Apollo 17 Technical Crew Debriefing

MSC-07631 January 4, 1973 -- Prepared by Training Office Crew Training and Simulation Division, NASA
OCR and manual edits by Eric Hartwell - January, 2006

   Contents

1. Suiting and Ingress
2. Status Checks and Countdown
3. Powered Flight
4. Earth Orbit and Systems Checkout
5. TLI Through S-IVB Closeout
6. Translunar Coast
7. LOI, DOI, Lunar Module Checkout
8. Activation Through Separation
9. Separation Through LM Touchdown
   1. Command Module
   2. Lunar Module
10. Lunar Surface
    1. First EVA, Massif
    2. Second EVA, South Massif
    3. Third EVA, North Massif
11. CSM Circumlunar Operations
12. Lift-Off, Rendezvous and Docking
13. Lunar Module Jettison Through TEI
14. Transearth Coast
15. Entry
16. Landing and Recovery
17. Training
18. Command Module Systems Operations
19. Lunar Module Systems Operations
    1. PGNCS
    2. AGS
    3. Propulsion System
    4. Reaction Control System (RCS)
    5. Electrical Power System (EPS)
    6. Environmental Control System (ECS)
    7. Telecommunications
20. LRV Operations
21. EMU Systems
22. Flight Equipment
    1. CSM
    2. LM
23. Flight Data File
    1. CSM
    2. LM
    3. Charts and Maps
    4. General Flight Planning
    5. Preflight Support
24. Visual Sightings
25. Premission Planning
26. Mission Control
27. Human Factors
    1. Preflight
    2. Flight

Editor's Note

 I take full credit for any errors in this text version. Ron Wells' scanned and searchable PDF version of the "Apollo 17 Technical Crew Debriefing" has auto-OCR text contents, but these are difficult to use because of Adobe's weird formatting – sometimes parts of sentences appear detached from the rest, and sometimes there is strange c h a r a c t e r   s p a c i n g. I used OmniPage Pro to do a fresh OCR using print-to-bitmap from the PDF. The OCR process is imperfect, so there are always manual corrections required. The original report also had its share of typos, which I have corrected wherever there was no doubt about the meaning. In particular, the typist consistently spelled "align" as "aline" (aline, alinement, alinements). I've also converted the section headings and crew names from ALL CAPS to Mixed Case so they're easier to read onscreen. The occasional editorial comment is in square brackets and italics like [this].

— Eric Hartwell, January 2006

1. Suiting and Ingress

Cernan:

Except for one small item, the entire suiting and ingress and all equipment supporting it was nominal. There were no complications or problems. Suit circuit checks and cabin closeout were rapid and complete and, to the best of our knowledge from inside the cabin, went very well.

Evans:

The anomaly Gene mentioned was my insuit drink bag. Unfortunately, I didn't try it out prior to putting on the helmet. I wish I would have now, because the waterbag itself had gotten twisted sideways underneath the neckring instead of hanging straight down from the neckring. The tube was crimped and I was unable to get any water whatsoever out of it.

2. Status Checks and Countdown

Cernan:

Ground communications with the spacecraft and all the launch preps for a nominal on-time launch went well. There were no spacecraft anomalies or problems during the launch prep. All systems checked out well. Controls and displays went well through T minus 30 seconds, when there was an automatic sequencer hold due to a potential problem that the ground support equipment saw on S-IVB pressurization. However, to the best of my knowledge, the S-IVB was GO on the cockpit displays. The S-IVB pressures were nominal, but, nevertheless, we had an automatic hold in the sequencer at T minus 30 seconds. From then on, for 2 hours and 40 minutes, we had a series of 20-minute recycles. I don't know exactly how many now. Did we ever get down to 8 minutes one time in the count?

Evans:

No. Once we got started below 20 minutes, we went all the way.

Cernan:

The problem turned out to be apparently in the software of the ground support equipment. The workaround was caught up, checked out through the Cape and Marshall, and once the count picked up, we had two azimuth updates.

Evans:

We had two azimuth updates, because the first recycle was more than 20 minutes, wasn't it? It was more than 20 minutes and we recycled to that point and then they found out that they weren't going to be able to pick it up again in 20 minutes. And we stopped at 20 minutes and made the second azimuths.

Cernan:

The point here being, both azimuth updates in the spacecraft went well. The CMP put them in the computer. The computer took it. I watched the IMU torque, After each one of those, they had to reset the GDC, which worked fine. So we launched with a good GDC following the platform. The only difference was a small roll angle, and it was reversed, because we had gone through 90° on the azimuth change. But that didn't really bother anything because the roll came in on time in a reverse direction. It was a small roll that culminated in just a few seconds.

The count and lift-off, through the yaw and the roll program, were nominal once we got through T-0.

Distinction of sounds in launch vehicle sequence countdown to lift-off - I think the only thing that really comes across in there is that at some point you get a good vibration. At some point in the countdown, you get a good vibration as you're sitting up there. It's not part of the CSM's operation, so you're not sure what's going on. And this happened in the CDDT and, of course, all we did was check and find out we were doing something with the booster.

Evans:

When they ran through some gimbaling programs.

Cernan:

The major portion of the launch count has to do with checking out the systems, so the commander stays very busy and many times on separate loops. The entire EDS system checked out very well. We only checked it out once in the initial count and during most of the recycle we stayed in EDS AUTO and then we de-armed EDS AUTO but still maintained a manual EDS capability to abort during that recycle time. We picked EDS AUTO as part of the T minus 20 recycle for final lift-off.

3. Powered Flight

Cernan:

The S-IC ignition - The lights started going out at 7 seconds, and somewhere around 3 seconds they were completely out. You could feel the ignition. You could feel the engines come up to speed. Just prior to lift-off and during the first few seconds of lift- off when we were near the pad, both the CMP and I could see the reflection of the engine ignition out the left-hand window and the hatch window in the BPC. We could not see the fire but could see a red glow through the windows reflecting apparently off the surface. Ignition was like a big old freight train sort of starting to rumble and shake and rattle and as she lifted off. We got a good tower clear. As you go through max-q, as in the past, it gets very rough and much noisier, but I don't think we ever had any trouble hearing each other in the spacecraft. I had my intercom very high and all my S-bands and tweaked everything up prior to lift-off. We went through max-q and the only unusual thing going through max-q, considering wind components that we had was that I saw 25 percent on the ALPHA going through max-q. The yaw needle was right on, but the pitch needle had dropped to a degree and a half at the most. I guess I didn't really expect it because of the predicted wind components. After we got through max-q, you could still certainly tell the bird was burning as we pressed on toward staging, but it got much quieter and it was very evident that you were through max-q when that time came. We had center engine shutdown on time. We had staging on time.

I don't think it's ever been recorded on a daylight launch before, but as soon as the S-IC shut down during the time involved in recycling and getting the staging sequence going and the S-II lit off, apparently the trailing flame of the S-IC overtook the spacecraft when we immediately went into that zero-g condition. And, for just a second, as the S-II lit off, we went through the flame. It was very obvious. We could see it out of both windows. I particularly could see it out of the left-hand rendezvous window of the BPC. It was not a smoke; it was not an orange fireball; it was just a bright yellow fire of the trailing flame of the S-IC; and it happened for just a split second. Then we got off on the S-II and things got very quiet and very smooth and was a very long, quiet, smooth ride.

Evans:

I really wasn't watching the lights because I guess I didn't expect the thing to shake quite as much as it did. To me, I felt like I was really vibrating. I wanted to find out what was making me vibrate. I wasn't expecting that much vibration when the S-IC lit off. At lift-off, again, once it got vibrating, I didn't feel the yaw. I was watching the needle on the thing but didn't feel the yaw, though. The shaking increased a little bit up to max-q and then there was a different type of shaking. It was more of a vibration, I think, going through max-q. And there was more noise associated with going through max-q. Of course, with the shutdown of the S-IC, I think that was about 4-1/2g.

Cernan:

We pushed 4g.

Schmitt:

Just pushing 4g on the thing and it quits just like that. I was prepared for it because Gene had said, "Hey, brace yourselves because it is going to happen," and it happened all right. It just flat quit when we went from 4g to 0.

Cernan:

The great train wreck.

Schmitt:

I think in all those booster cutoffs, it's hard to see how rapidly the g-level decreases. I guess the only other comment I have is that I think that it is good to do a lot of simulation about malfunctions during launch, but up through max-q it is a little bit unrealistic to think that you are going to analyze a malfunction in the spacecraft.

Cernan:

To sum up the S-IC, I personally didn't think it was any different than my previous ride on the S-IC and up through this point being a night launch really didn't make any difference at all. The only thing I did different that I hadn't really though a lot about until I sat on the pad and began to think about staging was, just prior to staging, I took my hand off the abort handle and held the support arm rather than the translation control handle until after staging. I did this just a couple of seconds prior to staging. I had talked about it with John Young a little bit prior to the flight and it turns out that's what he did, also. Probably a good thing.

The S-II ignition was very smooth. We got skirt sep right on time. I could feel skirt sep going. We had tower jett, which was really sort of spectacular at night. I think the LMP is going to add something to it, but from the left-hand rendezvous window, I could not only see the flame, but the inside of the BPC seemed to be lit up. Of course, it doesn't stay there very long; it's gone in just a split second. But it was a very spectacular sight at night to see that tower go against the blackness of space out there. We could see guidance come in very definitely. It was not as big a pulsation as I've seen on the simulator but I did see the needle and the spacecraft did change its attitude slightly. You could see the mixture ratio shift. It was just a long, smooth, quiet ride. Inboard cutoff was right on time. You could feel it, a definite physiological feeling. Of course, the g-meter saw it also. The S-IC cutoff, as Jack said, is again very sharp, almost instantaneous, from almost 4g to 0. But on the S-II , although it's sharp and a very hard hit, you don't unload the entire stack like you do when you're on the S-IC. The staging was very smooth. It did not seem like an exceptionally long time before we separated and the S-IVB lit off.

Schmitt:

On the tower jett, I wouldn't say a split second. As a matter of fact, I was surprised it lasted as long as it did. It was a few seconds.

Evans:

I couldn't see the rocket go. All I could see was an orange glow out the center window.

Cernan:

While we were on the S-II, we would see no indication of light from the engines. We were just thrusting out in the darkness of space. I tried to see stars for potential mode IV and, of course, at that time, mode II abort and turned the lights down on the left side once or twice. But even with the lights down on (we had the LEB lights relatively low), in my estimation, it would have required all the lights in the spacecraft to have been off and certainly more than a few seconds to become night adapted to be able to see through the windows and pick up stars that would have been able to help in an abort situation had you lost the computer and the SCS. We had looked, potentially planned to use those stars in an abort condition if we had to. We had excellent constellations to look at. They obviously were there, but I could not see through the low glow reflection on the window even with our lights, floodlights, turned almost all the way down. I even went to the extent of trying to shield my eyes on the S-II and looked out the window and I still could not pick up anything that I could have recognized for an abort. I also could not pick up any night horizons during that point in time which I thought I might be able to base on seeing where the stars cut off and where they do not.

Schmitt:

We had another indication of that during entry when we were looking for a night horizon and finally saw it, but it was extremely hard to find.

Cernan:

We got lit off on the S-IVB, and, unlike the flame we flew through on the S-II, we did not do that on the S-IVB. I don't know where the reflection came from, but I could see the reflection from somewhere out the forward window. Either it was the S-II trailing flame trying to overtake the vehicle but didn't quite make it, or it was S-IVB ignition reflecting off the S-II because there's no atmosphere up there at that point. But I did not see a flame, but a residual back light out that window just for a short period of time, either right at staging or just at S-IVB ignition. As I think back, my best guess would be that the same thing happened on the S-II, that the trailing flame, when you go from 4g to 0 instantaneously, tends to overtake the vehicle. But in the case of the S-II, it's not nearly as big a pattern and just didn't quite make it up the stack. I just saw some of the glow of it. That's my best guess. After the S-IVB ignited, we never saw anything except the APS firing throughout that burn.

You could see the mixture ratio shift.

Schmitt:

But PU shift, both vehicles, was surprisingly noticeable.

Cernan:

Communications throughout the booster phase were excellent. I never had any problem hearing either Stony or CAPCOM.

Controls and displays performed super.

Crew comfort through powered flight - I felt very comfortable throughout the entire flight in orbit.

As far as I'm concerned, there was no pogo on the burn.

Evans:

No, none.

Cernan:

Summing up the birds. If you want to put them in more layman terms, I think the S-IC acted and performed like some big, old, rugged, shaky, big monster. It has to be noisy, has lots of vibration, and smoothed out somewhat after max-q, but still was a rumbling bird. The S-II was a Cadillac: quiet, less than 1g flight most of the time until we built up our g-load prior to staging. It was quiet, smooth, had very little noise, or feeling of rumbling or anything else. The S-IVB: a light little chugger is probably the best way I can describe it, which is not different than I remember it in the past. It just sort of rumbled on, not anywhere near the extent of the S-IC, but just sort of continued to rumble on through the burn. After a while, especially during TLI, it got to be a very pleasant, warm feeling that she was burning like she should burn.

Evans:

Chugging, I think, has two different connotations. I felt the S-IVB was more of a very light rumble in the background, something that is kind of rumbling as opposed to chugging. A chug to me is a bang-bang type thing, and to me it was more of a rumble.

Schmitt:

I agree, it may be a sense of rumbling but the ride was smooth. I could sense some activity behind it, but I wouldn't have said that it was chugging.

Cernan:

I'll modify chugging to say it was a hummocky chug, just a rolling type. Nothing different, and, as I say, the best recollection, similar to the S-IVB I had the opportunity to ride on before, but probably even more steady and continuous flow of light rumbling.

4. Earth Orbit and Systems Checkout

Cernan:

Evaluation of insertion parameters - We got a good onboard orbit. Ground gave us a GO for orbit. The postinsertion systems configuration systems checkout and the complete spacecraft and booster preparation for TLI went extremely smooth and extremely rapid. By the time we came back over the States on the first pass, we were ready and the spacecraft was ready, and we were configured and could have gone on a TLI-0 without any hurrying and scurrying whatsoever. From that point on, when we got our GO on the booster and a GO for TLI-1, it was an Earth-orbit, an extra Earth-orbit ride to sit back and just monitor our systems in the spacecraft and see what we could see from Earth orbit in terms of viewing. It was an extra 90 minutes of the flight that, if you really had to do without, you could have. And it was not hurried. It was very comfortable, even progressing toward the TLI-0.

Schmitt:

Let me add just a couple of things. One thing that we had because of the later launch was a number of LOS/AOS updates to plot which did not interfere with our getting through the checklist. The checklist, I had a feeling, went more slowly than it ever had. But, as Gene says, still with plenty of time to meet the zero up time and to have essentially a whole daylight pass to just relax and look at the Earth. We had one note here. I didn't even remember until I read it here that in the ECS checks the hydrogen pressure indicators, or part of the indicators, were reading about 10 percent lower than we expected. But, as I recall, it may have been expected.

Evans:

The optics cover jettison worked as advertised. We jettisoned the optics cover in the daylight and you could see the two covers flipping off straight down the optics path.

Cernan:

I think everyone reacted normally to weightlessness. There was no feeling of disorientation or vertigo or any other disturbances at that point. The CMP is the only one who left the couch prior to TLI and that was for his P52.

Evans:

I didn't get that fullness in the head at that point at all. That wasn't until we'd been up there for 5 or 6 hours.

Cernan:

Launching at night, we just had a somewhat different view of the Earth than most other flights have had. The first real view we got of being in orbit at that point was pretty spectacular because it happened to be Earth sunrise and that's a very intriguing and interesting way to get your first indoctrination to Earth orbit.

Schmitt:

The transcript contains some descriptions, by all three of us, of sequences of that sunrise which, in the color banding, may be of some significance for other people.

5. TLI Through S-IVB Closeout

Cernan:

The TLI burn from the ground targeting point of view and targeting went just as written. We went down the checklist and cue card without any problems or any anomalies, without any changes except to the manual. We had a change to all our manual angles to monitor the S-IVB burn because of the late lift-off. We wrote those down on our cue cards and were going to use those in case we had to take over during the burn. We had to change to the nominal and we rewrote both of those on our cue cards. That's the only basic change I think we had.

Schmitt:

The communications all through Earth orbit were excellent, as I recall. There was no difficulty getting the pads up. They came up expeditiously and well read. We actually gained a little time because we didn't have television. But we didn't need it. We could have configured it for use.

If there's ever any attempt to do weather observing from Earth orbit, in the low orbit like that, you're going to have to have a very clear plan of where you're looking at what time you're looking in order to make reference as to where you are because you're moving so fast. You can't really keep track of where you are and specifically in terms of weather observation. Later on, once you get the whole globe in view, it's a relatively simple thing to pin down to within a few degrees of latitude and longitude where you are looking on the Earth.

Cernan:

On all these lunar missions, we've never really done much in Earth orbit except get prepared for the TLI burn. Future Earth-orbit flights need this continual map update, you're right. You have to do that. As I think back to 3 days in Earth orbit, unless you continually follow a map and a map update as to your rev as you progress around the world, what part of that world you're looking at is very difficult to follow except the precise piece of real estate you're flying over.

Schmitt:

The lunar orbital operation is somewhat different because you stay in the same groundtrack much longer I think.

Cernan:

The S-IVB performance was outstanding. She lit off on time and burned for 5 minutes and some odd seconds as I recall. And we had shutdown on time. The residuals and the EMS on the spacecraft are written down somewhere, but they were all very nominal, very excellent. We stayed in IU. As the S-IVB maneuvered, we flew through a sunrise during TLI, which in itself was also very interesting, very spectacular. We had nominal S-IVB performance after shutdown; and maneuvering to the sep attitude, we went through checkout load NOUN 17 and NOUN 22. There was again no noticeable pogo. The S-IVB sounded and performed just like it did on the insertion phase burn and I'll let the CMP pick up the separation and the transposition and docking.

Schmitt:

We all were very aware of PU shift.

Cernan:

I guess I could have called that or I was looking forward to seeing it. It is on my checklist. It's on my cue card and I've looked for it and I've seen it in the simulator.

Schmitt:

It just didn't register in the simulators, I guess. And the other thing flying through that sunrise, it did to a small degree interfere with visibility in the cockpit.

Cernan:

It didn't bother me from the standpoint of monitoring on my side at all.

Evans:

As far as the separation from the SLA, it was nominal. There's a louder bang than I expected from pyros. This is the first time that I really noticed that in the plus-X translations, or in any translations as far as that goes, you get about 0.4° per second rates within the dead band. As opposed to the simulator, it has about 0.1° per second on any of the translations maintaining attitude.

Formation flight was great. The S-IVB by itself was as steady as a rock out there. No problems. I couldn't tell it was dead banding or moving at all. I came in relatively slow, about 0.1 ft/sec, somewhere in that area.

Docking was nominal. As soon as he got capture on the thing, there were no rates. Everything was steady. I didn't have to handle the translation controls or null rates at all. We went directly to hard dock. There's more spacecraft movement during that period because I feel that the COAS and the docking target were off a little bit. And I don't say misaligned, but it's a little bit off. But, of course, it was in limits and was no problem.

Cernan:

When we went to retract, we got our big ripple fire - bang on the latches, so we had a relatively good hard dock. We only got one gray indication on the talkbacks. The other one was barber pole.

Schmitt:

There's a lot of descriptive material, I think, in the transcript on that. As I recall, we got two pulses in the ripple fire. It seemed like there was one or two latches and then the ripple fire.

Cernan:

I just recall a woomph!

Schmitt:

I think, if you look at the transcript, we said that there were two pulses to it.

Cernan:

Subsequent inspection of the latches showed that there were three latches which were not made entirely. One of them, as I recall, had to be recocked. Anyway, it turned out that once we got those three latches (which at that time looked like they were operating properly) reset, we got two barber poles on the talkbacks. Ultimately, latch 4 was found to be unseated on the ring, although, at that time, it looked nominal. The attitudes given us were excellent; we were able to watch the S-IVB maneuver. We were able to see the S-IVB vent and it all went well and nominal.

Schmitt:

It was very clean as far as any debris or anything coming out during the docking phase, and I could see a few little things that were bouncing around inside around the LM, particles of some kind. It was nothing like previous flights where they had a lot of debris. It was very clean.

Cernan:

As I recall, we undocked and separated just a little earlier than had tentatively been planned, but that was no problem because we were ready to do it.

6. Translunar Coast

Evans:

The IMU realignment and optics calibration - We've mentioned the visibility of the stars in talking about the systems in the section on systems. Systems anomalies - We already hit that one. Heat flow demonstration - it worked great. There were no real problems on it. It was a real time operation with ground. Everything is recorded on the down-link.

Schmitt:

There was some problem with the orientation of the experiment. As I recall, you reoriented it between the two experiments. I never quite understood why there was that problem. It was a checklist problem or something.

Evans:

The problem was something about the orientation of the radial experiment with respect to the X-axis. I pointed the radial experiment along the X-axis. It was supposed to be perpendicular to the X-axis, but it shouldn't have made any difference in the results anyhow.

PTC - We got it started and had no problem.

Cislunar navigation or navigational sightings - It's already mentioned in the systems part.

Schmitt:

You mentioned apparently you had a very good Delta-I determination - horizon determination.

Evans:

The P23s worked out great. The vehicle is heavy enough that you can control it quite easily with minimum impulse. I used the EMP on P23 so that once you had the star in the field of view and all lined up you could recycle through the program without getting all the maneuver data on the thing. While it was recycling, I could just watch the spacecraft and not let it drift too far out of field of view. When it came back in, I would maintain the star in the middle of the crosshairs of the sextant and maneuver the spacecraft so I could get the substellar point and maintain the substellar point. As it turns out, I guess the resulting Delta-I is within the limits that are recorded in the E-memory.

Midcourse correction - I think that's all recorded on the down-link. There should be nothing anomalous about that.

Photography - Jack, I guess you've taken most of the pictures on the translunar coast.

Schmitt:

Most of the photography came to GET within a few minutes. It was almost a continuous effort at the beginning of the day and maybe in the middle and at the end with some irregularities - getting a continuous record of a very nice view of the Earth and the weather patterns. We had about three-quarters to two-thirds Earth through most of the translunar coast period. And that should be in the photographic logs on the ground.

High gain antenna performance - Through the whole mission, not just translunar coast when I was using it, it was perfectly nominal. The ground did most of the calling on it. Between omis and high gain when they didn't call, it was easy enough to get the high gain to peak up. Usually in MANUAL and WIDE and either AUTO or REACQ depending on the occasion, it seemed to work very well. I wasn't aware of any high gain anomalies.

Evans:

Daylight IMU realign and star check - Again you can't see the stars through the telescope. Most of the time you can't see the stars through the telescope. However, if you have a good alignment and it shows up in the sextant, there's no problem.

ALFMED experiment - I think that's all recorded on the down-link. The one thing that I might add to that is that prior to this time I hadn't seen a light flash. So I put it on anyhow and sure enough the light flashes are there. And that's all recorded.

Schmitt:

In the experiments notebook, where the LMP was taking notes on the ALFMED experiment comments, it was necessary in this translunar coast period because we were on omnis and PTC. It is very difficult with two guys observing to take notes if they both start seeing marks at the same time. Interestingly enough maybe even for the experiment the marks seem to come in batches. There'd be periods of quiescence, then both of us would start seeing marks. So the notes are relatively incomplete and, hopefully, the DSE plus the down-link will fill in all the gaps. It's feasible to take notes but they will be incomplete compared to the verbal description.

Evans:

CM/LM Delta-P - Nominal.

Orbital science photos - We really didn't have any on translunar coast.

Schmitt:

Nothing was called out. We used about a half a mag on the Earth, maybe more.

Evans:

More than that. We used a full mag before we got to the Moon.

LM and tunnel pressure was okay, no problems.

Removal of the probe and drogue - Went as advertised. Worked great.

Odors - Every time I got up in the tunnel after docking or anytime, there was always a musty burned odor or something. It's hard to describe.

Schmitt:

Like a powder burn.

Evans:

Kind of like a powder burn, I guess. This was there both in lunar orbit docking and transearth docking. This was the second day we were out when we finally went up in the tunnel. Every time I opened up the tunnel, that's what it smelled like.

We didn't mention the SIM door jett. I guess I never did see the door. You guys wouldn't let me up to the window.

Schmitt:

Yes, we saw the door. I didn't get it right away. I was supposed to be taking pictures out of the window.

Cernan:

I saw it right away out of the hatch window. You should have been taking pictures out of the hatch because it wasn't immediately obvious out the window. It came off just as clean as a whistle, with almost no tumbling until it got 20 or 30 feet away from the spacecraft. Then you could see that there was just a little roll and a little pitch as it drifted on away, but very very little. Not a great deal of debris and garbage as I recall came off with it either. You could probably sum up all the pyro operations by saying there are absolutely no questions. They're just good, solid, hard thuds, including SIM door jett. Just a big solid bang, really not that much different than some of the other big bangs when you separate the spacecraft. They're just all big, hard, solid clunks.

Schmitt:

I don't remember what Apollo 16 said about it. Apollo 15 was suited, and they commented they didn't even know it went.

Cernan:

I'm surprised at that, even suited. It w a very definite jolt to the spacecraft when the door was jettisoned.

7. LOI, DOI, Lunar Module Checkout

Cernan:

The only thing leading up to LOI that had to be changed in the Flight Plan or in the Cue Cards, since we did a 2-hour and 40-minute clock update which by the way went perfectly, was the fact that I had to replot all the LOI abort parameters on the card. But the words came up very smoothly, and we just replotted the curve and changed the numbers. We had all our LOI abort constants and numbers for the new LOI configuration.

SPS burn - I thought the SPS burn was very smooth. We had an on time burn. The burn report came back to you, and the residuals and everything were just as nominal as could be. It was just a short little "g-thud," if you want to call it that, at ignition; throughout the burn, it went smoothly. Jack, you got anything about either one of the LOI or DOI SPS burns?

Schmitt:

They were all auto shutdown. We covered the problems before.

Gravitational Effects on the Spacecraft Attitude - That was on rev 1, wasn't it, where we had the pan camera going and we had it all figured that we had one jet firing and the gravitational effects were supposed to keep the spacecraft within that dead band. Sure enough, it did. At least, we didn't get out of the dead band at all and didn't have to change the DAP at all on the first rev. This is to keep the jets from firing into the mapping camera.

Evans:

Communications - We never had any problems with communications at all throughout the flight.

Cernan:

PGA Donning - Our PGA donning practice was a worthwhile exercise. It takes a lot of work to get the suits unstowed and stowed, because putting the suit on in zero-g is just a little bit different. Unlike the previous flight or two, none of the three crewmen had any problem in donning or doffing their suits. I'd say donning is easier in zero-g than doffing. The CDR and the LMP helped each other with the zipping on every donning and doffing, as we've done in training. We had no problems at all. I'm glad that we were aware of the problems that Apollo 16 had. I think we were more conscious of the potential problem that existed when zipping the restraint zipper. We were conscious of it and had sort of trained in a direction to cover all bets on being able to zip up. I would say that in zero-g the zipper was a little bit more difficult to zip, but certainly I can't really say it was a problem for either one of us.

Schmitt:

The only problem was that little blue donning aid always got in the way.

Cernan:

Every time we zipped it, we hooked the zipper coming around.

Schmitt:

One time, I can't remember whether it was on the surface or in orbit, I got some S'ing in the lower portion of your outer zipper, and we lost maybe 5 minutes while I worked that over. Other times, I learned that you just have to move through that smoothly, and it's no problem.

Cernan:

Tunnel mechanics and pretransfer operations - They all went as advertised.

Schmitt:

We might mention that we did take that extra film magazine over there. That was purely because that was preplanned in our minds, an extra 16-millimeter magazine, mag EE, because we felt that we just didn't have enough film to get the orbital CSM/LM activities in addition to the planned activities for descent/ascent and lunar surface.

Cernan:

If you're going to use that film during that period of time, it's better to have it in the LM than in the command module, and if it weren't used, you could always bring it back and use it in the command module. That worked out fine. I think we used it all.

Schmitt:

We used it but there was something wrong with the mag though.

Cernan:

had a gear strip in the mag, apparently.

Schmitt:

It showed a half a magazine of film usage, so we did something with it.

Cernan:

The condition of the CSM thermal coating was excellent.

Schmitt:

Cantu checks - We did have an S-band comm problem initially. I talked to some guys a little bit last night about it. As near as I can tell, it was primarily the combination of two things: (1) Up-link data dropouts which were causing the problem on the lockup, plus (2) some phasing, when I would switch antennas when they would just about have lockup. I think we're going to have to wait until we get with the communications people in the systems debriefings to really work that out exactly what was happening. It was a combination mainly of ground problems of getting lockup plus the unfortunate switching on my part.

The transfer and restowage of equipment were nominal. I can't think of anything right now that was a problem.

8. Activation Through Separation

Cernan:

That's probably one of the most nominal parts of the mission. It really went smooth. We oscillated on the timeline. We'd get a little ahead, and then we'd get a little behind; we'd pick up a few minutes, then we'd loose a few minutes. Basically we worked around the nominal timeline. I certainly wouldn't want to shorten it any, but we came to the milestones on time and met the ground at the right places.

Evans:

Prior to LOI, we manually pressurized the SPS, which was no problem. It was because of the oxidizer helium.

In all the sims we never got suited in the spacecraft. We never have all three guys in there trying to get suited and going through the sims. So the sims for the CMP were fat, dumb, and happy. There is all kinds of time in the sim; you could go out and get a cup of coffee and come back and still pick up everything. It's not that way in the real world. You get into the real world out there and you work your tail off trying to keep up and get things going and get suited. When I'm scheduled to do the P52, the CDR and the LMP are down in the LEB getting suited. There was no way I could do the P52 at that time. By the time I had a chance to do the P52 at the sep attitude, the optics were looking down at the Moon, so I'd have to manually roll and do some pitching to get the optics back up in the air, in the daylight, until I could get PICAPAR to work. And when I finally got the P52 on, I had a little bit of a problem getting my suit on that day. There was evidently an "S" or something right in the back part of the crotch. I had a heck of a time getting the zipper across that little S-band thing by myself, which was back there where I couldn't pull it through with the lanyard. I finally backed it off the other way to make sure everything was all clean and cleared out. A little squishing sideways and a contortion here and there, and I finally got the zipper all the way around. I think the rest of it was nominal. I was down in the LEB when you guys lowered your gear, but I could still feel the clunk in the CSM

Cernan:

You could feel it in the CSM?

Evans:

Yes.

Cernan:

We could feel it in the LM, and we could also see the forward gear and the ladder.

Evans:

Once I went back up to the couch, I could see the gear sticking out, too.

Cernan:

Which one?

Evans:

Whichever one is over there.

Cernan:

Did it have the ladder on? Probably not. I think the ladder is on one of the Y-struts.

Evans:

I think so.

Cernan:

Well, anyway, that's interesting. I didn't know you could feel it over there.

Evans:

Yes, I could feel it when you dropped.

Cernan:

In the rendezvous radar or the landing radar self tests (the transcript will have it) there were some residual numbers in the registers that I had not seen before during these tests, when I brought up VERB 63. They didn't affect the test. The tests came out very well, and there's only one other slight anomaly in the rendezvous radar and that was during the rendezvous radar test. It was either on this rendezvous radar test or the rendezvous radar test prior to lift-off - I think it was shaft. I did not get the cyclic oscillation in the DSKY on shaft. But the interface was good, and I'm not sure what the particulars of that problem were. At undocking we had P47 running in the LM, and I got zero in all three registers, zero residual velocity as a result of the CSM soft and open total undocking. Systems operation throughout that time was normal. Vehicle performance was as expected, in terms of attitude control.

Lunar landmark recognition - We were able to be in attitude and recognize and look at the landing site on that first pass when we went over. The MSFN relay worked. Generally throughout the flight, I think MSFN relay is more of a pain when you've got good VHF with the other vehicle than it is anything else, because you end up getting a repeat on the voice. I recommend against MSFN relay when you can use direct VHF voice.

Schmitt:

Yes, I agree. On the systems, I was surprised that the component lights in the test positions were very dim. But when they are activated by the caution and warning system, they are bright. I guess I never realized that before. Purely academic interest at this stage.

Cernan:

The secondary glycol pump start up was, I recall, a somewhat ragged start up, as if the pump was slightly cavitating for about 15 seconds. Then it was smooth. There was no subsequent indication of the problem with the secondary loop because we didn't use it subsequently.

Schmitt:

Referring to that radar test, it was the PGNCS turn on self test. I had a 400 in R-2 initially, and I had never seen that before in PGNCS turn on. That's what I was referring to about something different in the registers. It was on the initial PCNGS turn on, and self test.

Cernan:

All the alignments went well. One thing that we discovered - the gimbals apparently were mistrimmed on the descent engine prior to lift-off. Someone is going to have to resolve whether that's true or not. The pitch and the yaw gimbal trim in the DAP were reversed as to our checklist. When I inquired about it, I found out that our checklist was correct, which gave me an impression that the gimbals were both mistrimmed. But they were so close to each other that the ground indicated we should press on and we should see no reaction to that mistrim, and to start up. We did and we did not see any indication of the mistrim. If pitch and yaw had been separated quite a bit, I'm sure we probably would have had to go through a retrim of the gimbals during the DPS throttle check.

Schmitt:

One clarification comment with respect to the AGS. I mentioned yesterday that I thought it was a Z-gyro that indicated greater than spec calibration. It was the Z-gyro, just slightly greater, about 0.4

9. Separation Through LM Touchdown

9.1 Command Module

Evans:

In optics tracking, I tracked RP-3 which is about 5 minutes prior to the subsolar point. And that's too close to the subsolar point to be doing any optics tracking. As soon as I got to the TCA on that thing, I completely lost the visibility of the landmark. So the only good marks on that are going to be prior to TCA.

Cernan:

What was that landmark?

Evans:

That was the landmark for updating the mapping camera film. Actually, it is a recalibration of those particular points that had been tracked on previous launches.

The circularization burn was a good burn. The only anomalous-type thing on that is that the residuals prior to trimming were plus 1.70 and minus 0.6. The minimum impulse is a 4-second burn. It underburned in the minimum-impulse case by 1.7 ft/sec. It turned out to be no problem. The ORDEAL worked as advertised throughout the flight.

9.2 Lunar Module

Cernan:

Prep for PDI - just went out of the Activation Checklist into the Timeline Book. There are no notes concerning any anomalies. We stayed on the time line and as I said, we met the milestones with the ground. We came around the horn for PDI and established comm, and the ground had a load waiting for us. We had no NOUN 69 prior to P63.

Schmitt:

We did have the communications problem prior to PDI. The thing that started it off was the ground started up-linking on the omni, which they had never done before in the sims that I remember, unless it was a situation where we hadn't gotten the steerable. They started on the omni. I was not watching that, and I switched out of the omni to the steerable in the middle of the up-link. That started the problem, which apparently was compounded, as I found out last night. Anyway, the Goldstone antenna went belly up somehow, and the men who talked to me last night still do not know how. Somebody may, and I'm sure it'll be worked out. The up-link did get in and all you had to do was proceed on the VERB 33. We did have a good up-link, and that whole thing was in there but nobody's quite sure how it actually got in there. The ground surprised us by coming up almost immediately with that up-link, which we've never seen before. In fact, I expected it would be quite late.

Cernan:

We'd seen them come up fast, but they always waited for the steerable.

Schmitt:

Yes. That's what caught me by surprise. At any rate, we got it in there and there was no subsequent problem. The comm thing did delay us, and we were running a little bit behind the time line.

Let me mention one thing on the DPS start which I didn't mention yesterday. And that is monitoring 471 in the AGS showed essentially no Delta-V accumulation in Y. That was a good idea, although it was unnecessary.

Cernan:

As far as the start was concerned, the LMP confirmed ullage. I had my physiological cue, and I knew we had ullage. I was prepared to back up the ullage and back up the start, but we got an automatic performance in both.

Schmitt:

It was very clear that the SHe tank had opened up within a few seconds. We got our first jump in pressure a lot sooner than I expected.

Cernan:

All the pyro functions prior to PDI in the LM we could verify with a physiological cue. We could feel, and/or hear all of these functions.

Schmitt:

And this was suited.

Cernan:

In some cases, it was suited; not all.

I covered the performance of the engine. The PGNCS performed admirably. I called up the NOUNs I needed: 68s and 92s. We loaded NOUN 69s, and she just spit them out just like she always has.

Schmitt:

The SHe pressures during descent held low. About 30 psi, as I recall, beneath the predicted number.

Cernan:

NOUN 69 was plus 3400 feet, and that sounded very familiar, as I recall. Didn't we almost always in the sims have a plus? Even the nominal ones have a plus. Is that the problem they had? As it turns out, as soon as I pitched over, I took it right back out to get to our landing area.

Schmitt:

Is that right?

Cernan:

It was almost exactly the same number, which means that their targeting was essentially perfect, because the planned landing area was about at least a crater diameter short of Camelot. That's where we pitched over and that's where we would have landed, which was the planned, targeted landing area.

We did not say anything about DOI-2. DOI-2 was slightly smaller than we'd seen in the past, because of the orbit degradation we were in. I think it went down to something like 11 miles, but the DOI-2 just went super. We got the residuals down to 00 and 0.1, something to that effect. We saw a 7.0 perilune out of the PGNCS and a 6.7 out of the AGS, which is exactly the type of thing we expected. We went around to PDI in good shape. We got excellent radar and VHF ranging correlation during that radar checkout.

VHF Ranging and Radar Tracking - Everything was nominal during PDI right through pitchover. We got throttledown on time. We watched the computer and followed NOUN 92. The computer was happy, the GDC was happy, and everything was just perfect. At 13,000 feet, I could look over the edge of the window and see the South Massif. At 13,000 feet, I knew we were coming down in the valley because I could see the South Massif, and I could tell that we were in the valley or coming into it. At 13,000 feet, I had the impression we were level with the top of those mountains. (Laughter) I really did.

We pitched over, the needles dropped, pitchover occurred, 64, everything was nominal. Our target point was about a crater diameter short of Camelot. I used LPD frequently. I don't know how many times I used LPD, several clicks back, a couple left, a couple right. I just flew it where I wanted to fly it. I brought it back to an area in the vicinity and to the right of Poppy. As soon as I did that, I just sort of tumbled in on that area and did some more LPDs to finally what I'd call a suitable landing site. That suitable landing site became more evident the closer you got. Initial LPD changes to bring the landing site back east were just gross to change the area.

Once I had my area, I started tweaking it up to find what I considered a blockless and level area. I ended up taking over in P66 just a little below 300 feet. The reason I took over is that I wanted to slow our forward velocity down. I did not want to go any farther west, because there were more blocks and more hummocky terrain. As a result of all of our aft LPDing, we ended up (1) with a great deal more fuel than we might have anticipated, between 7 and 9 percent, I believe, and (2) the rate of descent, H-dot, was a little bit higher than normal, because of our steeper descent in the latter phases of the braking and landing. But as far as the CDR was concerned, they were very comfortable rates of descent. The LMP passed them on and said they were a little higher. I knew where we were. I think the most significant part of the final phases from 500 feet down, as far as the CDR was concerned, was that it was extremely comfortable flying the bird, either LPDing in P64, and/or flying manually in P66. I contribute that primarily to the LLTV flying operations. That's why the rates of descent and what have you were just very comfortable.

I kept a good rate of descent down through 200 feet, slowed it down at a little bit over 100 feet to 1 or 2 feet per second, and then started it on down again. We started to get dust somewhere around 100 feet.

Schmitt:

In my window, I didn't see dust until about 60 or 70 feet.

Cernan:

The dust layer was so very thin that I could definitely see through it all the way down. It didn't hamper our operations at all. When I was satisfied that that was my landing site, I made sure we had between 1 and 3 feet per second on the crosspointer forward velocity, and to the best of my ability, zero left and right. We continued on down with about 3 feet per second to landing.

I saw the shadow come right on up to me, and this is very well done in the simulator. When it passed on under me, I was expecting a blue light. It seemed like it didn't quite come, when the shadow passed on under me for just a split second or two. We got the touchdown light. I had planned to say, "1 potato, 2" and then push the stop button. But I didn't. As soon as we got the touchdown light, I, like most everybody else, hit the stop button. Then things just went "plunk." We plunked down with a relatively good thud, I'd say.

Visibility through the final phase was excellent. The tendency, once you redefine your landing area, is to become a little bit less concerned with your peripheral landmarks out there, because you know now about where you're going to go. You get more tunnel vision, and you are concerned with finding these specific touchdown points within that landing area. That's effectively what I did. I had no Sun angle problems. At that point in time, estimation of distances didn't mean much, because I was concerned more with what was right down below me and in front of me.

I can't say enough for what I consider the accuracy of the guidance. Manual control of the spacecraft was hard and firm, different certainly than the command module operation but exactly what I expected the LM to be. The simulator, I think, does an excellent job of controlling the firm good solid ATTITUDE HOLD, RATE COMMAND capabilities. of the LM. I'd say that I touched down with about 1 to 3 ft/sec forward, and 0 left and right, and about 3 ft/sec down. We'll just have to find out what those numbers were. I don't know. The fuel remaining was between 7 and 9 percent. From the CDR's side, the systems were excellent.

10. Lunar Surface

Cernan:

Postlanding powerdown - We got the verb for STAY at T₁, T₂, but we got a GO for at least a T₃, and we started right through the checklist and the power on configuration. Based upon the review of the Surface Checklist, there were no anomalies in powering down the spacecraft. We just followed right on through.

PGNCS and AGS worked fine. Z, once again, had a higher than spec gyro count. It was nothing serious though.

Eat and rest period - We had an eat period on the surface. As we were beginning our EVA-1 prep, we took some pictures out the window. We just followed the checklist, and, all told, we ended up getting out some 30 minutes late. I'm not sure why.

Schmitt:

Part of it was that P57.

Cernan:

Oh, we had to do a P57 over because we reversed the marks on a spiral cursor, which was just an onboard problem on our part. So, we did the P57 over, and we lost several minutes. We sort of never lost any thereafter, but we never made them up either.

Suit doff and don - This will cover all the EV prep and post activities. We both found, LMP and CDR, that donning and doffing the suit in 1/6g was relatively easy. Once again, we had no problems zipping up the suits. In the course of doffing, and prior to getting the suit fully off, we mutually lubricated each other's open zippers and all the connectors. When we doffed the suit, we went into a drying mode as the checklist suggests prior to the sleep period. I'm really glad we did because our suits stayed relatively fresh and clean on the inside. We doffed our LCGs every day and slept in CWGs rather than the ECG. And I'm glad we did that because it was much more comfortable. We made it a buddy system in the entire donning and prep when it came to the suit operations, except for putting on the gloves. We found it easier to put them on in parallel and get them locked and verified locked. We actually, each individually in almost all cases, put our own glove dust covers and ring dust covers on. Maybe we had to help each other once in a while. And contrary to some of our initial desires, we decided to go ahead and put those dust covers on for every EVA. After the first EVA, we found out what the dust problem really was.

Schmitt:

One of the tabs on the LMP's dust covers did break off on the first prep.

Cernan:

But besides that, we never used that donning lanyard that we had available. We never needed it. I can't really say anything else except that the doff and don went pretty much as we both expected it to. We obviously took extreme care of our suits - the best we could - because we had to use them several times. I think that care paid off because even at the integrity check of the CM/EVA, the suits were tighter than a drum. I think the wrist connectors, even with the dust covers, were tending to get a little bit stiff.

Schmitt:

Yes , mine were very stiff.

Cernan:

But nothing ever really froze up on us.

LM vehicle systems operations - There weren't many systems operating during the lunar surface activities other than the EPS and the glycol system. We set it up per the Flight Plan.

We updated the PGNCS periodically. It was all nominal operation.

10.1 First EVA, Massif

Cernan:

First EVA prep activities - And all I can say about the PLSS donning and checkout verification, cabin depress, communications checkout, and power transfers, is that it just followed the checklist and went nominally. The only thing that we might consider as a deviation is the fact that the CDR left his O₂ hoses off during most of the donnings because I felt I didn't need them with the water cooling from the spacecraft. It was easier to get them put out of the way early, and there was certainly adequate airflow. We left the flow on through the hoses to keep circulation in the cabin during that time. I felt very comfortable and less contained by having those two hoses out of the way. All I had dragging from me was the water hose and the comm hose.

Schmitt:

LMP wore the hoses most of the time to partly have a convenient place to put them. Also, I like the airflow.

Cernan:

And they're more out of the way of the LMP because they're on your side.

EVA 1- We just commenced the egress very slowly to get familiar, but basically there were no real problems with the egress. I felt you had to get down a little bit lower to the floor than I'd seen in the airplane, but once you understood where you had to get, getting out was no problem at all. Everybody knows that the LM cabin is very small, and you're restricted. You cannot move very fast or get out of each other's way very easily. So when you did have to turn your back to change valves or switches or circuit breakers, you had to move one at a time to get out of each other's way. Once we found out what those requirements were, we were able to work together very well and stay out of each others way most of the time.

Schmitt:

Yes. Let me comment about the LMP's egress and ingress and general activities a little bit that I've done in the 1/6g airplane in the mockup. They seem to be more difficult and more constrained in the LM than they were in the airplane. I don't know exactly why. Part of it may have been in the pockets. I kept finding I was hanging my leg pockets up on those things. I don't remember whether I had those on in the airplane or not.

Cernan:

The key to ingress was to get all the way in and then bend my legs up. As soon as I bent my legs up, all of a sudden everything broke free. I think it was that the pockets were hanging out on the sill, and as soon as I bent my knees, it took the pockets off the sill, and I just slipped right in. I didn't learn that until the second egress. Work on the platform and on the porch was fine. We got the MESA deployed. The LMP egressed, We got the LRV deployed.

Schmitt:

Cosmic ray was deployed nominally.

LM description and plan - There wasn't much to say. I had the impression maybe the strut was stroked, but that was discussed and photographed.

Cernan:

The whole EVA, as we call it, "closein," went so close to our EVA closeins and eventually closeouts at the Cape that even I was amazed. It turned out that I got to the flag just about the time I always got to the flag, and you were ready. It just couldn't have been a better reproduction of the training activities at the Cape. I think the transcript and the television better describes and debriefs that portion of the EVAs than we could by just sitting here and saying everything went nominal by the checklist because that's essentially what happened.

Schmitt:

You've heard all about the ALSEPs and the LTG problem in real time. It's on the transcript. It was something in the dome removal strip. We pried it off with a hammer. The ALSEP traverse surprised me in that the package seemed heavier than I had expected.

Cernan:

You lost a block.

Schmitt:

I lost a block. It just came off the Velcro. I may have hit it with my leg. Really the dust was so deep and soft that the blocks were relatively ineffective, and I ended up putting a rock underneath one corner.

ALSEP deploy - In the LMP's point of view, it was slower than I expected it to be. But, everything got deployed. And, the geophones were faster as we expected.

Cernan:

The heat flow went very well. It just went bang, bang, bang. Really the only difficult thing in 1/6g is that fact that you cannot bend over very easily to pick things up. I used the drill for a brace almost every time I had to get the wrench off, as you saw and heard in the transcript and pictures.

Every time I found out that I reduced a work output and reduced the frustration when I set the drill in the right place, leaned on it, and took the wrench off. The only little thing I had some problems with was with the core and the bore; you have trouble in 1/6g with the gloves on to align the threads and make sure they get all the way seated on the following bore or core prior to starting to drill. I had a couple of problems with that, but eventually I got them all. I never rammed a thread down with the drill. I always had it all the way flush, which preserved the bores, of course. The whole operation just went well. You saw it; you heard it. We followed the procedures. The TGE could have been taken on and off very easily on the Rover. The only thing that we didn't anticipate about taking readings when it was off the Rover was again the same problem. You have to lean down to get to anything, and the TGE is very low. It's very difficult to get down there and make anything but a swipe at the buttons when it's on the surface. I'm very glad we did not have to take it off the surface for all the readings because it made it much more convenient. It was not a problem of taking it on and off. It was a problem of pushing the button once it was on the surface.

Schmitt:

The ALSEP photos were not taken in the normal way. I think that by the time we had finished our second and last traditional revisit of the ALSEP, a fairly good collection of photos had been obtained, both on specific request from the MOCR and also random photos I took while they were thinking.

Cernan:

The whole EVA-1, all the way through the station 1 activities and the SEP deploy, although there were modifications in it, followed the checklist. The best debriefing is the transcript and the TV. I don't think there's anything we can really add to that or any of the other particular stations that hasn't already been said in real time.

Schmitt:

Let me mention again, for the record, that the geophone module package did not constrain the geophone's lines very well. But the net result was a good triangular deployment of geophones, even though they are not anchored at the base of that triangle.

Cernan:

We go into ingress and the EVA closeout was again pretty much as planned without anything worth talking about other than what was heard and seen.

Schmitt:

 I don't know whether you've been told yet or not, but both the SRCs have excellent backings.

Cernan:

Good.

Schmitt:

Number 2 has the best they ever had.

Cernan:

I took pains to make sure that that thing was sealed. They did have excellent backings? That's good.

EVA post-activities - Again, the refurbishing of the PLSSs went as was written in the checklist, both with, oxygen and water. Apparently, we got them completely refurbished for every EVA because the total time we were able to accumulate on them in the second and third EVAs. I never had any problems throwing the CDR's PLSS back in the recharge station.

Schmitt:

Let me go back to the EVA closeout. The transfer of the gear up the ladder by hand was not difficult, but it was more difficult than I had expected. Getting the EVA pallet in ahead of me looked like it might be a problem, but I found that by pushing the hatch full open and putting the pallet off to the right, I still had plenty of room to move around. I put it to the right, next to your stowage area, and it was out of the way. I got in and then reached over and undid it. Taking the gear off the pallet took longer than it did in training. It was a more difficult job.

Cernan:

That whole transfer seem to go very well, the transfer into the cabin and transfer back out of the cabin.

Schmitt:

Tool management reminded me of that for some reason the left-hand pocket down low on the left leg was essentially not used. I couldn't get to it easily. I was able to get to the right pocket and I did stow odds and ends of samples in there occasionally, and once or twice, the hammer. In general, it was only the right-hand pocket that was useful to me. Tool management was as we had trained, with the exception that as the EVA's progressed, the spring-loaded latch that locks the scoop into a given position in the detent ceased to function very well.

Cernan:

EVA post activities - You got anything to add?

Schmitt:

We did that in parallel with other activities.

Cernan:

We approached that relatively casually but with the idea of getting to bed on time, and for the most part, I think we had a little fat in there. Where we didn't we still preserved the 8-hour sleep period because the next day was not necessarily critical, except the day of launch, on which we wanted to get up on time.

Performance comments, equipment - I cannot say enough for the PLSS operation. Cooling capability was there tight as a drum; communications were excellent; and the suit performed well.

Schmitt:

The only problem we both had was in the gloves. Just general fatigue and also continual pressure against the nail there bruised under the nails.

Cernan:

That pressure against the nail areas was not a pressure caused by short gloves for me. It was just because of use. You required so much dexterity during the ALSEP deploy that it was apparently a pressure that got you across the top of the hands or the top of the fingers, but it was not a fore and aft pressure for me.

Schmitt:

But you still got some bruises under your nail? I don't see my other way to get that but by pushing against the nail. There was no way to avoid it either.

10.2 Second EVA, South Massif

Cernan:

Here again, you can talk about the prep activities. We were obviously smarter. Some of the things you do in EVA-1 do not have to be done during EVA-2 because they're only done once in terms of stowage and what have you. We had some OJT on EVA-1, and EVA-2 just went right down the line. We got the cabin depressed, got out, and went to work. I cannot say anything about EVA-2 egress or equipment transfer or anything else.

Schmitt:

Yes. I don't want to waste time on the traverses because I plan to do that with the tapes.

Cernan:

I've talked about Rover mobility and capability and the requirements of the driver for continuous attention and that became very evident on EVA-2.

Schmitt:

Although I made reference to most of the little memory jogs we had in the Cuff Checklist, it turned out they were not specifically necessary to have them in the checklist since our continuous observation and discussion of the surface covered those things as a matter of course, if they were there. I think the most important thing that they did was to force us to review cuff checklists prelaunch to learn, train, and think about the kind of problems they were referenced to. In the actual operation, most of those discussions took place relatively automatically.

Cernan:

The CDR's navigation page used in traversing to each station was probably one of the most useful things I carried on my cuff checklist. It kept me very much aware of the general heading I had to go and general large features we were looking for, I just think it was extremely useful. Because of the terrain and the inability to travel on a straight line for very long periods of time, I primarily did not navigate on heading. I primarily navigated to a point. And so the particular points that were shown for jogs in the traverse, or for Rover samples, or charge deploys, or for stations were most valuable to me, because I navigated to a range and a bearing and didn't worry particularly about the exact heading. That seemed to work out very well. And that's why we never, on any of the three EVAs, followed our tracks back to anywhere. We crossed our tracks a couple of times but we never covered the same piece of real estate twice. Performance of all equipment after EVA-2 was excellent. Going into the EVA-3, the prep, again, was familiar.

10.3 Third EVA, North Massif

Schmitt:

Station 3 - We both did most of that station separately. Gene was working the double core as planned and I was doing sampling. I got a little inefficient at the start because I didn't have a bag to put samples in. Once I got a bag, it was a little hard to handle because I was on a side slope. But in the time that we spent there, I think it turned out that Gene got an excellent double core canned and I got on the order of 10 or 11 documented samples, both surface and trench samples at the edge of that crater. I would still have a hard time evaluating now whether we could have operated more efficiently together or separate in that particular case.

Cernan:

EVA-3 closeout was nominal. It was modified because the LMP had to go back to the ALSEP again. As far as I'm concerned, the recovery of the neutron flux, parking the Rover, turning off the SEP and going through all that worked very well. Here again, any modifications to those closeouts are really not bad at all because we used the checklist as a reference and not as a cookbook. We understood what had to be done and what had to be closed out so that we could accept modifications and also pick up each other's task. And we did that quite frequently on the closeouts. We could see what the other guy was doing, and picking up the other guy's task occasionally, when you had a free moment or an easier reach, was a very simple thing to do. That comes from having done this together many, many times.

Probably the most difficult job of all the closeouts was trying to dust the suits It's a difficult and awkward position. It's hard to make fast sweeping movements in a stiff suit. We did our best, and I think probably the time spent was well spent. But I think also it was a bit more time than we had anticipated. The real-time transcripts will show just how much time and effort was spent in dusting. Both of us found that our lower limbs and boots could probably be better dusted by jumping up and down on a ladder or clapping your feet together on a ladder, which, incidentally, the CDR had to do in every case because he was the last one in. His feet were always in the dust prior to getting on the ladder. But I think that worked out pretty well.

Schmitt:

Third EVA was pretty much operationally like the second. We worked on slopes on both EVAs. On the third we did have the Rover on the slope. That didn't seriously perturbate the operations. I intended to rake larger areas for samples than I had planned to, but that was mainly because we weren't getting very many samples per rake swipe in most places. I think the only place we got a large number of samples was at station 1. After that we were dealing with no more than 10 in raking over a very large area in any of the other rake samples. But that's clearly documented in the samples. I don't know how many LRV samples we actually took, but it wasn't a problem. And the sampler was used whenever I worked around the LM or went out to the ALSEP or anything. As a result, I picked up maybe a half a dozen more samples just because it gave me something to carry a sample in.

Cernan:

The only piece of hardware I remember that broke was the bag fastener on your camera.

Schmitt:

Somehow or another I strained that and I taped it on in the cabin between EVA-2 and EVA-3. That taping job, using the food-pack tape, worked very well. We had no further problems. The EVA-3 post comments are the same.

Equipment jettison went smoothly with no problems. You had the feeling that if you had an infinite amount of oxygen and water, you could have used those PLSSs indefinitely. Good systems.

Cernan:

In closing, as obvious and as always true in the past, the efforts put forth on the surface of the Moon, or any place else, are based upon a great deal of work by a lot of other people. In general, the most significant group of people that supported us in excellent fashion, and probably the best I've ever been associated with, is our team led by Dave Ballard. Those guys continually went out of their way to make sure that things were done right. I just can't say too much for the effort that they expended. They performed in a super professional manner. Without that team and the training, the debriefing that we've just gone over here for the last 2 days might be a lot different.

The success of Apollo 17 is due to a lot of people. In particular, the LM activities went so smooth. The LM stowage, in which there were a few changes right at the end, the interior cockpit stowage and the exterior descent stage stowage, was really in outstanding shape, and it was due in no small part to the efforts of Terry Neal. Terry's had a great deal of experience in the past on previous flights, and that experience really showed itself. was a tireless worker. He supported every activity without being asked to at the pad, and came back and told us what he had to support. He kept us informed. He made sure that people who were in charge and responsible for all the training gear had all the knowledge to keep it up to speed, based upon flight configuration of gear. He was concerned about the type of details and things that the crew is either too busy to handle or certainly would have let slip by. He's the guy that got the job done for us so that when we got up there, to unstow the gear and to put it to work, it was not only like we had planned it to be, but it was all there and it was properly and professionally done.

Schmitt:

Your statements are certainly echoed in my mind with respect to the entire team. Every time something needed to be done there was somebody there who had already done it, generally. It wasn't a question of asking. It was a question of doing, or of utilizing the results of the team's effort. Terry Neal certainly made the lunar surface stowage and equipment operation, both in flight and in training, outstanding. There is no other word for it. We had no difficulty at all in learning where the equipment was and how to use it in its storage locations.

I'd also like to congratulate the EVA operations group for their work in putting together three, very complex Cuff Checklists, and in keeping a general trend of training going that was just about at the right level. We reviewed the various EVAs in a reasonable sequence. And by the time we launched, I think we had enough of a feeling for what was in the cuff checklists that we really, as you said earlier, only used them in the review and that can't be to anybody's credit but the people who organize the training program.

Cernan:

And the entire support team - it wasn't a case of them keeping up with us getting ready for the flight, but a case of us keeping up with them. Because they were going to be ready for the flight and they made it a point of making sure that we were going to be ready also.

Schmitt:

I think it's also worth mentioning that we have nothing to give but praise for the ability of the suit technicians not only to keep our gear in working order and up to date with the changes that might be coming along, but also in training us on how to use the gear. That is perhaps not in their job description. No small part of our ability to get in and out of the suits, and understand what you can do and can't do with the suits, in terms of doffing and donning, goes to the four guys who were our suit technicians.

11. CSM Circumlunar Operations

Evans:

Operation of the spacecraft - The CSM solo operations are essentially nominal. One time on the back side of the Moon, after I'd done the zodiacal light, where you had to switch to CMC free during the pass to prevent any jett fires and then you switch back to auto, I missed the switch back to auto and proceeded on into the waste-water dump and urine dump. Unfortunately, I locked the spacecraft control switch and CMC free. The waste-water dump evidently puts in quite a torquing force or perturbates the spacecraft such that I was getting a master alarm with the gimbal lock light. As soon as I had the caution and warning, I checked back and found that it was getting close to gimbal lock. I switched to SCS, and it backed away from gimbal lock. Then I pushed back to auto and got back to P20 attitude.

Navigation, normal state vector updates - When the down range error got to about 30,000 feet, I let go and shifted up a state vector. The RQ model being used over in mission control to project the orbital decay didn't work quite right, so I ended up with the orbit not decaying down to the circular orbit prior to the plane-change burn. I ended up making the high adjust maneuver or trim burn to bring the orbit down to 63 by 63. The trim burn was performed about an hour before the plane-change burn. Trim burn was a 9-foot-per-second RCS burn.

LM acquisition - Nominal in all respects. The thing that is somewhat of a surprise to me, and I should know this, you get molded into a false sense of security by doing rendezvous in the CMS. You look through the telescope, and there's a big blob of light. The telescope is indicating where the LM is. In the real world you look in the telescope, and you can't see. It's very hard to see 150 miles away. As a matter of fact, the LM was at about 80 miles before I actually saw the flashing light in the telescope. As I went into darkness, I could see the flashing lights in the sextant. I did not get LM acquisition prior to going into darkness, and I did not have it in the first part of the rendezvous. I did not have the Sun in the sextant. There was no Sun in the telescope, and it was about 3 minutes prior to spacecraft sunset before I had the Sun in the sextant and in the telescope. I could not pick up the LM in either the sextant or the telescope. Once I had picked the LM up in the sextant, I had no problem from then on.

Update pad and alignments - No problem. We kept the P30 pad in R-11 where it was always available in case I needed it. I always realigned to different REFSMMAT. In translunar coast or transearth coast, I always switched to SCS minimum dead band and gyro torqued. As I picked stars on the dark side of the Moon, I would coarse align to the new REFSMMAT. It might be interesting to note that on PDI day prior to LM separation, there's a P52 scheduled about the same time the LM crew is getting suited up. I delayed the P52 until they were in the Challenger. By this time, the SEP attitude pointed the optics right down to the Moon. The PICAPAR didn't work, so I just started the spacecraft roll and kept recycling the 404 alarm until I finally was able to get it to work. After I got to P52, I maneuvered back to the LM sep attitude.

Lunar sounder boom deployed - We had a little test to extend and retract the booms. Extend worked okay. Retract and HF 1 never did get the gray. The antenna retracted to the extent that there was no problem for RCS or SPS burns. In trying to retract prior to plane change, we looked out the window and could see it start back in. The extensions on HF 2 - Number 1 always extended all right, but number 2 would go out for a little way and stall. We retracted it for 5 or 10 seconds and then switched it back to extend until it deployed fully. At any rate, with a little bit of work, we got the booms in and out.

Monitoring lunar activity - I did not attempt to monitor it but I could put on VHF and talk to them. I was usually operating during VOX during the solar periods, so I just left the VHF off. Prior to lift-off, we had MSFN relays activated that worked real fine.

Lunar sounder pad experiment - No problems. Everything worked fine.

SIM bay daily operations - On the mapping camera, the first extension took longer than anticipated, so it was elected to leave the camera extended throughout that day. It took about 4 minutes to retract when we retracted it. On one of the mapping camera oblique passes where we were starting at the spacecraft sunrise terminator, I went to operate and got the barber pole. The Malfunction Procedure is to go to standby, which we did. We left it in standby until we just about came up to AOS. At that time, the barber pole disappeared. Evidently it was caused by the mapping camera area being too cool. And as soon as I got the gray indication, I went to operate and had no problems the rest of the time.

Laser altimeter - It seemed to work fine. There were no anomalies.

Pan camera - There were no anomalies that I know of with the pan camera. There was some concern at one time if it was getting a little warm in there and also some concern as to whether the lens had really stowed.

UV spectrometer - As far as I know, we got outstanding data. The information that was passed up to me indicated that there isn't as much hydrogen in the atmosphere around the Moon as was originally thought.

IR scanning radiometer - It worked real fine. We're still getting good information, and we were getting good information on the way back. It was on most of the time.

The SIM bay photos - Lets see, that means photographs by the LM. It seemed to work all right. The Challenger was easily maneuvered around to the right viewing attitude. They got some good pictures. Sunlight was okay.

Dim light photography - The dim light photography was the zodiacal light and the solar corona. It was okay.

Terminator photos - Hopefully, those are going to come out. I used a lot of Nikon film for terminator photos. We should have a lot of 35 mm stuff that was not planned or not scheduled in the Flight Plan. We used the Nikon with a red filter and a blue filter and took three shots with the red filter and three different shots with the blue filter of the landing site area. We also used two different polarizing filters in one direction and then in the other direction. That information should be in the Flight Plan. In each case, the zodiacal light with the filters worked out real fine. The timing and the settings worked correctly. I've got it noted in the experiment checklist that I had the wrong setting for half a second. I ended up on the 1-second mode. I think that was in the polarizing part. In any event those pictures should be good. In sketching the zodiacal light as you come up to the spacecraft sunrise, I think we probably didn't get the longest streamers that are just half a second or quarter of a second prior to the Sun popping over the horizon. In each case of the zodiacal light passes, the sequence ended 7 to 10 seconds prior to spacecraft sunrise. I think we probably missed the longest streamers. I didn't really observe this phenomena until the last day of lunar orbit and didn't have the opportunity to take a hand-held target of that particular phenomena.

Solar corona - The sequence worked real fine, no problems.

Earthshine photography - We worked it differently than it is indicated in the experiment checklist. I used Aristoteles and Copernicus starting out with a 1 second and taking two 1-second exposures. As we rotated around about every 30 seconds, it ended up a little closer than I thought. We were passing up the target too fast because we'd never get every- thing. The timing sequence may not be correct. It may not be exactly 30 seconds between each one. We would cycle down the exposure setting to 1 second, 1/2 second, 1/4 second, 1/8 second, and 1/16 second on Aristoteles and Copernicus. We'd leave it on one-sixteenth of a second following Copernicus and switch over to window three and pick up Reiner Gamma and do the same type of sequence. Then we stopped on 1/8-second exposure and carried it out until the end of the film mag.

Orbital science photography - It worked according to the Flight Plan We would have the initial setting, and on the orbital monitor charts, we would have the inpoints and then pick out specific craters and have these noted on the chart as to change settings. I did notice that it is very easy to bump and change the camera settings as you bounce around in the spacecraft - trying to keep track of the camera pointing as you try to maintain your own equilibrium. A couple of times at the end of a particular sequence, I noted that it had changed from what I had started with. The orbital science photography was accomplished with no particular problems other than trying to maintain a constant camera setting. We had two magazines of what we call CM option or option-photography colored film. Those two magazines were completely filled up with just targets of opportunity.

Plane change 1- I previously mentioned the trim burn part of plane change 1. Plane change 1 was a little larger than anticipated because of nondecay of orbit, Plane change 1 is where I had 0.7 ft/sec and it seems to me like an X. I did not trim it because we were only trimming Y. There was also a plane change where I ended up with a different roll because the pan camera was looking right into the Sun. No real problem. If I were going to trim anything, I would trim Y and Z just to make sure I didn't perturbate the apogee and perigee orbit. To keep the pan camera out of the Sun, I went into P40 trim and utilized that roll angle. Communications were outstanding. Maneuvers done to support the lift-off presented no problem.

Rest and eat periods - I never got to sleep on time. It just took a great amount of time for one man to go through that Presleep Checklist - to go down and chlorinate the water, take the panel off, pull the return valve and clean the hoses - it just takes a lot of time to get it all done. But, there's no real problem.

TPI backup - My TPI solution agreed quite well with the Challenger, no problem.

Midcourse backups - I ran into a bit of a problem. I ended up with 5 ft/sec as a Z-value, and the LM ended up with 1 ft/sec, I don't understand why there's that much difference between the two midcourse solutions. Of course, the Challenger made all the burns during rendezvous and braking, so I didn't have any problems there.

Prep for docking - There is no time to get all the cameras and things squared away prior to going into rendezvous, so I strapped the TV monitor to the XX strut by the CDR's couch and utilized it during the rendezvous and braking phase or final phase of the burn. I used a P79 to point the X-axis out the LM. And once it got close, I essentially pointed the spacecraft such that the LM was always in the center of the TV field of view while coming in for docking.

12. Lift-Off, Rendezvous and Docking

Cernan:

LM powerup and launch preparation went well. We did not do the P22. Everything else just went as advertised on the LM. She powered up beautifully. The lift-off was normal. Obviously, we got all our pyros, and we lost no changeover, Parker valves, or anything. Very soon after lift-off, we had apparent loss of comm, a lot of noise in the S-band. It turned out that we were down-linking, but there was something wrong with the up-link. So the CDR watched most of the guidance and would call out, in the blind, altitudes and GOs and what have you as we pitched over and pressed on up. For about the first 2 or 3 minutes, the lunar module pilot had to concern himself with trying to get comm back.

Schmitt:

Apparently , Goldstone dropped the up-link. When they were getting it back, I was switching omnis, and for a while there, it was just completely out of phase. They had a continuous down-link on us.

Cernan:

It was a very inopportune time, I might say, because it happened just right after ignition. I think that's something, though, that the INCOs are going to be able to clarify. We certainly can't give you the details. It's just that there was essentially no comm on all the antennas.

We flew into a trajectory that appeared to be nominal. The AGS showed us slightly out of plane. As a result, our tweak at 9 ft/sec was minus 4, minus 9, and plus 1. We burned out X, Z, Y, in that order.

Schmitt:

It was about 7 ft/sec, a little over 7 ft/sec.

Cernan:

It looked like we might have had a g-sensitive drift in our Y-accelerometer in the PGNCS. The tweak was excellent because our rendezvous was just as nominal a rendezvous and as nominal a trajectory profile as I've ever been involved with. The drift in accelerometer did not bother us anywhere else in the tracking or in the rendezvous at all.

Rendezvous navigation followed the checklist; we got right off the form very well. We got all the updates into the AGS. The residuals in the TPI burn were greater than what I had expected. We did not record them because I wanted to get them nulled out just as soon as possible. I don't know the tenths, but they were minus 7 in X, and they were 14 and 4, and I'm not sure whether they were plus or minus in Y and Z. They were large, larger than I'd expected. They were minus 7 and 4-point something and a 4-point something. We reduced those to less than 0.2 ft/sec. From then on, we continued to plot right through the midcourses right up the pike on a nominal trajectory.

Schmitt:

The comm was good. I have a couple of comments about the AGS. Early after insertion, I always checked the accelerometer. They looked real good. About 5 or 10 minutes later (I can't remember exactly) , I looked and I'd accumulated maybe a foot and a half per second in X. I did a gyro cal, and after that, there was no significant accumulation in X. It went very well. I did that without talking to the ground, but I felt I had an understanding with them on that.

On the TPI solution, the AGS was essentially within 2 or 3 ft/sec, a good TPI solution after six marks. The insertion solution was not very good. It was off by a number of feet per second in X and even more in Z. This was the first one of 17 marks. The PGNCS recycle and PGNCS final were very close, within a couple of feet per second.

Cernan:

Midcourse Solutions - The first midcourse solution agreed effectively all systems, except AGS out of plane was a little bit high. The decision was made to burn the onboard PGNCS solution out of the LM, which was minus 1.2, plus 0.4, and plus 0.3. We continued to track right up the pike. Midcourse 2 came up, and we again prepared all the solutions. The AGS out of plane was still a little bit high and actually in the opposite direction from the PGNCS. We had a slight variation in the CSM solution in Z. I don't know why. It came up with plus 5.4 ft/sec in Z. So we really didn't get a very good correlation between the CSM and the LM on the second midcourse. But the PGNCS was still performing, the radar was still performing, and based upon our trajectory plot and based upon our following a nominal inertial line of sight rate, we decided to burn the onboard PGNCS solution in the LM. It was minus 0.4, minus 0.7, and minus 1.6.

From there on out, we just continued to follow the inertial line of sight angles. There was very little tweaking in either Y or Z. We just sort of floated right through the braking gates. At 1 mile, I think we took about 6 or 7 ft/sec off to hit 30. We met all the gates as prescribed and just came moving very slowly into the final stationkeeping.

We went into a formation flight around the CSM. We got a good inspection of the spacecraft and the SIM bay, the report of which is in the transcript. Everything looked good to us The command module maneuvered to the docking attitude. The LM just took its docking attitude, gave stationkeeping control to the command module, did pitch and yaw maneuvers, and stood by for docking.

Evans:

One of the noticeable differences between this docking and the docking with the S-IVB is the fact that the ascent stage did dance a lot more than the S-IVB did. The S-IVB is steady as a rock. The LM dead band would change attitude, and you'd try to follow it. On the first attempt, I must have had less than 0.1 ft/sec, just barely closing. I was just taking it nice and easy. We made contact and did not get capture. As soon as we didn't get capture, it was obvious we were closing too slowly. We backed off a couple or 3 feet, renulled the rates, initiated the closing rates, and got capture. As soon as we got capture, both vehicles went to CMC FREE I looked out, and I had some rates in the Old and I'm sure that the LM had rates also. He must have had.

Cernan:

We went FREE Upon capture, the LM went FREE The CSM trying to null the rates ended up perturbating the LM and giving us rates.

Evans:

We finally gave up on that mode and had the LM go to ATTITUDE HOLD. Once you get ATTITUDE HOLD, the CSM could null the rates. We got it lined up and attempted the hard docking. There was no problem. The probe retract came back. This time, it didn't sound like it was as much of a ripple fire. It was more of a "phhtt." It was a quicker hard dock than it was the previous time.

Cernan:

I want to say something about the visual sighting during rendezvous. From the LM, I was able to see the command module when it was sunlit at somewhere around 100 miles. I definitely defined that that was the command module. After the command module went into darkness, I could not pick up his tracking lights until we were well within about 40 miles. I could not pick up the docking light, the rendezvous light, of the command module until we were well within 40 miles. It was initially a very dim, faint flash. I was able to verify on board that the LM tracking light was working. I finally figured out how; it was reflecting off the underside of the EVA handrail on the left forward side of the LM. I could see the LM tracking light flashing. There were some particles we took with us that stayed with the spacecraft, and you could see the sequential flash off the particles as the result of our LM tracking light.

Schmitt:

Regarding the television and photography from the LM, we'll just have to wait and see how it turned out. I took a lot of footage. We put it on not only the ascent mag, but we put it on the other mag. That includes the SIMbay. Right or wrong, we did have a Hasselblad on board, so we have a lot of Hasselblad photography.

13. Lunar Module Jettison Through TEI

Cernan:

Postdocking Check and Pressurization - The general comment I want to make about the postdocking operations is that both pilots in the LM took their helmets off to keep the dust off, primarily. The commander took off his gloves almost immediately after insertion, and flew the entire rendezvous that way. Jack took his off some time later.

Schmitt:

I kept mine on for some time. I can't remember exactly when I took them off. I did most of my preinsertion work with the gloves on, because I didn't want to take the time. I wanted to get that initial AGS solution. I could get that fairly rapidly with the gloves. I didn't take the gloves off until maybe 10 or 15 minutes after insertion. I kept the helmet on all the way through most of the transfer, just to avoid breathing the dust. I had the sinus irritation on the surface.

Cernan:

The commander kept his helmet on throughout the rendezvous and docking. I took my gloves off after insertion and left them off. As soon as we were hard docked, the commander took off his helmet. As I look back at that, because of the dust debris in the LM spacecraft, I'm sorry I did. I could have left the helmet on, and I would have had a lot less eye and mouth type of irritation. You knew you were in a very heavily infiltrated atmosphere in the LM because of the lunar dust. I don't know how much lunar dust previous flights had, but I think we saved a great deal of grief by sweeping all the dust we could find on the floor into the holes and putting our tape covers over those holes. I think that had to help a great deal. There was an awful lot of dust on the floor that we didn't see.

The commander had his helmet and gloves off all throughout the entire transfer. We handled the transfer the way we'd planned. The LM pilot did most of the preparation of the gear in the LM, and the commander stayed in the tunnel and passed things on. The inventory was going on in the command module side and on the LM side, both. We vacuumed each other's suits the best we could and everything else that got supposedly transferred, unbagged, or uncovered.

Schmitt:

In spite of the CMP's comments to the contrary, I think we got things remarkably clean. There wasn't an awful lot of dirt in the command module coming back.

Evans:

That's true.

Schmitt:

In contrast, he may have thought it was dirty, but I was surprised we were able to keep the level of contamination in the command module down.

Cernan:

After I took my helmet off, I could go halfway through the tunnel and stick my head up in the command module, and it was a totally refreshed, unpolluted atmosphere up there. It never did get polluted.

Schmitt:

I think having that vacuum cleaner running in the LM had a lot to do with keeping the flow in the other direction, filtering out the air.

Evans:

We never did vacuum in the command module because it just wasn't necessary.

Schmitt:

The suits were noticeably cleaned by the vacuum cleaner. You could tell you were pulling stuff off them, although they were still dirty. Every subsequent time we handled them, we got our hands dirty. I think most of the free dust was taken care of.

Cernan:

We effectively stayed on the transfer list. I say effectively, throughout the transfer. However, some things got transferred out of order and temporarily stowed in the command module. We effectively used the transfer list not as a cookbook recipe type of thing, but as an inventory list. We inventoried it several times from both ends and were satisfied we had everything transferred. We then pressed on with the LM closeout.

The LM closeout went nominal. We got back into the command module, and the LMP closed out the LM. For convenience, the commander went back and closed out the LM hatch and put in the command module hatch. Because of the slow tunnel vent, or the long duration of tunnel vent, the commander stayed in the tunnel, the LMP in his seat, and the CMP in the left seat. We suited up and prepared for our integrity check. As soon as the LM tunnel vent was complete and we were satisfied with the integrity of the hatch, we went into the suit integrity check.

Evans:

I bet it must take at least three or four times longer than the simulator did for the tunnel vent.

Cernan:

I think that's going to be applicable to Skylab. They're going to have to vent before they undock, I think.

The tunnel closeout was easy. We had no drogue and probe which were stored in the LM for LM jett. We just followed the checklist, and it all seemed to happen just as advertised.

Evans:

We got a little bit intrigued with the LM jettison. It was great. It just sailed out there nice and pretty, and we got a lot of good pictures of it. We should have been maneuvering. We ended up getting into P41 after jettison for sep burn, a little bit late. That was no problem either, because we just trimmed the residuals for P41 and got a good sep burn.

Cernan:

Cleaning control in the command module was excellent, considering all the dust and dirt that just seemed to adhere to everything in the 1M. When we got back in the command module, with the exception of the suits, and LMP and CDR, everything was clean. Everything was clean because everything was bagged before we brought it over - bagged and zipped. We never did open anything once we got it zipped up. So the command module stayed exceptionally clean throughout the remainder of the flight.

Schmitt:

In the bagging of the decontamination bags, I made a special effort, after requests prelaunch, to pull those zippers as tight as I could. They should be pretty tight.

Evans:

High gain always worked good; omnis and S-band were good. Photography went as advertised. We had lots of targets of opportunity. SIM bay operations have been mentioned before.

TEI updates, normal. Sextant star checks were good for TEI.

Cernan:

Every one all through the flight was good, which made me feel real good. I made sure I got it on those last few. I wasn't going to change any mode of operation. I made sure I got it on TEI. Just to make you guys feel at home. I figured you'd think I didn't do it right, if I didn't get the master alarm.

Schmitt:

The TEI, at 1/2g, or whatever we were pulling there, seemed like more than that.

Evans:

It sure did; it seemed like it was really pushing you back in the seat.

Schmitt:

Ron and I both started out holding our heads up and eventually relaxed them back on the couch.

Cernan:

I guess we must have had the spacecraft pretty well stowed, or tied down. I briefed the CMP and LMP, and, as I recall, those kind of burns back on Apollo 10, lots of things start moving through the spacecraft and find their way to the aft end of the spacecraft because of the g-load. Much to my surprise, all we had was an initial thud as we moved away from the station, and we didn't have any gear flying through the spacecraft.

Schmitt:

I found a white tag, wetwipe.

Cernan:

Other than maybe one or two of those things, in looking back, I would have expected more gear to come from somewhere, but we prepared for those burns pretty well.

Evans:

That reminds me of all this water condensing on the ECU unit, the pipes, and what have you. When we put our suits on for the EVA the next day, your suits were noticeably wet. When I pulled the PGA bag up, it was damp down underneath the PGA bag. As a normal procedure, we should have, either after the burn, probably before the burn, made sure we wiped up the water in the LEB.

Cernan:

Our suits were damp when we put them on, but I could not find any real water down there.

Evans:

There's always water down there in the ECS. I just assumed that's where all of it came from. There's not a puddle of water. Like I said, it's just damp.

Cernan:

It's almost as if it was colder down in the LEB, and water was condensing all over the suits. It wasn't as if they were in a puddle.

Evans:

The simulator is set up such that in roll dead band, it goes over to one side of roll dead band and just kind of stays there. During the TEI burn, it was bouncing back and forth from one side of the dead band clear over to the other side of the dead band. When it's bouncing back and forth, the roll rate is up around, oh, 0.4" per second, arcing back and forth across the roll dead band.

I'd like to mention chlorination at this point.

Cernan:

Without fail, almost every chlorination leaked. Sometimes large quantities of water, other times just small quantities of water.

Evans:

Water or chlorine?

Cernan:

A combination. Where it leaked appeared to be around the bag. It was the cylindrical chlorine dispenser that was continually wet. It was not where the dispenser fit into the needle or where the needle adaptor fit into the spacecraft. It was within the chlorine dispenser itself. Chlorination was a case of always cleaning your hands with chlorine because you always had it available down there within that dispenser. In some cases, you had a larger quantity of water that had to be wiped up with a tissue. That plagued us throughout the whole mission. It turned out not to be a serious problem because we learned how to handle it. That was one system anomaly that hadn't really been brought up.

Evans:

In two cases, I'm almost positive, it did not puncture the ampule. The reason I believe that's correct is that, when you started to crank the outside of the cassette down to push the chlorine into the water system - it was very hard to turn. If you tried to force it, you could force it on down there, and I'm sure that's a good way to break an ampule on the thing. In two cases, we took the bayonet fitting loose again and put it back on there, and in both cases, then you'd start to squeeze the chlorine out of the ampule into the system, and it would turn easier.

Cernan:

We got the chlorination done. We didn't miss any injections of chlorine, and we didn't miss any of the buffer samples. I guess we got the job done; it was just a little bit messy. The chlorine was evident because the CDR eventually peeled all the outer skin off his right hand. I'm convinced it was due to the chlorine, and had nothing to do with the EVA.

14. Transearth Coast

Cernan:

Passive thermal control was what I would call unusual attitude because of the UV/IR requirements. These unusual attitudes did two things. They required us to remaneuver the spacecraft several times and enter and exit PTC several, several times, which, in itself was not a problem, just additional coordination. Coincidentally, most of these particular PTC attitudes were within 30°, certainly 45°, of gimbal lock most of the time. We were looking at the red apple a good portion of the trip home.

Some of those attitudes where you actually were in attitude or PTC in these relatively unusual positions, change the equilibrium heat load on the spacecraft. RCS quad temperatures were all right, but you could see it in helium package temperatures and, most noticeably, you could see it on the change in condensation from the tall hatch to the forward hatch. The tall hatch eventually, for most of the way home, ended up to be very dry. The second day out on the way home, the center hatch got soaking wet to (the) point that we even took a dry rag and wiped off some of the latch components and some of the gearbox components, externally. Not that it did much good, but there was just that much water on there. I think this is all due to the PTC attitudes required for the SIM bay experiments on the way home.

Schmitt:

It was cold in the spacecraft, too.

Cernan:

Oh, yes, it was cold in the spacecraft.

Schmitt:

Not as cold as the commander thought it was.

Cernan:

Cold enough to warm it up, on the commander's orders.

Schmitt:

We mentioned we warmed it up on the ground's suggestion of an extra inverter and going to MANUAL on the temp gain. I think we discussed that.

Cernan:

Ron, all your REFSMMAT changes, your platform torquings , all those went very well, I thought.

Evans:

They were great, went really well.

Cernan:

All the way back home, it was just changing attitudes, changing attitudes, changing attitudes, with the exception of the EVA day, which we'll cover here shortly.

Evans:

CSM EVA - On EVA prep, we really didn't have any problem. We didn't know of any at that point. The EVA prep went right down the line, essentially. It was well laid out within the experiments checklist. We checked things off as we went, and stayed pretty much on the timeline. We started about a half hour early, and finished a half hour early.

Cernan:

We were a half hour early throughout the whole thing, and we lost that half hour in opening the hatch. We turned out to be exactly on time. Where we lost that half hour was on a comm carrier change.

Post-EVA - One thing that helped us immensely on what ended up to be, I think, a very fine entry stowage was that we backed off after EVA and took a good long look at the long-range stowage as well as the post-EVA stowage. We really started housecleaning, cleaning up the cabin, and effectively stowing some of the articles that were not going to be used any further in the mission for entry at that time. Our entry stowage really started with the EVA timeframe period, and I think that really helped us out in the long run.

The only change to the prechecklist and postchecklist was the order in which we doffed and donned suits. It was very evident there were certain convenient ways, because of the way the suits were stowed and the way that people fit into the checklist, that when we donned the suits. The commander was first, then the LMP, and the CMP donned last. It worked out very fine. The CMP had less work to do in his suit, which also aided him in the long run.

In doffing, the LMP was first, then the CDR and then, the CMP. That wasn't exactly the way it was called for, but that's the way it worked out. We stowed our suits in the L-shaped bag prior to putting the center couch back in. This was another good decision, I believe, in helping us get the suits stowed back in that L-shaped bag.

Evans:

Cabin depress - No problems. Normal depress.

Hatch opening - Even though the cabin was completely depressed, we were reading zero pressure. As soon as I opened the hatch, there was enough residual pressure, or something, inside the spacecraft that it actually tended to pull the hatch out of my hand.

Cernan:

Because your suit is bleeding into the cabin all the time, so you never truly get zero.

Evans:

That's right, you never truly get zero. The dump valve was still open, and if I had not been hanging onto the hatch, it would have blown it all the way open.

Cernan:

That's not unexpected because it's exactly what we had on the lunar surface. We completely dumped the LM. I'd still have to break that hatch loose and hold it open about 6 or 8 inches until things just vented. Then, I could let go of the hatch and open it all the way. If I didn't it would slam back, closed. It was basically the same thing. You have to open that door and really let things get down to zero.

Evans:

When I opened the hatch, all of the little ice crystals started flowing out. A pen went floating by, and something else went floating by - wasn't quite sure what it was. There's all kinds of little particles and pieces that start coming out through the hatch.

Cernan:

I looked specifically for the scissors. I didn't see any scissors go out that hatch. I hate to say it. Ron, I'd like to say they went out the hatch, but I sure didn't see them go.

Schmitt:

Sure you didn't see them go?

Evans:

I caught the one thing that started to go by me, and I put it in your pocket. Once all particles and junk were out of the way we pushed the hatch open. We disconnected the counter-balance with the tool E. So, that we locked the hatch in the open position, so I just shoved it open, it went beyond the center position and locked in the open position with no problem.

Egress - I had a tendency to float up against the MDC. I had to cautiously duck to get my face as close as I could to the bottom of the hatch in order to get the OPS past the MDC and get on out. TV and DAC installation worked fine. I could hang on with the right hand on the hatch, the great big D-handle on the hatch, with the TV pole in my left hand. Worked out real fine. Just stick it in there and line it up; make sure it was locked in, then climbed on up the pole to turn the TV on. I turned the back on. You couldn't see the light on the thing, but you could feel the camera running once you turned it on. You could touch it and you could feel it vibrate a little bit.

The lunar sounder cassette retrieval should be on the air-to-ground tapes. Most of it was no problem.

The pan camera cassettes were next. No problem on the pan camera cassettes. It's obviously a bigger mass, and it's quite apparent when you try to move that big mass around. It is heavier and it weighs more than the other things. It's easy to move, but it is it takes a little effort to get it started. You know that if you ever get it started in one direction and it's going to keep on going and you have to stop it. I just tried to keep it under control. Mapping camera cassette had the same problem I had in the SIM bay c²f². That was getting the thermal cover off. It stuck underneath the mapping camera laser altimeter door. I gave it a big jerk and it came off.

SIM bay inspection - That's all covered in the air-to-ground tapes. TV/DAC removal again was real simple. You just had to squeeze the lever and TV came out. It was easy to hang on to with one hand and maneuver the TV around and point it toward the Moon. I didn't have to worry about shining it into the Sun. I tried to again hang on with one hand and point the TV around toward the Earth. The Earth was maybe 15° away from the Sun. I tried to be a little more accurate. When I did that I really lost control of try body position. I was trying to maneuver the camera. You need both hands to maintain your body control.

Comm during EVA was loud and clear for me throughout the EVA. There was a lot of background noise; I'm sure it was coming over the VOX circuit.

Cernan:

It didn't appear to Ire that anyone on the ground had trouble reading you.

Schmitt:

One thing we did because it was bothering us I turned the VOX sensitivity down about two notches. That really improved the comm performance.

Evans:

I don't know if it made any difference or not, but I got the impression that it did help.

Cernan:

Comm into the cabin was excellent. I never had any trouble understanding with that hissing in the background.

Evans:

Ingress - It seemed to me it was easier than egress. For some reason, hatch closing was harder than I'd anticipated. Maybe this is the same reason in that I must have been exhausting into the cabin all the time. That hatch would come closed to within about an inch of closing on the outer edge. Then it took an effort to pull the hatch closed so you could activate the latching handle so that you could get the latches over center. Of course, once you got the latches over center, it was real easy, a couple more cranks on the hatch for closing.

Repress was normal.

Schmitt:

All I did was work in the hatch area. I want to emphasize what everybody's always said that you do your best work when everything's going easy. Move yourself in small increments to where you want to go. You can turn and dip and raise yourself out. I think it's also useful for any hatch or port operation to have somebody available to push you out on your tether towards where you want to go. It just eases the operation. With the struts and everything available there, there was never any feeling there that I could not have a way to control my body position. Sometimes it took a few seconds to get it where I wanted.

The one thing, invariably, every time I went back inside I had the 90° disorientation for a few seconds until I got the perspective of the cabin again. I'd say okay, that's right. Then I would go back outside and come back in, and once again it seemed that cabin had rotated 90° to my perspective. It's just something that's no problem, it's just a change of perspective. For some reason, I experienced it several times. I guess the biggest problem working in that angle for me, attitude, was I had the Sun full face.

Evans:

You had the Sun in your eyes most of the time.

Schmitt:

It made it hard to look in detail to see what you're doing. You were clear image; you were there. I could see every major operation, but I could not see specific details.

Evans:

I had no awareness whatsoever that I had an umbilical on my back. I never got the feeling that the umbilical was restricting my movements. I didn't even know that it was there, Did you observe at any time, did the umbilical ever get tangled around?

Schmitt:

No, the umbilical was easy to tend. There may have been one. I had a vague impression that I asked you to hold up, or maybe I did not say anything, I just moved you away from a handhold or something. The umbilical didn't seem to slink around. You seemed to have everything you needed on it.

Evans:

I did not even know it was there. Being tied to the umbilical does not restrict your movement or give you a feeling that it is restricting your movement at all.

Transearth - I did not see a light flash.

Schmitt:

That evening I did see them again falling asleep.

Evans:

I did, too.

Schmitt:

So then, it was just that period during the actual experiment for some reason they were not visible.

Evans:

We never really utilized the waste stowage vent to get rid of any odors out of that waste stowage compartment. It was always a crime if you were in that area, if you got real close to it.

Schmitt:

The cabin generally turned over the atmosphere in pretty good style. It got saturated sometimes with gas and it took a few minutes to clear. The cabin did a good job.

Cernan:

Flight Plan updates were super. The Flight Plan was excellent. Changes were held to a minimum, and we really did not change any part of the entire flight except a few dates, times, and attitudes.

Entry preparations began after EVA and continued all through the next day. We had very little final stowage to do on the final entry morning, just those things we had to leave unstowed until we got out of our sleep restraints. Basically, we just had to tie the big bags dawn. Final entry preparations went by the checklist. If anything, we stayed about 5 minutes ahead throughout the entire checklist, including separation and activation of the command module RCS and .05g, which came on time. Communications I thought were very good through this time. I understand the ground heard everything we said right through blackout. As soon as we came out, they still had ARIA, and they could still read us. We could have read them, but they never transmitted anything.

15. Entry

Evans:

Prior to midcourse 7, we did a null bias check and also an EMS Delta-V test. The Delta-V test had been going at about minus 22.2 or 22.1 at the end of the 10 seconds. Then prior to midcourse 7, we ended up with a minus 27. We'll have to check the air-to-ground tapes, but it still was within limits. We'll check the air-to-ground on the actual values of this, but it failed the null bias check by a considerable amount. Since it did that, I went through an extra EMS entry check. It passed that EMS entry check. I can't say for sure whether the .05g light was on during test 1 or not. It was on during the second EMS check. As a result of that, it was determined by the ground that the accelerometer in the EMS was probably putting out a couple of extra pulses. It was decided to change the entry checklist so that we would not put the EMS to normal until .05g time. This is what we did. The .05g light came on, and the EMS functioned correctly throughout the entry. Entry parameters are on the air-to-ground tapes and also on the frames.

The RCS sounds were a l