686, 695, 708

The NASA Mission Transcript Scanning Project

By Glen E. Swanson, Spaceflight Vol 43 February 2001
Sidebar to "We have liftoff! - The story behind the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo air-to-ground transmissions"

For the first time ever, NASA has digitally scanned all of the transcripts made from both the onboard tapes and those tape recordings made on the ground from the air-to-ground transmissions of the Mercury through Apollo missions and placed them on a two CD-ROM set. Entitled The Mission Transcript Collection: US Human Space Flight Missions from Mercury Redstone 3 to Apollo 17 (NASA SP-2000-4602) this special CD-ROM collection contains 80 transcripts totalling nearly 45,000 pages of text covering every US human space flight from the first human Mercury mission through the last lunar landing flight of Apollo 17.

Through the combined efforts of the history offices at NASA Headquarters and the Johnson Space Center, searchable Adobe Acrobat PDF scans of these mission transcripts were made from the best available copies housed in NASA's historical archives. The need for a more efficient distribution form of this primary historical resource was prompted by numerous requests from researchers and the public for print copies of the mission transcripts. Because many of these transcripts number thousands of pages in size, producing hardcopies and distributing them is both an expensive and time-consuming task. In addition, duplication exposes the original copies to unnecessary handling and risk of damage. By making high-quality one-time scans and packaging them in a user friendly CDROM, complete sets of these documents become more easily available to the public with the added benefit of allowing users to do text searches using the scanned Adobe Acrobat PDF files or print hard copies that are close to original quality.

The two CD-ROM set includes an index listing each transcript file by name. Some of the transcripts include a detailed explanation of their contents and how they were made. Also included in this collection is a listing of all the original air-to-ground audiotapes housed in NASA's archives from which many of these transcripts were made. Copies of the CD set are available free through NASA by sending a self-addressed, padded envelope with $4.00 affixed in postage (for North American Orders) or $8 affixed in postage for all overseas orders, to: NASA Headquarters Information Center, Mail Code CI-4, 300 E Street SW, Room 1H23, Washington, DC 20546-0001, PH: 202-358-0000.

The Mission Transcript Collection: U.S. Human Spaceflight Missions from Mercury Redstone 3 to Apollo 17 (SP-2000-4602, 2001). Now available commercially from CG Publishing. To order send an International Money Order for $8.00 to CG Publishing Inc, Box 62034, Burlington, Ontario, L7R 4K2, Canada or call 905-637-5737. 

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/series95.html

http://ston.jsc.nasa.gov/history/default.htm