NASA-UAP-D016 Preliminary-Gemini-4-Crew-Debriefing Part1 1965

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Authority:
DECLASSIFIED
NW 91526
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Group 4:
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CLASSIF!CAT:ON CHANGE
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By authority of--~4,...L.11.1-...___.~~L--L-....t.-e=---1
hanged by U~1:i:.~1 LDate
1973
42,
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PRELIMINARY
GT-4 FLIGHT CREW DEBRIEFING TRANSCRIPI'
PART I
Prepared By
Spacecraft Operat ions Branch
Flight Crew Support Division
June 16, 1965
This material contains information affecting the
national defense of the United States within the
meaning of the Espionage Laws , Title 18.
U. S. C
Section 793 and 794 , the transmission or revel a­
tion of which in any manner to an unaut horized
person is prohi bi ted by law.
Downgrade at 3 year intervals
Declassified after 12 years
NOTICE: This document may be exempt from
public disclosure under the Freedom of lnfor•
rnation Act (5 U.S.C. 552). Requests for Its ra•
lec1~e to persons outside the U. S. Government
should be handled under the provisions of
NASA Polley Cir-ecti11e 1382.2,
I

(no extractable text)

COI\JFIDENTIAt
PREFACE
This preliminary transcript was made from voice tape recordings
of the GT-4 flight crew debriefing conducted aboard the recovery ship,
the USS Wasp, on June 9, 1965.
Although all the material contained in this transcript has been
edited, the urgent need for the preliminary transcript by mission
analysis personnel precluded a thorough editorial review prior to its
publication. Errors in this transcript will be corrected as soon as
possible and an official transcript will be published at a later date.
This document contains a transcript of the first part of the
debriefing, during which the crew described the mission generally
from an operational viewpoint .
A preliminary transcript of the re­
mainder of the debriefing will be published by June 23, 1965. It
will cover systems operations, operational checks, visual sightings,
experiments , pre-mission planning, mission control, and training.

(no extractable text)

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Paragraph
Page Number
1.0
COUNTDOWN
1 . 1 Crew Insertion. ... ................... . . .
.. . 1
1. 2
Cornmlll1ications . . . . . ............... .. ... .
.. .. 2
1. 3 Crew Participation and Countdown....
..............-..6
1.4 Comfor t . ....................... .
.7
1. 5 Environmental Control System .................... ' ..... . ,9
1.6 Sounds ...... .
.... 11
1. 7 Vibrations .. .
. ... 13
1. 8
Visual .. . ....... .. .
. ... 13
1.9 Crew Station Controls and Displays
.1 5
2.0
POWERED FLIGHT
2. 1 Lift- Off Cues
....................... 17
2.2 Roll Program
2.3 Pitch Program ... .
..... 19
2.4 Aerodynamics .... .
20
•
•
M
•
•
2. 5 Environmental Control System
. .... "" ............... 20
2.6 Maximum g ....... .
....... 21
2. 7 Windshear ...... . .
. ...... 21
2.8
DCS Update
........................
22
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
M. •
2.9 Engine 1 Operation .....
. 22
2. 10 Engine 2 Status .. .
.23
2.11 Accel eration g's .. .
. ........ 23
2. 12 BECO ........ . ...... .
. ........ 24
2. 13 Staging . . . ...... .
.. .................... 25
2. 14 Engine 2 Ignition
. .. 25
2. 15 RGS Initiate .... .
... 26
2. 16 GO/NO GO . ............. .
.................
. .. 28
2.17 Systems Status ........ .
' ....
. ..... 28
2. 18 Acceleration ................... .
. .. .. 31
2.19 SECO. ....... .
......................
. .... 31
2. 20 Steering ....................................... . . .. .... 32
3.0
INSERTION
3.1 Post-S.EDO
•... 34
3.2 SECO + 20 Seconds
................ .. 35
3.3 Insertion Activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
ORBITAL FLIGHT
4. 1 Station- Keeping ....... .... .. ......... .
.......... ... 50
4.2 Extravehicular Activities ............ .
. ......... - ..87

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Ot her Orbital Operations
..... ~86
Preretro Preparations ...
. ........
..... 250
5.0
6.0
1.0
REI'ROFIRE
5.1
5. 2
5. 3
5.4
5.5
5. 6
5. 7
5.8
5.9
T - 36 Events ... .
~ - 22 Events .. .
:5:i- 13 Events
:5:i- 12 Event s ... .
!R-5 Events .. . ........ .
~R: 1 ~eennttss • ••• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
iir.: 0 .c, v
••••••••••••••••••••
Ret r opack Jettison ........... .
Communicat i ons ... . ........... .
REENTRY
6. 1
Reentry Parameter Update
6.2
400 K .................. .
6.3
0. 4 g ................ .
6.4
Acceleration Profile
6. 5
Spacecraft Control ........ .
6.6
100 000 Feet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ....... .
6.7
50 000 Feet ............. .
6.8
Main Chute Deployment . .
6.9
CommUJ1ications . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..
6.10 Singl e-Point Rel ease ....
6. 11 Pos tmain Checkli st Items
LANDI NG AND REDOVERY
7.1
7. 2
7.3
7.4
7. 5
7.6
7. 7
7.8
7.9
7. 10
7. 11
Impact ...... .
Checklists
Communi cations ...
. . ............ 259
. ... 260
... 260
.. 261
. ... 265
.... 270
.... 273
. ... 280
.••• 281
.•••• 282
. .... 282
. . .. 284
..... 290
.... 296
...... 296
.. •.. 299
. ...... 302
. .... 303
. ........... . .... 305
......... ·•....... 306
... 310
.. 313
... 314
Systems Configuration
..................... 316
Spacecraft Status ...... . .... .
. ............ 320
Post-Landing Activiti es ..... .
. ............... 325
C·omfort ............... .
. .. . .. .... ... 325
Recovery For ce Personnel
.. 326
Egress ......... . .. .
. . 327
Survival Gear ..... .
...• 328
Crew Pi ckup ......... .
. ....... 328

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1.1 Crew Insertion
White
McDivitt
White
CO ►~FIDE►~TIAb.
1.0 COUNTDOWN
The only problem during insertion was that I
fogged up again in my suit before we got the fans
on.
I think I'm just going to always fog up in
that suit of mine.
We turned the fans on quick,
but with the visors closed it doesn't go out.
We did have a problem with crew insertion on the
Wet Mock and I think we had that probably pretty
well taken care of.
They put us on the suit
loops and didn't turn the fans on. Normally you
wait for a clearance from the 1:t>acecraft Test
Conductor before you throw any switches. Well,
after we almost "died" of carbon dioxide poison­
ing during this +,est~ we got this matter
clarified.
As soon as we got in the spacecraft
and one of us was on the suit loop, we would go
ahead and cut the switches on to put us on two
fans.
We did this during insertion in the Wet
Mock. It really went well.
We really went for a long time in Wet Mock.
was beginning to wonder if I was going to have to
open my visor.
I was really uncomfortable.
COt74 FIDEt~TIAsb­
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1. 2 Communications
White
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But everything worked out okay on this one.
Yes.
The timing was excellent , I thought.
I didn't
think we had any probl em at all .
No.
I don ' t believe they missed a stroke on the
insertion.
I think the communications were pretty well
worked out, Jim?
Right.
One thing, the last three minutes or four
minutes, we got a little confused about who was
talking to who .
I was getting the Spacecraft
Test CJnductor, the Booster Test CJnductor and
the CAP COM at the same time.
We got a split count , too, on lif't--off.
The first three or four minutes I was hearing the
B)oster Tast C?nductor.
I heard what was going
on on his loop , and I was listening to him get
checks in f r om all of the guys .
I really wasn ' t
getting a clue as to what was going on.
I was
supposed to be getting the booster clues from the
test conductor.
I was supposed to find out when
the engines were going to gimbal and when they
-€9·NFl9E~TIA;t

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COl>J~IDENIIA~
3
were going to open the prevalves and stuff.
I
wasn't getting it from him.
We were getting a
lot of other information that made a lot of sense
to the Booster Test C:>nductor, but not an awful
lot to us .
There were cal l - outs l ikeVSequence
05003 complete." Well, this just didn' t mean any­
thing to us .
On top of this we had the Spacecraft
~est Conductor calling out the times , and super­
imposed on all of this was Al Shephard, the Cape
CAP COM, calling out events that he was reading
off that went on at certain specified times .
He
called out','Stage 1 prevalvesVand we could hear the
fuel gushing downstairs and the whole booster
rumbling.
He called out','Stage 2 prevalves','and
you could hear the same thing all over again.
I
thought t hat was a lot more meaningful than the
test conductor comments.
I think that was wrong, the way they were doing it .
I think we weren't supposed to be on any loop
except CAP COM at that time.
Well, I think what happened was that we got this
thing over-coordinated.
Al was going to give us
all this information, but then as a result of
GT-3, (Gus and Jolm said they didn ' t get enough
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r<3 eI<i FltEt>I TIRt
information about the boosters) they put this in­
formation on the test conductor' s loop too .
We
ha.d too many guys talking.
I think if just CAP
COM talked from thr ee minutes on down we would
be all right .
This is the way I thought it was going to happen,
and then from three minutes on down it really got
busy with the yak , yak, yak of everybody talking.
I don't lmow whether we got off the Booster ~st
C)nductor's loop or not, but at final countdown,
Al gave me
2 minutes , 1 1/2, 1, 30, 20 , 10 , 9,
8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
I got a similar count
from the Spacecraft Test C~nductor but it turned
01 ·.t that they were a second out of sequence on
the countdown and Al was giving me 10 and our
Spacecraft Test Conductor was giving me 9.
So it
went ten-nine, nine-eight, eight-seven.
They
were at the same t ime .
All I knew was that we
were getting close to engine ignition and then it
started .
So, we got a little over-communicated
there .
I think t hey kept us adequately informed
on the hold.
As a matter of fact , I ' d say we got
over-informed there at the end.
We had too many
guys keeping us informed and I think the pendulum
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swung from the GT-3 flight where nobody got in­
formed of anything over to our flight where we
got i nformed by three different people about the
same event.
On our flight, too, we were really more
aware of t he problem than those people were.
We
could sit right here and see the gantry come
down and stop, that was really the only problem
they had in the whole count .
I don't think radio discipline is a problem, Each
guy was disciplined on his own channel .
They were
conducting their tests on their own channel .
But
we were lis tening to three different communica­
tors at the same time.
We should have had only
one.
I think probably what we will need to do is
to get to about T-3, and then just cut in the
CAP COM.
That was the way it wa.s planned to be, I thought.
That's the way Al planned it.
That's correct.
I think, because there had been
some lack of information on GT-3, that it some­
how had been written into the SEDR so that we
were also on the Booster Test Conductor's MOPS,
so that we were also getting his countdown.
I
COrq--pf0f:Nfl1tt

6
White
McDivitt
think CAP COM, 'alone, would have been sufficient .
One further comment , I had to turn my ·11HF volume
all the way up to hear anybody.
I was at max.
There we were sitting right on the pad , talking
to a gu:y two miles away, and there I was with the
volume full up . It didn ' t give me much confi­
dence as to reception I was going to get when I
was 200 miles away , or three or four or five
hundred miles away .
I thought that the volume
control on the radio was inadequate.
We were wondering what we were going to have when
we got up a hundred miles.
That's right.
At max volume we didn't have enough
and at minimum volume it didn't shut it off.
We
will cover this later.
1.3 Crew Participation and Countdown
McDivitt
I think it was just about right .
I don' t think
we were over worked and I think we had enough to
do to keep us busy.
White
Actually, all we really made was a check of
switches .
There wasn ' t really too much else.
Having the back-up crew run that midcount was the
the right solution.
I wouldn't have wanted to
participate in anymore of t he countdown than I
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1.4 Comfor t
White
€O ► 4FIDE ► ~TI/>,~
did.
That's an excellent point.
The flight crew's
participation should be the final count, not the
midcount and precount. It doesn't tire the prime
crew out doing a lot of chores that they don't
really have to do.
I think this is a good pro­
cedure.
Initially, the first 20 or 30 minutes, I was
squirming around and I felt a little uncomfor­
table.
But after I had been in for 30 or 40
minutes I didn't feel there was a real restric­
tion on staying for several more hours.
I would
have been very disappointed if they had said,
"Well you have been in there long enough and we
will work on this gantry and try it again tomor­
row." I would have been happy to stay there
several more hours while they fixed the gantry
instead of pulling me out.
After an hour and 40 minutes,which is the end of
the normal countdown,I didn't feel uncomfortable.
We sat in the simulator and were a lot more un­
comfortable than this.
I didn't feel uncomfor­
table.
I had a chance to take a couple of little
CO ► 4FIDE~~TIA~

8
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White
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COl'IFIDE~4TIAt
naps.
I noticed Jim was napping too.
Yes.
I concur with F.d, although I don't want
to get carried overboard.
We shouldn't scrub
due to crew fatigue .
I think it is up to the crew.
If the crew is un­
comfortable they should come down.
But I don't
think he should say, "Okay, two hours and 30
minutes .
You cut this off. ", because it is an
operational procedure.
When I first got assigned to the crew I always
fel t one of the toughest things to do would be
laying back for an hour and 40 minutes or so
prior to launch.
The time we spent in the simu­
lator laying on our back, I thought to be a very
uncomfortable position.
As we went through all
the training and testing at McDonald, and again
at the Cape ,
;ny back got more callouses on it.
I got used to laying with my feet over my head.
At launch time I wasn't a bit tired from laying
on my back.
This is brought out in one of our last simulations ,
where we ran the whole four hour simulation and
we forgot to have them tilt us up to 30 degrees.
We just got used to running that way,
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9
€Otr4FIDEttftAl
McDivitt
That ' s right, I just don't think we should
scrub the flight because of fatigue.I don ' t think we
should do that.
We weren ' t approaching this point.
White
We had a long way to go.
1. 5 Environmental Control System
McDivitt
I think we ought to get this water management
panel squared away and everybody figure out what
we are supposed to do with those switches.
I
don ' t think we should be arguing about where the
switches are supposed to be on the launch pad. If
I hadn't asked somebody where the waste manage­
ment switches should be we would have probably
launched with it in · EVAPORATOR.
I knew that
i t wasn't supposed to be in the evaporator.
At
one of the ten thousand briefings we got on it, we
were told it shouldn't be there.
We ought to get·
this kind of stuff squared away before launch day.
Thirty minutes before lift-off we were arguing
about where that switch was supposed to be.
White
I wasn't confident that they knew where they
wanted that switch to be.
McDivitt
Well, I didn ' t think we should have it in the eva­
porator.
So, I think that water panel could have
cost as much as a wee~s slip on our launch because
coNFIDENTIAt­

10
€01'1FIE>Et<ITtAt
White
McDivitt
they didn't know where to put those valves and
it's only got three valves on it. It ought to be
made much simpli er than it is .
I think they
should get that squared away before the next
flight.
F,d and I knew where we wanted it. We
wanted it off and the other two switches in
NORMAL and leave it alone.
That's what we flew
with.
That's the way it ought to be fixed .
We can get canned , though, for not flying with it
in the right position by the checklist .
It
didn't say that on the checklist
Every check
list we got was different .
That ' s right! Fach one was different .
Fi nally
we decided we were going to do it as w.e did and
left it thr ough out the whol e flight .
Evel;'y­
thing worked fine .
We had ECS briefings by a
mul titude of peoples from MAC
including the
guys who designed it. Everyone of them dis­
agreed , It probably started out to be one of the
simplest things in the whole spacecraft.
By the
time they got t hrough confusing us with it, I
got the feeling nobody knew what was s_i,,.pposed to
happen to it.
I consider this the most danger­
ous of all.
'€0 l<I F' IE> Et-q ftAt

White
McDivitt
McDivitt
1.6 Sounds
McDivitt
11
I was convinced of that, too, after the mix-up
in putting all the water in the lithium hydroxide
tan.ks.
There would have been about a 30 minute four-day
mission.
The people that built the thing don't know how
it is supposed to go.
They had better decide
this and let us know.
I felt that George Roe at
the Cape knew what was going on except the Cape
personnel got the valves in the wrong position and
almost lost the lithium hydroxide canister full
of water with no water in the tanks.
I ' m not
pointing a finger at George Roe • I think he'·s
pret.ty knowledgeable about the system.. Maybe
somebody just wasn't following directions.
But
somebody ought to find out about the water
management system and make it clear to everybody
how it is supposed to be operated.
You can hear the prevalve~ both first and second
s tages. The prevalves and the fluid gushing are
very loud noises comparable to the engine gim-­
baling. I wasn't really aware that they were
~
going to be that loud.
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12
'COI\IFIDE~◄ llAl
White
McDivitt
White
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I got that feeling when I read Gus and John ' s
debriefing.
Did you?
I didn't.
I got the impression that it
was going to be a much quieter noise.
Well, the whole noise level of the engine girnbal­
ing
was louder than I thought it was going to
be. It surprised me .
Yes. Engine gimbaling was much louder than I
heard before.
We heard this during Wet Mock and
during precount and at midcount.
You can hear
those engines gimbal around; they really shake the
spacecraft.
But, I really wasn't prepared for
the big noise that the prevalves make, and such
a long noise as that fuel gushed down to the
bottom.
I guess that was what it was.
I didn't like t he sounds and vibrations we got
when they raised and
lowered the gantry.
It shook the whole spacecraft.
It shook the whole spacecraft--did you notice how
it never came up straight? The spacecraft was
supposed to line up kind of like this and then
wham!
I had visions of them knocking us off and
laying us flat on the ground before we were
launched,
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13
1,7 Vibrations
White
McDivitt
White
1,8 Visual
White
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
cor:,-~FIDEl'~TIA I
Those are closely associated with the sounds.
Yes.
I think that the engine gimbaling makes a
tremendous vibration in the spacecraft and pre­
valves on opening and make a tremendous vibration.
The gantry going back and forth vibrated the
spacecraft.
I don ' t think there is anything else,
do you?
No.
Well, you can sure see the gantry lower and the
white room disappear.
That is about all you can
see besides the sky.
That's pretty impressive. That's when I sort of
got excited,when the gantry went down.
That ' s a
new realm.
I thought they were going to launch me.
You're sitting there by yourself then, instead
of all those people milling around.
I do want to make one other comment on this visual
thing.
We did Wet Mock about one or two o'clock
in the afternoon. The sun was shining right in
the window, almost straight down, such that the
sun came across my visor from about just at the
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t:Ol-<IFIDEt'4T IAt
bridge of my nose on down.
I had a tremendous
amount of reflection inside the helmet, and I had
a great amount of difficulty seeing the instru-­
ment panel.
As a matter of fact, I'm not sure I
could have seen the instrument panel at all .
~ose first few seconds there are extremely cri­
tical on launch.
You have to be able to see those
tank pressure sages.
We ought to keep this in
mind for those late afternoon launches .
That is a problem, but the g loads are so small
at this time you could almost forget ab1ut look­
ing up.
Did I fly like this for awhile during l aunch?
I don't think so but you could have, The g load is
so small.
I'm not sure whether I did or not.
"'his is what we had to do during Wet Mock.
We
had to put our hand up and cover the window to
look down at our instruments to see them,
I 'm not sure I didn ' t launch that way .
I wouldn't be surprised if you did.
I don't think I launched that way, but as we
tilted over and we got in the sun, I think I put
my hand up for awhile.
COMftDEl'1 IIAI.

15
White
McDivitt
White
Well, if the g's are so low that-­
When sun gets in your face you can't see the in­
strument panels because they are just too dark.
The sun gets in your eyes.
The point that Jim
was making is towards a late-in-the-day launch,
which we might have later in the program, there
might be a bit of a problem of seeing the instru­
ments during launch.
Unless they put something
up, which I really don't think you want to d~ You
are just going to have to put your arms up and
shield the sun out and concent~ate on your in­
struments or you won't see them.
They are just
gone.
There is probably a point even in an early morn­
ing trajectory as you start to pitch over where
the sun will come right in your window and you
won't be able to see your instruments unless you
shield your eyes.
1,9 Crew Station Controls and Display
White
McDivitt
I found the switches all where they were supposed
to be and the cockpit all set up.
So did I, except the comment I made on the water
management system.
They didn't have the control
where it was supposed to be.
At least, they had

16
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~CNFIOEt~TIAt
it in the place where everybody was arguing about
whether or not it should be,
I certainly appreciated the work the backup crew
did getting the cockpit all set up for us.
Every­
thing was ready to go when we stepped in.
That ' s
the way it should be.
COl<:tll10E~4TIAL

17
2.1
Lift-Off Cues
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
€Ot◄ Fl9ENllAl
2.0 POWER FLIGHT
CAP COM gave lift-off, about as good a cue as you
can get.
Wasn't any question either.
Boy, you could feel
the first little motions of the booster as it
went up. It was really great!
I think you could feel the acceleration at re­
lease.
There wasn't a doubt in my mind that we
were loose.
That 's right.
I don't know if I could feel the
bolts or hear them.
As a matter of fact, it seemed to steady out a
little bit. The vibrations seemed to decrease
a little. Pretty impressive!
Not much vibration at lift-off. Very low.
Very low.
I got vibrations later on, though,
didn't you?
Yes.
Noise.
There wasn't much noise, was there?
No.
There was less than I had expected.
Noise wasn't a cue to lift-off. Noise was there

18
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if you were bolted down all day long.
I don't
think the noise changed a bit at lift- off.
You could see the visual cues out the window.
You were watching your gages, Jim.
Were there clouds out there?
No, but I could see it in the clear blue sky.
Could you?
Yes.
I could see the motion.
Okay.
Well, I couldn't.
I was looking out,
I saw a little cloud go by and then I didn ' t see
any more clouds at all,
It was beautiful!
The event timer st arted just like it should,
Of
course, that 's the best display inside the space­
craft for lift-off.
The event timer starts , and
it did,
We got both clocks started with the t ime hack.
had a watch hack on lift-off and the ...
handle
going.
I knew when the engine ignited, within
half a second accuracy.
Three seconds later I
was waiting for the lift-off and it came right at
three seconds,
We could tell ignition, too .
We could hear the
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2·. 2
White
Roll Program
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
White
2. 3
McDivitt
White
Pitch Program
McDivitt
White
things go.
I agree with you.
I knew we weren ' t going to hold
it when that lift-off went.
Roll program came in at ten seconds just like it
was supposed to.
I t was smooth, and it was just
the way it was planned, on at ten seconds and went
out at twenty seconds.
Could you see it roll
out the window?
You can see everything out the window, I think.
You can probably tell by the way the sun rays are
moving, can't you?
Yes, by change in lighting.
The right seat has
a better view.
You have to watch the guages so
closely.
I didn ' t even look out the window.
I know you didn't.
Pitch program started just like it was supposed
to, at twenty three seconds.
Pitched over the
proper amount, the pitch needles looked like
they were hanging in there all the way.
You could see the booster pitch definitely, and
that was mainly due to a change in the lighting.

20
2 ,4 Aerodynamics
McDivitt
White
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White
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Whi te
co~~FIDE~~TIAt:
We were getting aerodynamic noise, which built up
to max q.
We got some pretty good vibrations at
max q.
That's where I had the most vibrations . It was
just shaking like this.
It was vibrating and noisy.
That was the loudest noise we received the whole
flight.
Right after max q it got very qui et .
This is where I had the most vibrations.
There
were more than I expected.
Yes, me too. You can' t simulate this in a simula­
tor.
You get more vibrations than you do noise.
The only thing they have in the simulator is
noise, they don't have vibrations. It was pretty
loud and the spacecraft was actually shaking
around a lot. It was really vibrating.
Yes, it was.
More than I expected.
The whole thing was really going at it.
Almost
like a F-80 or a T-33 at a.bout
0.8 Mach.
Very good analogy.
2. 5 Environmental Control System
White
The cabin started venting shortly after lift-off
~O~◄ FltJEf<tftAL

21
McDivitt
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2.6 Maximum q
....
McDivitt
White
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2. 7 Windehea.r
McDivitt
and continued so until about 40 seconds and sta­
bilized out at 5.5 and I made my call in.
I
think I might have called in on RECORD.
You did.
I switched and made the final call at about 1:10,
I realized I called on REDORD and switched over,
How high did it go? Did it go to 5.5?
5. 5 and it stayed right there.
And then I
noticed later on it progressively leaked off until
it got to 4.9 where it stayed.
The suit? There
really isn' t anything to say about the suit.
No, I
don' t have anything to say about the suit.
It oi:erated like it was supposed to.
The noise built up gradually until we got to max
q , then it just dropped off.
The deterioration of the noise was almost instan­
taneous.
Very quick, It wasn ' t instantaneous , but it was
very quick.
In fact, it startled me when we separated.
I didn't notice anything on the rate needles that
had anything to do with the windshea.r
I couldn't

22
eot~FIDE~~"f1At
pick out windshear • on them.
How about you, Ed?
White
No.
McDivitt
Did you see any attitudes?
White
No .
McDivitt
No big divergences from windshear .
2.8
DC~ Updates
White
We got both of our ros updates right on time-­
H'45
a.nd 2: 25,
McDivitt
No comment.
Ed is in charge of ros updates.
White
I 'm the button pusher.
I do everything about
pushing the buttons.
McDivitt
I can do this with this little stick.
White
You can do it unless I have my knee over it.
2. 9 Engin,®. 1 Operation
McDivitt
They operated the way they were supposed to as
far as I could tell .
The tank pressures stayed
up fi~ on both
Engine 1 and Engine 2.
There
was never any doubt in my mind that they were
going to stay up there.
There weren't any of
those things like we saw in those simulations
where they came on down pretty low on the gages
when they were supposed to be at 18 or 15. There
wasn't anything like that .
They just stayed on
up there.
€0t'1Flf7ENf 1Al

23
White
Just where they were supposed to be.
McDivitt
Yes.
I followed them a couple of times and said
they were staying up fine.
They were way up.
There wasn't any problem there,
2.10 Engine 2 Status
McDivitt
Second stage pressure stayed right on up there
very high. Just the way they were supposed to.
There wasn't any problem there,
They didn't
decay all during the first stage.
2.11 Acceleration g's
McDivitt
They weren't bad and I don't know where they went
to on the g meter.
White
Just like riding in an old saddle.
McDivitt
That's right. It's very comfortable.
Steady on­
set.
White
Not very long.
Gee, we were below--
McDivitt
Wait a second.
This might be a good place to
cover the pogo.
I felt the pogo just prior to
staging, from about 2:15 on to 2:30.
I could
feel pogo.
White
How much were you getting?
McDivitt
Very little, I could just feel it pull like this.
Did you feel it at all?

24
White
McDivitt
White
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White
McDivitt
2.12 BEX;O
McDivitt
- COt~FIDEt ◄ TIM
No .
I could feel it .
It wasn't uncomfortable enough
where I had to l ift my head or anything.
I
wasn't thinking about a pogo at all. It wasn't
like I was trying to sit there and think about it.
But as we were going along I could feel this vi­
bration.
And then it just crossed my mind, well
there is pogo, and then we went on to staging.
But it wasn ' t bad at all .
The amplitude must
have been-­
You were paying more attention to your clocks
while I was watching the system ,gages and I
wasn't really aware of the times that were going
on.
I had my eyes- ­
It came around 2: 15 or so and lasted to about 2:30.
Maybe it was 2: 10 or 2:05 , but it wasn't bad .
We had one area that I will get into later that I
haven't told you about and that I didn't like.
Oh.
So , I think we hit the pogo and the g ,. s .
Engine shut down properly.
The lights came on.
Engine~- 2 light went out and the Engine 1 lights
went out. Just the way it was supposed to at
B~O and staging.
Two Stage 1 lights ON , Stage 2
EOt<I flf)Et ◄ Tl1'c b

25
COt ◄FIB~1'1llAl
White
McDivitt
2. 13 Staging
McDivitt
2. 14 Engine 2 Ignition
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
White
light OFF, Stage 1 lights OFF.
At that time I realized that we were going to
feel the pyros and stuf'f--feel the separation. It
was a very distinct feeling when we sepa rated.
Of
course, we immediately dropped in the thrust .
There wasn't any question,we had a good separation,
in my mind.
This is just the way it was for all
of our separations.
Ev-erytime we separated, it
was very clear that was what had happened.
Oh, yes, there wasn't a:ny doubt about it when
that first stage shut off--Voom!
Staging was just as it should have been.
Engine 2 started right on up.
Like I mentioned
earlier~the light went out and the tank pressure
went down just a tad, but it stayed way up there,
about two or three times as high as was necessary
for staging.
It never really did decrease. It
stayed up around 45 or 50 psi, and we need 20 for
staging, so-­
I couldn' t hear anything.
Didn't you hear the engine?
No.
I was listening but it still was quiet.
€Ot~FIDENllAL -­

26
McDivitt
Whit e
McDivitt
White
McDivi tt
2 . 15 RGS Initiate
McDivitt
'COl'4FIDEl'ffIA-t
I didn't really get much of a cue out of it at all,
except the lights went out and I could feel a
lit tle bit of acceleration.
The acceleration decreased.
Another thing I
didn't get--I got absolutely no pitch-up associ-·
ated with the--the way the centrifuge does you at
the end of an acceleration. I think that is
associated with the cab on-­
Yes .
I think that's the way they rotate those
gimbals when you come on down.
If they rotate
them a certain way you can get that pitching-up-­
A very safe forward-type deceleration.
I think that pitching up on the centrifuge is not
a malfunction.
It' s just the programing that's
hooked into the gimbals during the stop program.
You've got to get them all going the same way so
that you keep the vectors through you.
During
l aunch the vector is right through you. It's not
varying around , but in the shut-down on the cen­
trifuge those darn gimbals aren't always syn­
chronized together.
They get shifted back there
and it gives you that peculiar sensation.
Well, I was really watching closely but my rate

White
McDivit t
White
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White
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White
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White
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needles just barely changed .
We mus t not have
had any errors at al l .
Yes , I got a full error.
Did you have a full error?
Yes, my pitch error went all the way down , and
then it just steered slowly right back up.
Re­
member you-­
You did call and tell me you had a saturated-­
Di d you call saturated , or did you say we had a
bi g one?
I called it saturated, I believe.
That ' s right.
I called a saturated error and then I called you
that it was steering back to zer o.
Yes .
I remember that you did call that.
That ' s the way they showed this on the plot, t hat
i t would saturate there , am very quickly it
seemed to gradually steer right back up.
The steering rates that went in were on the order
of less than half a degree/second.
They were very low.
Very, very low because I was on
high scale.
The needle just barely deviated at all at RGS
GO~JFIDEN"flAl

28
White
McDivitt
White
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White
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White
2. 16
GO/ NO GO
McDivitt
2, 17
Systems Status
White
initiate.
It was beautiful steering.
Nominal, nominal, nominal, except like that
saturation on the error needle, but we have been
briefed on that.
That ' s right.
That ' s something to be expecterui
When did it saturate?
Right at staging. No, right at guidance initiate.
Oh, okay. It saturated right there.
Right there at guidance initiate, which is what
you ' d except.
They said they were GO and I said we were GO .
There wasn't much problem.
Ed and I had been
checking back and forth on the systems .
I knew
they were all right.
The systems were all pretty good.
There was only
one I didn ' t like and that was the stack readings
on the main ammeters.
One was reading about 28
and the other was reading about 14,
But I felt
that this was associated with bringing the batter­
ies on.
I went through and checked everything.
Everything was readi ng properly.
The control bus

McDivitt
White
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
White
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White
and main bus were all reading all right.
I felt
it was just a misbalance of loading.
I talked to
somebody previous to this time and it was
explained to me that this could happen this way.
I felt perhaps it was in the adapter batteries-­
would feed through on one of the stacks causing
one of them to take more than the other.
Yes.
You could have gotten into the knee of an
adapter-­
This is what I had figured-- that a couple of my
adapter aatteries were unbalanced, causing this
to occur.
I also had seen this on the simulator
quite a few times.
When did the unbalance start? When we got in
they were-•
As soon as we were on internal
power?
Right.
And I didn't feel this was the time to
talk about it. It was still under 30 amps, which
was my point.
So I didn't bring it up.
You didn't want to worry me?
I didn't want to worry you and I didn't want any­
body on the ground to start hollering about it.
You should have written me a note.
I did feel that this was exactly what it was-­
~Q~~ftE)EN:rJAL­

30
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
that it was adapter batteries. That was the only
abnormal type of indication we had in the systems.
They were all real good.
Well, we had good communications with the ground
during powered flight.
We had pretty good communications.
I called the
"Roll Program", and nobody answered me.
I said,
"Well , to heck with it, maybe they just aren't
ge t;ti.ng through." Then I was just starting to
call Roll Program complete when Gus called and
said,"Did you get the Roll Program?"
Now that was
the only transmission I made that wasn't acknow­
ledged.
Yes, I heard you calling, too.
So , if they lost communications it must have been
right at the 10-seconds t i me , and it should have
been for l ess than 10 seconds. It couldn't have
been for more than 20 seconds.
I heard the count­
down to lift-off and I heard Gus call and ask me
if I had the Roll Program started .
This was a
little bit less t han 20 seconds-- around 18 or 19
seconds.
That is the only period of time I
didn' t hear anybody I should have heard.
So , if
we lost communications, that was where it was.

31
2.18 Acceleration
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
White
2. 19
SECO
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
Well we got up to 7 1/2 g's. The acceleration
wasn ' t bad at all. I guess when you are really
interested in what you are doing like on the boost
or reentry, those g's don't mean anything.
I
don't like to ride the centrifuge. 7 1/2 g's is
7 1/2 g's on the centrifuge, but on the booster-­
My vision was crystal clear.
Me, too .
I wasn't even breathing hard.
I wasn ' t
huffing or :pui'fing or anything.
I was just laying
<there relaxed .
Particularly on this one, The acceleration burn
during powered flight and insertion was very light .
SECO occurred as it should have on my clock.
Ed
thought it ~s about--what did you say it was?
I thought it was a second or so early and it
concerned me because that meant we were going to
have to burn.
So I was quite expecting to hear
a big 6V come up from the ground.
There is no
question on that SECO either. It shuts off and
you get that linear straight deceleration.
The thing that surprised me was that we weren ' t
talking about it at all.
We were just going as
, CONFID·EN"TtAt

32
White
2.20 Steering
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
Whi te
straight as an arrow when that thing shut off.
There weren't any oscillations or roll.
I was getting a sinusoidal oscillation on my rate
needles , and I don ' t know now whether it was
pitch and yaw.
I cal l ed it out a t the time , to
you a:nyway, Eli .
Right.
And my attitude arrows were- ­
Your attitude arrows were right on? Okay.
But I
was getting an oscillation, very small, about
plus or minus a quarter degree in rates .
Not so
that the needle was actually moving back and forth
across the dots. It was pretty obvious that it
was.
Now, I sort of felt that I could feel that
movement a littl e bit, like this , but not annoy­
ingly and certainly the stabilization was holding
i t close enough.
But it wasn ' t that the rate
needles were just constantly oscillating back and
forth. It seems to me it was in pitch but I'm not
really sure .
A booster pitch,
The attitude error needles were the only deviation we
had at any time.
Yaw was just about nominal all
the time.
We had the pitch deviation at guidance
initiate. It went to full scale and steered right
• COt~Ft0ENflAL

33
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
back in, and also right at the end we had, in
pitch, a little bit of a pitch-down needle indi­
cation which increased to no more than about a
degree at booster shutdown.
You got about a degree,then,on shut down?
Just about a degree.
Yes.
I kept glancing over to see how you were
doing,
They were always right near the center for
me.
Yeah.
Right near the end they trailed do,.m just
a little bit.
I 'd be interested to see what the
ground thought on this.
Yes. You'll have to go over and look.
I'm sure
they have them.
€6Nft[:)ENTI.AL

34
3,1
Post- SECO
McDivitt
White
3.0 INSERTION
Yes .
There was a Post-SECO.
In the period be­
tween SEX:!O and SECO + 20 seconds, I unstowed the
maneuver controller.
I don ' t know where our
attitudes were.
They were the same as they were
a t SEX::O, and it was about 20 degrees pitch-down,
wasn ' t it? The rates during this period were on
the order of less than a half a degree/second.
We really had a period of from SECO to SECO + 30.
So, duri ng this time I actually fired the trans­
lations thrusters at least two times in one axis
to kill off the rate in t hat axis, and I think it
was probably the booster yaw or spacecraft pitch
where I act ually fired the U,rusters once or
twice to bring the rates back. It might have
been the other way around.
But, we didn't jetti­
son the fairings then.
I did unstow the maneuver
controller and the attitude was the booster burn­
out attitude and the rates were very low, less
than a half a degr ee/second.
I
think we
mentioned prior to this
time the feeling that we came off a little half­
(Q~~IQFNTIAL

35
3. 2
SECO + 20 Seconds
McDivitt
White
McDi vitt
White
McDivitt
cocked off the
second stage.
We were going to $ay on the booster until SECO +
30 instead of SECO + 20.
At 20 seconds the IVI ' s
started displaying and I read them off as 20 for­
ward, 11 right, and 5 down.
Right ,
This was when we were still in the 90 degree bank
position. Is that correct? Or was it after I
had rolled right-side-up?
It was after you had rolled right-side-up.
Okay.
Well, then the IVI's displayed when we were
still on our side.
It seems to me they were
about 25 feet/second forward , and some other
numbers, but anyway they were low enough where I
felt we were certainly in orbit.
At least the
IGS was telling us we were in orbit. During this
time, as I said earlier, I tried to damp the
spacecraft rates, the spacecraft booster rates
which were quite low.
I checked to see that the
OAMS Power Switch was in ATTITUDE and MANEUVER ,
and to see that Eli had switched over to DIRECT.
I told him I was going to do some thrusting but
I wasn't going to separate yet, so that when he
€ 0 ~~ FfDENT.I.Al

White
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
White
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White
~EIDENJl»,t
heard the thrusters go off he wouldn't push the
SPACECRAFT SEP.
Then we did separate the space­
craft with
the ·exact
routine we practiced in the
simulator.
I said, "Thrusting, separate", and you
punched the SEPARATE button and I guess you went
to Rate Command.
I thrusted straight ahead for
about five seconds.
This is where I think we
came off crooked.
This is the part Ed was men­
tioning before.
We didn't seem to come off
straight ahead.
We seemed to be getting some
sort of an oscillation that got us going in a dif­
ferent direction than what we had going on the
booster.
It seemed,, like one side of the separation plane
came off with more force than the other.
Yes.
That's what it seemed like to me.
It separated at a bit of an angle.
That's right.
We didn't separate fore and aft;
we separated with a lot of rotation to this side.
Yes.
Air-ground communications were all right.
We were
talking to them and they were talking to us.
I
never had any problem there.
Shortly thereafter they called up and told us we
i C&MFfEiEM IIAL

37
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
White
CO~ ◄ FIDEt><tTIAL
had a 153 by 57 orbit.
So, they were talking to
us.
I don't think I ought to read off this stuff
now, but they gave us the 2-1 data and all the
nominal data we were supposed to get. It came out
fine.
Say again what the IVI's were while we rolled
right-side-up.
Right .
At the position we decided on taking our
IVI readings, which was heads up in a zero-zero
attitude, you read off the IVI's to me as 20 for­
ward, 11 right, and 5 down.
Okay.
Then I didn't bother nulling the pitch -·
needle because we were really pressed for time to
get around.
No velocity correction was called up to us and
since we had no velocity correction, and we were
fairly busy at this time, I didn't even read out
the 52 or 70.
I wasn't particularly interested
in them. It ' s a funny thing though--52 was
punched in and had: been read out and it showed 30.
It had been punched in so it read out, you see, as
soon as something came in the quantity.
So,
did have a readout.
I read out 30.
I remember
looking at that.
I

38
~O ► ~flDENTI~
3. 3 Insertion Activities
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
White
I
I
I thrusted and got off the booster.
Then I went
ahead for just a short time, and then I started
to turn around right away.
During the turn-around,
I jettisoned the fairings.
They went off with a
bang.
I could see the fairing over the horizon
scanner go, but I never did see the fairing off
the nose go.
I just assumed that it went.
We
were already in just a mass of debris up there,
because when we se:p3,rated from the booster there
was stuff all over.
All over. It really flew by to the side of the
spacecraft.
Yes. It was all over the place.
As we.were
turning around it looked like we were going
through a snow storm.
There was stuff all over.
Finally we got turned around, in about a minute
and a half, and we could see the booster there.
There ' s one thing I would certainly like to see
somebody do--I'd have give my right arm to have
had a camera when I turned around and saw tbe
booster.
I ' d like to see somebody carry a camera
in a semi-•stowed position so he could immediately
get it out and come around and take pictures of
•CO ►~FIDE~~TIAL

39
McDivitt
the booster. Either the camera, or better yet a
16 mm camera with a normal lens on it .
Just tuck
it to the side of your leg.
If I had thought
about it I think this is what I would have done-­
just connected the camera, tucked it by my leg,
and taken pictures of the booster at this time.
I think, Ed, this is probably one of those philo­
sophical things.
On the first orbit you've got to
save to prepare to come back in case you have a
bad spacecraft.
You 've got to be ready to reen­
ter during the first orbit . Tuis is the kind of
bind we found ourselves in up there. During the
first orbit we really had a lot to get ready for
halfway through the second orbit, but on the other
hand we had to be in good enough shape so we could
reenter it at 2-1. Now, we didn't have anything
to go wrong so there wasn't any problem, but I
think when you first get into orbit you're in a
problem. This kind of a thing, I think, is a
problem you may have later on.
You've got to be
ready to eject at lift-off plus one second, and
you don't want to be sitting there holding a
camera or something like that. Both your hands
are busy.
But like you said we could stow it
~ONFtDf1'tliAt

40
White
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
White
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White
3omewhere.
I think you could.
You could stow it beside you
in the seat .
I think we over- emphasize the neces­
sity, particularly for ejection, of having to have
everything stowed when you are only ejecting up to
12 000 feet and at very slow speeds.
We certainly
have a heck of a lot more working against us in
our airplanes we ' re flying around.
That's right .
I agree with you.
I ' m just saying
this philosophy of being completely prepared to
reenter during that first orbit is in conflict
with doing this kind of stuff in the first orbit,
too.
We ought to get some of this, though.
I think we
are missing things .
I would have really-­
Yes, I think so.
We could have really had some
beautiful pictures of that booster when we were
close to it.
I also want to comment a little bit on the booster
itsel f .
I looked as closely as I could at the
nozzle skirt and the aft end of the booster, and
I saw no damage whatsoever.
No, neither did I from our vantage point .
As far as I could see the nozzle skirt was com­
,COI>~11;) El>fftAL

41
McDivitt
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McDivitt
pletely intact. There was nothing wrong.
Okay.
Let ' s try to follow this insertion activi­
ties list here .
I jettisoned the fairings , as I
said, as soon as I started turning around.
Then
Ed went through the checklist for us.
After I
fired the fairings I turned off the BIA Switch and
the retro rockets when he called.
I was probably
doing this before Ed called, wasn ' t I?
We did things just like we had been doing them on
the simulator.
We don't just take a checklist
and run down it item for item because there ' re
things you have to be doing , and it just doesn ' t
go in a sequence like that .
I realized this was
the way it was going to go, and I actually took a
pencil and checked items off. If you did an item
I checked it off, and if you didn't I left it un­
checked and we got it later. You just can' t ex­
pect to run down the checklist item for item because
you ' re not ready to unstow your life vest or to
get up out of your seat belt. You don't do that
for some time.
I think the logic on the check­
list we have here is a very good sequence--.
We reviewed that checklist 50 times. That's
00tq ftf)ENftA-t­

42
White
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
cor<tFIDENTIAt
probably the fiftieth checklist we ' ve got there,
and I don ' t think i t could have been arranged any
better for the two of us .
I knew Jim wasn't going to undo his seat belt har­
ness and I knew I was going to have to because I
had to do certain things that he didn ' t have to .
The point that I ' m making is that the checklist
doesn ' t have to be accomplished item for item,
completely done in numerical sequence.
Okay.
I thi nk we ' ll revert back to the exact
subject of 3,3 now.
Safetying the switches .
I
saftied the swi t ches--the BIA Squib Switch and
the four Retro Rocket Squibs Switches. I tested
the sequential l i ghts, but at a later time because
I was involved in turning the spacecraft around.
But X did test them.
As far as stowage, I stowed
my left arm restraint and my D- ring, but I did
not put my saf ety pin in.
I went through and put my arm rest down , put my
safety pin in.
That was one of the first things
I did.
I might comment that I never did put my safety pin
in.
I never put the safety pin in the D- ring.
I
felt the D- ring cover was adequate, and it was .
co ► ~fiilQ lil)l:rlsA<JL

43
White
I know, you never have been particularl y too hot
on that.
McDi vitt
Noo
White
Then I went ahead and disconnected myself.
I had
a lot of things I had to squirm around and do.
I
left my life vest on as we had planned to do , then
take them off leisurely at a different time.
I did
not find any reason to put the drogue pins in. I
don't think they are satisfactory in any way.
I
don' t think the pin itself is sati sfactory, and I
don ' t think the location or type of holes are
satisfactory. I will elaborate on them a little
further.
We have had aircraft around for a long
time and we have learned a lot about saf ety pins .
We have come up with some pretty good designs on
safety pins.
We have a design on our drogue pin
right now which is no more than the very first
type of safety pin that I saw on an aircraft. I
think that we are past the point where we should
be starting right out at the beginning.
We ought
to put a properly designed safety pin in there
that you can insert a little easier into the holes.
I ' m not going to try to design the pin but I think
that it should have some type of shaft on it that
r€0NFll}ENftl(L ­

44
McDivitt
-E OI'~FI DE~ITIAL
you can use to stabilize the pin when you insert
it. And when I say the holes through which you
insert the pins are unsatisfactory, I 'm referring
to holes through a cylindr i cal shaft that is
hollow inside so t hat you not only have t o find
the hole to put it in on one side, but you have
to work it around and find the hole that it goes
through on the other side. I don ' t believe that's
satisfactory.
I don't think the opening into the
hole is supposed to be beveled and they weren 't
beveled on my seat and they weren't beveled on
Jim ' s seat , either. I t hink a beveled hole is a
hole that is bigger on the outside than it is on
the inside. I don' t believe there is much dif­
ference between the outside and the inside of the
holes for the drogue pins. I had a difficult
time putting my own in. I put Jim's pins in. It
took me awhile, but I put them in. I never did
get one of mine in satisfactorily at this time ,
so I think we should do something better with
the drogue pins. In addition I couldn' t even see
the hole.
You had an easier time putting my pin in t han you
had putt ing your own pin in.
GO~~FIDEl>ITIAL

45
White
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
White
.-CQ~qfl9tNTIAL
That' s correct.
I could put yours in fairly easy.
That's right .
I think that when you turn towards
the center of the spacecraft , you end up with more
room than if you turned to the outside.
You can' t
see a thing if you are turning toward the outside.
This is probably covered later, but my hose lengths
were not long enough to permit me to turn all the
way around ,
I knew this when we went through
Weight and Balance.
I knew my hoses were not
long enough but it was too late, as far as I was
concerned, t o change them at that ti~ .
But, I
couldn't see the holes on my side to insert the
drogue pin. I couldn' t see the holes for your
drogue pin either, but I could get a better view
of them over there so I knew approximately where
t o put the pin,
I think in all respects the drogue
pins are not satisfactory. You just can't see
them; the pins are incorrect, the holes are in­
correct, and I think we can certainly do better
with them.
I think what Ed is saying is that it 's lousy.
That's right. In two letter words, it stinks !
This is the way the batteries were reading out
when I checked them at insertion. And this is what
CO ► 4FIDE~~rft"AI:

€O ►~FIDEt4Tl~L
I had suspected they were doing when we launched-­
why we had unbal anced stack readings.
1-A read
6
amps, 1-B read 10 , 1-C read 11. This accounts
for your high reading on Stack 1.
2-A
was
6,
2-B was 6, , and 2-C was 6. . Ttis was the way
they were reading.
I ran through a check on them
when we were actually in the booster phase.
So
that is why I felt the reading wasn ' t bad.
They
were both reading about 23 1/2 or 24 volts .
They
looked pretty good.
I got my 2-1 update.
I got the t:N of 167, 6T of
3+35, and GMT to retro command of 14 48 34. I have
the other times too. The time to 400 000 was 2+18,
as read up to me and the time to reverse bank
angle was 8+47. This is what we wrote down .
This is one time I remember now when I was a little
irritated, because they gave times to us in a
manner in which I hadn 't wanted them toe They
were supposed to give elapsed time but they gave
it to us in GMT time for our retro. We had asked
them to give it to us in elapsed, They came right
back up and gave it to us both ways.
I remember
writing it down twice, on the elapsed time of
01 32 35.
I can see why they did it because it

47
McDivitt
White
CONFtf>E~ftAi.
was two minutes past
one hour 30 minutes, and I
guess they weren't sure exactly what we wanted.
So they gave it to us in GMT and elapsed time
also .
But that is the information we received,
as far as our 2-1 area was concerned.
I think Ed had better cover unstowage.
I didn't
unstow anything.
I was just trying to stick with
the booster at that time.
The first thing I got into was my right-hand
stowage compartment and I unstowed the blood
pressure bulb. Then I started into the center
section to get at the camera.
The first thing I
wanted to get out was the Hasselblad and the 16 mm.
I was dying to get a picture of that booster.
So ,
I unstowed the Hasselblad and got a good back on
it and the 16 mm camera.
I didn't unstow the
urine nozzle as the flight plan had called.
We
both had decided we were going to use our launch­
day urine bags as long as we could, and we had
hoped to use them right through the ENA.
As it
turned out, we did. That was about all I unstowed
at this time.
I unstowed the cameras, the blood
pressure bulb and also got out the film cartridges
and the tape cartridges.
I put them on the side
CONFIDENTIAb

48
COt'4FI0EN-l+M.
of the foot well , where I planned to keep them,
so that we could keep a good tape cartridge
available.

49
McDivitt
---G0NF-40 ENTIA L_,
4.0 ORBITAL FLIGHT
I think that the orbital flight should be broken
down into some very distinct sequences .
I think
there are really three of these.
The first one
is about the first three or four orbi ts where we
were trying to stay with the booster, where we di d
the FNA and where we finally got back in.
The
time that we finally got the spacecraft depressur­
ized ends one phase of the mission.
The next
phase or sequence of the things that come along
is really the second phase.
This is the middle
50 orbits or so, where we did the experiments and
where we did the flight plan in a highly modified
manner.
We did the flight plan we started out to
do .
And the last phase or series of sequences
was the ~et ro-preparation , retrofire and the
reentry.
The retro-preparation was actually
another distinct phase of the mission.
I think
that we ought to divide it up into those three
phases-- the station-keeping and FNA as Stage 1,
general orbit as Stage 2, and retro-preparation
and reentry as Stage 3.
So I think we should
CONFID ~~:rtAl

50
4. 1 Station-Keeping
McDivitt
~-IE>ENTIAL­
start in the orbital flight with the station­
keeping on the booster.
I think that we should
just pluck that thing out and follow it through in
its entirety, and then come back and pick up these
things like the thrusters , Control :fode Checks ,
Com Checks , and those things.
The station-keeping with the booster--Well, as I
said earlier on the insertion phase , I started
turning around as soon as I completed the forward
thrusting.
I jettisoned the nose fairings after
about 30 or 40 degrees of yaw.
I rolled right­
side-up and then I started yawing around to the
left.
We saw all kinds of debris floating around
and we finally saw the booster back behind us. It
was already in a peculiar attitude.
As Ed men­
tioned , when we separated from the booster, it
didn·• t really feel like we came off straight ahead.
It seemed like we got knocked off to the side of
the thing.
The spacecraft-booster combination
sort of bent in half at the separation plane.
We
yawed on around and saw the booster, and I thought
it was around 400 feet back.
Eli thought it was
a little closer.
-€0·NFIDE~L

51
White
McDivitt
£.ONfll)ENTIAf
I would estimate it at between 200 and 250 feet.
Okay.
We were in pretty good shape right then
and I applied about five or six seconds of
thrusting that should have come out around
5~
feet/second .
I was in a hurry trying to get our
separation velocity stopped, so I was thrusting.
I had it in Rate Command .
I pointed the space­
craft at the booster and started thrusting, and
by the time I got the computer in the Catch- Up
Mode and the Start Comp button on, I had already
thrusted ' 2 or
3 -~ feet/second out and I
counted up another · 3
feet/second on the IVI's.
It looked like we were probably stopped, although
I couldn't tell tlBt quickly.
I knew I had as
much f::.V
in there as I had at separation, and
possibly a little more, because I tried to hold
the separation f::.V
down to no more than
•5
feet/second.
We watched it for just a short time
and then it was obvious that we hadn't stopped our
separation velocity--our relative velocity--so we
were still separating.
So , I applied about ano­
ther •• 3
or • 4 feet/second, which should have
more than overcome the :4
or · 5
feet/second
I put in initially. It looked like we had stopped
.CO NFlD-E-~IlAL

52
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then.
Our relative velocity looked like it went
to zero.
Here, I thought, we were out around
500 or 600 feet.
F.d thought we were: probably in
closer than that.
Yes.
I thought we were in a little closer.
I put in a total of around· 9
feet/second in
the first minute and a half after we turned
around .
I think we commented together on the speed with
which the booster was going away ~om us .
Right
off the bat it looked like it wa.s- -it surprised
me that it actually looked like it separated ·rrom
us as fast as it really-­
It looked like it had a lot more velocity than
the
4 or 5
J feet/second I added at t he
separation.
It looked to me , as an off- the- top- of:.
my-head-guess , that something in the spacecraft
separation thing had really built up a lot of
relative velocity between the booster and the
spacecraft.
I don't know why or how.
Al so , it
looked like we weren ' t
inplane anymore. It was
actually out-of-plane so that we had an out- of­
plane relative velocity that I took out .
I
pointed at the booster because , obviously, if
--EONffOfNTt~t.

53
€0NftDEM11:At~
you're separating away from something, whichever
way you ' re going, if you point at the thing and
if you t hrust in that direction you are to take
out your relative velocity in all planes .
So , it
looked like the thing was off to the left or to the
south of our orbital track by a couple hundred
feet and it was going down rapidly.
Losing
altitude. After I thrusted this second time, I
knew I had more than enough velocity, much more
than I needed to kill off the
5 feet/second
we'd added .
I watched it and it looked like it
wasn ' t going away from us anymore. It looked like
our relative velocities had stopped.
I wanted to ··
get the platform alined somewhat in case we did
have---to come down in the 2~1.
We really hadn't
had much chance to check over the spacecraft yet.
So I quickly went to as close to zero-zero- zero
as I could get .
I used the zero yaw and the zero
roll off the ball and I went to a pitch att i tude
that looked like it was about zero and tried to
get the ball to aline to zero-zero- zero.
At that
time the booster was mostly behind us--mostly
back toward the Cape from us--back behind us with
respect to our velocity back there. It iwas in the

--
54
White
McDivitt
<coNFU)1:l'tllA.b­
window and I could see it. Well, I started
alining the platform and left it there for a
couple of minutes .
The booster started falling
again, descending below us.
It actually went
out of my view in the window.
At the time
though our relative velocities were quite small,
so I felt I could let it go for another 30 seconds
or a minute and not have it ge~~r away__!rom
...=
------­
me .
It looked like it was coming toward me again ,
but going below.
So , I allowed myself about
another minute and I pi tched down and looked for
it. It appeared that during that minute it had
gone a lot farther down than I had expected it to
go .
Yes , I was surprised.
Remember that it looked like
the orbit was sure something different than we
predicted.
Yes. It looked to me like the booster and the
spacecraft weren't in anything that even resem­
bled the same orbit, at the rate it was descending.
I don ' t know what the range rate was at that time.
It looked like it was a lot more than a foot/
second, though.
I don ' t know what it was.
I
quickly pitched back up to zero-zero-zero and
C.ONF~DE~:r.lAL

55
White
McDivitt
s tayed there for about another ten or fifteen
seconds and went to Orbit Rate,
I knew I didn ' t
have a good alinement on the platform but I knew
I couldn ' t stay there any longer and have the
booster anywhere nea r us .
So, I flipped around
and pitched right straight down and here's where
the problems started,
To get down to the booster
in a long rendezvous type maneuver, what I should
have done was to jus t stay horizontal and fire
retrograde and take some total velocity out of the
spacecraft.
But , when you do this the booster
continues to pull away from you for a whil e , and
then eventually you are going to drop down below
it .
Then you are going to be in a l ower-altitude
orbit and you are going to pick up and catchup
with the booster.
Well, with the station-keeping
we had to do and the fact that the darkness was
only a matter of another few minutes-­
Boy it was fas t !
It wasn ' t any time a t all.
I didn ' t have time to
play a rendezvous
game with it,
I had to over­
come this relative velocity we had with sort of
brute force , so I thrusted right at the booster
again.
I got going down and I used about 5
"CO t'-' FIO~NT+Al.

56
White
McDivitt
White
\ McDivitt
I
feet/second there.
Here ' s where the numbers get
a little vague.
I thrusted down at it and I
watched it go for awhile.
I thought sure we 'd
start closing on it again.
We weren't closing,
so I thrusted down on it again.
I must have done
this probably three or four times. I can't say
exactly.
I don ' t remember, precisely, how many times you
thri1sted.
I was keeping my eyes on the booster.
And i t was a lot t ougher to see when it was down
with the ground as a background, I t hought, than
with the sky as a background.
During this period
of t i me its rotational velocity picked up con­
siderably, and during this time Fd checked it and
got eight seconds for a complete revolution.
A complete revolution.
Yes.
This was an estimate.
This meant that in the first three minutes after
we were in orbit the thing had gone up to a rota­
tional rate of 40 to 50 degrees/second.
It seemed
to stabilize at that rate. Its rotational rates
stabilized but I don ' t believe its rotational
mode ever stabilized. It didn't rotate in a plane
as I thought a loµg body like that would rotate.
It seemed to oscillate in just a random
tumbling
-CE7~1DENTIAL

57
fashion.
It was all over. It looked to me like i t
was rotating in three axes in a completely unpro­
grarnmed manner. It might have been that the roll
nozzle was flopping around and the fuel was turn­
ing it around in different directions.
And as a
matter of fact, at this time we should go back and
draw a picture of what the fuel looked like and
what was coming out of the nozzle.
The booster
was tumbling and you could see the fuel squirting
out of the roll nozzle in a big fan like this. I
had the impression that if the booster were per­
fectly stationary, the fuel would have been coming
out of the nozzle in a great big cone the way you
would expect it to, but because the booster was
tumbling so rapidly it was coming out in a long,
twisted- - l ike a horn of plenty.
It was very ob­
vious; you could see it, and ther e wssn ' t any doubt
about the fact that there was a lot of fuel coming
out .
Whether this was contributing some thrust to
it or not I don't know.
White
I want to comment on something that was quite an
experience for me.
When I called out to you, I
was looking down at what I thought , since it was
pitch black, was the sky.
I could see little
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58
McDivitt
White
~Ptt>fNT-l;4h
sparkles everywhere.
And it looked like almost
a starlit sky, but it just didn't quite look
right to me ; it looked like an artificial star­
lit sky.
It looked like some of these star dis­
plays they have created for us .
And I looked
over at Jim and asked him if he was seeing this
and about the same time I noticed that he had
nothing but dayl ight out his window.
This was
the first time that I had the daylight-dark
experience of one guy looking into pitch black
night and the other guy looking into a complete
daylight window over there.
Jim remarked rather
disgustedly to me, "We are pointed straight at the
ground!" About the same time I realized I was
looking out at the fire flies everybody had seen,
but probably in a much more profuse quantity than
had ever been seen before, because we were getting
all this fuel that was vaporizing into many, many
particles from the booster and a little bit of a
contribution from the spacecraft also.
And we were thrusting, too.
I 'm sure we had all
that junk on it from our launch.
That ' s right .
And the whole area out in front of
my view was just entirely taken up with these
CONFIOENft-AL

McDivitt
White
McDivitt
little par t icles , and this was at sunset .
As the
flight progressed, each time we had a particle or
a group of particles such as a urine dump r ight
at sunset or sunrise, the sun would pick these
particles up and they would act just like littl e
magnifying glasses and make very bright spots.
This is exactly what happened.
Did you ever see
that then? I think you were more in the daylight
side.
No.
I was on the daylight side.
I didn't see
what you were talking about.
It was really something.
The whole sky within my
view was covered with these little particles- ­
thousands of them.
There was obviously a great
deal of that stuff in the air all around.
As soon as we got turned around I could see trat t he
lights were flashing on the booster, and Ed saw
them , too. It was pretty apparent .
I call ed out
r i ght away to the gruund that the lights were
working.
I don't know if they understood what I
was talking about or not.
I also called out
shortly after we came off the booster and we saw
it,that it didn't look like we were going to be
able to touch it .. because of the high rotational

60
CO·N·F~DENTIM
White
McDivitt
rates that we already had.
We were into darkness
by the time that we got turned around, and I had
thrusted just two or three times at the booster.
We were still quite far above it--I would guess
now on the order of 2000 feet or more and it was
still dropping away from us rapidly; I had already
used about 25 or 30 feet/second to get toward the
booster.
I knew I had to catch it during the
night time because when we came out of the dark­
ness on the next pass, we had to be next to it ,
because we were supposed to take some photos of it
around that time .
So I thrusted some more right
at the booster trying to just overcome orbital
mechanics with brute force. It was too late to
start playing fancy games with the orbital mechan­
ics.
Finally, I got us down to what I considered
a good position, and this was prior to Carnarvon,
I believe.
Remember when we finally got it on
the horizon?
It looked like it had finally stopped.
The relative velocity had finally stopped.
And
let me now make a general comment about what I
thought of the lights on it.
We had two lights on
the booster that flashed and they were diametrically
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61
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€01~FtDcNfJA~
opposed on the center of the booster .
And when
the booster was in such a manner that I could see
both of the lights, I could tell relative rates
and I had an idea of how far away I was.
Did you
find this to be true too, Ed , or not?
Well , I can' t honestly say I was looking at it
with that feeling.
Okay.
Well, what I am saying is that it was
difficult-­
I want to hear what you are going to say.
I 'm
not sure what you ' re saying yet,
It was difficult to tell how far I was away from
it , at best , but when I had the booster in such a
position that I could see both lights at the same
time , I could tell by the distance between the
lights whether I was close or far.
Okay.
I agree with that.
And when I could see these lights flashing over a
period of time , I could tell whether the distance
between them was getting larger or smaller so that
I knew i f I was closing or not .
Unfortunately,
because the booster was tumbling in this scre,ry
manner, I couldn't maneuver around ~he booster
because it was tumbling so fast ; I was just trying
CONFtDENftt\L

62
to get close to it and not even maneuver--not to
pick specific positions .
All I wanted to do was
just get close enough so I wouldn ' t lose it. When
I could see these two lights, I had a pretty good
impression of whether I was closing or opening;
for a long part of the early part of the mission
in the night time it looked like we were holding
our own, and then we finally started closing with
it .
I finally worked it down where we were at
the same level ,
All this time I had been above
the booster.
I worked dovm until I was at the same
altitude with it; at least it was on the horizon.
I felt that by then I had gotten the thing under
control and we stood a pretty good chance of still
coming out on the daylight side with the booster.
I can't tell you what the range was. It looked
to me like I had worked the range back dovm (it
had been opening up as· we went into darkness)-­
to 2000 or 3000 feet again--probably around 2000
feet . It might even have been as low as 1000 feet .
It could have been lower than that .
At one time I
got the impression that we were quite close to it .
White
Yes.
You were wondering whether you should retro­
grade away from it .
6ONFt01:M"flAL

McDivitt
White
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It looked to me like we could have gotten as close
as 200 feet .
It was extremely difficult to tell
how close we were. What's your guees , Ed? Just
pick a number.
I wouldn't say that close.
I 'd say you ' re more in
the ball park in the neighborhood of 700 to 1000
feet.
Okay.
You could be magnitudes off.
Before we got to Carnarvon, I remember, we were in
reasonably good shape, because I had finally
gotten down to the booster.
I felt if I could
just keep it down near the booster we would be all
right .
Then it looked to me l ike we were closing
rather rapidly. So I thought we were going to get
next to it and then we were going to be all right.
'I'he reason I felt this was because I could see the
two lights. It must have been rotating in such a
manner that I could see the two lights.
Almost
every fifth or tenth time they blinked I could see
them.
I could see two of them.
So I knew by the
distance that we were in quite close and everything
looked pretty good then.
And then for a long,
long, long period of time after that I never

White
McDivitt
saw two lights again.
I don ' t lmow if you did or
not .
I kept looking and there was a single light
and a single light and a single light, and I
didn't lmow where I was with respect to the boos­
ter.
And then I started getting the impression
without really seeing the double lights , I guess,
that it was going away very rapidly.
Maybe I did
see two lights and I just don' t remember it now.
My impression was that the light was getting
fainter .
I think that must have been it.
I think that
must have been it. But all of a sudden I got the
impression that it was leaving me at a rapid rate .
I
It wasn't that easy to see.
During the few times
that the booster was up against the sky back-
I ground it was easy to see , but when it was down
against a ground background, it was very difficult
to see . I think it was just before we got to Car­
narvon that I felt we were in good shape.
And then
as we passed Carnarvon , I remember calling I could
see the lights of the city.
Well, during this
period of time all of a sudden I thought it was
starting to pull away again.
So I started
thrusting at it again. And I never really got the
~itAL

65
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EONftE>ENllAL..
double blink of the lights for a l ong, long, long
time.
And finally I thought I could see them
blinking again, and they were almost a single
light this time since they were so far away.
And
this occurred over a very short period of time.
TRn minutes? Five minutes?
Yes .
Is that right? Whatever you think, Ed.
Yes .
I fully agree wit} you.
So then I said to Ed, "I ~hink we are losing it ."
So I started thrusting at it again. All of a
sudden it was apparent that the thing wasn't as
close as it had been.
So we started thrusting
at it.
In fact, that was one time you said we had lost it,
didn't you?
I said I think we have lost it.
I had it in
sight.
I didn't saj that I had lost sight of it.
I thought you meant you had lost sight of it.
No.
I still had it all the time.
But it wasn't getting any bigger.
I didn't have e:n:y idea in the world where we were.
And I still couldn't really tell. Finally, we
could see the sky starting to get a little gray
~NflDENTb\L

66
GOt\fPID Etft+AL
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and I thought at least we were going to get to see
where the thing was.
And all of a sudden the
booster came out just like that, and you could
see it.
The lights disappeared and there was the
booster. It was ·2 or
3
miles away, I'll bet .
You asked me there and I estimated 1 1/2 miles.
So, it had gotten that far away in such a short
time, and it was down .
I think what really gave
me the clue that we were losing it again was that
I had it on the horizon and it had sta~ted going
down below us.
Right. It looked like it was about 30 degrees
below -­
It started going down again.
And I could see it
was coming down below the horizon, so I knew that
I wasn't right with it.
But I wasn't really sure
how far away I was so I did thrust a couple of
times--a foot/second or so--to make sure I always
had a closing velocity with it.
And finally I
got the thing down.
It was down so that when it
came out it wasn't directly below me ; it was out
in front of me and down again.
And like Eli said,
I guess it was down about 30 degrees.
White
That's what I ' d estimate.

67
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C-Ol<fFJ0ENT1Ai.
When it came out of the night and we saw it out ('"
there in the daylight- ­
Right .
I 'd estimate 30 degrees down.
It was above the horizon, just barely .
Or was it
above the horizon?
No, it was below the horizon.
I ' d say it wasn't more than ten or twelve degrees
below the earth horizon, but below our local hori­
zon. It was in the neighborhood of 30 degrees .
If you looked out level to what you would call
level--but you lmow the horizon tilts away from
you , so- - .
So here again we were faced witr. the same kind of
problem- -to cater. up with the booster. _What I
should have done was to retrofire right then to
drop down , get a lower orbit, and come back up.
But we had to get to the booster right then or we
weren ' t going to get to it, becauae we had the
mission to take p~otographs of it across the
States .
So I thought if I could close with it at
10 or 15 feet/second we could at least overcome
our problem.
So I aimed behind it , so to speak,
and down , and I thrusted that way trying to get
enough closing velocity down and another one that
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eo~~FtOENllAL
would bring us up to it at the same time; but most
of the thrusting I did was down .
Then we just
didn't gain on it .
I started thrusting retro­
grade with my top thruster, but I was thrusting
more back and downward.
I just absolutely could
not get down to the booster. It kept pulling
away and pulling away until by the time we got
to Hawaii .
You were putting a lot of 6V in there and we just
weren't doing anything.
We just weren't making
any headway.
It continued to pull away from us and it was
falling farther and farther below us until
finally-­
You put in about 40 feet/second to do something
with it and it hadn ' t changed a speck.
By the time we got to Hawaii I told them I thought
we were having difficulty doing it .
k:J.yway, I
had decided by that time that if we were going to
do the mission at all, the only thing we could do
would be to leave the booster.
The fuel was
down to around 75 per cent on my 'gage and the
gage kept going up and down, so it wasn't a
heck of a lot of help.
I had burned around 85 or
eor<IFIDE~~Tl:t\L

90 feet/second .
I had numbers in all three of the
windows, and of course since I was changing atti­
tudes and thrusting in different directions those
numbers were going all over the place.
So I made
up my mind then that i t looked like a hopeless task
and that we had better stop this stuff or we were
going to lose all the fuel for the whole mission.
We probably wouldn't be able to catch it, and we
wouldn't be able to do what we were going to do.
I think the only thing we could have done to save
the whole thing would nave been for us just to go
forward on the local horizontal and retrograde a
large amount on the order of 20 to 30 feet/second,
fall down below the thing and catch it .an orbit
or so later and actually perform rendezvous with
it.
But because the flight plan was such that we
had to get all the EVA done in the first three
orbits , and because Chris and I had talked this
over and decided the EVA was the more important
of the two things , I felt t hat the best thing to
do woul d be to abandon trying to catch up with
the booster.
White
Let me interject something else, too.
See if you
had the same feeling.
I had the feeling that the
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booster orbit had changed so much with respect to
our orbit that if we really went down after it, it
might jeopardize our lifetime.
Honestly, I was concerned about that too , because,
remember, I called and asked what the heck our
orbit was right then.
The booster looked like it
was going down at such a rapid rate.
By the time
we got to the States I would guess it was
5
miles below us at least.
My
impression was even more . I thought maybe it
wasn't more a t the time but it was going more.
felt that if we really got back with tbe booster we
might have a pretty good orbit , but we would be
down in the neighborhood of 130 and this wasn ' t
the altitude we wanted to be, .,for. the six-day
lifetime that we wanted.
The other thing that bothered me was that we were
going toward perigee where we should have been
coming back together.
And we weren't. We were
pulling away so fast that it wasn't even funny.
Frankly, I just couldn't figure out what kind of
orbit the booster was in. It looked to me like ,
if we were having trouble , the place where we
should have been the farthest from it was at Car-
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71
eo,~FtDENTIA'l
narvon.
Apogee should have been farthest apart .
Our perigee should have been closest together.
It was almost opposite.
We were with it at
Carnarvon, but we wer e way far away from it and
getting farther away from it as we crossed the
United States , or Mexico, or wherever we came.
I
wasn' t looking out at the scenery; I was looking
at the booster. It.was extremely difficul t to
t rack across the water and as we got to the land
it was almost an impossibility to track it , Here
the distance i s extremely difficult to judge.
It
It could have been anywhere from 5
to 15 miles
directly below us at this time.
If I had a range
rate I could have told where I was all the time
and with range rate I would have been able to
rendezvous with it from a mile.
I could have
done the things I lmew had to be done , rather than
try to do it .forcefully.
I sort of feel the big
problem was that we were so optimistic for those
first three orbits that it is almost unbelievable.
It became apparent when we tried to do the EVA
that we couldn' t do it in the t ime allotted.
But
anyway,I had decided by the time we had gone by
Hawaii, or wherever it was after we had been in the
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72
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daylight for ten minutes or so, that i t was hope­
less, and I told that t o F.d .
I told him I
thought we had lost the booster for good.
I
don ' t mean I didn ' t see i t but t hat we weren ' t
going to get back down to it .
He agreed with me .
Yes.
I think I could have gotten to the booster in a
dignified , normal , slow, easy manner if we di dn ' t
have the constraint on us of being next to the
booster in the first daylight pass over the States,
and taking pictures , prepare for the EVA , and be r eady
to emerge from the spacecraft an hour after we
came out of the daylight on our first pass , which
was about two hours into the flight .
I just felt
that if I had had more time, I could have gone
ahead and done some of this without using brute
force to overcome the difference between the
booster and myself.
I could have gone into a
l ower orbit and chased it t hat way.
I could have
just gone horizontal and r etrofired and fallen
away from the thing initially and caught back up
with it l ater on, but it was getting so far away
from us to start with that to purposely put your­
self fart her away from it so that you could catch
eor'4FIDEMT+AL

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JeG~-1DENT-IA~
13
up later on was not the thing to do.
We had to be
all done at a certain time.
We had to be with the
booster when we came back into daylight.
That was
it; that was the thing.
We had to be with the
boost er, because we had to take those pictures .
Then we had to be with the booster again an hour
and a half after that so that we could do the EVA
right next to it .
And with those kinds of time
constraints you don ' t have time to perform a ren­
dezvous.
You've got to get with it right then, but
we just couldn't get with it right then.
\
You know another thing too; I'm darned glad we
didn ' t use any 10 feet/second initially to sepa­
rate with.
I think we could have used something
in the terms of 1 or ·2, feet/second and that
would have been fine.
Don"-' t you?
I cut it short .
I only burned about
5 seconds,
and I stopped.
You have been doing that in all your simulations
so I knew you were going to do that.
You can even
cut it less. It was amazing to me the separation
you get i mmediately.
I t almost seemed like we had a posigrade rocket
on the spacecraft and a retrograde rocket on the
GQ;NFt0ENllA~
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74
C.Qt~FIDEtfflAt'
booster, the way we separated . Well, anyway, we
told Guaymas that we had to get resolution i mme­
diately if they wanted us to continue to chase the
booster because we had used a lot of fuel and we
weren ' t getting any closer and it was still
pulling away from us .
If they wanted to go for i t
they had to make up their minds and we would
really go after it.
But I didn ' t think it was
wise.
They confimed this and said,'Knock it off!'
For cloeing rates at rendezvous, I think you could
handle 20 , 30 , 40 feet/second if you are coming
at it , not if you are gomg away from it .
You
see we never got a chance to do a rendezvous .
We
never rendezvoused with it .
The best thing we
ever did was to get close enough to it where I
could at least say I was at the same al titude with·
it for a change. It was the fir st t ime I had
gotten back to tee same altitude since we left it
at insertion.
Yoo just can't equate it.
You
don't do an optical rendezvous with the booster
below you.
You try to put it above you so you
have the stars and the sky background. It was
below us .
You couldn't do any line· of· sight
nulling because there wasn't anything to null the

•
75
H)EN=ttAL
line of -sight w:ith .
On the other hand I found
that if the sun was on the window you couldn't see
beyond the nose of the spacecraft.
This satellite
that I saw over around Ha¼~ii--I saw the thing
and we were closing on it.
We might have had a
better rendezvous with it than with our own booster.
We were closing on it and I was concerned enough
that I checked to see where the a .c. Fower Switch
was to see if I had maneuver capability at the
time :
The • sun came across the window and I
lost it just like that. It might have been 5·
miles out.
I don't knov•. It might have been then.
It might have been 50 miles out, but I had the im­
pression in the 30 or 40 seconds I saw it that it
was quite close because I could make out the shape
of it. Shoot!
The sun came across the window and
that was the last thing I saw out the window.
I
never saw another thing out the window until we
were gone and until the sun finally came off the
window.
So, if you are doing an optical r endez­
vous and you've got the sun on the window, I don't
know what you'd do.
White
And if you have as dirty windows as we had-- our
windows had a white film of material on the
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76
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outside
, which made it very difficult to see out
when the sun's rays reflected on these particles
that were on the outside of the windshield.
To just summarize this thing, I think that we
came off the booster with a fully unknown relative
velocity which was much greater than what we
anticipated, and it didn't seem to be an inplane
relative velocity. It didn ' t seem to be an inplane
local horizontal relative velocity. It was out-of­
plane and it looked like the booster headed down ,
with respect to us because i t started separating
from us so rapidly,
I t al so had less total velo­
city.
I think that this was the first sur­
prise . It started tumbling and immediately the
rates built up in just a· very few minutes to
something very high--40 to 50 degrees/second-­
but it never got any higher, at least the best we
could tell.
When we last saw it over Mexico or
over southern United States it was still tumbling
at about the same rate , I guess around 40 or 50
degrees/second.
I felt tret I got down to it all
right and I was in reasonably good shape prior to
Carnarvon, and from that time on until we came out
of the darkness I lost it , And I think I lost it

77
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£0N·~ll;)ENTIAl­
because looking at a single light at night doesn't
give you any depth perception at all.
You just
don't know where the booster is.
I think that
summarizes it.
Ed, you want to add anything?
You
weren't watching it as much as I was , but you saw
enough of it to know exactly what was going on.
Well, you see I wasn't able to put the pieces
quite together because I was either looking out,
and I couldn't see when you were thrusting, or I
was looking in and watching you when you were
thrusting and listening and not looking out.
I
tried to interJect my thoughts as we went along
and I agree with what you said.
I don't believe
I want to add anything else.
Now that we've covered the tracking and the losing
of the booster, I think we ought to go back to the
very beginning a t insertion and we will go through
the checks that we went through as we proceeded
along and the things that F,d and I were both doing
aside from tracking the booster, the things that we
were either doing to prepare to come back in at
area 2-1 or t o stay in orbit and proceed with
the FNA as we had planned,
In looking over the
fli ght plan that we had and the briefing guide on
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page six,I have already covered the things on
platform alinement.
I did not have time to aline
the platform.
I tried to get it to somewhere near
the local horizontal so that in case we had to do
a retrofire I ' d be able to do the Etrofire .
I
brought the spacecraft up to a pitch attitude that
I hoped was zero,but I never got the spacecraft
alined to see that it was zero.
So we really went
into this thing without my ever having seen a zero
pitch attitude on the spacecraft .
Obviously
I didn ' t get a chance to see the 30 degree pitch
down on the retrofire attitude.
I didn't really
have time to look out the window and do a single
thing that would have prepared us to reenter at
2-1 because we were so busy keeping track of-­
You know another thing I ' d say also is that we
were eternally optimistic.
We felt we were going
to aline the platform and watch the booster at the
same time.
As a matter of fact, while I was trying to get the
alinement it became apparent to me that I could not
aline it. I even thrusted vertically-­

79
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I was in a horizontal position and I thrusted
down using my top thrusters, so that I would
try to keep the booster in my view.
Thrusting,
chasing the booster, and alining the platform
all at the same time--those are the kinds of
things you have to do.
So, I never did get the
platform alined.
I did not have time.
I got
it somewhere near local horizontal .
If I was
within pl us or minus 5 degrees in the axis, I
think I did a reasonably gooi job,
The
Thruster Control Mode Checks that took place at
15 minutes I didn't do as such.
I would just
thr ow it into a different mode and thrust.
I
just did it with a catch~as~atch-can.
I did
check out the different modes.
Everything seemed to be working.
You weren ' t
getting My thrusters that weren' t f iring, and
your modes all seemed to me to be working
pr operly.
It looked pretty good.
I had one comment on the Co~munications System
Check.
Remember we lost good communications
with No . 1 UHF and we switched to No . 2 and
seemed to have good communications with it

80
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from th~~1 on?
Now this wasn ' t representative
that we lost UHF No . 1 beca1lse w0 used bo:h of
the sets at different tiJWS throughout the
mj_ssion later 0:1 .
But at this particula:-:- time ,
UHP 1 didn ' t give us good reception 13:1d we
swit<~hed .
I thought comm t"li:-:at.i::ms through the fi1•-it :liv
of the flight wi;re atrocious .
They were
terrible .
Finally we switcht~d to th•) .-~~en~ry
St ub Antenna and that seemed to fix L!w p:>oblern.
I
Didn t you thL1k so?
But you know we went back
to reentry a n tenna, over Carna:::-vo:i one tine .
WH got just as good r~cept i ::>:1 o.ff of it that
ti.me as we di.d any other ti-:ne .
I remember when you were rnak i.ne- yo·.1r
Cornmuni catio:J.s Check.
That wa.1 ·.-.r1hm I was
ai:;leep.
You were ,;hecki :,1g the two and you
end<id up with the r eentry antenna.
Yes , later on in the flight , as I said, at the
end o.f the fi r.st d9-Y or :30.
We seemed t o get better communications .
fact , I
W'.:iS a little concerned that the
comm..micati.ons w1;re so lousy th~t W'; might h1we
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81
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to come back in, because we were really losing
communic~tions.
We were trying HF and all kinds
of things.
Information just wasn't getting
up to us.
That was after EVA.
Right.
Communications just weren ' t getting 11p
to us.
I figured we didn't have any communications
with the ground during EVA.
No, we didn' t . Our VOX blocked t hem out.
I know it.
But the Communications Systems Check that was
supposed to be performed at 15 minutes-­
we sort of already accomplished the thing,
because we 'd used UHF No. 1 and No. 2.
I made the check with them.
Did you make the check? -- that ' s right you made
the check but we didn ' t use the HF because we
weren't going to put the antenna out until after
EVA.
We didn ' t do anything with the urine
bags except keep them right where they were.
At this time we didn't pressure check both
suits , because we did this later.
We didn ' t aline the platform, as I mentioned.
C:0NFt0ENlt~ L

82
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The Control Mode Check was a catch- as- catch­
can.
You did unstow, the equip~ent that we
were supposed to unstow.
The bl ood pressure
bulb, the Hasselblad camera and its packs , a11d
a 16 mm camera.
During this time when I was
chasing the booster, I did manage to get to
reach back behind my seat and pull out the
bracket for the 16 mm camera.
You tracked the
booster while I smoothed the thi.ng out .
That
I s right .
We didn ' t get out the urine nozzl e.
How about
the utility cord? Did you get out that fancy
utility 0ord, the three- axis utility cord?
Yes, I knew where i t was.
I didn't give it to
you beca~se you didn ' t need it .
No, I didn ' t need it .
That ' s right.
As Ed
said, we did not pressure check our suits at 30
minutes like we were supposed to.
There ' s this little thing here that says meas11re
all LV~ .
All I did was put the co~puter in
Catch- Up, hit the Start Comp button, and just
l et the numbers fall where t hey would.
At the
time that we stopped chasing the booster around ,
I had about 60 feet/ second in one window,
C-O~ ◄ Ftf}EMTIAL

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-€0Nf-U)ENT1Al
03
30 in another, and 30 in another.
I never really
ea..11e to a positio:1. to try to ni1ll all these
things out to see what the total 6V was.
I
was putting in the thrust with mostly the aft
thrusters and the down-firing top thruster.
I don't think I used the left and right thruster,
at all.
I don 1 t think I used the bottom
thurster at all.
There was no difficulty
controlling a~y of them.
I used the forward­
firing thrusters once or twice to try to slow
dow:i, to take out total velocity.
Then there was the Accelero~eter Bias Check l
which was another one of those things.
I don't
know hon I let it get into the flight plan.
We both joked about that one, huh, Mac?
We
were really going to get an Accelerometer
Check when we were trying to track the booster.
I was putting 16V ' s on the IVI 1s at a rate of a
foot per minute at least.
We ended up with over
a foot per minute, I think, over that period
of time.
We couldn
I t have checked anybody
1 s
accelerometer bias, so I just didn't even fool
around with it.
We were supposed- to take a
blood pressure.
Did you take that blood
~F.10ENTIAL

84
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OONFIDEN II.A:L
pressure , Ed?
Yes.
You did ta!<e the blood pressure.
I think I did. I had it out .
I don ' t know
whether they asked for it or not .
Okay.
I don
1t remember on that .
Okey.
We got the ~antity Read off.
I guess
we got a t.ime hack so:newhere in there .
They called up I believe. I remember them calling
the Quantity Read- Off, and I turned it 0?~'.
That's right.
Then it says at one hour we were supposed to
W1stow and assemble the maneuvering unit in its
16 m:n mount.
I don ' t think we had that stuff
out by then, did we?
No.
You see, this whole flight plan was based on me
being able to track the booster witho~t using
any thrust , a~d essentially having the space­
craft stationary near the booster, without
any maneuvering at all, where the station­
keeping was a matter of just looking out at the
thing and co:1.trolling your attitude with pulse.

85
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We thought that if the booster was stationar~
we could get in close to it .
We could
essentially fly a formation by it with mo~e
a:titude co:1trol than translation control ,
which l eft me then free to help F.d assemble all
this stuff for the EV~.
Well, it turned out that
I didn ' t dare take my eyes off the booster for
half a second.
So all tne things that we were
supposed to do together up until the t ime we
f inally said goodby to the booster, Ed had to
accomplish himB11lf.
I was completely unable to
help him.
The only thing I ma.~aged to do was
to unstow the 16 lllDl camera bracket and put the
16 mm camera on.
I ~ouldn' t quite get at that one.
No .
I could nardly get to it.
So we w~re
probably behind at the hour mark.
Right?
Yes .
Not by an awful lo~.
I knew we had a probl em with the booster, and I
was more concerned with our problem with the
booster t han getting the gun and stuff o:it
then.
I felt that they w~re both tied together
and once w~ l ost t he booster we didn ' t have a
EONFIDEN:f.lAt"

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sweat time-wise on making o:1r EVA.
So , I was
trying to be of what assistance I could to Jim
on watching the booster during these first
..
critical periods.
Yes. It wasn ' t unappreciated because this
booster was becoming a speck on the horizon, and
if you blinked your eyes you co:1ld very well lose
thn dar.r1 thi"lg .
When wa were out that seconi day, I think you
said one tiine you did. lose it for a minute.
Tha~' s right.
I was lucky enough to still be seeing it , un~il
yo0.i started picking it up again.
That ' s r.·I.ght .
So, I'm saying it really took
t ~o pairs of eyes constantly looking at that
booster to keep it in sight. It's juAt one of
those thingH that just took so much time thkt
we hadn ' t planned on.
It was almost unbelievable.
In o:.ir flight plan from an ho:.ir to at1 hour and
twenty minutes we don't really show a'.1.ything.
Although, here again, we were busy with the
booster.
So, when we got l:l.1'.'0und to closing with
the boost~r, there wasn't any closing.
We
finally got clearance over the United States to stop
L

McDivltt
~Ot~R0ENrtAf~
s1
fooling with the booster.
I think this was ·.t.n
extremely wise dP.cisioo.
I got to Guaymas and I said the booster was
pull ing aw,zy from us.
We ' d already used abo~t
100
6.V to stay with it, and I r ecommended
that w~ just give up on it.
We had to get a
deeision imm,0idiatel y because I couldn ' t stay
with it and 11ot use f\1el at the same t Lme .
They
came back from Texas.
I talked to Guaymas and
got their confirmation from Texas, which was
only a "Tlatter o.f a couple of m'i.nutes, saying
leave the booster.
Th9.t was about the only
thing tney could 3ay.
Wnite
McDivitt
And this was the time I went after the gun.
Okay.
At th9.t time we reve.rted fror:i station­
keeping, which we were both attempting to do
to EVA preparation, which we both had to do .
I
Thats when Ed went after the gun, and we
st8J'.'ted our ...,c,.;pa::at.i.0.11.
We wc-::-do ' t .rea1 ly
far bt-~h..:.nd llt this time.
All WH had to do was
get the gun out and get the m!'l.neuvering unit.
The cameras we·c(: already out.
You had the
Zeiss too , didn ' t yo~?
-E0NFIDENTJAL

88
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Yes.
The Zeiss came out with the Hasselblq,d ,
from that S3Jlle package as the movie ca:nera.
And the storagf~ certainly wan :i l ::>t easier.
What do you think?
Tbat ' s right .
Particularly getti~g it out that center thing.
You can just zip :hem o:.it of there with no
probl1Jra ;lt all.
So, a~ about 1: 30 we started to assHmble the
gun.
If you look at the checklist, yo:.i see
that we probably gcit the gun assembled :Ln
nothbg na.t.
It 1s no problt:im to assemble the gun .
We started our eg:-ess preparations essentially
on time.
As a mattHr df fact , I think we evtm
got star ted a little earlier.
Then, we weren ' t worrying abo-;.1t anythi11g else .
Then, we w:ren
I t worrying abo·J."!; staying with
the booster.
We probably started it abo~t 1:35
or 1: 40.
Over the States we started our ~gress
preparat io~.
We went to our .Jther checklist.
You were o,•er Ascension , calling off the check­
list.
I sta::ted reading the checklist off to Ed and
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89
EO·MFIDENTIA't:­
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we w1:nt through it .
He unntowed evet'ything.
Why don ' t you tell them what you did there, Ed?
I just read the checklist off to you, and you
went a.head and riid i.t.
Okey.
I had to get bar.k .i.11":o the r"ight -h.md
box, and I un:=i tow0d the item:, there .
The
first time I went back in there , I took the
firs t items out, and I did :1ot unstow the full
box.
I rem,~mher I told you,
II It
I s all comi.r1g
out , Jim.
I ' m gol11g to bring them all out on
the 19.11yard. "
Remember?
Right .
We'd tak~ them o~f piece by piece if we need it.
At that tim,1 I pill lfld the wh0l,'! lanyard out and
the cockpit was full of little bags. I was qu.ite
happy that they had prevailed upon me to put
a lanyard on all this equipment.
I had thought
at one time that it woulri be mvt'd desiri-:l,bl~ not
to p,1t a lanya.rcl on .
We 'd been wo:::-k.ing a lot
in our sim11lations without the lanyard and it
seemed pretty easy.
But looking at it now, I
highly recom..n~nd that eve r-ybody k,-lep that stuff
on a l anyard .
We would have r eally had a mess if we 'd had all
-€0NFl0ENflAt· -­

90
Wnito
McDivltt
Whi t e
McDivitt
those thitJ.gs floating ar.ound. It was bad
eno~gh as it was.
Yes , eight or ten of those little bags, and I
was glad they were all tied Jn to Jne string.
I could control them in t hat manner.
They were
quite simple to U'lsn3.p.
I thought the snap
attachmP-nt made it p:::-etty easy to UtJ.stow, and
selectively pick o~t the items that I wa~ ted .
I unstowed the pouches that I needed, and then
we g,)t ready to tak~ the long um'J ilical out .
h'ld a little difficulty.
It toJk m~ about
three trys to get it out .
It ' s f airly big
package to come through a small hole. It was a
good thing th~t we had tak~n the Velcro off of
the batch, beoause t here was no tendency for
any th i. ng to hang up as w,~ remewed it .
On the
third try I got it out .
I thought yo~ did an extremely good jJb getting
the bag ou~.
You got it out a l ot quicker than
TC'ai.nec in Houston or in the simlll ator at the
Cape.
You didn ' t know it .
It took m.1 th:::-ee tr.rs.
Wall , maybe it did , but it sure l:,okH1i like it
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91
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Waite
C~Ptl)E~TIAL
camP. out a lot eaf-Jier.
I thought you got it out
in a big hurry.
I didn ' t notice that it took
yo:J. three trys.
I saw you stat't, and then jllst
a f-Jhort t.i.m,1 la7-er, it was out .
Well , it d:id come out pretty easy, and I think
the storage was .satisfactory, bllt I 'd
certainly reco1nm,1ricl thA.t noth.i "lg b ~) on ';ht1
outside to k~ep it from coming vllt. It's a
real tough-­
Yes, we need the velcro off of there.
We ' re
pretty wd1 sure of tha-~.
The reGt of the ::iquipm•:111';-
the "y" con:1ectors,
the bag thA.t contained the "y" connectors, and
the attachments for the chest pack, I handed
to yot1.
I thi'lk you wi;c~ k:➔ep.L ,1g tra,)k of most
of those things 1mtil the time I needed them.
Yes, I was.
The storage of the ventilation module froc:i the
fioor came off pr~tty easily.
That ' s when 1
started goi!'lg ahead ;md putting it all on.
You
read the checklist off to me.
I had gone
ahead. and done a few things anyhow.
As you
read them off I checkP.d them off to be sllre
that I had done them all.
I think we h-':l.d
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92
I
McDivitt
White
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cor ◄ FIE>f~IAL
everything out without m~ch problem at all.
think it took •ls longer actually to p1lt it
all together..
That ' s right .
It did.
We started going
through the checklist here and putting the
things on and W'3 started getting more and more
rushed.
We were supposed to star.t the E[,rress
Preparation Checklist at abo:it 1:44.
We
probsbly sta::-ted it at about 1:35 or so.
We
started it about 10 minutes early, roughly ,
maybe five to 10 min1tes early.
We were
supposed to be ready to start the depressu r.a7,a­
tion at 2: 30 over Carnarvvn .
I think I could h.3,ve gone through ari:i l1ook2d
ev8.rything all up , but I felt that we should
go -:hc:-ough fairly close to the p~ocedure w1; had
set up on the checklist.
That
I s r igh t .
I think this slowed us down .
Well, we set tht, procedure up so tha~ when we
finished wlth it, it would be right.
I think
this helter- sk8lter thing that we were being
forced into was for the birds.
So an Ne g0t
farther al:mg, it beca;n,~ .:i.ppar,mt to nt, that
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93
~IDENf ~kl111
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the thing to do wo~ld be to stop.
Right .
Go aht-,acl with the assembly of the stuff.
Why
d-:m
1 t you cor.1:nP.n~ on that?
I I ve co;::rnt'.!nted in my Self Debr: ~efing aboc1t th,?
equipment and the assembly of it .
I thought
thec-e was no d-i.fficulty at all in conrn-,cti 1g
the "y" connectord, the hoses, anj the chest
pack.
I thought the connection of th•e chest
pack to 11\Y harness was a good o~e.
With the
velcro I could m•,we it in and -:)Ut wheneve.c I
waa~ed to s:) that I could mak~ '!\}' connec tiorrn
on the i,il,?t side of the ECS hoses .
It w.mt
along pretty smoothl y , as a matter of fact .
think as we progressed along in it though , we
felt tha~; we hA.Cl r3ve.cythi'.'.lg d,me .
I didn
I t
rea.11.y feel that; w: hail 13verything done 1,n a
thorough manner .
And I think yo'J. had that sarnr~
feel i.ng.
That ' s right .
Wnen W8 got to Kan:) or Tana1.,;1.r·Lve
- ~I th::nk it was TananR:-'l. ve--I cal'led whoever
I was talking to and sai<l that we were :rLl.Ilfl.i.ng
late and I thought that we would probably not
do the EVA on thi.s particular .cev.
I krtew thn,t
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94
Wh::.t':l
McDivitt
White
l:,okl~d to 1:1,? l i.kc~ we had ,il 1. the stuff hookr.d
up , but Wf; hl3.dn
I t really had a chance to check
it .
I also noticed , Ed , that you W':re gr~tting
this whol ~ thing off .
So I tol d them over
Tananar.ive- -I believe it was Tan~n~rive- -that
dP.pressurize at the ne xt station .
We went on
ahead and it looked to me like yo~ were all
hooked up and 9.bo11t ready to g';) except for. <me
thing.
W,~ for.got tht1 thi~rm.-.11 glOV':~ .
I d i.i not have
my ther.,n.-tl. gloves on.
You did not have the the::-m.,l gloves oa , which
is aor t of insigaif icant , but we hadn ' t really
sure that l t wa.~ l.n t"le ri.gh":; sp-:,t .
w,~l l , we talked a~d yo:.1 said , "~9.t d,:, you
think?"
We talked it over:- and I had the same
feeling. I though":: it sur.e wo~lld oe sm,1.rt if we
had abo11t W rni'lntes to just; sit her~ r,➔ al still
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CONFIDE~il~l-
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befoce we go out .
I think w~ w·are in a situation w~ere it would
probably hava gone all right .
We hr-ui cor:ipl,3ted
hai rlo:w as far as the check.i.'lg w~nt , and I
juat di:in
1 t feel th'3.t we were i11 the right
shape .
Ed didn't think we were , and besides ,
could see Bd.
He coul,ln
I t see himself.
~d
look'.-!d a.wf0.1lly hot , s.rvl h;? l:iokt~d like he wa:1
getting a little pooped out from playl ng c1..-:-01md
with that big suit .
I tho~ght that the best
thing for his sake , e.nd I kn~w h~~ ·t1oul<'l.n ' t
ad.mi-'.; i.t , wa~, to l13t him r~st up for anot'1er
o.cb i. t .
I
agree that
was
the best judgment.
So , when w~ go-t to ~arnarvon--I g,1ess it was
Carnarvon--I called them A.'ld sa.:i.n r,m wc-Jra not
goi:1g !;o co □c out on tha:': or':>:.t .
It wa,, Carr1arv0n.
It was just before we
So , we postponed it until the next orbit.
As a
matter of fact , after that w~ j1rnt sat ther::!.
We d idri I t dn a thi-ig for abor.1: 10 mi.nutes .
I
let Ed cool off a li.ttle bit .
We were on two-
EON~l(;)ENTIAL
I

96
fa'1 o;>eration ,q,-: the time.
We j·.1st sat there
and we were cooled o.!'f.
We went ~o,x1.d for
White
Okey.
The.n as w~ wr:n '; back around , I asked yo,J.
to go thro:;.gh the checklist ag-'3.in , a"'.ln. ·,m wen';
through item by item this time .
McDivltt
WhL te
McDivitt
Wo.ite
bi.11-:k to the beg-Lrming checkl i.st , the EgL·ess
Prepa':.'ati:>n Checklist .
We started at the
top 0111; , and we dU. every step on it again .
We verified every s tep to make s1u·e ,rn hr-tdn' t
left an;rthi--ig out .
We actually went in ~d check8d t his time .
Another thi ng ,m ha<ii'i' t r eally positively
check9d was the positio11 of all the locks on all
of the hose i.n~e ts and o•J.t.l,~ts .
This time ·,,e
ac tually chi,ck~d .<J.11 those lock~d .
Al 1 of them
W<:'t'e locked in , but it was a good t hing to do,
I believe .
You want to rnakA sure .
We di:i do ou:r Suit
h-tegi.'ity Check hefor,~ we started all this stuff.
That ' s rigbt .
We started before we actually went
to the unstowing of the stuff from the right-
hand af t food bo:x.
We went to the S:1it
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97
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White
It1 ~2gt'-i. ty Check.
Well , I don ' t know 'tihere it is , but we did it
when we were s111)posed to d·::> it .
We did the .&lit I ntegrity heck befo:ce we
started the .Egt•ess Pr~paration 0he.-;klist .
That ' s when ·,.e did it , over the States.
I think we d-Ld thA.t just about the t .ime you
decided to give up on the booster.
We di1 the
Suit
In~egTi.t;y Check.
Both suits checkHd ::>ut
all right . I t went up to 8.5 and it leaked
do~ to about 8 . 3 Qr som,,thing l i.kH that .
Same thing with mine.
It went up to 8.5 and
laak1--?d down ju:1t a little bit.
Not enough
to ~e concerned about .
No.
Oh, one thing that we did do on that extra
orbit that w~ went around -- I discon_~ected the
.0epress 0ystem 1ind we Wf.:mt back nn the-­
Oh , yes.
We never e ·.ren got on the .;·_epress
system, di.d we?
Yes , I believe w•~ were , but then we turned it
off.
We w~re already to depressurize and then
wcj wimt back on the spacecraft ECS system, full,
and ~ent through and reverified the whole
checklist again .
The onl y thi 1gs that I would
(;6)N.f-lDENTIM
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.
98
McDivitt
White
say we h~dn
I t done to ffi3" sati.sfacti.,_.,n t"le fi.r;;t
time ,1as t:J check the inlet an<l 011tlet positions
of the locks , and I didn ' t have my tho?rmal
gloves on.
It turnAd out I didn ' t need them .
Also , d 1r.i11g this pe.clod of timr-i 1 R..l i.ned. tht,
pL1tfor1n, ;.rh.i.ch war. ~onpl ~tely in .i.s:i1 i.nP.d .
It
w:.:1s probably alined within a c-:iuple d,=1g1.-ees ,
but as we went a-r.ou:'1d in Orbit Rate it g0t
farthP.C' anrt farther 0;1-'; of tol?r-:in.~e .
So , I
m:uvv~d ·to a
1.i.1e the pl-:i.tfo.rra.
Here agllin , I
m.i..ght com,1.mt on the fan t that ou:::- ini ti,9.l
flight plan was so optimistic that it was
almoat unbelievable .
The both o~ ua wurk~d full
time :>n doing r10 tn; 'lg ex•)ept pc,~par.ine for EVA,
aJ1.11 we dldn ' t quite gHt thA job done .
I ca11 ' t
believe that we could ·'lA.ve poss ibly flown
f o:-mation w:i. th the booster and taken pictures
of it and all the other thi 'lgs t:i.at we had
and even comH close to compl-?ting it .
Well , the way we wo11ld h'3.ve had to do it, would
have been witho11t a checklist.
I would h~va had
to just go ahead :.md ~1:>ok c~verything •..p .
I
think tl'J could 111-w-3 do,w it satisfact)rily l-i
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99
EONfl0ENTIAL
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this manner, but it wouldn ' t have been the way
we would have wanted it.
Yes, that ' s right .
I don't think that ' s the
way it should be done .
It was just too bad
that we had a time limit on it , but when we did
get rid of the booster, or the booster no
longer became a part of the flight plan, then the
time limit vanished.
We found out that we
really needed that extra orbit, or probably could
have used another 20 minutes.
Yes.
We went back.
And I remember as we came
over Carnarvon, we had about a 15 minute chat
back and forth- kind of a rest period.
We
were all hooked up at that time, and that ' s the
time we went on the ~epress flow, ready for the
depressurization.
I think they gave us a GO
then for our EVA.
That ' s right .
We depressurized the cabin and
got down to 2 psi to check our blood pressure.
We tried to put our blood pressure plugs in
the blood pressure plug port and found out that
we didn't have any blood pressure plugs on
either- suits.
This was quite a surpri se.
An
unpleasant one, I might add.
Well , we decided

100
White
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that from our past experience and our
knowledge of the suit that even if we did
spring a leak in the blood pressure cuff the
size hole that we had in the suit would not be
catastrophic , and we decided to go ahead with
the EVA.
It was within the·capability of the syst em we
were using.
At Carnarvon we not onl y got the go- ahead to
start the depressurazation, we also got the go-
ahead to open up the hatch , the go- ahead that
we weren ' t supposed to get until Hawaii.
So ,
we went ahead and did that .
--._____ _
Yes.
I ' m kind of curious of the whole time.
We
were out nearly an orbit , I think.
We didn ' t
get it closed back again till we got back around
to Carnarvon.
We were in a whole orbit depressurized.
Yes, I don ' t think people quite realize that .
We ' ll remind them.
As we got to the hatch
opening thi ng, we had our first difficulties
with the hatch.
The gain gear, I guess you want
to call it--actually I call it the ratchet­
didn' t want to engage into the UNLOCK position.

101
We fooled with it a f ew times a~d it f inally
engaged in the UID.iOCK position, and Ed was
able to go ahead and start.
White
The first indication of trouble was when I
unstowed the handle to open the hatch.
The
handle freely moved up and dovm with no tension
on it at all.
I knew right away where the
trouble was . It was up in that little spring
on the gain pawl.
So, I went up and manipulated
it back and forth in hopes that I could break
the lubrication loose in the spring to get it
to work.
We must have spent several minutes
with t he hatch.
I thought perhaps it might
have been stuck in the manner that the hatch got
stuck in the Wet M Ock, where it just was stuck.
You could ratchet it open, but the hatch itself
wouldn ' t open. It was pretty apparent the trouble
was in the gain pawl .
I jimmied it back and
forth, and then I decided to go ahead and try
the technique of actuating it in sequence
with the hatch handle . If you actually replaced
the operation of the spring with mechanically
moving the gain pawl up and down, you can do
the same work that the spring does.
EONFtDENTIA~

102
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Your fingers sort of take the place of the
spring and drive this l ittle pawl home.
This is the first time we actually tried this
in a suit.
It requires you to press up with
your left arm to get at the gain pawl, and at
the same time hold yourself down.
And I think
l ater on this was a source of some of our
problems which I brought out now so that we can
find out later on.
I f el t it start to engage ,
and start to ratchet the lugs out.
Jim also
verified that they were coming open.
I backed
them off , and I remember Jim saying "Ooop ! Not
so fast !", and at that time it popped .
The
hatch actually popped open, jumped open about
3 or 4 inches.
I was expecting the hatch t o come open with a
bang.
Although we had the cabin to vent and it
had bled on down to where there was nothing
indicated on the Cabin Pressure Gage , we still
really had the repress valve on.
He was
bleeding right into the spacecraft .
We never
got down to a vacuum and even though we had a
cabin pressure of only a tenth of a psi , we
spread it over t he entire area of that hatch,
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103
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McDivitt
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and that puts a pretty good size force on it .
I had a real tight hold on the hatch closing
device , and when it popped open I was able to
snub it .
It didn ' t really open with much force , did it?
Well, it did. It opened with a fair amount .
It
popped and I couldn ' t stop it the first inch
or so. Then, of course , as soon as it opened
that much pressure bled off.
I just sort of
snubbed the thing to keep it from flying all
the way open.
Now if I hadn ' t been holding onto
it, I don ' t think it would have gone open more
than two or three feet .
This is another point too.
There ' s more force
on the hatch actuator than I thought.
I didn ' t
just flip the door open with my hand.
I had to
actually forcibly push it open, similar to the
force with which I opened the hatch laying on
ti
II
my back under one g .
That ' s about the force
that I had to put on the hatch to open it .
This extra force that we are talking about is
due to the 0-rings they put in the pyres that
are used for jettisoning the hatch.
This is
something that they put in just before the
Ee-NFt0ENTIM.

104
White
OO~~FK:>fN--TIAL
flight .
Something that we 'd gone out to the
spacecraft t o feel .
We knew just about what t he
force was , but it was pretty high.
Okay.
At this time I had certain things that I
had to accomplish .
I had to mount the camera
on the back of the adapter, and mount t he
umbilical guard on the edge of t he door . I
elected, as I had pl anned , to go ahead and mount
the camera f irst and then the umbilical guard .
I mounted the camera and it went on without too
much difficulty.
The t hree little lugs on the
bottom are a good mounting scheme.
I think I
would make a littl e easier engaging device for
working out in a hard suit.
I had familiarity
with it, and it did lock up there all right .
The umbilical guard for the umbilical on the
side of the door took me a little longer to
mount.
Back to opening the hatch--I had the
thermal gloves on when we were opening t he
hatch, and because of the fine work I had to do
with the little gain and the drive lugs up
there, I had to remove the thermal gloves so
thtt I could actually actuate those small
l evers.
I couldn ' t do them with any precision
EOl'JFIDEN+JAL

105
G()NFIE>ENTIAt
with my gloved hand .
So, I took the thermal
gloves off at this time and I handed them to
Jim.
When I got back out I didn't notice
any temperature extremes.
I felt quite confident
that there wouldn
I t be any heat since we just
came out of the dark side, so I decided to do
the actual work in putting this equipment on
with my plain pressure suit gloves .
I had much
more feel with them.
Let me get back now to the
umbilical guard on the door.
I t went on pretty
well. It took me a little longer and it took
me four or five trys to get the little pin into
the hole that actually snubbed the guard down
on the door.
I did something then that I
hadn ' t planned to do.
The bag had floated up
and out of the spacecraft and now it was above
the point where the hose was going through the
umbilical guard .
I had planned to keep it down
inside .
I left it there for two reasons:
(1)
I figured it was there already and I would have
had to take the umbilical cord off again and
scooted it back down , and (2) I also felt that
Jim might have had a better view if it wasn't
sitting right in front of him on the hose coming
CONflDENTIA~

106
McDivitt
up from th1~ r ~press v,1.lve.
I elect ed to go ahead
and leave the bag there.
I t hen reported to
Jim that I had everything all mounted and was
ready to go.
I had planned to take a short
series of pictures.
Since we had gotten out
early, I had a little extra time at this time ,
so I went ahead and turned the outside EVA
camera on.
I took a short sequence of pictures
that actually gives the egress up out of the
seat.
I kind of went back down and came out
again so they would get an actual picture
of it , and then I turned the camera off again.
I mounted the camera and I turned it on while it
was on the mount.
I took a short sequence when
I asked Jim to hand me my l eft thermal glove ,
which he did .
I put the thermal glove on while
the camera was running.
I t urned back around.
I wanted to be sure the camera was off, so I
took it off the mount and I turned the camera
off and actually visually took a look to see if
the switch was off.
Did you lmock it off one time? I thought you
said the camera f ell off.
GO MF tf}ENftA L

White
McDivitt
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€0tt<tFIDENTIA-6-
107
By golly , I did.
So I must of mounted it four
times.
That ' s right , I knocked it off one time
during this time when I was out there.
I got
the picture of the egress, and then I asked you
t o hand me the gun.
At this t ime the camera
wasn ' t running.
I had the glove on my l eft
hand , and I went ahead and t ook the gun and made
sure that it was ready to go.
I had the
camer a on at that time and the val ve was on.
I
checked the valve to be sure it was on and I
was essent iall y ready to go.
I don ' t know how
l ong this took, but it took me longer than I
thought .
We had had early egress and it wasn ' t
too much bef ore I got the GO t hat I was ready to
leave the spacecraft .
I ' m not sure whether we got that GO from
Hawaii or Guaymas.
I sort of suspect that we
got that GO f r om Hawaii, not Guaymas as we had
originally planned .
Well , it sure seemed short from the time I was
mounting all that stuff out there to the time
you told me go.
That ' s right.
I ' m sure we were talking to
Hawaii, and they said you' re clear to proceed
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108
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with EVA.
And that ' s when I went.
I bet we went out at
Hawaii.
I think we went out at Hawaii.
I delayed from the time you gave just a minute,
long enough to actuate the camera on the
outside.
This was kind of interesting.
When I
actuated that camera, I had D\Y gun tied to my
arm with the tether. It floated freely to my
right .
I turned back around and turned the switch
ON on the camera, and listened and made sure
the thing was running.
I knew it was running,
and put it down.
I think you'll see t his on
the film.
I wanted to be sure it was running
when I mounted it back there.
I actually took
it off and turned it on, and I remember it
jiggling up and down when I was trying to stick
it on there.
It ought to be a funny looking
film.
And it might even show the gun floating
beside me as I was mounting it.
That ' s when
you said, "Slow down.
You' re getting awfully
hot . "
I was working pretty hard to get that
on.
I mounted the camera again and this is
where I tried to actually maneuver right out

109
of the spacecraft.
I knew right away as soon as
I got u~I felt even before - - that the technique
of holding on to the bar in the spacecraft and
sticking a finger in the RCS thruster wasn ' t
going to wor k.
I mentioned that to Jim before -­
that I didn ' t think I would be able to do it .
McDivitt
I think that you and I both knew how you were
going to do, and ever-sbody else was planning for
us how we were going to do it , but without any
real experience in it. People. who didn I t know
a lot about it were planning this sequence a~d
it wasn ' t the way it should have been.
White
I couldn ' t have done that .
I didn ' t have three
hands.
I couldn' t hold the gun and put a
finger in the RCS nozzle, and hold the handle
at the same t.ime.
I thought it would be more
d~sira.bl:'; anyhow to actually depart the space­
craft with no ·.relocity, other than that imparted
by the gun.
This is exactly what I did.
I
thought t hat I was free of the spacecraft , and
I fired the gun.
I real'i.zed that my legs were
still dragging a little bit on the side of the
seat, so I pulled myself out until I could
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110
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CSl>,lflQEDlllA I
spacecraft.
I think you called me and said I
was out of the spacecraft.
I called and told you that you wer e cl,3n.r.
That ' s right.
And that ' s when I started firing the gw:i a"ld
act~ally pr~pelled myself under the influence
of the gun.
I don ' t believe I gave any input
into the spacecraf"t whm1 t 1,3ft that t Lne ,
did I?
No , you left as clea,1 as a whistle.
Later on, I gave you some pretty big ones.
You were re~lly boun0ing arou~d then.
Now at the tjme, J l ef t entirely under the
influence of the gun avid it 0arried me right
straight oat, a little higher tha"l I wanted
to go.
I wanted to ma:.~euver over to your side,
but I maneuv•;r~d out of the spacecraft and
forward ru1d pBrhaps a little higher· than I
wanted to be.
When I got out; to whst I estimate
•
as p~obablyone-half or two-thirds the way out on the
tether, I was out past the nose of ·t'ne
spacec:::-clft .
I started a yaw to the left with
the gun and that ' s when I reported th~t the
I
gun r 8al1J worked quite well. I believe that I

~ONFl01:~TtAT
111
stopped that yaw, and I started t .1.·a.nsla:b.• 1-"'
back toward the spacecraft .
It was either on
this translation or t~'1P. one following this that
I got into a bit of a combination of a pi·tcl-i
roll and the yaw together.
I felt that I could
have corrected it , but I knew tha.t i.t ww.~d h av0
ta.-<e.'1 mor,-: f...i.el than I had wanted to expend with
the gun, so I gave a little tug Jn the tether
and came back in.
This is the first experience
I had with tether dynamics and it brought me
right back to where I did not want to be.
It
brought me right ba~k on the top of the sp~ce­
craft, by the adapter section.
Jim was
calling me and said that I was out of his sight.
I told him that I was all right , that I was up
above the spacecraft , I looked down and I could
see attitude thrusters firing, littl-~ white
puffs out o~ each o~e.
I wasn
I t very close.
They looked just like what Chamberlain' s report
told us. It looked just like about a foot and
a half or maybe 2 feet of plume from the space­
craft and certainly didn I t look omin-.11H.~ to me
at all.
In fact it looked kind of like the
spacecraft was really alive and working down
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112
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there.
I knew Jim was doing his job holding
attitude for me .
Let me comment on the attitude- holding right
now.
Initially we started out in blunt-end­
forward. banked to the left about 30 degrees or
so.
This happened to be the attitude we were
in.
We wanted to be bl u:~t- end- forward for the
sun . and they told me it didn' t make any
difference what attitude that we were in when
we opened up the hatch.
We had originally
planned on opening the hatch toward the ground.
I was CRlled by some station that said it didn't
make any difference what attitude I was in when
I opened the hatch.
We opened
the hatch.
We
opened it in that particular attitude, and I
held the attLtude for the f irst portion of the
time that Ed was out .
When you had th" gun you
managed to stay reasonably well out in front .
I held the sp~cecraft essentially stationary
with respect to the local horizontal.
After
yvJ. ran out of fuel in the gun yo'J. were on top
of the spacecraft all of the tim~ .
I felt that
unless you really had to have the thing
stablized, to maintain your S•?nse of balance or
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113
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whatever you want to 8all it, I wouldn't fire
the thrusters.
You asked that already wnen I was out.
Yes.
I asked you if you needed it and you said
no.
So, then I felt it would be better not
to fire the thrusters, because you were drifting
back up over the co~kpit.
I could see that you
were going up over us.
I couldn' t see back
behind me , but I could see by the motions that
you had when you went by me that yuu were going
to continue on .
I felt th~t it would be a lot
safer if we just let the spacecraft drift
unless it got into very high rates.
I fired the
jets a couple of times just to bo~k ,:,.ft the
rates.
I let it start drifting when y0u got
on the tether so tha~ you wouldn
1 t get back
there on top of one of those thrusters when I
fired them.
From abou-: the time? you ran out of
fuel until you got back in I didn
1t do mu-:::h
attitude controlling.
I did some.
Everytime
the rates got up pretty high, I
1d knock them
off.
You were able to ma...~euver around the
spacecraft when the spacecraft itself had rates
of say plus or minus • 2 degrees/second in a
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114
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couple of the axes at the same time.
Here again
before the flight we discussed the axis system.
Ed selected the spacecraft as his axis system.
It didn ' t a:;:>pear that he was having a bit of
trouble with i t .
He was maneuvaring with
respect to it , regar,lless of what the earth,
sun , moon, a~d stars were doing.
It was
pretty ob\·i,..,us to me th:l.t was exactly what he
was doing.
Well, when I came back the firs t tims to ·~he
spacecraft with the gu-:r-- I had used the tether
to bring me back--I did go back up on the
adapter area.
This is the first time it had
happened.
I said , "All right .
I 'm ~omL'1g
back out again." This is one of the most
impressive uses of the gun that I had .
I
started back out with that gun, and I decided
that I would fire a pretty good burst too .
I
started back out with that g.m , a.~d I literally
•
f lew with the gun right down along the edge of
the spacecraft , right out to the front o~ the
nose, a..'1d out past the end of the nose.
I then
actually stopped myself with the gun.
That was
easier than I thought .
I must have been fairly
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115
fortunate , because I must have f ired it right
thro..igh my CG.
I stopped out there and , if my
memory serves me right , this is where I tried
a couple of yaw maneuvers .
I tried a couple
of yaw and a co:..1.ple of pitch maneuvers, and then
I started firing the gun to come back in.
I
think this was the time that the gun r an out.
And I waa actually able to stop myself with it
out there that second -';:irne too .
The longest
fir ing time that I put on the gun was the one
that I used to start over the door s up by the
adi=tpter section.
I started back out then.
I
probably fired it for a one second burst or
something like that .
I used small burst all the
time.
You could put a little burst in and the
response was t r emendous .
You could start a
slow yaw or a slow pitch. It seemed to be a
rather efficient way to operate.
I would have
liked to have had a thre~ foot bottle out there-­
the bigger the better.
It w~s quite easy to
control .
I f eel that with the gun there would
be no dif ficul ty in maneuvering back to t he a.ft
end of the spacecr:eif+, and r.h;.s was exactly
what I did later oi-1 , just on the tether.
I got
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116
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all the way back.
So, I ran ou~ of air with
the g~n ani I reported this to Jim.
I didn ' t
attempt to take al}Y p-Lotures while I was
aotually maneuvering with the gun.
The
techniq·.1e th;,.t I used with the gun W3.S tne
te:.!h.aiq 1e ~hat we developed on the air- bearing
platform.
I kept my left hand out to the side,
and the gun as close to my cente::- of grcrrity
as I could.
I think l;hat the training I had ,)n
the air- bearing tables was very representative ,
especially in yaw and pitch.
I felt quite
confident with the g.m in yaw a:u pitch, but I
f elt a little l ess confident in roll .
I f elt
that I would have to use too mich of my fuel .
I f elt that it wo~ld be a little more difficult
to control and. I didn ' t ,,,ant to use my fuel
to take out my roll combination with the yaw.
We divided our plan so tha.t I would havd a part
of it on the ma.YJ.euver and a part of it on the
tether.
I don't know how far along we were
whP.n the gun ran out .
Right on schedule when the gun ran out .
We
planned f ollr minutes for the gun port ion of it.
We were just abQut on schedule .
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117
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..CE>-NFIDENTl~ l:­
I bet we used a little more than four , because
I think we came out earlier th'll1 we thought.
No , I sta~ted the event timer to time it .
Well, this is where m:r control difficulty
began.
As soon as my gun ran out I wasn
I t
able to control myself the way I co-..1ld with
the gun.
With that gun, I coi.lld decide to go
to a part of a spacecraft and very confidently
go.
I think right no·,. that .1. wish that I ha:i
given Jim t he gun ,u1d taken t he camera off ,
Nov, I was working on taking some pict.1res
and "lorking on the tethe:r dynamics.
I immediately
realized what was wrong.
I realized that our
tether was mounted on a pl ane ohlique .to the
angle in which I wanted to translate .
I
remem·i:cL' i'.c-•.1::n our air-bea:::-ing work that every·­
time you got at an angle from the perpendicula-:7
where yom.· tether wafl r:iounted, it gave yo.1 a
nice a::-cing trajectory back in t he opposite
direction.
You
I re actually like a weight on
the end of a str ing.
If you push out in one
direc;tion, and you ' re at 911 angle fron ~he
perpendicular, when you reach the end of a
tether, it neatly sends you in a long ar.c ba:k
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118
in ~he opposite dir ection.
Each time this arc
carried me right back to the top of the
ad.9,ptec-, to th~ i;np ,.:;(' 1,;he s_pa~e(;raft , in fact
toward the adapter section.
One time I w11s so
close to the t hrusters back there that I called
J •
I
• d
"D
I t f .
b
ti
:i.;n.
s,:u. ,
on
ire a.nymor:; . ,
eca.use
I was right on the thrusters.
I was even
closer than that f oot and a hal f wh.ich I had
noted to be tne leng!;1:1 of the thz-uster plumes ,
and I didn ' t want to sit on a firing thruster.
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McDivi tt
We were discussing the EVA and I was si:1.ying that
I spent approximately 70 percent of my time , it
seemed, trying to get out of the area back a:1ove
the spacecraft in the adapter area .
Yes , you intended to go toward the position that
was directly over the cockpit .
You always arced
passed it beca. 1,•11~ y ::n
W1'lce coming from the front .
This was exa~ tly rig'•rl. because that ' s exacUy
wher e my tether was connected .
Chris had been
very emphatic that he wanted me to stay out of
this area, and I had agreed to stay out of there .
I tell you , I was doing my level best to keep
out but the tether dynamics just put me back
there all the time .
Let me inter ject something here.
When we were
talking about the control modes and how we were
going to control the spacecraft , we decided on
the Pulse Mode rather than the Horizon Scan
Mode , or anything like th..,t .
The Horizon Scan
Mode
would
leave me free to use both hands to
take pictures of you and that way I wouldn ' t
have had to control the spacecraft .
But since it
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120
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was an automatic mode and it fired whenever it
felt like firing. It didn't give us any flexibil­
ity, and . this is why I felt that the best mode
to be in was Pulse , in case you did get back
there .
That ' s exactly what happened .
I didn't have to worry about the thruster going
off in your face .
I didn't want the thrust ers
to fire and they didn't fire because I didn't
touch t hem. It was a wise choice.
I think this was good .
When you look at it
fr om a picture-taking viewpoint , it gave a
wider spectrum of pictures.
You got different
views of the earth and the horizon.
I ' m glad
we weren 't held to a specific mode.
I think that the picture we did take or the
attitude that we started out , which is shown i n
the newspaper , is just about right .
I guess we banked over to the right, I don ' t know.
That must have been just as I came out .
I don't remember, but it had enough of the
ground in the background so that it was certainly
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121
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ce,~F~f>ENsrlAL
worthwhile.
On one of my passes back to the adapter area I
got so far back that I was about 3 or 4 feet from
the adapter separation plane, perpendicular to
it .
It was rather jagged .
There did appear
to be some sharp edges but it really didn't
look very imposing to me . I took a picture of it .
That's one picture that I believe was good and
should come out.
The trouble is it was probably set on infinity
and you were up about 5 feet .
No , I set the camera to about 15 feet or so. It
might be a little fuzzy because it was too close.
No, I didn ' t see the far side of the adapter. It
didn't go all the way around .
I think I could
have pushed off and gotten back that far.
No .
Better to st ay away from it.
Well, I felt that if I got going I could h~ve
swung all the way around and had my umbilical
right on the edge, without anything to hold on to
or any gun to control myself. This didn't seem
like it was at all safe and I had told Chris that
I wouldn ' t go behind the craft. So I didn ' t go
back there .
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122
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White
That must have bee~ just about the time I told
you to come back in.
No, I would estimate this was about two-thirds of
the way and about this time I was after pictures.
I knew this was a part of the flight plan that I
had, in my mind , fulfilled satisfactorilly. So
I tried to get some pictures and this is where I
really impar ted some velocities, trying to get
away from the spacecraft into a position so I
could take a picture. I went out to the end of
my tether cord quite a few times doing this .
I seemed like every time I would be completely
180 degrees to the spacecraft . I'd have
beautiful views of the ground but I couldn' t
see the spacecraft. It was a definite mistake
to mount the camera on the gun . That made it
very difficult to use the camera.
I had to
point not only the camera but the gun with the
long thrusters mounted out on the little arms.
I 'd want to take a picture of an object like t he
spacecraft, • and there were too many loos~ items
to get tangled up
in and block the camera.
I
know my tie-down strap was floating loose .
I
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123
-CONFIBENf-1-M
get it later on anytime I had to pull my helmet
down .
Occasionally when I got in close to the
spacecraft, the bag and strings associated ..,,-; th
the bag were tangling up around the vicinity of
the gun and the camera.
And it seemed like
the umbilical was right in front of the camera
all the time .
So , I think the pictures will
verify that I was flicking my right arm quite
a bit in the l atter part of the flight , trying
to clear things out from in front of it to get
a picture . Whenever I was in a position to get a
picture it seemed like I was facing away from the
spacecraft .
I took a couple of shots in desper­
ation and I think I might have gotten a piece of
the spacecr aft . But I never got the picture that
I was after .
I wanted to get a picture of Jim
sitting in that spacecr aft, through the open
hatch, with the whole spacecraft .
I know that I
didn' t get that .
In fact, as time went on I
realized that I wasn ' t going to get much of a
picture .
I was trying everything I knew to get
out there and get stabilized so that I could turn
around and get a good picture .
I just couldn't
do this . This was at the time when I was looking
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124
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a little into the tether dy,1amics , and I actually
kicked off from the spacecraft pretty hard .
I
remember Jim saying,
"Hey, you're imparting 2
degrees/second rotational velocity to the space­
craft when you depart . "
I was pushing the space­
craft quite vigorously.
I wanted to push off at
an angle of about 30 to 40 degrees to the surface
of the spacecraft ,
And anytime I pushed off from
the surface of the spacecraft , my main velocity
was perpendicular to the surface . It shot me
straight out perpendicular to where the tether
was attached .
Again, this wasn' t in the position
that Jim could take a picture of me, and it wasn't
too good a position for myself .
I usually ended
up facing away from the spacecraft .
Let me interject something here .
In desperation
I took the Hasselblad camera and stuck it over
out through :Ed's open hatch, and asked him if he
could see the camera and if he could tell me
which way to point it. He couldn' t see the
camera so he never really did tell me which way
to point it .
No .
This was the time that ~rou said ,
"Hey, get
in front of my windo;,.· ." It just so happened that
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125
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I was right up close to the spacecraft and that's
when I came over.
Do you remember me coming
over and actually looking about a foot from your
window, Jim?
Yes .
Looking right at you.
Yes, I think that was the time the movie camera
wasn't going and I was fooling around with it ,
trying to make sure that it was running.
Oh, that would have been a very interesting
picture.
I'm not sure it was going, Ed ,
~ecause, as you
know, we had so much trouble making the left
hand one run.
We had that t rouble throughout
the remainder of the flight.
You pushed a
switch over and it seemed to run so:netimes, but
sometimes it wouldn't.
I kept worrying about
whether or not it was running so, I would grab
a hold of it to see if I could feel it clicking
over.
I switched the ON-OFF switch on a couple
of times to make sure I could tell the change in
the feel of it. I'm afraid this time is one of
the times that I didn't have the camera going,
because I was trying to make sure that it was
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126
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going.
I ' m not positive .
I hope I got :,he
picture but I ' m not sure about it.
That was the time that I came right in , and I
couldn ' t have been more than a foot from your
window , looking in .
I could actually see you
sitting there .
That 's pr;.,bably :,..-hen you put a mark on my window .
I think the way I did that--I could actually see
you in there and I pushed away with :ny hands a
little bit .
I think this was t he time that eHher
my arm or my shoulder contacted the upper part of
your window and you called me a "dirty dog"
because I had messed your window up.
You know ,
as you look back in retrospect , I wish you ' d
handed me a kleenex and I wish I'd cleaned up
the outside of those two windows. I think we
could have done it .
Yes.
We'd have never gotten to the kleenex at
t hat time , but I think we might have done some­
thing about it .
I think I might have but we might have smeared
them so irrepairably that it might have-- .
That ' s r ieht .
When you looked at that wi ndow
of mine from the inside while the sun was shining
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127
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C-O ►~FIDENll.Ab.
it looked like it was a black paint smear, such
as if you Id take a piece of v:hite linoleum
and a black rubber soled shoe and made a mark
on the linoleum. It had that kind of consistency.
It was absolutely opaque .
Just as black as it
could be .
Yes, I could tell .
When i hit it I could see
from the outside that it turned white .
It tu~ned black from the inside.
From the outside it was white.
From the inside it was black. When I got the
thing turned aro--.md a different way with the
sun on it , it was perfectly clear as if you
had taken the coating off, and what I ;.•as
seeing was through a perfectly clear surface. So ,
I don ' t know really whether the thing was black,
that you placed something on the window that
would make it blac~ or whether you ' d taken
something off that was very white , very thin .
I smeared the film that was on your window.
I 'm
quite confident that is what happened.
I looked at our spacecraft windows after they
got it onboard, and I could still see that
little hunk of window.
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128
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COt'4FIDE~l·l1tt­
you did was remove a layer off the window, rat her
than put something on it. You took something off
it .
Except I can't possibly imagine why it was
so black and opaque with the sun shining on it
at certain angles .
I'd like to comment on the ease of operation
outside on a tether . If you've ever tried to
hang on the outside of a water tower , or about
an 8- foot diameter tree , you can visualize the
problem I had out there .
The decision to leave
the hatch open was probably one of the very best
~:1at we made .
I had nothing outside the space­
craft to stabilize myself on.
There just isn' t
anything to hold
onto. I think Jim will
remember one time when I tr ied to hook my
fingers in the RCS thrusters .
I think Jim could
see because- - .
I could see .
I was right out in front of Jim I s windo•,.r . This
gave me really not hing particularly to hold ,):nto.
I t didn't stabilize me at all .
I had nothing
really to hold onto, and so if you have ever
tried to grasp an 8- foot diameter tree and shinny
up it , you know the kind of feeling that I had
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129
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outside there. There just ,rasn' t anything for me
to hold onto.
One thing though that I ' ll say
very emphatically- - there wasn't any tendency
to recontact the spacecraft in anything but very
gentle contacts .
I made some q·,.ite interesting
conta~ts. I made one that I recall on the
bottomside of the right door in which I had kind
of rolled around. I actually c8ntacted the bottom
of the spacecraft with my back and the back of my
head .
I wa.1 faced away fror., the r..ipacecraft and I
just drifted right up against it and just very
lightly contacted it. I rebounded off.
As long
as the pushoffs are slow there just isn' t any
tendency to get in an uncontrol lable attitude .
It seemed Fd did hit it pretty hard at one time.
I think that was after he pushed off violently;
he went out and it seemed he came back and bashed
it pretty hard.
I remember a pretty solid thump.
It seemed it was over the right hand hatch or just
right behind--.
I know a couple of times I kicked off with my
feet , and I think I k~ow the time you are talking
about.
I came in with my foot . It wasn' t so much
the contact with myself--.
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What did you do? Contact and pushoff?
I contacted and pushed with my foot .
I heard a big thump and I think I call ed you at
this time t o take it easy.
I believe that was on the fro~t end of the R & R
Section on my side where yo'.l couldn't see me .
It was a position that I couldn't see.
One of the pictures that I saw last night in the
movies , I think, was made at t hat time .
I was
coming in fair ly rapidly and I wanted to get back
out, so I kicked off again with my foot fairly
hard.
It was a vary good kick.
I felt th:3,,t
I.
certainly could have controlled myself without
the gun out there if I had just some type of
very insignificant hand-holds or someth.i.ng
that I could have held on to .
I believe that I
could have gone on back to the adapters with a
minimum of several hand-holds to go back ➔;he re,
going from one to the other.
I was actua,.1:r
looking for some type of himd-holdi: out th0re.
I remember that the only one that I saw was the
stub antenna on the nose of the spacecraft .
could see the ceramic covering ()Ver it, I believe
it was ceramic , or some kind of covering o,ar it .
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,,CQ.N-FIE>fNll'M.
Yes, it ' s white.
I felt that this wasn' t quite the thing to grab
onto, this was at the ti~e when I want ed to get
out at about 10 or 12 feet directly in front of
the spacecraft. I certainly had the urge to hang
onto the antenna and push myself out. But I
didn't and ther e really wasn't anything to hold
onto .
You really need somethine to stabilize
yourself. I worked around the open hatch.
Let me ask you a question?
How about putting
the hand-hold inside of the nose cone? A fairing
is up there for launch, just the fairing.We could
mount a hand-hold right inside.
I think we could have rea'lly made som,~ money if
we had had an attachment for the tether out there
right on the nose o.f the spacecraft.
Strong the tether out there and then attached
there?
Right .
Rave a seoond attach point and put it
right out there. It would give you something
to hold onto out there.
Yes .
There wasn't anything to hold onto o~ the R & R
Section.
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I know it .
It had smooth corners and the only thing I could
have grabbed was the a 1ten1a, a:id I didn ' t want
to grasp that .
we tho·.1ght one ti:..e of holding
oa out there and th:usting, but-- .
There isn' t anything to hold onto.
I think you
pt'obc>.bly co'.lld have gotten a hold on the antenn'3.
and held onto it witho~t hQrting it .
I examined
it pretty closely before the 1-3.'mch, and i t look­
ed pce~ty sturdy .
I thought this was somet hing we needed and I
didn't want to fool with it .
As it turned out we really needed that antenna
be~ause that was the antenna thu.t we used the
whJle flight- -that stub antenna in the nose .
Yes .
When we opened up the spa~ecraft the hatch came
open with a bang.
The air that wa had inside
was obviously of greater pressure tha':1 that o:1t­
sitle , and we had a great outflow of t hings inclu­
ding a piece of foam that we had used to pack our
tnA.neuvering gun in it ' s box. It was the first
thing t hat we put in o=bit .
But then throughout
the time thit Ed was out, he wanted the doJr wide
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open. It was pretty obvious that the flow was
from the spacecraft to the outside because part­
way through his maneuvers his glove floated out
and floated away from the spacecraft with area­
sonably good relative velocity.
The entire time
he was out , even after we h.'.l.d the hatch open fo~
20 to 25 minutes, we were still getting particles
floating out thxough the hatch. It was the flow.
The streamlines were very obvious. It was from
inside the spacecraft to the outside.
I guess
the spacecraft was out-gassing at a sufficient
rate to cause a reasonably large pressu.re differ­
ential from inside to outside , and it was cer­
tainly relieving itself. I noticed this even as
we were trying to get the hatch ~losed .
There
was still a flow from inside to outside.
Okay.
I think that pretty well covers most of
the things that we actually did while I was
out there.
Now , as for getting back in--.
Yes, let's go all the way back thxough and come
back in .
The time really did go faet!
I had
watches with :ne, but I dii:a ' t look at them.
I was watching the time.
I noticed my watch
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around 4 minutes and 6 mi.nutes and 8 minutes .
And t' .en you got involved in floating 1:3,ro'.l.Yld
as we were t rying to get that last pict,\u'e .
The tim,a really flew!
You kept getting behi.nd me all the t ime and I
became distracted from ;he t ime we were on VOX,
co'llpletely blocking out the grou.'ld .
Our VOX must
have been triggered constantly, be::::ause whenever
we were on it they coul::l:o' t tra.'lsmi t to us.
That ' s where the time got away from me .
That ' s right , and it was 15 minutes and 40 sec­
onds when I looked at my clock.
So , I th::>'.lght
that I had better g::> to the ground.
I said to
the ground, "Do you ha-.re any ,rn,ssage for us? 11
because I knew it was time to get back in.
And
th-9y just sai:i, "Yes .
Get back in! "
Right .
I remember hearing Gus say,"Yes, get
him back in ! "
This is what all the fuss was about .
They
might have been transmitting to us to get back
in hut we ware on VOX a.-id couldn' t hear a t hing.
I did a few things after this time that I wasn ' t
d·::>ing to deliberately stay out .
Bc1t I was
deliberately t rying to do one last thing.
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t rying to get that last pi cture .
And this was
one of a couple of times that I kicked off the
spacecraft really har.d, to get out to the cmd ·':l'!:
the tether. And [ wasn 1 t successful in g~tting
t he positi on so t hat I couli get a picture. I
fel t this was the one part of the mission that I
had:1 1 t completed.
Everything else was successful
and I wanted very badly to get that picture from
outside .
I spent a moment or so doing this.
This was also the period of ti~e in which I
called down to Jim a~d said, "I ' m actually walk­
ing o~ top of the spacecra.ft. 11
I took the tether
heU onto it, and ui:ied it as a device to pull me
down to the spacecraft.
I walked from about
where the angle starts to break be+
·"l the nose
section and the ca~in secti':ln.
I walked from there
~robably about two-thirds of the way up the cabin,
avid it was really quite strenuo'.ls,
Could you see
me walking along, Jim?
No , I couldn't see but I could feel the thumping
on the O'.ltside .
That ' s when 1 got to la 1ghing so hard. This was
when Jim \•tas sa,ying to com,, in.
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and said, "Get in here! "
When I w,3,s •t1':ilking on the •:,op and w,3,3 .l:3.1.,5·!1ing ,
Jim pr:.>bably did·:1 1 t think I th:mght he wa.s
serious .
But i t was a very funny sensation.
Now
as far as delayi:ig, there were ce::::-tain things
that I ha1 to do befo~e I came in.
And there
wasn ' t anything in the world that was going to
hurPy me up in do:l.ng the;n .
We had just agr eed
that we'd do things in a slow manner and this is
the way we ' d do it .
Let me talk about the tine here. It is implied
in the ~apers that Ed didn ' t really wa"lt to come
ba.ck in, and didn ' t .
I think one of the things
is that we didn't hear .
We didn ' t have any
t ransmissions from the ground after he step~ed
outside until I went off VOX at 15:4) .
They
said , "Come back in . ", an:l I told him to come
back in .
I think that he pt•obably del q,yed .~'::>out
a minute or t w? minutes .
I thi nk so , trying to get the pictures .
And at that t imn I got a little i t-ritated a.."ld
hollered at Ed , too .
Th,~n he started back in.
But whe~ I came baJk 1 had things to do .
McDivitt
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I k-1ow it .
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to get tfuis thing in its proper perspective.
Yes.
We were 3 minutes 40 seconds late getting started
back in because we just lost track of the tine.
I couldn't see Ed any longer.
I was trying to
keep t rack of what he was doing without being
able to see, and I lost track of time . Then I
think he delayed p·:obably a _ni:mte o.!' a :nbnte
and a half before he started back in.
That ' s right.
So , those are the two delays.
We 'd agreed on that he'd start back in after 12
min:1tes.
Fro!ll then on all the time was spent
J.ist trying to g,~t back in.
I had certain things to d-., .
I hail to disassemble
the camera that was on the spacecraft .
I did
this very slowly.
I had to dis,::011J1eot the elect­
rical connection to it and hand the camera back
in to Jim.
Then 1 had to go out and disconnect
the umbilical, and this really went pretty well.
The little tether that I had them put on the ring,
a pull ring, to disco:n:.~ect the pii worked pretty
well.
I disconnected the umbilical and discarded
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That was the last th.ing Ed put into orbit .
Right .
I put that L:1 o~bit. Earlier , it was
r eally quite a sensation to see the glove float­
ing off.
I asked Jim a few .nin.ltes before about
1
thf~ glova , ".>r Jim had asked me, "ne:v, do you want
this other glove?"
About a minute 1-9.t er, I saw
it gQ floating o'.lt of the hatch .
All I can say, Fil, war,, about a half hou.'..' 13.ter I
was sure t hankful that we had g')tte!1 r id of so:ne­
thing.
We had s·:i much other junk that we didn ' t
want .
I saw t he glove come fioating r)at of the righ>
hand hatch , and it was a perfectly clear picture
of t~ glo·,e as it floated out .
It floated ::mt
over my right shouLler arnl t1ut- -it l:ioked 1ike
i t waG on a defL'li te trajecto:r-y going somewhere .
I don't know where it was going.
It floated very
smartly out of -i:he :Jpa:~ecraft and ,:mt i.n-~o
s pace .
I thi n~-< this ha:l. a lot to do ·11ith that C'lt- gas­
sing.
There was a definite stream--.
Yes .
It was following the s tream:..ine ri~ht :m~
of i:he sp~1i::ecraft .
It went oat perpendicular to thP spacecraft ,
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whichever direction that is .
Back to getti'lg bade
the 3pacecraft- -I hc:l,d the
L°l
one thermal glove o~ the on~:aand , my left hand.
I always wanted my right hand to be free to op­
erate that g,m a--id the camera.
The way the cam­
era was mow1ted on there, I had to use both h9.nds -­
one hand to actually stabilize it with the glll1
and the other ha.;1d to cea.ch over. Again, I think
dynamics pl~yed a little bit of a role there.
Everytime I brought my hand in from a position
ou~ on my left, it tended to tur.n me a. little
bit, which is exactly what we found happened on
the air-bearing tables. I think that the camera
should have been velcroed to my body somewhere
and used independently of the gun.
Yes .
I g 1)t that same impression.
I got the
impression that what you reall y should have d•:me
was--.
Dropped the gun.
Unhooked the camera out there floating around
and j.1st throW!'l the g,m away.
I don't think you
ever should have tried to bring it back.
Well , what I should have done was fold the g~n
and handed it to y◊u,
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That would ·:iave ·j'.lSt taken longer.
It wo'.l.ld
have taken precious seco::ids out of the very
few thA.t we had anyway .
I th i.nk y0u sho'..lld ha•re
j 1st unhook.~d it and throW!'t the g'1fl ::;,w:~y .
This was probably the thing that I was most
irritated with not completing.
I dii.1 ' t .feel the
pictu.ces were satisfactory with the can,~ra out­
side. But I think the reason was that my camera
was not in a position so 1 could use it adeqciat­
ely.
But coming back in was the last thing.
As
a matter-of-fact , before I dismounted the movie
camera A-nd dismounted the urnb ~lic:,,1, I folded th,,
gi.ln .
I took the l::;,nyard off with the camera on it, and
handed Jim the gun and the camera.
A.11d I stuck it d:,wn between my legs .
That was thfi first thing that I handed in .
Then
I handed in the 16 mm -~am•=ra , and then I threvt
away the umbilical . Thls wa8 where the fun
s l;,,u· ~..::.1.
I f1)11nd it wa.r:i ::;, 1 )t mo:-::-e difficult
coming b.3.ck in tha.::i I had :remembered in the zero­
g training. It seemed like I was contacting both
sides of the hatch at the same time , much firmer
than I had in the zero--g ai cplane.
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You mean you were hitting the hatch o~ one side
and the hatch opening on the other side.
Coming back in, I was conta~ting the side of the
spacecraft o~ both sides .
Yes, that 's right.
Yo•.l weren't really hitting the hatch on both
sid,=.is, you were ht t ting the hatch opening on both
sides.
Yes.
I was coming down through there. I felt a
much fit'mer attachment wedging in there than
I 'd remembered from the zero-g training.
I think
this might be associated with the extr a 7/10 or
8/10 pound of pressurization on thf.l suit.
I
just mi6ht have been a little fatter.
I did
notice that the suit was a little harder. I felt
this type of suit before during my pre-work, so
this wasn't a su£p=ise to me at all .
But I did
feel like I was a little fatter getting in and
wedged a little tighter.
I really don't think Ed was ari:y fatter.
I think
that link in the suit holds the suit to whatever
volume it's going to go to.
And I don ' t th'ink
a couple psi are going--.
Well, I felt like I was hitting a little more as
-

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tOfqfl0Et ◄ TIAL
I came in .
Yes.
I think what happe:.e::1 ·,ms he was stiffer ,
and he wa.sn' t bending his legs and his arms ai:1y .
You mean with the harder suit I was stiffer?
Harder .
And your. arms were stiffe:::- a nd yo'J.weren't
bending them
around as much . It looked a lot
more rigid.
This mig~ ~ hav,3 been.
Not semi-rigi.:i--Ei w:3.s rigid .
All r ight .
This might have been.
And that looked to me like it might have been tht,
probl3m .
ThL, might have been part of the recontact 0::1 the
side of t;'.,e spacecraft that I noticed .
But
as I came back in, I noti-:::ed that I had to work
a little harder , and I hoped the tape was running·
because I think we had a very good commentary.
We were both talk ing very clearly bal)k a'ld forth
to ea-:::h ot~~er during this time and I w~s telling
Jim that I was go:'..ng''to com-3 in slow because it
waf-1 a little tought;r than t ha.:i tho 1ght .
We ·-'•=re
talking back and forth ab.::mt being slow and tak-·
ing it easy .
I actually helped pu:,h ~ down in there .
I d,,n ' t
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know whether he felt it or not in that suit .
No , I couldn't.
I reached over and I steered his leg::i do,m in,
and I sort of got hi.n settled b the seat a
l ittle better than what he was getting himself.
Yes.
Right.
I was kind of free wheeli~g my feet
up there.
Yes . It looked to me like Ed was holding o~ to
the top of the open part of the hatch and j~st
swiveling around that pa-rt. It looked like he
didn ' t have enough mobility and strength in his
arms to actually t wist his body down against the
force of the suit into the seat.
After awh.Lle, I reached my left arm u.nderaeath,
the same techniq~e we had used in the zero-g
training, and actually I had my hands all over the •
ci rc1xi t breakers.
Yes.
Ed was a real hazard to the switches.
Yes, and I pulled myself do·..m in and that ' s when
I really started coming .Ln--when 1 gut hold. of the
underneath stde of that circuit breaker panel
and p~lled myself in. That's when my first real
progress was made toward actually getting d:>wn in.
Because, while I co1.1ld steer Ekl from where I was
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(:O~FlDENTl~L
I really didn ' t have the strength to pull him in .
It was ';)0 degreea to the ·,my that he t:'ea.l.ly
wanted to be pulling .
I co'.lld steer.
I did do
a lj .,tle bit of pushing, but n::>t a heck of a lot .
I w:as>1 1 t really contributing rn,wh to the effort
t her.e ex-~ept-- .
You
were guiding me down into t he fcotwells .
Yes . That was aoout it .
B'J.t once I got my hand,, 11p 11:1dernP-ath the irrntcu­
ment panel , I was back pretty well in familiar
groun:is--the work that we ' d done five dnen times
in the zero-g air.pla,He ,and I kJ1ew the tecMi.que
pretty well.
10 0::)0 tim,~s !
White does check pretty ...,ell .
I really did it a lot;.
Maybe the suit wa,3
stiffer, or maybe I was .fatter, b:.it I wasn ' t
going in quite as easy as I had before--getting
into the initial positio:1 to pull myself dow~1
in~o the seat .
So it took ma a 1ittle longe.t:' .
I f you recall , I had to go back o'.lt again one
t ime .
I got back do•,1a and started to wedge my­
self d::>wn anrl I got t wo fat cr-:1inps at the bot­
toms of my thi.gha in both legs , where the
muscles star ted to bal l up a little .
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Oh?
Did you. get it in your. thighs o:':.' calves?
Bo-th of thP. muscles in the back of my thighs
balled up in a ball and I thought , "Well, I have
to go back out and l et them straighten up."
So, I straightened my legs out .
We had that problem before in the zero•-g air­
plane.
This is the time Jim said, "Hey while you' re
up, why don't you throw the vlsor out?"
I
hesitated a minute because I thought, "Well,
you son-of-a-buck, you might have problems here.
You might have to be spending an orbit or so
trylng to get in."
No , as a matter of fa~t , I don ' t think th~t is
when you did th.row it out .
I think you threw
it out when you ca.me back dow~ and you started
to close the hatch.
You were having trouble,
It wouldn't close, and you said, "I'm going to
have to take this visor off so that I can see
these things." And I said, "Listen, if we get
this thing closed we're not going to open it
again .
Throw the visor away."
That ' s right. That was when I got the cramps ,
went back up again and then I came back down
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again , and said , "Hey, I can' t see them.
I ' m
going t.o have to take the v•; .~or off."
No ,
J t was a little bit 19.ter than that .
¥0'.l
ha:l all ready started to try to close it and you
were having difficulty 0losing .it .
Okay.
Let I s get thP. sequr-mce out .
We came dowi1
in.
I got up to st ~aighten my legs a little
bi. t , went back up , then I came back riown- - .
- -with all yot1r. equipment on--.
I hadn't hel d the handle yet, had I?
No .
You ha:ln ' t done a thing with it.
So I got back d '.)wn into positi'.)n- -.
~-with all yo~~ eq'.lipment o~ 9.rld pulled the
hatch down.
The hatch was dO\v.'1 far enough to close at th i.s
time .
I thought i.t was.
I did., too .
I felt it was d::r,m far e:1:>'.lgh.
can tell by looking right straight d:>1,m at the
edge--.
Yes .
I can tell by looki'lg ,111 llndernP.ath the
r ight- ha.':1d side to see where the dogs are.
Okay.
So I tho'.lght the hatch Has doW!l far
enough to close at that time.
I reached up and
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got the handle , but I don'-c k11ow what I said
to you.
You didn't say anything .
I do~ ' t know whether
you said anything to me or not , bu"':. you didn ' t
have to sa~ anything to me .
I saw you move
that ha.."'ldle and I saw how easy it was going and
I saw that the dogs were~ ' t moving.
I thLnk I said somethL'lg.
I don ' t re1nember w:hat
I said .
But I said something anrl you knew
right away what had happened.
You didn't say a word.
I waB watchi.'.l.g the dogs
and that lever a"'ld I krle•,1 what the trouble was .
Right .
So I guess that ' s when I said , "I ' m
going to ha·,re to take the visor off because I
can't see." And then we went back up and Ji m
said, "Well, we're not going to open the hatch
again.
Why don ' t you thro·,1 the visor out ." I
hesitated for a mir'l.ute to throw it out because
I thought that we might have a pt'oblem.
Actually, we had a little more difficulty than
we had explained .
We fooled around for a min­
u~e or two or m~wbe even th:=ee or four with the
handle. It was pretty apparent to us that we
weren ' t going to get the hatch closed with nor­
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mal st-rai.gh~- forward techniques , and tha~ 1ve were
..
g0ing to have to s t art going to ot'·er t hings .
Whi.le we say that we came d::>wn and mo·,ed the
handle once or t wice , it was oYer about a three
or four rnin11te period , at l east .
The ~orinal meth::>d of closing the hatch is for me
to co~e d::>wi.1 and wedg➔ ~yself down , hold onto
the llttle canvas handle up t~ere , a."1d ,c1.ctL1ally
aJply a <iownward fo::-ce on t he hatch to help close
i t .
Then with my right hand I use the hatch
handl e to retche t the hatch down . This is no:"..'­
mal ly .:>ur techniq·.1e we wollld alway::; use , and
!:ever i n t he past , has Jim had to help mo: with
t he hatch closing device .
Thi.;, ·11as'.l.' t the c>:3.se
this tl!lle .
As so-::>n as I ha:i go-l;ten np ~here to
operate the gain lever, I co~ldn ' t ope~ate the
canvas handle anymore .
I co~li n't apply any
torque O'."..' pull there beca,1se--.
N-::>t only that, b:.it you were actually pushi.ng
yourself up off the seat .
And I 'm not sure
that even the first ti.ne that WE; had the hatch
closed far enough . It looked li.ke it was closed
far eno•..igh .
As a ms.tter of fac t , later on when
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was closed fine. It really wasn ' t closed far
enough because you never did get those dogs out
until we- - .
No, the dogs came out, Jim, the first time 1 got
torque o~ it. Those dogs started out, then it
closed.
Did they? Okay.
Yes.
I think we had it down f~r enough.
It looked t :J me like we did, and I couldn't
unde~stand why they weren't coming out .
I knew
that the :oo.tchet wasn't engaged, but I got the
impressiJn that i t was from watching your hand
when you came down one time.
You had the ·ratchet
engaged and the littletit pin that sticks in the
doer that doesn't allow things to come closed
wasn ' t there.
No, the. ratchet wasn't engaged. There was nothing
on the handle at all. It was free, completely
free.
The s:ituation hadn't changed at all.
Another thing I'd like to point o·.lt now, too , was
the chest pack was in the way of bringing the
handle down to a full-crank position.
And I
wanted definit ely to do this because you can
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fully stroke the ha"'l.dle each ti.maL
\Je went back up so that I could "ictually see a"ld
observe the levers .
This was the time Jim sa..id
to th.row the visor o·.1t because w,~ pr:)ba.bly would­
n ' t o_pe'!1 th1, hatch aga.i.n , onca w,3 g8t it closed .
And this see~ed like very goo1 so:md advice to
me .
The o:':1.ly thing I was a little q·.1esti::m1ible
abou ~ 1,1a::; that 'it this ti.mt, I ha.ii the inkling
in my mind that we ~ight spend quite a bit of
time g':tti ng this hatch closed , and I mi.gh·~
want t he visor when 1 was back out ~i1 j·1. .
B'..lt
I thoilght the judgmfmt to t hro·11 the v ls'.:>r out
was best and I threw it 0'.1t--opaned the door
abo'..lt a foot and a half and thr.ew the vlsor out .
The next t ime we canlf? back dow:1, I was s t ill
having the l i ttle bit of p:oblem with the cramps,
but not ~-9arly the pr~obl:=:m 1 wa'9 having with the
gain lever .
One superseded the o LheT.
That ' s right .
0~1e p.::-oblem became of much higher
m:agnitude tha!l the other .
So this was the t ime
that we started ·Norking .
I k."lew what I hai. to d-J .
I knew I had to work the gai n lever in sequP.nce
with the han1le again , juAt like ~e had w~en we
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opened it .
We both had a.."l inklirig that this was
going to happen when we opened it the first time .
But this posed the problem of when I reached up
with my left arm to work the gain lever. It
takes a great deal :>f force .
This isn' tthe direct­
io:2 that the suit is designed to reach in.
And
it tak~s a great deal of force to lift your arms
up in the vicinity of your helmet to operate
something there. In so doing it pulled me back
up :)Ut of the seat .
An1 I think this is the time
that Jim noticed that I was up higher than I had
ever been before, and he actual ly felt that my
helmet was up against the hatch.
I tend to agree
that I was up in that posit ·ion.
Yes .
I actually pulled Ed 1own in the seat by
pulling on the--.
I think so.
I did it in steps. I'd pull down and 3d woul-i
cooe down.
Then I'd pull some more, he'd ~ome
down some more.
I was actually pushing up with my left hand and
IJl.Y helmet was wedged right up against the hA.tch.
I had a little bit of area in which they actually
see t he dogs that I was working with up there .

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You could see them though?
Yes, I could see them .
At least I coul:1 3ee what
positions they were in .
I could see the little
.,.
lever operating unde-r the spring:..._where I was
actually operating the spring on the g~in leve-r.
This is where I think we grJt some very good team­
w~rk, because it was neces sary that Jim pull
do·tJn in conjunctio-:-i with the time that I pulled
down on the c,1osing handle and Jperated the
ga:i.n l ~ver .
I just hope that the tape worked
because I can rem~mber I was in there .
Jim was
talking to me , and. then when it came to ~he point
when we really had to make the big pull I felt a
little torque on the handle .
I knew that we had
it at that time if we co:.ild only get the hatch
down ,;lose enough so that the dogs W')uld engage .
And I ca..~ remember giving the old--I think I was
yelling HEAVE! HE.LIVE!
Is th13.t what I was yelling.'
I think so .
.And tt was in perfect ti~1d.,1ig, because I could see
Jim or I could see the hatch come do~n each time
that I was yelling IE.AVE !
I think it was
probably the mast--.
The most int eresting mome!'lt of the flight.
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Yes . It was the most interesting moment of the
flight , but I think i.t was probably the m::.H,t , if
you wan~ to say, draimitic.
I don 1t know the
right word .
But it was probably the most
dramatjc moment of my life. About those 30
seco:i.ds we spent t'ight there.
The dogs started
l~tching.
I co~ld feel them going in, and then
I could feel them co~e over dead-center.
Jim
called out that the dogs were in.
I knew that once we got them moving we'd be all
right .
Yes , once they started coming in.
As long as
we got those dogs to engage , with the little
lever that permitted them to come out and l~ck,
I knew that we hn.d it hacked.
Yes .
So did I. Even i f
e "ould 'tave had to
reenter with the hatch in that position, we 1d
have been all right.
I don 1t thi.nk that the
heat leaks were that tremendous.
I knew we could continue and dog it on in all the
way. It seems like whenever you know you're
right on something, you want to be darn sure
that they fix it. This was going through my
mind then.
And I remembered that I felt I was

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right in that the bar and the attachment on that
bar and lanyard were not strong enough .
I re­
membered that and I knew how hard you were pul­
ling on that thing.
I t hink , if nothing else,
they ought to :Je sure .
How many times did we
break that attachment at the bar?
We br oke the attachm~:mt abod; three or four t imes
on the zero-g airplane.
Everytime they kept
telling us it wasn't made out of the right kind
of stuff and the st~ff we were going to have in
the spacecraft would be the right material.
~•'ell ,
it didn't break in the spacecraft .
Just coin­
cidently, or maybe because we both had doubts
about the strength of that particular piece .
The same thing crossed through my mind .
I was
thinking t hat the success or failure of this
hatch closure depends on whether this hatch
closing device st ays hooked onto t hat space­
craft and doesn ' t break offo
We would have been flat out of luck!
We would have been in deep trouble !
I 'm not sure
we wouldn ' t have been able to get the hatch
closed, because we had put that canvas strap
on t here and I might have been able to pull you
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down that way.
But I had about all the pull I
had in me on that last-­
I know you did .
--on that last thing and I had a lot of mechanical
advantage over it. When we went to that canvas
strap we would have had to go with no mechanical
advantage.
As a matter of fact, a mechanical
disadvantage.
This is one thing that didn't fail, but I
recommend that it be made stronger.
Stronger anywny!
I think so .
For nothing else than a psychological purpose .
Right. I'd like to take the spacecraft now and
see if I could break it, because I had the
feeling that I never had been confident that that •
attachment nor the bar nor the lanyard were
strong enough.
When I say I was really pulling as strong as I
could, I really had some pull left in me, but
I guess what I should have said is that I was
pulling about as hard as I dared pull at the time.
I guess I could have pulled another few pounds,
but I hated to apply more than was needed on

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~CYEFTTTAT
there because of the lack of confidence in the
strength of it.
Everything I had was in it over there .
I was
pulling down with my legs as hard as I could and
operating.
I was pulling on the handle .
I
remember one< time you said , "Hey don ' t pull on
that handle so hard ! You're going to break it! "
I was cautioning you to take it easy, which you
don't usually have to do.
This was when we were yelling HEAVE!
I was
heaving on the handle as I was pulling it down
each time . It felt like to me that the handle
was giving.
But I didn't give a darn! If it
broke, it was going to break.
So o:".e of the
points we learned out of this was we'd like to
see the bar and lanyard strengthened.
Let me say one thing about the decision to go
ahead and open up the latch.
I f we hadn ' t done so
much work together with this hatch and run t hrough
just about every problem that we could possibl y
have had , I would have decided to leave the hatch
closed and skip the EVA when we first started
having trouble with it .
We had encountered j , .st
every conceivable pr oblem that we could possibly
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have with that hatch. If it failed we'd know
exactly what it was.
That ' s right.
I personally had disassembled
this cylinder and piston and spring combination
up at McDonald prior to the altitude chamber, so
I knew exactly what it was made of.
I am sure
the problem was t hat the dry lubrication coag­
ulated, or whatever a dry lube does, and was
causing the piston to stick. I knew how we could
do this thing.
Carl Stone and I
had dismantled
it and put it back together, cleaned it out, put
it back together, relubricated it , put it back
toget her, and i t operated fine.
I figured out
how to make the t hing work with it not working
properly by using your finger as the spring.
That ' s the exact technique we had used.
I f we hadn't had the training together that we
had , and had not encountered all these problems
before, I know darn well I would have decided
not to open the hatch.
Maybe we wound overdramatic about the effort we
made getting me back i n, and I 'll honest ly say
it ' s one of the biggest efforts I ever made in
my life, but I don't think we were all done then.
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There were a lot of things we could do.
We could have gone around several orbits working
on cl osing the hatch.
That wasn ' t the last time
we were going to get a chance to close it .
So ,
there were things left if we understood , and
ot her procedures we could have used to go ahead
and close it .
When we got it cl osed back in, I
was completely soaked wasn ' t I?
Yes .
You were really bushed .
Sweat was just pouri ng down.
In fact , I could
hardl y see . It was in my eyes .
So I told you, "Just sit ther e and I ' ll get a
r epr ess .
Don' t even move for 30 minutes ."
I just left the r epress valve wher e it was .
I
closed the vent valve and we had a lot of in••
structions from the ground to close the water
seal and e. A1ole bunch of other things that didn't
make any sense to me .
I knew that the spacecraft
was repressurizing.
I watched .
There wasn ' t
anything else ttat we had to do right then , and
we were both bushed, especially Fd.
He was
perspir'.ng so that I could hardly see him inside
the fact plate .
So, I just said ,"You sit there
and I ' ll sit here and we'll just coast around.
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~Ot~ftf)·ENT* L
When we get the thing repr essurized , we'll start
doing something." That was exactly what we
did. I did finally extend the HF antenna and t ry
to call somebody on HF and let them lmow that we
were back in safely and that the t hing was re­
pressurizing.
I didn ' t get any response until we
got to CE:.r ".arvo·1 , which was about three minutes
l ater.
I called and told them that we were re­
pressurizi ng and had the hatch closed.
You lmow, that was some pretty good gage reading
that we saw when we got the first 1/2 psi.
The first 1/2 psi. Ha! Ha!
That was really a big one.
Since we ' ve described
the whole operation we 'd like to go back now
and specifically point out the pieces of equip­
ment that we used and our opinions of them, a few ·
features that came out loud and clear to us i n
operation, general conclusions on EVA as an
operation, and what we have to 10 to make it an
operational procedure. So the first thing I ' ll
do is go down through the equipment.
As an
overall comment on the equipment, I would say I
felt very confident the equipment i,:ould do the
job.
And without question the equipment performed

160
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11.s it was <dvertised . It performed just exactly
as it hsd been designed .
There wasn ' t one thing
on t hem as f ar as the VCM , the umbil ical, t he
gloves , the gun , and the visor that didn ' t
perform just exactly as it had been designed .
·1. 111 take them all one piece at a time , and dis­
cuss them a little .
I ' ll start right with the
visor . The visor was a rather controver sial
piece of equipment from the beginning.
And I,
for one , doubted a little bit t he necessity for
quite the pr otection t hat we were providi ng,
although I had helped right from the beginning
in the design wi th some of our ideas on the viso~
It turned out though , and I commented on this
during the t i me that I was out , that I was very
happy to have the visor, I was able to look
directly into the suniight .
1 did so in instal••
ling the camer a on t he back of the adapter .
I
felt that the vision out of the visor , was about
as it would be on a normal sunn;,r day.
This is
because it is so br ight up there in space .
I
fel t
2:>.s if my vision was what I would consider
normal .
I was looking at the different parts
of the spacecraft and down at the ground, and
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6€01>-JFIO.ENTl.4 L
the view that I received at this time vas what I
would expect on a normal sunny day.
I was cer­
tainly glad to have the visor and I left it down
throughout EVA .
I think on a later flight we
might recommend going ahead and lifting the
visor and observing any changes we might see in
visual acuity when looking down at the ground .
the ground vision through the visor really
didn't seem to me to be degraded at all. Eviden­
tly just the intensity, and not what I was seeing,
was cut down.
Let me comment a little bit on that visor .
I
didn ' t have a visor and the bright sunlight that
was in the cockpit didn't seem to bother me.
imagine that the visor turned out just like a
pair of sunglasses.
You go outside on a normal
d~y and wear a pair of sunglasses . If you
don' t have them, you ' re squinting. But if
you start out without them you tend to get
accustomed to it. I think I was accustomed to
what light there was coming through the space­
craft , admittedly much less than that outside.
F,d was accustomed to the sun visor and it turned
out just like two people with and without
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162
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sunglasses. They both could have adapted.
I
didn't look into the bright sun straight ahead.
Well, the first time I looked into the bright sun,
the first thought I had was, "Boy!
Am I glad
I 've got this vis::>r on!"
I know you mentioned it on the radio.
--because I was looking right atraig-ht into the
sun. I had to look into it t o attach the camera
onto the a:iapter section.
I d-:m' t normally
wear sunglasses.
As you know, Jim, I have never
worn sunglasses very much , and I didn't n::>tice
it from then on, through·~ the t Lme I was out.
I hail n::> impulse whatever to lift my visor.
My
vision was a.s clear as I co·..i.ld have expected it
to be without the visor. There are a few design
points in the visor that we could make better and·
I'll briefly go into them right now.
When you
are seated in the spacecraft one visor slips up
underneath the other a~d back along the back of
your helmet, so th~t instead of resting on your
helmet on the headrest you're resting the visor
o~ the headrest.
You certainly aon't want to do
that. The visor should be restrained in some
manner from slipping up along the back of the

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helmet.
Also, my visor was quite difficult for
me to raise and lower.
Once it was dowr it fit
quite snugly, for which I was happy.
But it was
difficult for me to raise and lower. It was
actually a two-handed operation, which is one of
the reasons why I didn't raise it outside;
although, I had no impulse to raise it when I was
outside. I think that we might be able to design
them to be raised up and down more easily.
Let me make a comment on that visor.
I never
did see any need for the little lexion visor.
That's exactly the point I was going to get to
next.
I think that one single visor made as
close to the helmet liner as possible, p~oviding
the maximum amount of headroom and a minimum
amount of interference, is what we actually need.
I don ' t believe we need that lexion outer visor.
As they pointed out to us, it doesn't really
protect, because it bows in a.~d it doesn't
really give you the protection th~t it should
be affording. I would recommend one visor, one
sun visor only. It'll be simpler to operate.
I think so, too.
Okay.
The ·v;ntillation Control Module, I can say
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without qualification, worked exactly as it was
planned to work. There was not one complaint
that I had with it. It provided me with the
proper flow.
The flow was lass than with the
no.:-mal ECS suit system, but it was adequate to
keep me cool and ventilated, except for two times
during the flight. Those times were when I
atta~hed the camera right before departing the
spacecraft and reenterdngthe spacecraft. But
I think it performed without fault.
The umbilical was another item that I thought
performed its part of the flight quite well.
had no complaints about it. I did tend to get it
tangled up with the bag and the strings that were
attached to the bag during EVA.
I am very thankful that we decided to design the
gloves in the manner in which we did, the two­
piece glove that was easily donned or doffed
under pressurized conditions.
As it turned out,
I took them on and off twice while pressurized.
I was quite happy that we had them designed in
this manner.
As it turned out, the heat on t he
side of the spacecraft, or the cold on the side
of the spacecraft when we ca.:ne out of the dark
I

COl<tFtOf:M'f lA'i.
165
side , were not noticeable to the touch at all .
I
didn't use a right hru1d thermal glove at any time
during the flight .
I took it off w~en I was
opening the l'.e.tch and, as I pointed out earlier,
it floated off during the EVA operation.
I didn ' t
have opportunity to use it again if I had wanted
to. Coming back i n we had difficulty closing the
h~tch, and I , at this time , removed my left hand
glove and used the plain pressure s-.1it gloves
for this operation .
The press'.lre suit gloves
were comfortable .
In fact , there were no sen­
sations of either hot or cold through my gloves .
White
Th: gcU1 , I think , was an outstanding point in
the flight, a highlight of the flight . It
worked just as we had felt it would work and it
was , I felt , simple to operate .
The training
t hat I had. on the air-bearing platform provided
me adequate orientation in the use of the
space gun.
I think that now that we have a little
more t ime to prepare ourselves for the next time
we use this gun, t raining with it on zero-g
flights would be appropriate .
I don ' t believe
we will have any t rouble using it in the zero-g
aircraft .
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166
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One mistake lhat we made o~ our E'fA equip~ent
was the rno·.mting of the Co, tarex camercl. .
This
camera s):-iould h,•,ve been attached by velcro to Ill:) ,
s o that I could use it independently of the gun .
It W'.)Uld have been easier for m,3 to us9 and I
would have had a nnlch higher probability of
getting satisfactory pictures with it . It was a
case of lumping too mu~h together--vJtting tha
g-~n and the camera together .
White
The attachinAnt of the VCM to the h~rness was
a good type of attachment . It was easy to dis­
co~nec'
Lhe two velcro attachments anti move
the che~t pack in and out .
I hai to do this
both when I opened the sp:1.cecraft hatch, so it
would clear the hatch handle, a,d I had to ~)ve
it out of the way when I cl osed the spacecraft
and p~mp~d the hatch handle .
White
Now we can get into some concl usions . While I
was out , I decided to put a piece of velcro strip
on the side of the adapter to see if later on we
might use this as a method for attaching i tern:, on
tha outside of the spacecraft , if the velcro was
still there and if it was in good shape .
I think
the velcro could be madeintoc.. very useful item for
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167
a type of tether. I think you m.ight even be able
to do something alo~g the line of just having
some fenale velcro on the gloves and pieces of
the male velcro at points along th~ adapter.
This might provide us at least some attach:nents
so th~t we could maneuver o'.lrselves back to the
adapter sect.i.oP..
This wo'.lli be about the sim•­
plest kind of handle that we could use.
I do
believe that we need some type of handles on the
outside of the spacecraft .
Jim suggested one o~
the nose and in the cover on the R & R section
up there .
I think this is an area that we cer­
tainly have a possibility of using.
I certainly
would have found it useful.
I woul d still be a
little h~sitant, though , o.f breaking the an­
tenna.
You wo'..lld want to be sure that this
wouldn't be hroken during EVA .
I think the
feeling I had o'..lt there, again, was like
holding onto an 8-foot tree .
There wasn't any­
thing to hold onto.
You definitely need some
kind of hand- holds .
The decision to leave the
hatch open was one of the best decisions that
we made . It provided me with a center of oper­
ations for my work.
I was able to stabilize my­
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self by holding onto the hat ch. It was also
surprising to me how much force it took to open
the h.:i,tch the first time against the p·!'eload and
the actuaters , due to the seals.
One other very
good decision was to have me wear the heavy suit
and Jim the light suit.
I think thi~ was one
of the thine-s that made our opera.tio;1. easier. It
certainly m~de my getting back in the spacecraft
a::1d Jim's assista.1ce in closing the h;~tch much
easier for him ,
Hlso , I was handing him things
in a"'.ld out .
He was performing quite a bit
of coordination in the operation with pieces
of equ.ipt1ent thA-t were going in 'ind o·.1t of the
spacecraft , and I l:>elieve t hat by being in
that 1ight s:.ii t he ·11as able to do this tni.1,::h
easier than if he had been in a heavy suit .
I might make a comment on that suit, too.
When
we opened up t he hatch we were in~ vacuum.
n::iticed that the temperature of thA suit dropped
slightly so thci.t the suit was a little bit
cooler inside .
I was w)ndering if I was going
to get too cold through the suit, but the rest of
the time we were out the the temperature never
changed .
I don ' t remember looking ~t the suit
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inlet temperature, but the suit itself stayed
reasonably warm.
I had sun in the cockpit and I
had the cockpit open w:i.thout the s1.m iii it for a
rel.:1.tively long period of time, four or five
minutes at a time. This didn't seem to affect
my temperature inside the suit.
I think you felt the temperature more than I did.
I felt the temperature go down, rather than up.
I felt that also while outside.
I would say
H was lery co::nfortable figu.re.
I figure that I
was probably at 68 degrees temperature out
there inside the suit , which was cooler than I
had been anytime during the flight . It wasn't
a cold feeling, just a very natural comfortable
temperatnre .
~uit inlet temperature was running about 55
degrees during most of the flight . It got d•:>wn
around 52, s0 it probably might have even been
cooler than yo'ir 68.
Wel l, it was cooler insi1e the suit when I was
outsi:ie the spacecraft thn.n at any other time
during the flight . It wasn't uncomfortably cool
there at all.
I t hink that we can go on with some co::1clusions .

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Some conclusions that I had were:
1.
I didn ' t notice any extremely hot temperatures
on the outside of the spacecraft .
I al so
didn' t co~tact surfaces for any period of
time to tra~sfer much in the way of a hea~
load to any part of my suit including the
gloYes .
2. There I s a de.fi·-iite req-.ii rement for som(3 type
of hand holds outside the spacecraft .
3.
We should think a little more o~ where we want
to operate during EVA and where to attach
the tether .
The tether was not attached at
a po.int that wo·.1ld provide me the capability
to operate in the area that I wanted to .
You coul dn't get to the nose. It p.i:-ovided great
operatio~ for directly above.
Straight above.
I just don ' t know how you would get the thing
out there .
You would have to run it along the
spacecraft , then attach it somewhere at thfi
"
front .
It would preclude operations in other areas.
You
would either have to accept ,,,here we a.re going
to operate or-- .

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·::·ou conld have n::..lt iple attachment points around
the spacecraft .
Of course , now , if you have a g-..m with a good air
sour0e, I wouldn't particularl y care where it
was attached .
I thi.nk you could go ahead a..'ld,
maneuver to a:ny point you want if you have a gun.
Again, when you're p~shing off of surfaces , you
tend to go perpendicular to the surface from
which you push off.
I found when I p·.lshed as
hard as I wanted to I'd still tend to go straight
up above that hatch instead of ou t toward the
fron·~.
I think this is a fairly obvious con­
clusion, but it proved out .
Everytime I pushed
off I went straight up instead of at an angle
to the surface where I wanted to go .
So!lle thi.ag that you should bear in mind is that
yo•.1 were pushing off fro!ll the front whi.ch
tended to make the front go down as you went
out .
Yes.
Everything was working against getting
where I wanted to go.
Everything I did tended
to put me up.
When you started you went in a straight li.ne
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I think, initially, where I was holding the
attitude, yo'J. didn't have that much trouble.
Of
course, you weren ' t pushing 13.S hard ei·~her, be­
cause you had the gun .
No , I wasn't .
Later on , when we started free drifting, you
w,~re ba~k behind m~J where I couldn' t see.
Did you feel me stomping around back on the
adapter and hitting the adapter.
Weil, I felt you hitting things back behind me
and once you went behind the line thEit was dir­
ectly over'.,.ead the spacecraft.
l cottldn' t see
you t hrough your open hatch.
I never reaEy had a good co.!ltact with the
adapter back there .
Just as -:,.r,21 l .
We W':r:.ildn ' t want to disturb those •
radiator tubes too much .
No,
Well, now that we 're back, we'll have some
conclusions on the adapter area.
I made it a
point right from the beginning -~o take
a look at the thermal lines , the thermal p~int
on the adapter. It looked like it was in good
shape . It was all there. There was discolor­
ation arou.~d the attitude thrusters , particularly,
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from the thrusting. The color of the thrusting
is just like the RCS thruating--nice and clear
plume. It looked lik~ from o~tside, thu".lgh, that
I could see a lot more of the plume than I could
when I w~s sitting inside the spacecraft looking
out at the RCS thrusters firing.
Again, the
cam,era was not attached in a.n opportune ma.n'ler
to operate.
Which camera? The camera on the spacecraft?
I'm really after that camera on the gun.
That
one wasn't attached gooa.
The cam-era on the spacecraft was okay. It was a
little difficult to attach because of the
attach'Dent on the bottom of it .
You can't have
it at any angle to make it engage. It has to
be perfectly flat with the mounting plate on the
bottom.
A big co:!1.clusion that I came to-- and
I' 11 see how you feel ab.:mt this one, Jim --I
feel that storage in the back of the adapter
section wa:s certainly a very high priority for
l ater missio:!1.s .
I feel that we can adequately
store eq·.1ipment in the adapter area, particularly
larger pieces of equipment that we don't have
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have particular use for in the early part of the
flight . If we ca~ lick the p~oblems in opening
and closing of the hatch, we can store equipment
in the back of the adapter section as a routine
operation .
That ' s right .
I think the extravehicul ar activ­
ities have proved to other people what we all
ready knew a long time ago--that 'FNA is quite
simple .
I think the thing we ' ve got to iron out
is the hatch opening and closing. This is
really our. problem.
I don ' t think you or I will
ever have any doubt about the extravehicular
activity.
That was , I thought , going to be
pretty straightforward . It looked like to me it
was pretty straightforward.
I felt that I could operate equipment 01.1t there.
I co,1ld assemble equipment .
I could put pins
in, pull pins o~t, and screw thLngs in.
I did
all these things during the flight.
I tu.rn~d th.a
gun ::m , a::i.d I put i n the pin to operate the um­
bilical guide .
I attachad the camera.
I don ' t
think yo~ could do these operations very effect­
ively with big heavy gloves on.
Alth:>Ugh my
gloves oper ated satisfactorily, I think that for
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assembly of i terns you wa.---it to have ....--you ought to
look into the glove area a little more thoro'.lg'hly
anii try to get a piece of a glo-re ·,1ith so:ne
type of a surface that will give us some heat
protection and gives us a high sensitivlty of
feel through it .
The big conclusions , the final
co~~lusions , that I ' d like to draw are that EVA
can be made a normal routine operation if the
following modificatio~s are made to the space­
craft :
1.
The highest priority is that the spring back
there on the gain lug has convicted itself
and I don't believe that that's a good design.
There should be s:>me way ths.t either the l ub­
ricatio:?1 is :nA.de foolproof or the spring mH.de
stronger .
I think what we really want to say here is that
the locking mechanism is inadequate as it is ,
compl etely inadequate .
Until i t is fixed , I
think we should take it easy.
Th11.t 1s right .
I think we almost had a bad experi­
m:,e with ths.t gain thing.
We knew about it ahead
of ti.me .
We thought we had it fixed, but it ' s
not fixed .
I think it convicted itself and it's
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guilty and it has -Lo be fixed.
2.
I recommend that at least the egress kit on
the right of the crew compartment be remo·red
to provide more room in the spacecraft .
see no reason for it being in t here.
I think
it wo•.1ld be worth the effort a~d the ajdition-­
al money to p.rovlde the extra room .in the
spacecraft.
So , my second recommendation ,::m
EVA is to remove the egress k.Lt, at least
from the right -hand side, to provide more
head room.
Yes, that ' s good.
I might add that it ' s a good
thi.ng that we had that egress kit modified- to
the m:i.nimu.11 height, because without that we would
have been in deep trouble.
That's right.
Yes .
You and I had been telling each other t hat
that was the biggest thing we did on our whole
nine months prior to the f l ight- -to get that
thing cut rlown .
I ·t1.1ink it sure paid for itself
on ou:r. flight .
3.
My third item is to make the bar and lanyard
completely foolproof in strength.
That was a
device that provided us with the added force
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we !leeded to close the hatch, just as we sat
there and said we might need during the SAR
of thfl spacecraft in St . Louis.
I think the
attachrnl'9nts of the bat' and the cable to the
spacecraft sho~ld probably be at least doubled
in strength, so there just isn 't any question
in the pilots' minds or the engineers' minds .
I guess the eng:ineers were co::winced that
you didn ' t have Jim and I co!'lvinced that those
tw~ attachme!lt points--.
We've seen it break too many times, I think.
We've broken the bar and we've broken that
atta::)hn:ent point. I ha::!. actually physically
twisted the attachment right off the spacecraft
up in the zero-g airplane.
I certainly wouldn't
have put my full strength into it if I knew
my life depended on that attachment. It should
be ma.de absolutely foolproof.
Well , that was t l,'.e point I was trying to make
earlier when I said I was pulling as hard as
I could.
Then I said that I really wasn't
pulling as hard as I was capable of.
You did::1 1 t have confidence in that attachment.
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any harder .
No .
I think that shouli be t he third recommen­
dation and it should be corrected .
I think we could spare a couple of extra po1.1.-.ida
of weight there , just for the pilots ' peace of
mind .
That 's right .
Take the time it takes to put a
new attachment on there .
They told us they
d.idn ' t want to do it beca~lse they ' d have to re­
rig it .
I ·~hink t hey ' d better re-rig it and take
the tim~ to put a good attachment o~ there.
4. The final thing really doesn ' t fit in with
the first three recommendations , but I would
sure like to have the opportllnity to use that
gun 9gain with about a 10-times supply of
oxy~n in a great big canister. I think
that maybe this is one of the items wa could
carry in the back of the aiapter. We could
use a small supply to provide t ~e means to
go back there to get a great big canister.
Then we ' d have a :mit that we co'.lld actually
do some maneuvering with.
That ' s r ight .
I think that , in essence, we
proved the usefulness of a self-stabilized or a
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man-stabilized maneuvering unit-­
Yes .
- -rather than o.na that is gyro-stabilized with
automatic stability features.
I think that al­
tho'.lgh you did·'.1 1 t burn up a lot of fuel , you
certainly p~oved the feasibility of this type
of ma.neuveri ng unit .
We had a1 awfully small amcr.1i.'1t .
We j..lst had the
6 feet/second-­
We p~oved, in my mind, that I had the capability
to go .fr om Point A t::> Poi nt B with that mr1.neuver­
ing U."lit .
Let me ask you thi8 question, a.."ld be ho::1est about
it .
Would yo'.l detach yo'..lr tether and _go without
i.t? Don ' t be too optimistic , because other
people ' s lives may depe::1d on it.
I think that we probably have not done enough
investigati on to do that at this time, but I
feel we are p:.:-ogr essing toward the point .
We
made the first , say 50 percent, of th~ step
toward being able to detach the tether and go.
I don ' t believe that I wouli deta:::h the tether
aJld 5o ·,.ii.th that 6 feet/seco::1d-- .
Oh, no .
I didn' t mea."l t hat .
I mean with that
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type of a unit .
If T had some more !:::,,V
in a U:'lit like that I
think that I would be ,.:illing t o detach myself
on the next fli.gh t , right n::>w , fr,Jm the space­
craft and go .
That ' s com'bined with tw-) things,
you see . You h<1:ve two th.ings working for you.
You have the capability to maneuver yourself ,
and if you should get out of control the space­
craft still has the capability to come over a~d
get close en::>'.lgh so that you could get yo".1.c-self
baGk .Ln control and get in the spacecraft .
I think that 40 or 50 feet/second would be a
minim'.l.,n.
I hnd 6 and I ' d like to see, pcobably,
a capability of about 10 times that .
_That may
be a little--.
It ' s diffi~ult. I wo~ld think it would be
difficult to fix a number on it until you fixed
the jo'b .
Yes .
If you want;ed to go to som.-1thing that was 1::> feet
g;way and come back, you ' d probably get by with
20 feet/second .
If I wa-:1ted to get out of the spacecraft and g•>
along to the back of the a:lapter and get in the
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adapter without being attached to the space­
craft, I ' d only need two or thr-ee time the
a'.'llount . I'd be happy co go with that.
There are some problems in th,~ capability to
alin9 on,3 1s self onto an object .
I think chasing
the booster around points this o~t.
You say you'd
be willing to go away becaur-Je the spacecraft
can oome and g~t you.
Admittedly it can, but
kseping in mind the difficulty wa had with th9
booster . I don' t really an~i~Lpate us ever get­
ting into the situat Lon like that beca~1se ;rou I d
never get so far away that you're in different
orbits, like we were with the booster--.
What I vis·,.1al i.ze is a 25 to 50 foot operation
where you' re goL'lg ou.t to investigate ei-l:her
a.."lot~1er spacecraft or another satellite up there,
or making a trans.fer similar to the type of trans­
fer that we visualize as a backup mode for Apollo.
I think with the gun I had, if tbc LEM and the Com­
mand Module were there , I'd be satisfi ed, .i,0 d9part
the Command Module aJ.l.d maneuver over to the
LEM situated 10 t0 20 feet away from the Comma·'ld
Module.
I feel I coul::l io that at the present
time.
I d:m ' t think it would be a very smart
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thing at the pcesent time to go m~neuvering off
200 to 300 feet away from the spacecraft with
this type of device. I , think this device is
designed and has its greatest usefulness in close
operation around the spacecraft .
That ' s right. There is no need to maneuver off
about 4-00 or 50-0 feet away because if you want
to go that far, use the spacecraft. This gun
is for a close working job .
I think it's a valuable tool in this manner.
Okay .
That's the same conclusion I came to .
We'd be willing to do it at close range .
I ' d be willing to do it right now .
I might not
go tell somebody else to god~ it , but I 'd
be willing, with the training that I had with
it , to transfer 15 or 20 feet without a te'Lher.
But , I think we sho~ld spend mome more time ·..nth
the gu..-i .
I think so , too .
I also think it would be of value to go in the
zero-g airplane with it .
Yes , I think so, too .
I think the work that we might do in the z.aro- g
airplane doesn't necessarily have to be done in
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183
full regalia, with all the pressut'e s·.lits in a.
pressurized ~onditio:n.
I think we can go up
there and learn a lot abo"..lt the gun wit ],.out
pr essure suits on, in a plain flying suit type
operation. Perhaps polish the training off with
a 1i t tle ·,1or k in press'.l:rized S 0.lits. If yo"..l work
in the zero--g airplane with ':I. p:.-essurized su.Lt
it ' s pretty awkward .
White
In pitch and yaw I felt I could maintain effect­
iv~ly zero rates.
I don ' t k:no·.., how it looked to
you Jim, but it looked like I could establ ish
a rate and take the rate out without too much
trou'ol~. The yaw is the lowest moment o.f them all,
Pitch was very easy, j''..lst to pitch the. th.ing ,1p
and down .
I ' m still a little suspicious of roll.
That's the area that I wo"..lld like to look into a
little more .
I think that yo"..l could get yo"..lrself
into a kind of balled up situation with pitch,
roll, and yaw all coupled up. It might take a
little bit of fuel to get yourself straightened
back out again.
But just in translating from
Point A to Point B, you could care less if you
roll ed, as long as you kept pitch and yaw
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translate and correct pitch a.'1d yaw -,rery succes.s­
fully and effectively forget about roll, just as
we do .in our reentries or our retros.
The questio~ is: Was there any problem with the
g-..m of maintaining a fairly well stabilized at­
titude and sti11 get my tra~sla.tion inP'.it? I
did this actually three different times and this
was what I had done when I was coming back to
the spacecraft the last time.
I had to put in
both pitch and yaw and had ta..~en them out and
I was coming back.
I was going to fire my last
thrust to·,mrd the spacecraft.
I got a little
burst.
I could feel a little bt'..rat and than
it petered out .
B-:it you can put a tra.-isl.~tion
in. I was also s~rp~ised that I was able to stop
at the time I tried to stop it out there about one
half or two-thirds of the way out on the end of the
lanyard .
It seemed to stop pretty well. It was
either the gun or the lanyard dampening me . It
didn ' t dampen me in roll, so I think it was the
gun that actually did it.
I think that this previous bunch of words just
spoken covers a lot of de tail, of the first
three or four orbits of our f l ight, and it covers
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that first phase of mission sequen~es that I
first mentioned.
I think the next thing we
should do :;s go through the interim o~bits, about
50 or 55 , or ho~ever many there were, where we set
abo~.1t to save up enough fuel to do soJ1ething con­
structive, to check on our orbit to see what it
was, to see how we were d,3caying, what our life­
time expecta':lcy would be, and perform the exper­
iments that we'd initial ly set out to do on ~ur
flight plan. Although, it's not going to be of
much use to go through it in a chronological
ord.er, I suppose that is probably the best way.
As I just finished saying, we're not going to
get a.'1 awful lot 0 1.1t of going thro·.1gh the flight
plan sequentially, but we'll do it quickly and
then we ' ll co:ne back and discuss each experiment
o~ operation, check as entity in itself, a"ld
we'll dis8uss the systems as an entity, too .
We ' ll do this, generally, in elapsed time .
Going back to the EJVA for J.1st one moment . I'd
like to say that the use of the ma'111al heaters on
ECS o bottle was abo'.lt two f ive-min1te periods
2
separated by about 10 min:.ites.
We really
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186
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4.3 Other Orbital Operations
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Let's see . One thing that we did was to turn off
the ES Sensor at 6:35.
You have notes along here?
I got all the Rensor stuff down, I think, pretty
well.
Okay ,
I have the ES Sensor and the Bio-Med
Recorder No. 1 going off at 6:35,
At about 7 hours elapsed time, I checked the OAMS
fuel remaining.
We had about 62 percent indicat­
ed, 2100 psi, and 88 degrees t emperature .
We
kept getting our GO and NO GO checks as per
flight plan. At about 7:30 Ed went to sleep.
We didn't do any lifetime adjust maneuvers.
I
turned the spectrometer-magnetometer on.
This
was while Ed was asleep.
Extended the boom,
got the ES Sensor on, and we left the spectrometer-­
magnetometer on for three passes through the
~outh Atlantic Anamoly.
I couldn' t really see any
increase in the ammeter when we extended the
thing.
We went through a number of extension
cycles throughout the flight to make sure that
we got the thing out. At no time during the
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we extended it .
The way it operates is, it has
three positions:
EXTEND, OFF, and REI'RACT.
I t
was in the OFF position and I put it to the EX­
TEND position . Then I put it back to the OFF
position. Periodically, throughout 7-he flight
we put it to the EXTEND position and back to OFF
to make sure that if it got screwed up the first
time that it would go on out. The first extension
was supposed to be with the spectrometer-magnetom­
eter on .
So, I checked to see the circuit
breakers were on, and they were on.
I turned
the spectrometer-magnetometer on and then I ex­
t ended the boom.
And in this way the experiment­
ers hope to get some indication from the lines
of force that they were picking up if the thing
actually extended at that time .
I hope t hey got
it .
Incidentally, you got a pretty good operation on
the swizzle stick,
I was asleep and Jim was
doing that on my side .
That's right .
I did it with the swizzle stick
way over on Ed' s side. I didn't aline the
platform or anything.
We were in free drifting
flight at this time .
As soon as we finished the

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€01\IFIDENfl~ l-
EVA we went into free drifting flight .
We
powered down the platf orm and the computer, shut
off the attitude indicator lights--we went through
a complete power-down procedure .
We were really
trying to save bettery power, 0AMS fuel , and
everything else we had .
We went on a complete
power-down, down the checklist, and we just
didn ' t have anything on.
And we stayed in this free drifting mode for about
two days .
That right , Ed?
Closer to 2 1/2 days .
Mostly for the first 2 1/2 days we were in a free
dri fting mode .
We didn ' t do the platform aline­
ment and the translation at around 8:10--8: 20 in
the flight plan.
We did not obtain any booster­
star measurements .
As a matter of fact, I'd
like to comment on the booster-star sightings , or
just the booster sightings .
We saw the l ights of
the booster definitely on the first pass as we
were tracking it .
The second pas~ RS Ed sai~
he saw them, and he said he was sure he saw
them because they were flashing .
I was pretty
sure i: saw what he was talking about.
However, this
occurred just at sundown.
Every other time at
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sundown we'd call out the booster a couple of
more times before we finally figured out that
this was not the booster, but a planet .
One or two times I'm fairly confident I saw the
booster.
You're pretty sure you saw it?
Yes.
That was the booster.
Well, I was pretty confident that I saw it
flashing, too .
But later on I watched th2,t star,
that particular planet, come up.
I sat right
there and watched i t, and it flickered as it came
up t hrough the atmosphere .
Yes, I agree with you.
So, it could have been that we were just really
looking for the booster and at that particular
time we looked out and saw this thing and it
flickered.
I spent one whole sunset doing
nothing but keeping my eye out for that planet.
Sure enough it popped up and I saw it.
But, you know never flickered .
It flickered .
I watched it as it flickered.
It flickered all the way up
I watched the t hing
as it set, and it flickered all the way down-­
the last at 10 degrees or so. This is exactly
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eorqFIDENf~L
wher e we thought we were seeing the booster ,
right where it was low on the horizon, as you
would expect to see a booster .
That old thing
was flickering away like mad .
I think that was Venus , too .
It was t he planet that was trai ling the sun by
just a very slight amount .
I made it a point
to check during the remainder of the flight ,
two or three times to see if that thing flickered
as it came up. It really did.
So , the more I
saw it flicker the more I began to doubt that
we had really seen the booster on that second
pass . Maybe we did , and maybe we didn' t .
Well, it's not really too impor tant .
No, it ' s not .
But the fact is , that little plan­
et was flickering away like mad.
Let me ask you one more question about the flick­
er.
Did you see it coming up through the air
glow? Was that where you felt it flickered?
Yes .
Everytime it was above the air glow it was loud
and clear to me .
Yes , except that you couldn' t see t he air glow
as the sun was setting.
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That's right .
Initially you saw the sun out there and you saw
this thing looking like it was flashing.
Once
it got above the air glow, the planet did not
flicker anymore. It was perfectly bright .
Very hright .
When we saw that thing that looked like the
booster, it was very low on the horizon. It
always popped out .
Remember how that bright
light used to pop out? You'd have t he light
sky and all of a sudden t here 'd be a bright
light there .
\Te saw that planet come up so many t imes during
the flight, I feel quite convinced that the
first sighting or two weren't of the planet.
Well, maybe it wasn't.
Actually, I continued to see the blinking on it
after the stars were out .
Wait , let ' s take a look and see which way the
booster would be .
The booster was bel ow us so
it should be going out in front of us l ike mad .
You're looking into the sunset which was behind
us .
The booster shouldn' t have been there.
The
booster should have been out to the fr ont of us .
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€9-NF~DENTIAt.­
It should have been in the opposite direction.
I ' m : ot convinced which way we were looking.
We had to be looking to the rear.
The sun
sets to the rear.
We had to be BEF to see the
sun when it set .
You see, ;,,·ou ' re BEF to watch it
set .
Were we BEF for the full time or were we in free
drift?
We were in free drift but this was near the sun
when this thing came out .
No , they always come out loud and clear when
you ' re away fr om the sun, when you' re looking
away from the sun.
Yes .
I lmow it , but at that one time when you
sai d, "There ' s the booster.", you were looking
at the sun.
Remember , I had turned around?
They told us that they wanted us to be BEF and
heads down when we opened up the hatch.
That ' s
where we were .
I turned around to be BEF.
We
were BEF when we saw that thing.
We'd better l ook at the tapes .
I think we can
probably get better information on this when we
check.
I think we were even looking in the wrong dir­
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ection .
The next pass around I called out and
said,
111 see the booster on top at 9 o' clock,
perpendicular to our flight path." I don ' t
think that ,.ias the booster either.
It's kind of academic.
Yes .
The reason that I broughtthe thing back up
again is I wanted to be sure it ' s brought out
that the planets are so clear and so bright,
even far more brighter than they are looking at
them from the ground .
Looking at them up there,
it really is striking the first time you see
them. If we took a l ot of pictures of anything,
i t was a pictl:re of that planet .
Sunrise and sunset .
The sunsets all had the
planet in it .
That ' s right.
That planet has always been there .
Very pretty.
It certainly was .
Okay, I got a call after Ed went t o sleep that
we were going to pass by myr.hnl"r. :.:. u.:-o which
would be north of track, at 7:56.
I wasn't sleeping.
I heard it .
Did you? Okay . Well , I didn't have any fuel to
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point the spacecraft at Typhoon Babe so that was
that .
I f I had drifted around so I could see it,
I was going to take a picture of it but I never
drifted around so I could see it .
I just
passed on by .
A little bit later on, I was
call ed up and told that at 23:55 GMT my
ascending node would be at 83 degrees East an
my 6th Rev .
This was just a map update .
I
was told I should eat at some particular time .
I t hink it was 00 :15 t o 01:00 . It was
already past that time, so, I ate \-1hen I felt
like it. The pilot was supposed to do a No .
1 Aero-Med Pass at 02 17 43. This was the first
instance of us running into a case where a man
was supposed to do an aero-med pass when he
was asleep.
This continued on intermittently
throughout the flight .
White
It seems like I was always asleep when I was
supposed to be doing an aero-med pass.
McDivitt
This continued on intermi ttently during the
flight .
As the flight progressed, the doctors
got more coordiarted on the ground and we got
more coordinated with them to tell them who
was sleeping and how long we were going to be
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sleeping.
We had less requests for aero-med
passes of guys that were sleeping.
We, in
general, refused to wake the other person up to
do an aero-med pass .
We were told by the
doctors and the flight planners on the ground,
that at 02 30 59 we were supposed to turn on
D-8 .
Now, I don ' t know why we had to have this
to the nearest second.
I was also supposed to
go to sleep at this time, to t he nearest
second . It seemed a little academic to me.
So I
w., !<e Ed up at 02:30 Greenwich Time.
He
turned on the D-8 Experim~rut and I didn't
go to sleep until I did something else. I
think I had something to eat but I'm not real
sure .
But I didn ' t get off to sleep right
away .
Then I told Ed he was supposed to turn
that MSC 2 and 3 off at 03 :00. I awoke at
06:15 .
But what happened in between that
elapsed tim~ Fil.?
Shoot, that's not right
06: 15?
I must have awaken -­
About four hours is what you rad.
Right.
Looking through my notes here I see
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didn ' t get to sleep at 2: 30 and Ed didn't
wake me up at 6:1 5.
So I guess we were down
from anywhere from 3: 30 and 4:30 .
Right .
You slept approximately four hours .
let you go about 30 or 45 minutes after that
time of 6:15 , as far as getting you up. While
y~1 were asleep, the things that I did:
I
believe that I had a meal which you had gotten
out.
I believe we had one before this, though.
Di dn ' t we have one after EVA before I went to
sleep? Or, did I just drink a lot of water and
go to sleep?
No , I think we had a meal before you went to
sl eep .
That was my second meal that I had shortly
after I got up.
I believe ihey called and
asked me to give them an aero-med pass, which
I don ' t have the time logged on.
I imagine
the medics will have that.
I ran through a
D-8 Experiment at 02 30 59.
The MSC 2 and 3
recorders were supposed to come off at 3
o'clock, but I didn ' t turn them off til 04 19 40 .
It didn ' t seem like that was particularly
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why I didn.' t t:iL:k about it. I got
instruct ions from the ground to maintain the
oxygen pressure at between 930 and 960 with the
o2 High Rate .
This is the time I told them
that the Command Pilot was asleep and I ' d
prefer to do it at a later time .
I think they
called me back a few times on it ; finallJ, when
it got up to about 960 I went ahead and dumped
it .
It scared me to death!
The o2 High Rate started filling the cabin up ,
pressurizing it up around 5.4. At 5,4 on the
button the vent valve relieved and Jim about
came through the top of the hatch.
I was there half asleep with my gl oves off, my
visor down , and a cover over .
Trie cabin vented
and the cabin pressur e dropped about 3/10
of a pound.
I knew that I didn ' t have my gloves
on and I figure ,
"Boy, I am going to have
to get those gloves on in the next half a
second or I'm going to be--"
He didn ' t get his gloves on but he sure was
thrashing around for a littl e while til I got
him the word.
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I didn't want to wake him up.
I was hoping it
would go through without waking him, but it sure
didn't .
Man!
It liked to have scared me so bad I don't
think I went back to sleep.
No, you went back.
You slept better at the end of
your sleep cycle than at the beginning.
So you were trying to get to my end earlier.
I think I did the other.
I always slept best at
the beginning of my sleep.
No, I al..ra.ys slept best at the beginning.
You did too?
There was a period where I had to get to sleep,
then there was a period of solid sleep, sometimes
15 minutes, sometimes an hour.
But after I went
by that first bunch, then I was in a state of semi­
wakeness .
Kind of like dopey, fitfull sleep.
That's the same
type of sleep I had , at least until the last time.
Okay.
There really wasn' t anything else that went
on except a few tape dumps and an update for the
orbital plotboard.
I found this to be very use­
ful.
I used the plotboard to keep track of my
orbits , where I was during the first part of the
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mission , exclusively. It was very accurate .
You
could check the times in the plotboard as against
what you saw on the ground and you could locate
yourself quite adequately.
How about you?
While I 'm thinking about it, I thought the plot­
board information early in the flight was excellent.
But I thought that the plotboard i nformation at t he
end of the flight was not correct .
As a matter of
fact , I started ~o call them a couple of times , but
I never did.
By the time I would get the stuff
plotted , and get the map put where I wanted it , we
would be someplace else .
I 'm sure that that in­
formati on they were sending up to me wasn't right ;
I ' d be off an orbit or two .
After about the last day and a half, I used the
nominal orbit plot maps exclusively. I could see
the time and the location.
I
could spot it
right with the ground.
And I think I figured it
was seven minutes behind near the l atter part of
the mission.
This didn't bother me .
I could tell
how far it was behind, and then update my position
on the map quite easil y . I thought those pre-plots
were real good.
So did I .
I thought they were, too .
But I was a
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200
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little disappointed with the map information at the
end of the flight .
I don ' t know exactly what was
hap~ening.
But I ' m convinced that it wasn ' t right .
As a matter of fact, a couple of times I was even
on the wrong orbit .
They' d give me a time and a
l ongi tude and I'd plot it. I wasn' t even over that
part of the world.
I'd be over a whole orbit from
that.
Jim, I made this mistake once , too.
I was using my
plotboard.
I ' d plot evecything out a.nd I came
down in a place in Mexico at night, Tampico, Mexico.
So I told them something about seeing t his spot in
Mexico. T:!ey didn't pick up my mistake.
I was back
checking over and I got to looking at my map and
said, "What the heck are we doing here at night?"
I was actually on the other side.
I was clear
around in Australia.
Had you plotted east instead of west?
No, I don't think I did.
I think I plotted it
correctly.
I went back and checked it and I never
did get the plot .
I went on to do something else
and I didn ' t get the plotboard squared away on that .
But I realized that instead of passing over Tampico,
Mexico, what I was really seeing on the ground was

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Sidney.
You only missed it by half the world.
That 's right.
It was exactly on the other side.
But not exactly.
It was about 120 degrees off.
Mine was something like this .
One that I remember
specifically--they gave me a map update and they
wanted me to do a check over El Paso and El Centro.
Looking at this I could see that if I was at the
right time, I would have come up from the south;
whereas, my pass was down l ike this , and I
was an orbit or two off.
Well then , we're not talking about the same thing.
I think I had probably slipped it somehow on here.
You might have plotted 60 Fast instead of 60 West,
or something like that.
Yes.
But I was off by a time fact or.
It w~sn ' t too hard to realize that Mexico wasn ' t at
night.
I have a net! here that says , "RKV tape dump and a
No. 1 Medical Pass on the Command Pilot at 07:02
GMT."
That's right.
And I got you up a few minutes
before 07:00, if you recall .
In fact , just before

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you had to make your Medical Pass I woke you up ,
So I'd est imate that Jim got up around 6:55, just
enough time t o transfer the equipment to him and
let him make his Medical Pass .
At 7:15 Greenwich Time I was supposed to eat.
Right .
At 11:15 Greenwi ch Time I was supposed to
go back to s leep.
I s that when you did?
I don't even see that on
here .
Where it says "Pilot sleep".
Is that a penciled- in note?
Ther e was just a seri es of instructions that we
got from them.
Okay.
Good, because I don ' t have that .
It doesn ' t really mean that ' s when we went to sleep
because you know we did things somewhat out of
sequence.
At 8:55 over the RKV we got a list of PLA's and
CLA ' s .
Was this one of' our first big batches of them?
You know, initially, we di dn ' t get too many of them,
and then we started getting them on a very regular
basis throughout the flight .
I thought that com­
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I have a list of notes here that say:
Rev 12
was over the RKV where we were supposed to get
the CLA's and PLA 1s.
We did.
Rev 13 was over
Canary where we were supposed to have a C-Band
track.
I think that meant C-Band went to
CONTINUOUS , but I'm not really sure. •
This is the time at about 17 or 18 hours that
I called down and asked them how the tape dumps
were coming out, because we weren't holding
any attitude for them.
We were holding nothing
more than a drifting attitude and I know that
over some stations we were blunt-end-down and
rolled upside down.
We were talking, I know,
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204
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said all of the tape dumps to this time had
been exce11en t .
At a GMT of 12 16 00 I got a comment : "No fuel ,
but do a Flight Track Orientation. " This is
like saying, drive from here t o ~he drug store,
but don ' t use any gasoline--a.~d don't take the
car.
So as I flopped over near around 12:16, I
looked down to the ground .
We could do a Flight
Track Orientation pretty well, considering that
we had this movable orbital map and we had a
pretty good idea of where we were going to be
to start with so we could pick out where we
were.
Got a map update at 10 17 49, ·73 degrees
West.
A tape dump at Canaries on Rev 13 and at
Carnarvon at Rev 14, Around 19 hours , I checked
on our orbit and it was 155.7 by 88.
At 11 52 43, turned the C-Band Adapter Switch
to CONTINUOUS .
At 11 59 23 we turned it back
to COMMAND .
This is Greenwich time.
All the
stuff in the flight plan such as the Orbit
Navigational Checks and the Apollo Landmark
Invest igation were not done. We were doing tape
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dumps , medical data passes and that was a bout it .
The next M- 3 Experiment s wer e all par t of medical
data passes.
I don't even lrnow why they ' re in the
flight plan .
I couldn ' t figur e that o:1t either.
We did an HF Check.
Check began at 16 58 30 GMT,
and ran on t hrough 19 07 00 GMT; this included
the sunrise , sunset , day , night--all the HF checks
and we' ll cover those in the experiment part of
our debrief ing.
During this period of 16 58 30 GMT to 19 07 00
GMT , we did the HF Checks .
Oh, here it is!
Command Pilot asleep.
Where?
At 11 :45 Zulu. Pilot awake at 11 : 30,
I do~'t
know when I went to sleep here .
Okay.
Let's check that some other time.
Okay.
It'll take a long t i me to sort that out and I
don ' t think he needs that right away.
All right.
I got Command Pilot asleep at 11 :45,
Okay.
I don't have me up or asl eep or anything.
What I ' ve got here in my notes is , Ed to bed at

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20 :15, up at 22:15 , back at 23:15 ,
These are
Zebra times , I ' m sure .
So I don ' t know exactly
what happened in there.
Well , you ' re clear over on 24 now .
Okay, you ' ve
skipped the time when you were asleep.
That ' s r i ght .
I don ' t have anythi ng on that .
Okay, I have you going to sleep.
I logged myself
awake at 11: 30,
Command Pilot asleep at 11:45,
These are Greenwich times .
If you add 8:45 onto
that , it comes out 20 hours and 30 minutes ,
elapsed time.
You gave me the instructions for
the C-Band adapter times .
I did turn those on
at 11 52 43 to continuous C-Band ori the adapter ,
and at 11 59 23 to COMMAND .
Also during that
peri od of time, I had been told to go ahead and
run Apollo L~ndrnark Investigation without any
fuel .
But luckily, the spacecraft rotated right
around as we came up to it and I was looking right
down at the junction of, I believe, the ... and
the White Nile.
That ' s right .
That was the first task we had of
finding something on the ground.
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I t was no trouble.
It -really worked .
That was the one that I was
probably most famili ar with. It's such an obvious
one. It's out in t he middle of t he desert and
it ' s t he intersection of the big Nile, where it
junctions into two other sections, a little island
and a northern tip of the island .
I was able t o
pick the island up from the t i p quite clearly.
I did take a couple pictures , I believe, of it ,
but we were just passing and I wasn ' t tracking.
I did r eport that it was a good landmark and
qui te easy to see .
We did get an instruction at this time to go to
the normal flight plan at 22 hours. This was
something that was kind of hard to do .
I don't
t hink we really ever got back on much of a normal
flight plan for the whole flight , but we did get
instructions at 22 hours elapsed time to r eturn
t o our normal flight plan .
At this time Jim was
still asleep.
We got the update th9.t the Hawks
won 3 to 2 .
Ha ha ha ha h9..
I r elayed t hat information to Jim when he woke up.
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That ' s right.
Okay, I think we've already
covered our HF Checks , which were part of the
regular flight plan.
Yes , we did that .
I said they were between 16 58 30 GMT and
19 07 00 GMT .
Right .
We scrubbed the Apollo Landmark Investigation at
28:40 and again at 29:10 .
We were allowed to do
the D-9 at about 29:30 in irifting flight o~ly.
Doing the D-9 in drifting flight means that you
look outside w:ith the sextant and you pick out
whatever two s~aTs are there and you measure an
angle betw8en them. It was a qU1:1.litative rather
than a quantitative type investigation for the
experiment.
I ' m telling you , with D- 9 it was
mostly qualitative throughout the whole missi on.
We did a few quantitative things , but the number
of quantitative things that w~ ·quld do were very
limited .
The HF Test took us one and a half orbits .
Yes .
It took t wo hours and 15 minutes at least .
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Yes .
This is where we did D-9 i n drifting flight
only.
Yes , and again t hat was like taki ng the car out
of the garage without gasoline.
All it amou:~ted to was looking t hrough the window
and picking out two stars that you can see and
taking a sighting between them.
Jus t a qualitative
check t o see what the sextant woul d do .
We di d
t hat .
D- 9 turned out to be a qualitative, rather
than a quantitative experiment , except in a very
isolated instance.
We weran' t even stabilized.
You were t rying to talk me through some of the
thines , but I had the helmet off and on-­
This was when we firs t discoverad that. the light
bulb in t he readout P'Jrtion :,f the sextant was
burned out or something was wrong.
Right .
We couldn ' t read out t he angle.
We called down, but we nevar got a call up on
t hat or any instructions.
Well, there weren't any.
Ha ha ha.
Okay, then I
have in my notes here , as I mentioned earlier:
" 'Ed went t o bed at 20 :15 , got up at 22:15 and went
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back to bed at 23:15 , " That ' s all Zulu time, but
I don ' t see when he finally got up for the last
time.
Maybe I 've got it in here.
We had another map update in there but it's really
not important .
We scratchsd the Apollo Lanirnark
Investigation-­
What time did yo~ have me asleep?
23:15 , Jim?
Okay, well I obviously was up shortly ther eafter
because I got on the horn and you were asleep
when t hey called us up and told us we ' d. passed
the U.S. space record-­
That's rig},t .
At a little past 32 hours,which is 23:15 .
That ' s
32 hours .
The space r ecord was 32 h~ur s .
We cancelled the Apollo La1dma:rk Investigation,
Run 3, a t 30 hours and 10 minutes .
Got t hat , Ed?
Yes .
We didn' t switch to bio-med r ecorders .
I made a
note here early i n the flight plan on the bio-
med r ecorders, "Ed slept f irst and turned No . 1
off." When I slept , we forgot to turn it back Ofl ,
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211
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for a peri od of about eight or Len hours.
Then
when 1 went to sleep t he second Lime , we turned
N) . 1 on and No. 2 of f , whi ch is the way i t should
have bPen .
Bu'.; as soon as I wok8 up, we t uraed
No . ? on agai n and No. 1 off, because you wer e
g 0i r,g t o go to bed.
Now you •iidn' t go right
back to sleep again so I have a note here, "We
h'l ve to t ur r. or. No. 1 as soon as he .,_,akes up. fl
We did.
Ran No. 1 r o' awhile with No. 2 off.
We t u.med them bot h back on, and 1 eft them r ur1­
ning for the r emainder of the flight . What we
di d i s t h9,t we pi ck'=d up a cushi on of about eight
hour s on each -recorder and .let them r.un th,? r es t
of the flight .
The D- 8 Experiment a t 2300 ho'..lrs-­
Ed w1.s asl eep then.
I t ol d t hem t hat Ed was
sl eeping and coul dn' t make it.
Right.
I t hink I probably di d t hat later on.
Tha t ' s right .
Remember we discussed t h~t you
would turn o~ thP- experiment later on when you
went through the Sout h Atlant ic Anomaly?
Right .
You plotted it out on the map and turned it on
your self.
The port ion of the flight plan at 31

212
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bout's elapsed time says , "Prepare for S-6
Experiment , update D-8 , MSC 2 and 3 on . "
Now- I
turned MSC 2 and 3 on again, about then .
We did
not do an Orbit Nav Check, Run 3, b,:.cause we dldn ' t
want to use any fuel .
We scrubbed Experiment D-8
and w2 ware going to turn i t on at 23:00 or do
it at 2300 .
But, I guess Ed ·v1as still asleep, so
we didn ' t do it then .
At this t .i.me we were both
in pretty bad shape as far as rest went , s•:> I
felt it much better to get some sleep th~n to
fool with the experiments .
Then going through-­
Okay , this is the period of time whea you were
asleep.
Yes , because I don ' t have any notes there.
Go
ahead.
Right .
I had a very busy time shortly after I
got up.
I had a requirement to , ~t 00:15 ,
Oh , yes .
They called the update to me and I
passed it on to you and then I went to sleep.
That ' s right .
I turned on the MSC 2 and 3, and
then I went D-8 at 02 :15 .
00:15 Greenwich time , you were supposed to take
some pictures of cellular clouds .
No fuel all otted.
I think I took some pictures of clouds.
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~ot;R-E>ENT-IA.J.
MSC 2 and 3 wera supposed t o go on at a GMT of
00: 30 , and yo~ were supposed to control the
spacecraft to BEF for that pass .
That ' s right, and we went with BEF for that pass ,
for MSC- 2 and 3 Experiments .
At 02:15 I was
supposed to do D- 8.
That's right.
I did D- 8 at 02:18, as a matter of fact, and it ' s
logged in the D-8 card.
Then at 22: 35 GMT, w,~ were supposed to do S- 6-­
I see that I ' ve got a scratch through it. I think
that you weren't up.
I was up and I tried to do
it, but there weren ' t any clouds around.
I wasn't
pointed in the right direction, so I just scratched
it out .
Yes , this is where I went back to sleep and you
got up.
We had a very important tape dump at
03:03.
I think I relayed that to you before I
went to sleep.
Yes.
1 must have really snoozed here.
I was gone for
four hours.
I'm on 36 right now.
We had a tape playback.
We
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were eating along in here and I can ' t tell you
where we ate because we ate whenever we fel t
like it.
We always ate when we woke up and usually before
we went to sleep.
That 's right .
That I s when we were eating and
that's when we had originally planned on it .
That' s the way it went in the original flight
plan.
At this time of the mission I guess we
weren' t doing much except staying alive.
My
impression of what we were doing was eating,
sleeping, and dumping tapes.
and looking at the ground as it went by.
As a matter of fact, w1~ were still pretty well
pooped out from that long per iod right there-­
Your eyes were just getting better.
Your
eye looked l ousy at that time, the first
24-hour point.
Your left eye was as red as
can be.
At about 36 hours it was still pretty bad, but from
there on it improved continuously.
I noticed that whenever I slept, I got much
hotter when I had my faceplate closed and my
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gloves on. Remember?
I kept turning on the
double fans.
Even when you didn't sleep in that configuration,
you got hotter when you slept than when you were
awake, which is the reverse of what I figured it
would be.
I figured that when you slept , we 'd
want to go to one fan all the time.
Well , I slept good when I had my visor open.
Did you? The last day or so, though, we had two
fans on every time you slept.
The last day we did.
Of course, I slept the best
then too as a matter of fact. After the first
day, I had my faceplate open more often than I
had my faceplate closed.
I wasn't .
I had a problem that whe.v1 Pd put my
visor up, I was really crunched down in the seat,
because I'm quite a bit taller than you. It was more
,Jomfortable for me to keep my visor down than
it wau t,c, keep it up.
We had an RKV tape dump ,
around 36 hours , and I have an Orbit Nav Check,
Run 4, here.
I don't believe we did thA.t , did
we, F.d, at 36 hours and 50 minutes?
I was asleep and I can't tell you.
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We didn't do any of the Orbit Nav Checks with fuel
so it was just a matter if you could see the
ground you did one.
They called up some more
S-6 information for me, but I wasn ' t to use any
fuel on it .
They said I was to pass Typhoon
Babe at 06:06, point of closest approach, and
there was a new storm brewing.
I ' d have rny
closest approach to it at 06 :13.
Oh, yes .
I also
have a period that Ed slept here.
Which time was that?
Well, you got up at 08:15, Zebra time .
That 's
about 40 hours and 30 minutes elapsed time.
I
drifted around to where I could see Typhoon Babe,
but there wasn ' t anything to take a picture of,
There was just a mass of clouds down below; smooth
tops and nothing worth even a frame .
I got another
update that said: "Over Cairo on the 26th Rev I ' d
have rny closest approach at 07 13 37. It would
be 90 miles slant range on the closest approach.
Don ' t use any fuel .
We were just supposed to look
at it. We did pick up Cairo and Alexandria both .
I think you were awake at that time, weren't you?
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Well , you weren't awake then.
What time wa.s it, Jim?
It says 07 18 37.
You should have been asleep
then.
I have in my notes that you slept to 08:15,
Well, I was like you were.
I wasn ' t sleeping
very good the last--quite often, I had my cover
up watching out the window.
You could al ways
hear everything that was going on the radio, so
you knew pretty well what was going on.
Well, anyway, Cairo and Alexandria were both
clear, but this was the first time we'd seen
them and it took a long time to find the targets- ­
the particular target that we were looking for.
We could find the Red Sea and we could .find the
Mediterranean, obviously.
You could see the
Suez Canal .
You could see the river.
I had
difficulty finding the town of Cairo .
How about
you, Fil., with Alexandria? You were looking for
Alexandria.
I found that one.
You found the town all right, but finding the
airfield that we were supposed to take a picture
of was pretty difficult the first time.
Later on
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when we'll discuss the experiments, we'll comment
on that . It looks like I was asleep here for
awhile because I don't have any notes .
Okay.
I have a set here.
I was given the first
time to take a look at some of the D-6 targets .
I had No. 1, No . 12, and No. 13, and I had all the
times for them.
I think No. 1 is Tripoli .
We ' ll
go over these in a little more detail when we go
to the experiments .
Tripoli was covered by clouds .
Alexandria was pretty good , and I was able to
follow it pretty well.
Did you take any pictures of it?
Yes.
I took some pictures. Actually, I think
we should go back and look at these.
I got several
passes.
This was the D-6 Experiment.
No. 12 was
Tripoli and it was covered with clouds.
No . 13
was Alexandria, and I took manual pictures with
the 20 mm Contarex.
I didn't actually see-­
The 50 mm Contarex?
No, the 200 mm Contarex.
The 200 mm. Hand-held?
No, I had it mounted.
I didn't actually see the
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but I had seen it before.
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actually looking at the camera when I was firing
it, so I - ­
Did you see anything in the ground glass?
Not very much.
Were you trying to track that way or were you
just looking out the window.
No .
Just looking out the window.
The point that
I brought out is that they gave me four targets.
The t argets should be far enough apart so that
you can actually get set for each one.
I had
four targets here but I could only use- ­
Oh, that was when you zapped from Tripoli to
Alexandria to Tel-Aviv to -­
Tel- Aviv and a whole bunch of them all in a row.
You could have a thousand miles between targets
to evaluate.
You finish one and you're starting
to take pictures of the other ones.
I had them at 10 61 51, 10 21 50, 10 25 30 and
10 30 15.
Well, that was a beautiful row of
targets in there but-­
A pair though or every other one would have been
enough.
And we were still being very parsimonious on fuel
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and I didn't feel like zapping the spacecraft all
around.
We had some more updates , tape, and a
medical data pass for myself at 45:45.
We got the
word to delete Translations 2-A.
At that time
they put in D- 9--the first D-9 with fuel .
We also scrubbed the Horizon Scan Moonset Check
at 46: 33, or whenever that is.
Right . It was schedul ed with the platform up
and we didn ' t have it up.
Also I ' ve got the Scanner Thruster Plum Checks
scrubbed at 47:40,
Also a deletion of the ES Sensor - ON because
we weren' t going to translate.
So at 14:14 we
had our first D- 9 Experiment with OAMS .
We were both up.
Right .
This was the first one with fuel and the first
big disappointment of the experiments .
Right. It was certainly very difficult to use.
This is where we tried to do the dayside pass
when we had stars , and we couldn' t see past the
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quite short.
We were not able t o see any stars so
we weren ' t able to do much on that run at all .
This is the t ime we !mocked off any more day star
sightings.
We were supposed t o turn on MSC 1 and acq aid off
for five minutes between Tananarive and Carnarvon,
I guess.
Oh! This is where I missed a sleep period.
This
i s where we missed a sleep period.
We got busy and
ran the D-9 right through the sleep period.
Then
I got back to sleep at 54: 55 to 60:65 elapsed time.
Oh , yes.
You got about one hour's worth of sleep
between 49:40 elapsed and 50: 20 elapsed , or some­
thing like that.
Right before D-9, I got a little sleep.
That 's right.
I 've got a little note in here that
says, "Ed got about one hour of sleep."
That I s right .
We were supposed to do S-5 over t he States on Rev
32.
Start at 17:40.
We were supposed t o do Apollo
Landmark No. 4 starting at 15:00 Zebra on Rev 33.
That was El Paso.
That's right .
We were both up for that .
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We did the S-5 Experiment together and that was
the best series of pictures we got on the whole
flight. It was really fabulous .
We got good
pictures both for the S-5 and S-6 on this one.
They should really come out good.
I did the Apollo Landmark Area No . 4.
I did the
tracking task with it at 19 16 42 on El Paso,
and it turned out pretty well.
We tried to make
a tracking pass on El Paso International Airport,
and we never even saw El Paso.
This was a very big surprise to both of us because
we though we ' d nail that one cold.
That's right.
We've been in and out of there so
often, you lmow, it's just like another home base.
Which leads to one of your conclusions, which is-­
You can' t have targets out in the middle of a
land mass .
They've got to be near a body of water.
You need something to identify the landmark.
There are some beautiful topographical features
near El Paso .
There' s a range of mountains just
to the west that show up and the white sands are
out there to the west--Shoot! We never saw any­
thing.
I think I saw El Paso when we were right
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over it.
I said, "I think there goes El Paso.
I think we missed it ."
The next thing we said was, "Yes, it is.
There ' s
Texas." We could see Corpus Christi coming up on
us.
That 's where you took it.
That ' s right .
So then I went to a tracking task
on a pair of sand pits, with a channel between
them, right on the coast--around Corpus somewhere.
So, we did a tracking pass on it because we were
all set up and we 'd already used the fuel to get
stabilized.
We were all set to do something so
we went ahead and did something.
We took some
200 mm pictures of this.
I took about 10 pictures,
We'll just see how the target stayed in sight.
This was our first real tracking pass, wasn't it?
I had one good one on Tel- Aviv.
Did you use the fuel required to do it and all that
s tuff or did you try to chintz on it?
I tried to chintz on it, but I think it was good
tracking.
I actually tracked the airport at Haifa
instead of Tel- Aviv.
I realized it at the last
minute that I didn ' t have Tel- Aviv, I had Haifa, but
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I had an airfield and I had a town so I-­
You took some fixed-molll'lted 200 mm pictures .
Yes .
I took about two pictures of it.
I couldn't
take a series.
I-­
That ' s right.
You didn ' t have the gunsight to
t r ack with either.
No .
I just put it in the middle of the window.
At this time our orbit was 88. 1 by 148. 7, so we
had come down about 7 or 8 miles.
D-9 and Apollo
4, were around 51 hours.
I don't know exactly
how that fit into this schedule that we were doing.
We were switching back and forth from elapsed time
to Greenwich Mean Time so we got a little confused
on these.
We got updates of the PLA ' s and CLA ' s.
This plan says , "Prepare for D-6." Well, we didn't
have a D-6 Experiment anymore.
Ed went to sleep
again at 54 hours .
Yes.
At 54: 30 I' ve got myself asleep.
Ed asl eep at 54, and I have him waking up at 59:15.
That was when we started trying to nake you sleep
a little longer, Ed.
Half our notes here are elapsed time and half of
them are in Greenwich Mean Time.
I think this is
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probably one of the weakest points in our flight
planning-- trying to get times correlated .
This correlation between one time and the other
time is hard to handle.
We were getting start
times in GMT.
We sai d that we wanted these start
times in GMT because this i s the only official
time that we had.
The elapsed times were just for
planning.
We only kept them to the nearest two
or three minutes .
I started my Omega watch on
elapsed time at take-off, and I just let it run
through the whole flight.
I never set it.
I
never checked elapsed time or anything. It could
have been off two or three minutes , but I was
doing the flight plan to the nearest iO minutes
off the book here.
When we got retrofire times
and when we got start t imes for things, we got
them in GMT .
It made it awfully confusing in the
flight plan by switching back and forth,
Fortunately, we got off at 15:15 which is better
than getting off at 12:36 or something like that.
On the Apollo mission we 've got a better set of
clocks .
We're going to have Mission Time and
Phase Time , so whenever you start a new phase
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you go back and start all over again.
Wel l, I 'm not convinced that we couldn ' t have
even handled this one on elapsed time.
We did.
Well, I mean let everything go elapsed time.
Forget about your Greenwich Mean Time.
No .
I don't know what we would have lost .
The retrofire times.
Put the retrofire time on elapsed time.
Like
you say, it was much clearer to you using that
one watch on 12- ho11r increments , and it was to
me too.
That 's the one I used.
I used this one
watch right here on elapsed time,
Well , let ' s get into that as a separate thing
at the end .
We had the MSC Experiment 2 and 3
off at 02: 25 ,
We turned it on at 22:14,
These
are Zebra times now.
I have a note here,
"Perform D-8 Experiment, Radiation Exper iment,
at 55:30 elapsed time , " and I 've got , "No. Pilot
asleep. " Did you do that experiment later on, Ed?
Which one was that, Jim?
D-8 Experiment .
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At what time?
At 55 : 30 elapsed.
I 've got them in Greenwich Mean Time here again.
That's around 22 or 23:00.
Something like that.
Yes.
I 've got one.
I did it at 23: 58 GMT.
How did you do that? You were supposed to be
asleep then.
Maybe you woke up and did it and
went back to sleep.
You know, this was the time when you went to
sleep, I 've got you asleep on the fourth day
at 03:30 Greenwich Mean Time.
We ' re not on the fourth day.
We're still on the
third day.
I 'm between 54 and 59 elapsed.
All right.
That's the period of time I'm asleep.
I've got the D-9 Experiment was run between
22:43 and 23:22.
I must have done that.
Okay.
We got Ed up at about 59 hours elapsed time, and
did a Medical Data No. 2 Pass on m~ except by then
I think they were Medical Data No. 1 Passes.
went to sleep at about 60:15 elapsed, and I got
up about 65 : 30 elapsed.
I had about five hours
there when I was supposed to sleep.
Shortly after you went to sleep we started having
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the RCS heater troubles and we had them coming on
for the next three to four hours.
We had them
cycled on and I called the times down.
I don ' t
believe we want to go over them all right now.
I
had them cycled on and off at intervals of about
15 minutes, for a total of eight different times .
They started coming on exactly at 06:47 and the
last one I had was on at 08:23.
That was the
last time we had any RCS heaters. It was rather
peculiar because they alternated.
First the
A-Ring would come on and the B-Ring would come on
and the A-Ring would come on, and so on.
Is that right?
They came on at approximately 15-minute intervals
and it took approximately five minutes to bring
the temperature down to within limits.
I reported
those down and they seemed to be interested in
getting exact on/off times of our heaters to plot
our electrical profile curve.
I ran an Apollo
Landmark Run Noo 6 with yaw 15 and pitch 30.
I
think the results of that are in the other log­
book.
I reported down at this time that ~im had
a successful bowel movement .
I already had one.
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I had an HF Check at Ascension at 05:09 , which
didn't work out-­
How could I have a successful BM if I was asleep?
You had already had it.
I reported it at that
time.
I wasn ' t able to read Ascension on this
HF Check.
I got the okay for an Apollo D-9 Run
No. 2 for 06 01 44.
I called down to get
clarification on it and they said I could use
stars of opportunity.
This is what I did.
I
ran the D-9 with the stars of opportunity.
Why
we did this will be brought out in the D- 9 de­
briefing.
This was a no-fuel D-9?
No.
This was with fuel .
But, remember, the stars
were placed so it was hard to get much.
Yes.
We scrubbed the Apollo Landmark Investigation No . l .
We didn't do that.
We gave a Medical Data Pass.
Ran the D-9 Experiment , I believe, and got fairly
good information back on that.
As a matter of
fact, I did do the Apollo Landmark Run No. 6 and
that information is in the flight log.
I got Jim
up, it says, at 08:31 .
This doesn't sound right
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I got myself up around 65:40 something elapsed time .
I just drew a mark there.
That's exactly where I've got you up--at about
I got a comment here.
This is something that
went on throughout the flight .
I went to sleep
and I looked at the OAMS Quantity Gage and it was
reading 60 percent.
When I woke up it read 56
percent.
This meant a 4 percent drop and it
was somewhat alarming since we were saving fuel
so much.
He accused me of having to use all the fuel up
while he was asleep.
Ha, ha.
No .
I'd noticed that the gage went up and down
before, but it never had gone up and down so much
in such a short time.
It would move up and down
by 2 percent quite frequently over a period of
15 minutes to an hour. It would change by 2
percent. It did this between 60 and 70 percent
for a long, long, long t ime.
We were going pretty
easy on the fuel .
It did move up and down like
this quite a bit.
This is just a comment that
throughout the flight the OAMS Quantity Gage did
fluctuate quite a bit.
We had the uncertainty
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in the system and this 2 per cent was, in general,
about 7 pounds .
That was really quite a bit of
fuel. 4 percent was between 12 and 15 pounds,
depending where you were on the scale. This was
and awful lot of fuel to have suddenly disappear.
I just wanted to comment on that . It was an
interes ting thing. . We'd been dumping our ECS o2
pressure. We'd gone to High Rate or cabin repress
and dumping the stuff overboard--overpressurizing the
cabin and having the cabin vent to keep the pres­
sure down.
Finally around this 66 hours, we'd dumped
the thing down to 880 psi on the gage.
This was why
we didn't have to dump it so often. We'd been
dumping it before around 960 psi--dump it there
and bring it back to around 930 psi and let it build
up, and then repeat the cycle again.
That was about every 4 hours.
Yes.
We had to dump at least every 4 hours.
We brought it dovm to 880 psi and this gave us a
period of around 12 hours.
You know, I thought this was a very clever method
of holding the cabin at a higher pressure than
normal by McDonnell--putting the vent down so low
that it vented in a normal mode.
You
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certainly could tell on the gage when it was
going to vent .
It vented right down there at
about 960.
Yes .
I thought we ' d really hack that apart when
we got to the systems .
Yes .
All r ight .
I wanted to be sure that we
didn ' t forget it.
I guess we were both awake at this time . We did
MSC-10 some place.
Here 's where we got into a
bunch of bad flight planning.
Someone on the
ground screwed up.
They ran our Horizon Scanner and MSC- 10 Checks
right together.
We started out our MSC-10 Check and at the same
time we were supposed to start powering up the
platform and alining it .
What time did you have MSC-10 Experiment?
We were supposed to power up the platform at 10:15 ,
Let ' s see if I got the start times here for MSC-10.
We'd have it in the book.
Well, we didn't get a start time because MSC-10
starts when the horizon comes into view, when we
could see the first light .
We started the MSC-10
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as a sequence of pictures every five minutes.
The sequence is three pictures every five minutes,
for as many passes as you can get .
So you have to
start this thing at sunup, or as soon as the hor­
izon becomes light.
We took our first three pic­
tures .
We went on through and we were supposed
to start our Horizon $canner Check--.
Jim, the time we started you ' ve logged in here as
11:04.
Okay, at 11 :04 we started our MSC- 10 Experiment .
We were given instructions to start the Horizon
Scanner Sunset Check at 11:54. It just so turned
out that we were going along and we weren ' t out
of frames of film yet for MSC- 10 .
It was still daylight.
Yes, it was st.ill daylight, that's right, and we
could still get some more good pictures, I thought.
Here we had instructions to start our Horizon
Scanner Sunset Check, and in looking through this
thing, it looked to me like that was the only
place we were going to get it; so I don't under­
stand exactly why we had to run MSC-10 and the
Horizon Scanner Check simultaneously. They
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couldn' t be run simultaneously! It looked like
somebody with a little foresight on the ground
could have seen this .
That was really the only bad screwup, I think,
in our flight planning. It was right there .
I think so , too .
So we terminated MSC- 10, al­
though we had enough pictures , I'm sure , to have
completed the experiment . It would have been
nice to use up all the film .
There ' s no sense
in carrying it and not using it .
At 11 :54 we
did the Horizon Scanner Sunset Check--the plat­
form up and alined .
At 12:15 we did the Horizon
Scanner Moonset Check.
At 12: 22 we did the
Apollo Yaw Orientation. At 12: 58 we did the
Horizon Scanner Thruster Check.
At 12: 59 we
did the Horizon Scanner Track Check.
At 13:14 we
did the Attitude Thruster Check.
At 13: 20 we
were supposed to power down and at 13: 20 were
supposed to turn off the MSC No . 1 Experiment .
What happened as we went through here--we got
a little behind because it took a little longer
to do some of these things , especially this
Horizon Scanner Track Check.
It was
taktng so long that
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we eliminated the last two steps in it.
We did
the zero bank angle and the pitch up and down.
We did the zero pitch angle and the roll left and
right .
We did the bank to one side and the pitch
up and down ,and we did the pitch up and the bank
on both sides .
We didn ' t do the pitch down and
the bank on both sides ,and we didn't do the roll
left and the pitch up and down.
We were running
late and at that time I didn ' t know how we were
doing on electrical' power and everything,so I
elected not to do the last two portions of the
check.
We had it pretty well ironed out , anyhow.
Yes .
Surprisingly broad bands , too.
The scanners seemed to be working perfectly.
The
attitude thruster check was just as it should have
been.
We powered down the platform and turned off
the MSC Experiment No . 1 about two minutes late.
We powered down at 13:27.
Okay, seven minutes late.
We never did take any
16 mm photos of the plumes .
Before you went to sleep on t his one.
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I hadn ' t gone to sleep on that one.
Before I went to sleep.
Before you went t o sleep, yes.
Okay D- 9 -­
Wr-: were really busy at this period of time.
Yes, a D- 9 at 20: 51 Zulu.·
I have a feel ing I was asleep here, Jim.
I think you were, Ed.
You went to sleep at 71 : 15.
71 : 15?
Right.
I did the D- 9 Experiment at 20: 15.
At what time, Jim?
At 20: 15,
So you di d the D- 9 while I was asleep.
I have a note here that we ' re going to be over
Guaymas at 15 44 55 .
They wanted a No . 1 Medical
Pass f r om me.
They wanted me to turn the TM switch
to REAL TIME and ACQUISITION for three minutes
over Guaymas.
Guaymas must have lost it ' s
command function or something -- not for the
whole time though.
Yes, t his is where I was asleep, Jim.
I remember
that now.
Okay, now I have a comment here .
I turned on our
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nose down attitude, with a pitch up rate of about
two degrees/second , in the Horizon Scanner Mode .
The thing caught and held the spacecraft within
the deadhand
and finally damped it down , and
we stayed in the Horizon Scanner Mode.
I think
that this is about the time that we went to
Horizon Scanner, isn ' t it?
You were in Horizon Scanner while I was asleep.
Yes .
I don ' t have that in my notes, but we went
in the Horizon Scan Mode around 72 hours , I think.
I think it was at 16: 03 GMT that I mentioned it.
I didn ' t do an O .rbi t Nav Check at the 72 hours
and 50 minutes as shown in the flight plan .
Oh ,
here ' s where you were up again, Ed.
Because you
were up when the computer screwed up , wer en ' t you?
Yes.
I saw the light.
Okay.
During the course of our passes over the
States , here, around 75 hours , I was told to do
Orbital Nav Check N:l.9 at about 75: 30, and I was
to do Or bital Nav Check NolO at about 75: 50, Okay.
I completed the Orbital Nav Check, Run No. 9, and
then you must have waked up , I think.
I think
you wer e asleep when I did that.

White
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What time do you have me waking up?
I know about
what time I woke up.
You woke up around 75 :30 or so.
I was going to
do an Orbit Nav Check No. 10, and we were over
the States.
They wanted us to turn on the
computer to send us a load, so I did .
That 's
probably what woke you up , when I was trying to
turn on the computer with the swizzle stick.
Yes.
But this time the computer stuck in the on
position.
When you tried to turn it off.
And it wouldn ' t go off.
I remember watching.
I saw the mal light go on.
So it stayed on, and that ' s when we had all of our
computer trouble , which you'll check and cover in
systems.
Oh, the time the malfunction light
came on was right when we were about to turn it
off.
I 'd say around 75:15 or something.
In that area?
75:50 CS~-Hawaii.
I think it was about 75:50 or
thereabouts.
They sure do have some peculiar
times here. It only takes , according to flight
FlOENf lAb

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239
~K)ENTIM.
plan, 30 minutes to go from Guaymas back to
Guaymas.
That's a high speed orbit .
That ' s right. It does have that, doesn't it? Looks
like a goof, doesn ' t it?
It only takes 40 minutes to go from Hawaii to
Hawaii.
We were really traveling!
I don't know
what time the computer stopped.
I think they've got it on the ground.
They can
read the ma.l light.
We were talking to them on the ground. It should
be on the air to ground tape.
Then we were
cleared to do Apollo D-9 in the orbit that
covered the night time around 77 1/2 hours or
so .
That was my D-9 at night, wasn't it?
That's right. Ed did this.
Before you went to sleep, though, we had one other
thing.
We had the zodiacal light photographs
that we took, and we had a special procedure
called up where we pointed straight down.
Oh, yes .
That's right.
Pulsed it , with the shutter speed of the Hassel­
blad open.
You operated the Hasselblad and I
operated the spacecraft .
We pitched down and
EO~F1D·EN11AL

240
C@t ◄ Fi0EN-llAk=
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ran through this test and pitched up and ran
through --.
The Contarex.
You used the Contarex. T hat ' s right.
We did this at about 78: 30 , and I went to sleep
at 79-­
No , we didn ' t .
We did this at 76: 30 , Jim.
76: 30?
I have 78: 30.
I just took on Rev 51. You 're correct .
That Rev
51 they called up wasn ' t right .
Okay , we did it
at 21 :40, which I have as equivalent to 78: 25.
Then at 80 hour s I went to sleep.
You went to sleep about 80 hours elapsed time.
That' s r ight .
Okay, while you were asleep, I
ran a D-8.
In fact , I had quite a bit to do
while you were asleep this time.
I ran a D-8
at 23: 57,
These are all Zulu times.
I turned
on the MSC- 2 and 3 at 23: 57,
This is where I had
the requirement to attitude hold, small-end­
forward , thr ough the anomaly.
On the first pass
through at 23: 57 to 01 : 30, I didn ' t feel that I
had a good atti tude.
From 23:57 to 01:15 I di dn ' t
feel my attitude smal l-end-f or ward was satisfactory.
G20t<iFIDENTIAt

McDivitt
241
-cet"'4FIE>Ei'JTIAL
I elected'to make a similar pass through on the
following orbit, watching the stars and making
sure that I had a good small-end-forward.
I
found out that the first pass through was pretty
good until the tail end, where I thought the
stars were in the wrong position. It turned out
that this is just the way they came up, and I was
good for both of them except for the tail end of
the first run through, I logged in two small
end passes through the South Atlantic Anomaly.
I also ran the D-9 Experiment and I found that
by using the fuel and having the H0rizon Scan to
hold when you wanted it to hold, the use of the
sextant and horizon in making measurements was
considerably easier. I made what I feel was a
good Apollo D-9 run.
I ran the D-8 Experiment.
I had two times to run the D-8 Experiment.
I
ran it at the Greenwich Mean Time of 01:30,
I
was to look for Pegasus at O2:28,straight up at
268 nautical miles, and I was all hot to watch
Pegasus go over and was just approaching my
straight up attitude when-­
The sun shined on the window.

242
White
No , I was called and t hey said, "Say we got a
critical tape dump.
We want you in a level
attitude for it." And I said, "Well, you just
gave me instructions to watch Pegasus. "
And
they said, "No, we want the critical tape dump. "
So I went right down to that attitude, and we
got the dump off in time for me to go back up to
the attitude prior to 02:28.
I got up there
about . 5 minutes prior to that time, but the
sun, as Jim said , was up and was reflecting off
the particles on the windshield, and I really
couldn't see very much.
I tried to see Pegasus ,
but I couldn't see it.
I turned MSC- 2 and ~ off
at the appropriate times .
We got instructions
from Houston CAP COM to t ry a few things with the
computer.
We were to turn the computer off , the
IGS on, the computer on at 20 minute intervals
to try to r ecycle the mal l ight off. They thought
that it might have been cold.
€0Nft0·cNll~

243
-CONfteiENTl~L
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McDivitt
Let me step back a little bit to this
computer problem.
The computer stuck c.wer
the States at around 75 1/2 hours or so.
The
computer was stuck on. If you've got to have
something stick, you're better off to have it
stick on, I guess, than off.
Especially if
you ever want it to work again.
As we went
out of earshot of the ground UHF radio range in
the States, I asked them if that they had any
instructions.
They said, "Stand by. " I sort
of felt that the thing that we ought to do was
just leave it on for a while.
We got a call
from Tananarive and they said to place the
computer switch to the ON position and a. a .
Power Switch to the ACME.
I said that ' s
certainly a peculiar place to put the switch
and they said these are the instructtons from
Houston.
I think we had a good computer at that time.
I know darn well we had a good computer at
that time .
I think this is like getting your
landing gear stuck up and you fool around with
C-ONFIDENTD\t-~

244
it and it comes down and then just for the
hell of it you pull it up again to see if it's
going to come up.
I don't think we should
have ever turned off the computer. Unfortunate­
ly, I didn' t have all the infonnation at my
fingertips that I needed to really make a de­
cision on it.
When we got to the next station,
which was Hawaii, I asked them how we were
doing on electrical power.
They sai d that we
were 160 amp-hours ahead of the curve.
We had
a 200 amp-hour cushion, so that meant that we
had a 360 amp-hour pad on our flight pl an. In
the meantime, I had checked to see what the
computer- ON, IGS Power Supply-ON took. It
took 5. 6 amp-hours to power this thing.
We
were at 76 hours on a 96-hour mission and we
had about 20 hours to go.
Twenty times 5.6 is
a little over 100.
So, if we had used up these
100 amp-hours , we'd still finish up with a
better electrical pad than we started out with,
or than we expected when we started out.
So,
I sort of feel that we needlessly threw the
computer down the drain.
After we got the

245
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GNFIDENTIAt
thing turned off and ruined, we went ahead and
turned the IGS Power Supply on, the computer on,
and left it on the rest of the flight anyway.
So, whoever sent those instructions accomplished
it.
I guess what he wanted to do was turn off
the computer.
He sure accomplished that.
It
seemed to me like it would have been more
worthwhile to leave the thing on till we got a
little more data out of the thing, instead of
rushing to get it turned of f the way they d.L<.l,
I don't understand it .
I don't feel that it
was a wise decision.
Unfortunately, I didn ' t
have the electrical power consumption at my
fingertips right then, or I never would have
turned the thing off.
Okay, I guess we're over about 86 hours.
I got
up at 86 hours.
That ' s one of the longest rest
periods that I ' ve had .
At 05 48 45 Zulu we were
supposed to perform a D-9 Experiment , and I guess
we did.
Then I have in my notes that Ed went
to sleep at 87 hours elapsed time .
And this was my five hours of very good sleep.
~ONFIDENT~A4,

McDivitt
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Whit e
McDivitt
co,~Fl0EN·l+AL
It's my best and last .
You must have let me
sleep till when?
I don't even have when I got you up, but it
was about five or six hours.
I think it was
around six hours.
No , it wasn't that long, was i t ? Because that
would have run us a little short .
You had
about an hour 45 minutes or two -­
I had an hour and a half nap.
I got up at
three hours before retrofire. Retrofired at
97:45,
I went to sleep at 93 hours.
Okay.
So, I got up -­
Ed got about six hours nap.
I got up about 95:05 that time.
You went to
sleep about -­
No , you went to sleep at 87 hours and got up
at about 92 -- a little past 92.
This is what I
1d estimate, Jim.
A little past 92.
So, you had about a good
5 hours.
I lmow that you were still sleeping
at 92, because that ' s when the urine system
stopped up, and you were asleep then.
So,
think you got up -- I ' d guess, around 92:30,
OO~~FIE>ENTIAL...
I

White
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White
I lmow I went to sleep at 93.
I went to sleep in
pm GMT and 15 after the hour, whatever the hour
was , and I woke up again.
During the time that
Ed was asleep, I did two Apollo Landmark runs
using Area No. 16 for the first one.
This was
on Basrah. It was a good run. We'll go into
this a lot more in detail later on.
I did
the second one on Cairo .
This was a good run.
I went through some more computer mode checks.
Every ten seconds, I changed the computer
modes and turned the switches on and off,
pushed the malfunction lights , hit the Start
C-omp button, turned the switches on and off,
ran the IVI's and a whole bunch of other
things. The computer was dead and ±twas
pretty obvious that it was.
At 92 hours, the
urine flush system stopped up.
Just prior
to that Ed had urinated and we had a big
bellows full.
As it started going overboard,
it always went overboard in squirts.
Did you have it at 92 or 95?
92.
Okay, that was when I was asleep.
CON·FIBENTIA~

248
'CONFtDt:t+l~Al:--
McDivitt
You were still asleep, and I think you got up
around 92: 3(), I would guess .
Sometime around
in there.
I know that I got up three hours
before retrofire and I slept about an hour and
a half.
You can go back and say that you got
up about 92: 30 or 93 elapsed.
Ed had urinated
in the bladder and the bell ows was full .
As it
got towards the end, i t started going out very
slowly, but it did all go out .
So , I turned
the thing off normally.
I l eft preheat on for
a short time, two or three minutes , and then
turned it off.
After my urine dump, I had
about half air and half urine in the bladder,
and the bellows filled out. It just.stopped.
It was pretty obvious that it wasn't going to
go any farther .
I turned off the OVERBOARD
position and went to PREHEA:T on the other
switch.
I then went over to the evaporator
and dumped through the evaporator and it
dumped right overboard.
We used the evaporator
dump system one other time during the flight .
We played back the tapes and the things we
were supposed to do unt il about 93 hours, I
CONF-10EN"FIAl...

-----ceNFl0EN·;pJAL
249
believe, and that ' s when I went to sleep.
I
woke Ed up and I went to sleep at this time .
White
Actually we got our update while you were
asleep the time before.
We got the update for
how to perform the retro.
We figured that with
the procedure they gave ue, if we followed it,
we would get a three- sigma miss distance of
70 nautical miles.
We were to use an 0AMS
r etor with a manual retro.
At this time, we
were going to push the manuel button.
They
didn ' t know at this time that the TRS was
working all right .
They later came in and
told us to use the automatic mode of time.
We
were to use zero-lift rolling.
We were to
start the terminal maneuver at the 400 000 foot
marker.
They told us to expect to encounter
about 8 g's during the reentry.
We were told
the recovery area had three to four foot waves,
18 knot winds, and good weather.
I
1 ll cover
this more later.
White
There wasn ' t much more.
We got an update.
I
took a few more pictures, and I did a medi cal
pass.
During that hour and 40 minutes there,·wasn ' t
CONFl0ENTIAL

250
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.u1.ything else.
Nothing else was scheduled.
We wer e down through what we felt was all the
fuel we wanted to use , so about all I did was
a couple of tracking tasks.
Going back for a moment, - at 17:19 I did an
Apollo D- 6 on Yuma.
Okay, I think that bri ngs
us t o the preretro portion of the mission.
Right , Ed?
Yes, sir.
I think you 'll find there are ~uite
a few errors and omissions in what we've put
on the tape right now.
I think you have to com­
pare them both--the two tapes together--to get
anything.
That's like air to ground tape, also .·
That ' s right. It has to all be put together .
This is just a piece right here.
White
We really started our preretro preparation
about three hours prior to preretro .
At this
time we started stowing equipment and pre­
paring the spacecraft and ourselves for the
retrofire. I think we worked for probably
30 ±o 45 minutes without making a very bi g
CQ~~F-IDENTI--Ab

251
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McDivitt
-eOl'<tflDENTl~L
dent in the pile of junk that we had in the
spacecraft.
IL.was apparent to1,me at ·I.hat
time that we were going to have to go a lot
faster than we were going or we'd still be up
there stowing stuff away at retrofire time.
So , Ed and I then went into high gear and we
really started stuffing stuff away.
We put
the film in the middle food box, and we put
the caJDeras and some of the refuse, including
three defecation bags, exerciser, and some
other things, in the left-hand aft food b·ox.
I took a lot 1,nger to stow the equipment than
we had planned.
Do you have any comments on
that?
Yes , I thought this also .
We had just every­
thing out prior to this time.
We hadn ' t
really been able to stow anything.
We used
every piece of our equipment right up to the
time we started our stowage.
In fact, I think
you were getting a little uneasy there for a
little while that we weren ' t going to get it
all in,
That's right. At the rate we were going, we
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252
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COl<IFIDEt\fltAL
wouldn ' t have.
That' s right.
We had to accelerate our pace a
l ittle bit and perhaps get a little faster and
not quite as thorough in o~r stowage as we
would liked to have been.
I think everything
was put away.
Everything was put away except
for the umbilical .
We knew we weren't going
to stow the urine hose, so we put that in the
umbilical bag.
The two meals that we had left
we put in the umbilical bag aleo .
We had some other things.
We had the extra­
vehicular sleeves off your sujt, the blanket
that went over my leg, the launch- day urine
bags , and a couple of other things were down
underneath my legs.
They were between my l egs
and the seat.
Right.
I put my launch-day urine bng in the
bag also , so that things wouldn ' t ric.oohet·.
around.
I think we had all your stuff in the bag and
I had all my stuff wedged between my legs and
the seat.
We both also had a trash bag on either side.
€0~<1FIDENTIAL

253
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We had that on the l aunch also.
The trash bag was full .
Did yours stick on the side?
It stuck.
So di d mine.
I put mine further up -­
It didn ' t have anything heavy in it.
It was
light weight.
It was all trash.
Dry trash.
It all stayed there pretty well.
We di d get
the stowage done in time.
I think we had about
10 or 15 minutes in which to collect our wits
f or the -­
That' s right.
I was trying to make an -effort
such that at the time we arrived over Carnarvon
the greatest part of the stowage would be
down.
However, we didn ' t quite make this.
I
had a time powering up the spacecraft, and I
had the IGS power on.
I had already turned
the IMlJ on.
I was beginning to warm it up,
and had it in the Cage Mode .
When we got to Carnarvon we were still stowing
things away.
I t hink by that time I had al­
t0NF1Dc1'ff~L

254
I
GOt\J FIDE~I-A=l
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McDivitt
Whit e
ready strapped myself into the spacecraft.
had my survival gear hooked up, my shoulder
harness hooked up and my lap belt on loosely.
We did the things that I could do by myself,
such as stow·ing the ventilation module and
stowing the cabl e.
You were doing other things.
That's what I said.
We were coming up to
Carnarvon.
I was shooting to have all this
stuff put away by then.
We didn't have it all
put away but we had most of it done, where I
could actual ly get around to flying the space­
craft again.
We checked in with Carnarvon , and
confirmed our retrofire time.
We weren't
really supposed to pick up our retrofire dat a
until we passed over the States .
From Car­
narvon on up to the States, we ~ontinued to
stow away little bits of pieces that we had.
I think you were still eating.
We finally de­
cided that you ' d better stop eating or we
weren't going to be ready for reentry.
With a little prethought I had taken one meal ,
prepared it and set it aside so I could eat
it just before reentry.
This is what I was

255
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doing.
As we came up on Carnarvon, I thought that we
were in excellent shape.
We had a lot of spare
time .
We could get ready for retrofire.
We
came up to the United States and ran a pass
across the United States.
We got the updat e
times and we got all the reentry quantities
~hat we needed, both with and without OAMS .
They told us that they had a valid load in the
TRS .
At this time, I assumed that they
checked the TRS, but when we got our early
retrofire, I wondered if anyone really had
checked the time.
I know it was off at least a second. · I'd
estimate it was off a little more than a
second.
A second and a half, probably.
No more than
two seconds because we didn't arm it until
three seconds• But it sure fired shor tly after
that.
Yes.
One thing that we got was different.
All
our quantities checked out except for one.
They called up a landing time which, the first

256
McDivitt
C.QNFIDENT~AI.
time , I copied it as 15: 55 , and the sec.;ond
time I copied it as 17:10 .
This was prior to
firing anything, so I think they corrected one
time only.
I thought the rest of it was very
well h8J1dled.
We had the times called up and
verified several times .
As we started our pass across the States , I
started alining the :EDJ.atform..
We had the best
alined platform although we didn ' t really need
an alined platform since we didn't have a
closed loop guidance system.
But we sure had
the best alined platform at retrofire that the
space business will probably ever see .
I
alined the platform across the United States ,
and then I went to Orbit Rate.
I had about
a 20-minute alinement on it and went to Orbit
Rate.
We left it in Orbit Rate.
I did this
alinement small-end-forward because I wanted
to see where I was going for a change.
We
went into the dark side, and we really got
into our checklist then.
We performed the P~e­
r etro Checklist well in advance of when it was
supposed to be done. It shows it in the flight

257
,.CO~ F ID"EMltAt
plan at about 96:40 with the retrofire at
about 97:45.
I think we did the Re,tro Check­
list right after we completed our pass across
the States.
We did it right at about 1+30.
Then I did it at one hour.
At TA-1 hour we
went through the checklist again, and got· all
those things that we skipped.
Some of them we
didn't want to do as early as an hour and a
half.
We went through it again in an hour,
and we did the Preretro Checklist step by
step.
I think at that time we had everything
stowed away.
We took a couple last drinks of
water, and put the water gun away, and then
proceeded on down.
White
I had one comment on that checklist. I still
think our HF procedures are not too well de­
fined--when we do and when we don' t put the !::IF
out. Not out, but when we put No . 2 on HF.
It popped up in the checklist again and we
questioned this prior to the flight.
Why put
No . 2 audio on HF during this time? I do not
feel we want to be on HF.
We had the HF on.
We could hear them calling us , if they did call

McDivi tt
White
McDivitt
us on it.
We could switch over t o it quite
quickly.
This wasn't on the checklist , but
we put my switch on RECORD and recorded the
whole sequence of events.
That' s right.
I think that was sort of a
needless position.
You could l isten on HF
without having the transmitter on.
That was the only discrepancy t hat I fow1d in
our checklist.
Everything else we went through.
One other thing.
They had, "Insert a new
voice tape , " and we both felt we wanted the
full reentry on one tape.
If we put a new
voice tape at this time we wouldn' t have
gotten it.
So , I inserted a new voice tape at
the Minus 36 Checklist and I think this is a
good time to do it on future flights.
Yes, the TR-36 Checklist was to be done over
Carnarvon.
We decided that we would check the
maneuver thrusters prior to Carnarvon since
we had a lot of time.
There was no sense in
waiting until the checklist time ca.me around.
Since we had a lot of time , which was the
thing I was striving for , I went ahead and
COl\lftD·EN--T~L

259
5, 1 Zt-36 Events
McDivitt
CONFteENTlAL
checked the aft- firing thrusters No . 9 and 10
as we had in the TR- 36 Checklist, except we
did it between TR-45 and 40.
Got them all
checked out, so that by the time we came over
Carnarvon we just went ahead and started up our
event timer on their mark.
We confirmed with
Carnarvon that we had indeed checked on maneuver
thrusters and that they were all right.
We got
this checklist completed well in advance too .
We went through it a couple of t imes , although
there really wasn ' t much to it after the Man­
euver Thruster Check,
I guess we could proba­
bly follow the retrofire itself here .
5,0 Retrofire
I juet covered most of this.
I set the event
timer up well in advance of Carnarvon.
At
Carnarvon, I got the TR-36 hack.
I got the
event timer started right on the money.
We
got a hack on it later and it was indeed with
the ground times .
I checked the aft-firing
thrusters prior to reaching Carnarvon, and I
told Carnarvon that I had indeed checked them
-CONFt0ENflAL­

260
COt~FIOf:m1"AL
5. 2 TR- 22 Events
McDivitt
5.3 Tlt-13 Events
McDivitt
and they were operating properly.
At TR-22 I was alining the platform.
I
started alining the platform over the States,
and I put it in Orbit Rate for a while.
Final ly
we got over to the dark side and there wasn ' t
anything else to do , so I alined it some more .
I alined that platform for an hour and a
half.
We had the best alined platform at
retrofire in the world .
We were in pretty good
shape by the t ime we got to the T - 22 checklist,
R
which is really nothing at all. It 's just
another platform alinement.
We checked our
ground updates, and again Carnarvon told us
that we had a good load in the TRS.
At TR-13 minutes we started the computer.
We
started our TR- 13 minute checklist at about
TR-1 4 to make sure we didn ' t run into any
problems.
We got into Orbit Rate, and I got
all the things out just like the T - 12 checklist
R
says.
We had an OAMS burn of 2 minutes and 40
seconds.
They called it up and I

261
5.4 !R-12 Events
McDivitt
.CONFIDENTlAt'
checked it.
I was exactly right.
They were
obviously flying it off the same card that we
were, because I checked it and it was exactly
2 minutes and 40 seconds.
Hawaii said they would give me a countdown to
TR-12, and they gaye me the 3, 2, 1 Mark.
I
started thrusting at that time.
Ed had planned
to give me a check at one minute elapsed time,
two minutes elapsed t ime, and at 30 seconds to
g o, 20 seconds to go, 10 seconds to go, 5, 4,
3, 2, 1, and off.
That's exactly what we did.
He called me at one minute, and again at two
minutes.
We went right on down, and he gave me
the mark.
I was checking the t i me as he gave
me the counts. It was agreeing exactly with
my event timer.
At Ed' s mark, I released the
attitude controller :end we were within tenths
of seconds of exactly 2 minutes and 40 seconds
of burn time.
During this period of time, I
think I held the attitudP-s probably within plus
or minus a degree. It was very easy to control .
The thing that I noticed most about it was the

262
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absence of noise from the aft-firing thrusters .
I could hear the RCS firing, but I could not
hear the aft- firing thrusters .
I could hear them.
You know how the "x" is like this? My ears were
plugged up throughout the flight , so maybe you
could hear t hem.
I could hear them.
That was in Rate Command.
And stopping?
Yes, I heard Rate Command.
I knew what I was
doing with the stick.
Maybe what you were
hearing was Rate Command.
I was going to comment that the way that I was
l istening to t hem':!: thought they were just
cutting out.
You were hearing the attitude thrusters , Ed.
Here' s what would happen.
I would be thrusting
along and the thing would st art deviating. It
has a tendency to deviate more in yaw.
I s i t continual? Did you hear it all the time?
Yes, almost all the time except for pauses
t hat were frightening, as the attitude would
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263
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~
IDENTIAt
drift off just a slight amount, around a degree .
It wasn't deviating a lot so I was making small
corrections.
It would deviate in yaw so I would
control it back. It tended to deviate slightly
to the left all the time.
I controll ed it over
to the right and I would bring the ball back
underneath the dot .
Then I would even go back
to zero.
Then I would release it .
I would
bring the stick ·back to neutral, and for a shor t
time, the rates would bui ld up and the silence
would be deafening.
There would be no noise
whatsoever.
I would think, "God bless it .
Have the aft- firing thrusters stopped firing?"
Then the thrusters tended to yaw the spacecraft
some more.
As it came around , it got past
2/10
1 s of a degree/second deadband and the
Rate Command started firing Main.
Okay, that ' s what I heard.
That ' s right.
That was Rate Command.
When I yawed back around,
it was really going.
I'd come back to neutral
and it would stop.
All right.
Then I couldn't hear them.
I didn't
hear them when we took the check on them.
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Neither did I .
I didn ' t hear a thing.
I agree
100 per cent with Gus that you absolutely
can' t hear those aft-firing thrusters.
My ear muffs are loose.
They are always loose
on my ears.
So if you could hear it outside,
I would have heard it.
I didn ' t hear it. I
heard Rate Command.
Those attitude thrusters really make a noise.
They make a big noise. It sounded to me like
I could hear the thrusters firing and I was also
detecting these pauses evecy so often.
Several
times I thought, "Oh , heck, it's stopped! "
That' s right ,
Especially, when we started
getting down towards the bottom.
The old fuel
gages were going down toward zero and the ti me
was running around. It looked like it was
going to be a dead heat between which went .out
first. There was one··particularly J.ong pause
,.
at about 2 minutes and 30 seconds,
I thought ,
"There it goes ," a.nd we made a quick correction.
.And when I stopped, I couldn' t hear a thing.
Nothing changed.
That ' s all it was.
Okay.
I retract my statement.
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5. 5 TR- 5 Events
McDivitt
Well , not knowing exactly what I was doi ng with
the hand controller, you--I was making small
corrections.
That ' s the first time I'd heard that kind of a
sound.
We were getting it when we wer e chasing that
thing around, too--when we were chasing the
booster around.
You were thrusting again.
I thought this was
the other one.
Yes, that ' s right.
So we got through the TR-13
and TR-12 Checklist s.
~e TR-13 and the TR- 12 Checklists really should
be grouped together--the preparat ion and the
OAMS retrofire.
Once more we started doing our checklist a little
early.
Since we had the t i me there was no since
in wasting it and then rushing at the end.
So
we went through what we could in advance of
T -5.
The things we couldn't do or that didn't
R
need to be done in advance we waited for until
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266
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first clue that the TRS was ahead of the ground
time.
This is an area where I particularly watch the
time.
This is an a.:-ea where I 'm making a time
check to start the elapsed timer going in order
to get our time after retrofire.
I was watch­
ing it pretty close.
The indication on my
watch was that the TRS vi.as about a second or so
early.
I felt we had a good Green·..n.ch Mean
Time hack.
We checked it several times and I
thought we had a good one.
With my time refer­
ence it was approximately a second to a little
better early.
At this time I had about half
of the checklist completed before we got to
the time for it.
I verified it several times.
It's not a hurried time at all, from 36 down,
I don't believe.
There ' s no time in there when
you're really rushed unless it-­
Yes. It is not hurried, provided you have
everything else completed and you' re not doing
anything else but preparing for the retrofire-­
you have nothing going wrong during this period.
At TR-5 the sequence lights came on a little
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267
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bit early and that's where Ed got his first
clue tr·at the TRS was ahead of the other thing.
I didn' t notice it because I wasn ' t watching my
event timer that closely.
Ed got his GMT sto¥ ­
watch started.
Why don I t you go ahead with the
electrical , Ed?
I turned the main batteries on, verified them
on, and verified t hey were taking the load.
They were in good shape.
This is where we turned the OAMS off and the
RCS on.
Let me talk about the checkout
on the
RCS now.
We had armed the RCS prior to the
TR- 36 Checklist, and checked out each ring.
When I was checking the rings out, I felt that
I might have a thruster out.
That was because
when I pitched up or down, my top left yaw
thruster was firing in one ring.
I felt that
I might be generating a rolling moment by
having one of my pitch jets out and the yaw
jets were having to take out this rolling moment .
I checked it in one ripg.
I don't remember
whi ch ring it was.
I went to Direct 8lld did
it again. It didn ' t seem to do it, but on the

268
other hand, it didn't seem to make the space­
craft roll either. Then I turned that ring off
and went over and ddd it on the other ring.
Identically the same thing happened.
I thought
I might have trouble with the roll -gyro .
I
turmid the roll gyro to SECONDARY.
That didn 't
seem to make any difference.
We went back to
PRIMARY .
I remember commenting at that time
that the RCS was a lot looser in control than
the OAMS.
It seemed to me that the OAMS held
the spacecraft attitude better. It seemed like
it controlled to a rate deadband that was
smaller than the RCS deadband.
I don't know
why you're using the same gyros and the same
electronics.
The only thing that could be
different would be the attitude drivers on the
RCS might be activiating slower than they are
in the OAMS.
It seemed like the rates were
such a--seems like there must be a lag in the
whole system. It seemed like the deadband in
the RCS was twice what it was in the OAMS . It
operated properly.
There's so much difference
between looking at that ball on firing retros
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and looking out and actually seeing the nose
of the spacecraft moving around out there.
There's no comparison with t he simulator.
You
just can't simul ate this.
When I looked down
at the ball and did t he retrofire, i t was just
l ike the simulator. When I was l ooking outside
and actually seeing what the spacecraft was do­
ing as I cont rol led i t , it seemed like it was
a lot sloppier with the RCS than it was wi th
the OAMS .
We must have fired over New Mexico or Texas.
Our retrofire?
Yes.
I could see the old brown sandy earth
down right under us.
Yes, Guaymas gave us our countdown, so we were
over northern Mexico .
That ' s the area that I thought we were over.
Actually, it may even look almost a littl e like
west Texas.
It could have been.
Then I did TR-5.
I went
to our retro attitude.
We reported our TR- 5
Checklist complete.
I don ' t know exactly when
Guaymas came on the radio .
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5, 6 TR- 1 Events
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COt\JFtE>l:N!TtAI'
Yes.
At TR-1 there wasn't really much that we
could do in advance, but whatever we could do ,
we did .
There weren
I t many steps.
We just waited for minus 1 minute.
All you have to do is really just prepare your­
self mentally, but at T - 1 I told Ed , "We ' re
R
at a minute. " , and I guess F,d already knew we
were at a minute.
Yes.
F,d did it just exactly as we'd briefed it many
times.
You punched the SEP OAMS.
We heard the
bang.
He followed wit h a SEP ELECTRIC, rather
quickly afterward as we had planned.
We heard
the bang.
Then we waited a short t ime as we
had planned, and fired the SEP ADAPrER.
Then
there was a great big bang.
The tendancy is
to punch those buttons 1, 2, 3.
We decided
that we didn ' t want to go 1,2, 3.
We wanted
t o go 1, 2, (pause) 3.
That was exactly what
we did , and there wasn
I t any doubt whether
the equipment adapter separated.
I had no incl ination to look around.
I knew it
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was gone.
That' s when Ed hollered, "'l'here go the pump
packages ! I see two pump packages out there.
Just exactly what John Young said!"
They separate right off to the left side.
Jim
couldn ' t see them because of the position of
his head.
I could see them.
That 's right.
I never saw them at all .
I could clearly see the t wo pumps together on
the mounting and mounted together.
They were
right together.
And I'll back John up to hilt
on that one.
I saw them too .
We got the ad~pter separated with all the at­
tendent flying pump packages.
Quite a flourish, isn' t it?
Right.
I t sure is . It was a big bang.
There ' s
no doubt about it.
At TR- 30 , the TR- 30
Sequence Light s ceme on, and at that t:Lme Ed
said, "The s aquence 1ights came on about a
second or a second and a half in advance. "
So , I armed retro squibs , and we discussed
whether or not to punch off the Auto- retr o
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272
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want to p,mch it off ahead and have t he retro­
rockets go off early, but I figured that it·
wasn't in a hurry that much.
But if it c8Jlle
on much earlier than that, i t was really going
to make us short. So, I finally decided that
we'd go ahead and ann the Auto-retro Button at
about three seconds so that we weren' t going
to be any more than 15 or 20 miles short as a
result of the retrorockets going off early.
We'd still get the auto- retrofire, signal
through, so that if something went ·,:rong with
the manual retrofire signal we'd still get the
retrorockets fired .
I felt that three seconds
early would be better than a possible 15 or 20
second one in case we had to go through some
non-nominal method of firing the retros in case
the manual button didn't make it work.
I told
Ed to arm the auto-retrofire, a.nd he did this
at about three seconds and i t fired automati­
cally at between two and one seconds, I think,
in the count.
Yes.
I felt that we got a one-plus second early
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5.7 TR-0 Events
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auto-retrofire.
Ri ght.
I did too .
We went through the little
discussion there from minus 30 down, and I knew
what Jim's point was.
I think I distrusted the
system a tad more than Jim did, but I thought
his logic was good.
We had two systems work­
ing to fire the rockets.
i was in full agree­
ment.
We went through and saved fuel for four days
so we could do an OAMS retrofire.
I felt if
we're going to adopt that sort of philosophy
and go through that long of a lean fuel period,
then we could afford another few miles of in­
accuracy thrown in by an early retrofire if we
got the redundancy that you would get from a
double-firing.
So , I elected to go ahead and
have Ed push it.
Al though it probably con­
tributed on the order of 8 to 10 miles to our
miss distance, I don ' t think it really hurt us
that bad.
I had the spacecraft in the retrofire attitude,
and when the retrorockets f ired, I-­
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274
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I had also pushed the man1lal b'uttG::·. on time.
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So, it was about a second after they actually
fired.
Excellent.
The spacecraft was in the proper
retro-attitude and we got a real good push from
the retrorockets.
There are four distinct
pushes, and I never felt a pause between any
one of them.
Did you?
Yes, a little pause between each one.
I
think my cues wei:e tuned llp in a different
manner than yours.
Yours were working on the
controls.
Did you feel that you could actual­
ly see the acceleration? You weren' t looking
out the window.
I was a little bit. It looked like we were
actually turned around and started back the
other way. ila, ha!
I really could feel the g ' s .
Nothing that was
uncomfortable, but I felt each one of them and
I al so felt looking out that I could see the
spacecraft sl owing down.
I know i t was such a
pityingly amount compared to our velocity, but
I was looking down on the ground when they fired .

275
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Mcnivi";•
Your view of the ground is considerable at
minus 30 degrees, a~i it did seem like I could
see the spacecraft actually slow down.
I don't know what the magnitude of the g's was
during retrofire. We were super- sensitive, I'll
tell you that.
We'll get to that later.
As
a matter of fact, later on when I was debating
about whether or not the g meter worked, I
stopped and hit the reset button, and it did
·:1come down. It came down f:r, ~ic. something less
than oL-s· to zero.
I 'd say bet;.reen 2/10 of a g and 1/2 g dtiring"
retrofire.
'I 'd guess something about that order too . It
sure seems a lot.
Your cues a=e really up,,fo r the g's.
You've been at zero e for so long, anything
feels like it ' s a lot.
I was at zero rates ani in the proper attitud~.
I was in Rate Command when the retrorocket s
fired .
I maintained the attitude very well.
It was very ea$y.
There ·were no deviations at
all .
Ed was standing by on the roll rate gyro
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276
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in case it looked like I was loosing control
in yaw.
He could turn off the roll rate gyro
and get all the authority that I needed in yaw.
As far as I could see, it never deviated more
than a degree from where I was supposed to be.
I don ' t think it ever got off that center bar
in yaw, :ind it never got a dot- that little
dot- -away from the 30 degree mark as far as I
could tell.
Could you see any, Ed?
I was sitting there watching it and enjoying
it at that t~me tecause the attitude was stay­
ing right on.
Yes. It was right on.
We got the 6V in the
right direction.
N,:-w, the IVI' s didn't read
out, because we didn ' t have the computer on,
so we really couldn't tell.
It was as steady as a rock.
You could see the
decelerations and looking out the window, I couldn' t
detect any movement
in attitude.
I was
looking right down on the ground several times
during several of the retros, and I think you
could detect motion fairly well .
I didn't see
any.
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277
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I'll tell you.
I was really happy after that
OAMS retrofire and the retrorocket retrofire .
I figured that we had exactly what we were
supposed to , and I was positive we were going
to come down on that cotton-picking carrier.
I was really quite happy after that , because
I don't think 3ven i :c.. t:'1"" simulator we ever had
on0 t~.d-~· easy.
Shall we make 01lr admission on OAMS retro at this
time, Jim?
Yes.
As a matter of fact it might be appro­
priate.
I'm probably one of the biggest an­
tagonists to the OAMS retrofire that there
possibly is at the Manned Spacecraft ·center,
because I think it's a fuel wasting ma~euver
and a lot .-:,f other things.
I still think it is.
I ' ll still say one thing--after I fired the
OAMS retrofire and I knew I was going to come
down, I was a l •::>t more relaxed than I had been
before I got there.
I ' m going to have to tell
Dr. Gilruth that , but I still think we can get
by without it.
It was nice to see tt work. It was nice.
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It was , and I was real sorry we d:idn'·t havG
a computer because after those two thingn , which
I thought were done certainly as good as I
could possibly do them.
I felt sure that ~e
could have landed right on the cotton-pickin~
car rier ' s deck if we just had a computer to tell
us wher e t o go . I would have liked to have tried
the guidance.
I worked hard eno,.1g'.l on that
reentry guidance and I didn't get to use it .
Jim, I think there is one thing that we left
out - -the reading of the percentage of 0AMS fuel
left.
I think we called out --3
or 4
per cent.
That ' s right.
I had
3
or . 4
pe·rcen t
remaining on the gage .
We called it out and
it will be on the tape .
I wrote it down ~t
3
percent.
Here it is.
3 percent
of
the fuel left after 0AMS.
Yes , an1 it wa~ a little hard to rea1 down
there and parallax was
pretty bad.
I estima­
ted that it was
3
per cent.
I read off the g_uantity on the gage and it was
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279
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1100 psi?
Yes.
I'll tell you one thing about the out-the­
window view at 30 degrees pitch-down attitude.
You're really pitched down at 30 degrees .
That's another thing that I noticed.
I was
looking out the window, and I s~rely wasn ' t
obse~ving much in the way of a horizon.
I was
looking at the ground.
The top · 2 inches of the window has the hori­
zon in it.
So , if you really had a bad r etro
and you get scr ewed up a l i ttle bi t , you coul d
lose your horizon.
You could lose your horizon, but I think you've
got a good enough view of the motion of the
ground az1d an object on the ground.
I thl.nk
you could do a very effective job.
If I really hai to do a..~ out-the-window retro
I ' m 11.)t even sure that I ' d look out and use the
hori zon.
I think I ' d pick a spot on the ground.
That' s the point I was making.
You' d put a
grease pencil on your window.
You'd have to use both .
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280
Whi.te
I LM.nk you'd find a spot on the ground, and.
hold it.
McDivitt
Because the spot on the ground is going to move.
Whi.te
Yes, it's going to move during the fir~ .
That's
exactly what you do on an attitude ball. you
know .
You have a horizm1 and you have a spot
and then you fly tha":; :~pot.
So, it sounds kind
of l ike the thing I think you can do.
McDivitt
The retrorockets fired, as I said, in the order
1, 2, 3, 4.
We got the manual fit'e out-­
button punched.
Ed got that.
We had said that
because we're getting a countdown we were going
to fire the Manual. Retrofire Button ex1L­,tly
when we got to zero.
We weren' t going to wait
aro,md a second af ter that so that we got the
computer and all that jazz on the line.
We
didn ' t have .any ,;01:iputer to get on the line.
We weren't going to read out anyth:i.ng on the IVI' s
or anything else.
All we were concerned with
was firing the retrorockets .
5,8 Retropack Jettison
McDivitt
I waited 45 seconds.
I started rolling over at
this time. When 45 seconds crune, I had t~e
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281
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5.9 Communications
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5. 10 Update
/4ONFl0-ENflAt­
retro-;;ett squib on, and I punched off tho retro- -­
The light came on And you punched it .
That 's right.
The light came on at 45 seconds
and I punched it.
There was a real solid bang,
and I knew we separated from the retropack.
No
doubt there either.
As we went on down , we
finally sa•,r the retropack com,::- on around behind
us .
Do you have anything else on the retropack
jettison? I guess not.
That ' s pretty simple.
We got the com from t:~e ground.
I thought we had good communicat.tons with the
ground.
No problems with the communications.
I was a
little concerned with the communications
earlier in the flight , because we wer en' t get-•
ting anything.
We weren't getting retrofire
times or any other information.
But to~ards
the end of the f light coouwmica.tio:is wer,1 8iC­
cellent.
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282
McDi vitt
The update was awful , I think.
As I mentioned
earlier, they updated our TRS but the TRS was
obviously not running with the ground.
6.0 REENTRY
6.1 Reent:cy Par ameters Update
Mc:Divitt
We really didn't have a reentrs parameters up­
dl:l.te post-retro .
We went intn black-out pretty
quick.
There wasn ' t anything to update.
We
were going to st art rolling at 400 000 .
Re­
gardless of anything else, we had a pre•­
program_~ed reentry.
6.2 400K
White
We were at 400K before you got your
3 ­
Minute Update.
McDivitt
That's right.
At two minutes a~d 38 secondA
we were through 400 000 feet.
We got there in
a hurry.
I roll ed upside down, and I flew do,m
to 400 000 feet , which was to be at 2:38,
How­
ever, I thought that we ' d retrofired a little
early, so I wasn ' t in any great rush to start
my rolling reentry.
I dela¥ed about :another
30 or 40 secondA.
The only reason I delayed
was because I knew there wasn't any rush to get
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283
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over, because if we were going to be nnypl a~e ,
we were going to be short.
I j".1st wanted to
get over a.nd get in a good attitude.
So , I
r olled the thing upside down, got the-­
One thing---on the Post- retro Checklist, we
dedded this time to use Reentry Rate Command
rather than Direct.
That ' s r ight.
That ' s a deviation on our checklist.
When I got the thing upside dow:n, I was still
in Rate Co!llllla.nd.
I held the lift vect or up,
heads down, until I got down
to· about 3
minutes and 15 seconds .
I got my 3 minute
time hack from the ground.
I got my clock
counting up a 3 minutes .
At about 3 minutes
and 15 seconds I started th0 roll.
What I did
was, I put in aoout 15 degrees/second, and then
we turned off the roll gyro .
I just left the ·
thing rolling.
I controlled the pitch and yaw
inside the rate deadba.nd, which was plus or
minus 4 degrees , just a3 you would in Direct.
still had the rate deadba.nd
t o take care of
any wild pertubations that we got into .
-€0NFl0ENllAL
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6. 3 .04 g
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We didn ' t even have a time for .04 g's did we?
No .
We d.id:a' t h:we ::1.ny-thing like that.
We
started rolling reentcy at 400 000 feet, except
that I didn ' t start it until ah-.ut 45 seconds
after that to make sure that I had good atti bd9.
I started the thing around the way I wanted it.
Just .<.i,lxmt this tim,~, we saw the retro adapter
start floating back past us.
I figured the
other day that thing was small-end- forward
rather than blunt-end-forward.
I'd sa:y it was front-end- forward too.
We saw the spherical end of the retrorockets.
Remember?
Yes.
All four of them.
All fo·..1r of them.
We didn ' t see the nozzle.
It had done a 180-degree turn small-end­
forward and it was as stable a8 a rock.
We
could see the whip antennas sticking out to the
side.
Exactly the position it should go to .
That's
the heaviest end, I would presume.
It would tend to trim that way too.
Except that
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285
CONFtDENTl;ttt-
I didn ' t think there would be any aerodynamics
at 400 000 feet .
But it was turned around 180
degrees and was perfectly stable with the whip
antenna sticking out, which at that iime was up
to the right.
White
Yes.
McDivitt
We were upside down.
It sure was a funny look~
ing sight.
White
It sure was. It was really pretty.
McDivitt
And it was as stable as a rock and very slowly
d:t'ifting behind us .
As a matter of fact, for
a while I thought that our opening velocities
were too slow, and I thought it would just
come back and hit us.
But, it just stayed out
there, and we started our rolling reentry there.
We were coming on down and we were rolling
around and before I got any noticeable g ' s at
all--Isn' t that right--before we got any notice­
able g ' s it s t arted burning?
White
Okay.
We saw the reddish pink layer come a­
round the spacecraft--
McDivitt
Well, didn ' t we see the retropack start burning
before the­ - ?
-CONFtDENllM

286
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~ 0 t>J FI l;)fNTIAi.
Whichever way we saw it , it's on the tapes ,
because we discussed it pretty thoroughly.
That ' s right , as we were doing it.
But I sort
of vaguely recall that watching the retros
after us as we s]!lllrl around , it started glowing
a little bit and then you could see this big
spray come off the front--shock or something.
It looked like it was just melting and corning
away.
It just looked like a great big orange
mushroom back there, and that's when it really
started falling behind us.
We hadn ' t felt any g ' s at all.
Had you felt any
Igs?
Not that time .
I ' m sure that I hadn ' t felt any g' s .
I was wondering why we were so light .
We were
looking down at Florida. We had watched Florida
go by and commented on it .
Shoot , we real ly made a low altitude pass across
the States.
We should have probably filed a DD­
175 to get clearance.
We had to come through the control zone, you
know, at Eglin.
They're kind of sensitive about

287
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CONf-H~ENl-lAL-­
lower altitudes.
... started glowing and burning and it was as
stable as a rock as long as I could see it.
Did you ever see it tumbl e?
No , never did.
Okay. It was behind us and it looked like it
just ate the front tight off, and I guess when
we first saw it , it was on the order of 200
feet , maybe?
Yes.
And the last time I saw it , it looked like it
was about 3/4 .. ..
That was about the position that I saw the
booster for the first time.
I think you ' re right.
I guess we could see the
dome on it and all that stuff.
As a matter of
fact , it was a pretty good reentry shape.
It
looked stable as a rock.
I t stabilized right out .
So, we finally saw it drop behind us and burn
up.
As it finally started drawing behind us.
We started to get
The first thing I saw was the orange flame- - the
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288
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orange or pinkish flames coming out. It looked
like the flame was coming up around my side of
the spacecraft like this .
Was it doing that on
your side , too?
Yes . It looked like it was almost coming from
three points .
Okay.
Probably what it was doing was corning
around both sides because of the angle of attack
and going out this way.
But I definitely could
see the orange fire come up around the l eft­
hand side of the spacecraft and out in front of
the window, and pretty soon I saw some green
fire-­
Coming out of the top -­
Oh, is that where you saw it? I didn't. I saw
the green fire down close to the left- hand side
coming up over the nose inside of the red fire ,
and then it was all swirling around there.
Then
while we were coming down, we were coming down
in a r oll, but with our relatively high L/D, we
were in a great big roll with a big wallow.
guess this is really indicative of how much lift
we had.
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It looked to me l ike we were getting a lot of
lift out of it.
It looked to me we were getting an awful lot of
lift out of it.
It was really whipping around there.
And we were going around at a pretty good rate.
The needle was off to the left .
That ' s right .
It moved out sl owly , slowly and got out t o
about 2 degrees and it just held there .
The
spacecraft was as stable as a rock.
I damped
the thing a couple of times in pitch and yaw and
it just stablized right on down there.
I
don ' t think I even t ouched the pitch again .
I
think I maybe touched the pitch four times all
the way down and the yaw maybe six or seven
times.
What I was looking at was just a huge
portion of the sky.
I could see the ground,
then I could see the sky, and I really saw a
lot of the country as we came rolling by.
What surprised me is how much it was.
I knew
why it was doing it but I thought it was
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290
arc was that this thing cut out.
That thing
was a real lifting body.
You ' re really getting
a lot of lift initially, and if you roll around
there, you 'd kill it all off; and your aero­
dynamics is such that you really can't tell,
because the stability is so loose right there .
White
You know you're going to get some lift if you
have an offset CG, but you couldn't tell
where it was going,
McDivitt
You ' re in the area where you're getting a lot of
lift so i f you do a roll , you've lost that
range right off the bat .
We came down on this
great big spiral, and here I think we ought to
get into
6.4 Acceleration Profile
McDivitt
- - the acceleration at retrofire.
I called
down on the ground and told them that we had
four retros.
We got automatic.
We got auto­
retro.
We got all four in sequence .
We got
auto- retro.
Auto- retrofire appeared to be about
a second and a half early.
In the acceleration
profile I said, "Well, here come the g ' s, Ed. "
and I felt the g ' s going up.
He said yes.

291
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I said, "Yes .
There are two of them, aren't
there?"
Yes, and then we waited a while longer and-­
I said, "Gee, there ' s nothing on the g- meter. "
I said, "The g-meter must be broken " ,so that ' s
why I reached up and reset it . It actually
went down a little bit. So we went a little
while longer, and I said, "Ed, I feel a lot of
g ' s ", and he said , "So do I ." Then he said 1:We
must be up between three and four. "
If felt like that.
And I said, "Yes, I think we're up about that
high too ." And the g-meter was still reading
zero for all pratical purposes . Pretty soon it
started building up slowly. It went up to
2, 3, 4, and I called out at 2, and I called
out at 4, and I called out at 6, and I think I
called out at 7.
About the time you called out the 2, I knew we
had been had.
Yes. It's just that we were super-sensitive to
g's and the load pulling us into the seat was
on .the order of a tenth of a g.
It ' s true.
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292
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cor~FtOENr~~
So , we had 1/10 g and we thought· we had 3 . .And
we both felt this way .
The g 's went up to a­
bout 7 1/2.
They told us we would probably get
8 g ' s coming down .
When we got the instrument
positions back from the spacecraft , the post
landing switch positions, they had the g- meter
marked at 7 1/2 g ' s , and I suspect that ' s
probably about as high as it went.
Now , I ' m
telling you this was really a piece of cake.
I thought that maybe 7 1/2 g ' s aft~r being out
there for so long would be tough , but I di.dn ' t
even have to breathe hard to get any air,
I
just lay there and relaxed and enjoyed the whole
thing, and I really got a big kick out of that
reentry.
We chatted back and forth .
We talked through
the whole g-load, and I was watching outside
and inside .
I was looking out quite a bit of
the time when things were going so smoothly,
particularly the g- load.
When you get to the
high g's , you might as well look out, because
you ' re not going to do anything about it , and
I noticed no dimming in vision .
Everything was
as clear as a bell .
Not a speck. I could see
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293
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everything on the instrument panel , and I could
see things very clearly outside .
Things were going so smoothly on the inside that
I looked out too .
I enjoyed the scenery on the
way down .
Once you get in that position and you get the
high g ' s you ' re not going to do anything inside .
In the amplitude of the oscillations, --all the
simulations show that they tend to decrease as
you get to high g ' s and the fr equency picks up.
So the only thing you could do is hurt things if
you start screwing around with it , except we
didn ' t have any oscillations anyway. It was just
as stable as a rock.
I think at this point I ' d like to put something
in.
I ' d like to find out when they analyze the
data whether the upper right-firing thrusters
on my side were firing a whole magnitude more
than the right-hand upward-fir ing thrusters .
In
fact, they very early in the pr ofile became a
cherry red and just stayed red hot , even a little
bit white hot all the way down .
There was no frequency to it at all . It appeared
to me they were firing continually and I think
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294
McDivitt
maybe this might associate itself in some wa;y
with something in the system prior.
I think it was prior, because we were in Reentry
Rate Command and we started the roll. Then the
yaw needle drifted on out and it looked to me
like it never got over about 3 degrees/second.
I was trying to read the 0.1 degree/second seal~
It might have gone on to 4 degrees/second with
the roll rate we had in there , and the jets just
kept right on firing constantly.
What I had done when we started was to leave the
roll gyro on, and I rolled the thing over till
I got almost full deflection on the needle .
Then
I put the roll gyro off so I'd have 15 degrees
and we wouldn't tend to overrate the thing so
t hat the Reentry Rate Command was firing all
the time .
What I think happened was that as
we went on down, the yaw rate needle tended to
drift on out .
I don't know if you noticed it or
not , but it tended to drift out . It started at
around 2 degrees/second, and it drifted on out
slowly until it got to about 4 degrees.
I
thought it never got out to more than 3 degrees/
second .
Later on, when we started oscillating
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295
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around like we did, if the thing were out at 3
degrees and started banging back and forth at
all , the yaw thrusters would be on constantly;
and also that ' s the side that they'd be on. It
would have been on the right-hand side.
Are you
sure that it was red that high up, or did it get
red when we started getting down where we got
all those oscillations? Because there I ' m sure
it was firing all the time.
It was red for a long time, Jim,
Was it?
I was actually watching it, waiting for one of
them to bust loose, because it was really firing
a lot more than I thought it was out there. Jim
asked me about the frequency of it, and I could­
n't tell whether it was on or off . It was r ed
all the time. The other one was hardly heated
up at all.
Shoot .
There wasn't any need for any kind of
firing then.
It would be interesting to see if the other yaw
thrusters were.
Well, it ' ll be interesting when they cut these
things apart to see what kind of life cycle -­
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296
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I t really had a good workout.
6.5 Spacecraft control
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6.6 100 000 feet
McDivitt
Spacecraft control was like a dream.
A good
engineering description. There weren't any
oscillations. It was as stable as a rock.
I
don't think we need to say much more about that .
It wasn' t like any failure simulation we've
seen . It was the easiest thing to control, easier
than any simulation I 've seen.
Shoot! A baby
could have done it.
We started getting oscillations around then and
the Reentry Rate Command fired a few times and I
d~mped it in pitch and yaw.
There really wasn't
any control problem to it at all, I didn ' t feel.
Did you think there was?
No .
I would have been watching closer if I had
thought there was .
The altimeter was at 96 700 feet throughout
the entire flight. It started on down,and we
were still at about 5 or 6 g's when that thing
started on down. It went on down to about
92 000 feet, and then the g's started off, and
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6.7 50 000 feet
McDivitt
It went all the way back to about 96 000 feet
again, and then it started down again. The
second time it started down, it really started
down in a hurry, and I was sure that we were
still at 100 000 feet.
So , I waited until the g level got about 3, which
is around 80 or 90 thousand feet.
I started slow­
ing the roll rate there.
I wanted to get the
thing to a zero roll rate by the time we got to
40 or 50 thousand feet, certainly by the time we
got to 40.
We started gyrating around some more,
but I didn't think it was exceptional. The
Reentry Rate Command started firing.
As a matter
of fact, I said!'H?re comes the Reentry Rate
Command, " and then I was firing on top of .it so
that we really weren't oscillating too much.
Then we got to 40 000 feet and I put the drogue
chute out, and that's where things really got
exciting.
I put the drogue out at 40 000 feet.
We were nice
and stable as we went down.
We were a heck of a
lot more stable than we were when we put the
drogue chute out.

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That ' s right by several orders of magnitude.
When we put t he drogue chute out, we were
concerned about the thing destabilizing rather
than stabilizing.
So I intended to put the
drogue out and leave the control at Reentry Rate
Command . This I did,
and we oscillated all over
the sky.
We estimat ed pl us or minus 40 degrees ,
and I t hink we were at least every bit of that .
We were, and when the drogue chute came out , I
was right in the sun so I couldn ' t see i t , and
I didn't know whether we had one or not,
You
called it out , and about t he t ime you cal led
it out , I coul d see it up there gyrating
wildly around .
I never could tell whether the thing dereefed or
not.
I had a lot of goop on my window and the sun
was out , and all I could see was the shape of the
dr ogue up there , and it really was fluttering
around .
We wer e plus or minus 40 degrees to it
without any doubt , and I wouldn' t be a bit sur­
prised if we wer en' t plus or minus 60 degrees to
it . We wer e r eal ly getting tossed around.
It was just jer king al l around .
It was fast , but I don ' t think it was that big a
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299
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'EON·Fl0ENTIM
magnitude.
(McDivitt is making a noise to des­
cribe it.)
About like that.
I was really surprised the thing held on there,
to tell you the truth.
So was I. I was expecting the drogue chute to
fall off any minute.
I was, too.
It worked all right.
It held us together.
If I went through it again, I'd be perfectly
happy sitting there riding through it, to tell
you the truth.
The way I looked at it, it was rather interesting.
I hadn't quite expected that.
Neither did I. I know that Gus said that he had
a pretty wild ride and he thought the thing was
destabilizing him.
He had a scheme where he just
turned off the propellent valves to stop the
propellent flow.
That meant that he had to wait
about 10 or 15 seconds to get the propellent
valves back open again to get the jets firing.
Well, I wasn't going to do that. I thought
the thing to do was to turn off the electronics
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300
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OOt◄ FIDE~rtAL
and see if the thing was going to become unstabl~
This is what I did .
I turned off the RCS elec­
tronics .
The thing was that they didn't get
any worse . It didn ' t get any worse .
I watched it.
I could see enough of it to tell that we weren't
becomi ng wistable.
It was unstable to a point and then it stabilized
out in this oscillation .
That ' s right . It was really gyrating around .
By that time we were down to 20 000 feet and I
called, "20 thousand feet. Pull down the handles" ,
or something to that effect .
You called out 28 .
Is that what I said? And then, I pulled the
propellant valves, as I had planned to do, and
turned the oontrol node to Rate Command rather
that. Reentry , because I wanted to burn up
all the fuel that I could out of those manif olds .
As a matter of fact, I was interested in burning
up all the fuel I could bef ore I got to the
ground .
I have a question.
I thought you put it in
Rate Command before you turned off the valves ,
and it pretty well damped itself out on the
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301
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drogue.
No, I don't think I did.
Okay.
I don' t think I did. I think I left it i n
Reentry Rate Command until I turned it off
and then turned
off the power.
I went from
ACME to OFF on both rings . It didn ' t get
any worse. I think what I might have done is
I might have gone from OFF to ACME to Rate
Command , to turn the propellant valves off rather
than going from
Well, I know it damped out there in the end
considerably.
I think it was when the Rate
Command, or whatever it was, was firing,
Well , Reentry Rate command was going all the
time.
We were going at a heck of a lot
faster rate than 4 degrees/second.
Well, we cut down our oscillations considerably
after you did something over there.
I thought
you had put it in Rate Command .
I did put it in Rate Command , but I didn't
leave the propellant on. This was why I
wanted to get r id of all the propellant onboard
t he spacecraft if I could. But I didn't want
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302
to let those things fire for a long time and
maybe eat up t he drogue chute, and find ourselves
without propellant and without drogue chute , too .
So , once we got the drogue chute out, I let
the things fire for a while and turned the
electronics off. Maybe I turned it back on and
went to Rate Command , and off with the prop­
ellant valves .
I 'm not really sure.
White
I think you had it in Rate Command for a little
while - --i)robably while you were firing out the
fuel.
McDivitt
Yes, that ' s what I did .
I went to Rate Command
and let all the fuel fire out,
just as we had
planned.
So that I was sure that the rates were
high enough t hat we were going to fire out the
fuel without disturbing the thing on the drogue.
So we fell on down .
Ed got the snorkel on the
vent valve about 28 to 27 thousand feet .
We
came on down .
I watched the altimeter go through
11 ooo. .
6.8 Main Chute Deployment
McDivitt
At 10 600 I punched out the main chute.
I saw
it go out with a lot of crap and corruption flying
off the nose .
It went out and came out in a
reefed conditi on, and I saw and I said we had a
good reefed chute.
I don ' t guess you
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6.9 Conununications
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could see that too well, could you?
No, I couldn't see the chute out.
I saw it
finally when it deployed.
I saw the thing hanging up there just the way it
was supposed to, and then the thing dereefed,
came billowing out just the way it should, and
:'said, "We ' ve got a good chute".
One edge of it
collapsed and came back in and collapsed about
a third of the chute. We've seen a lot of movies
of these chutes corning out, so I wasn't really
worried about the thing collapsing. It went
in and came back out.
There weren't any communications that I could
tell were there? Maybe we received some trans­
missions on the drogue, but I'm not really sure.
As soon as we •deployed the main chute the antenna
came off.
So we couldn't talk to anybody after
that .
I don't think we got anythi ng on t he drogue.
I ' m not really sure that we did.
I don't think we did.
Shoot!
We were getting thrown around so that
we couldn't have heard anything anyway.
C8t--.J·F ID-ENTIAI:
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-cot ◄ FIE>Et~TIAl
They tried to communicate with us a couple of
times after we came out of the blackout and before
we put the drogue out .
I didn't hear exactly
what he was saying. He wasn't hearing anything
I was saying either as far as I could tell .
He
wasn ' t acting like he heard what I was saying.
He gave us our blackout times of 5+23 and 9+21,
and there really wasn't too much we could do to
check these out .
After we got the main chute deployed , I told Ed ,
"Quick! Take your blood pressure ." The chute
came out around 7500 feet or so , and when we
finally got the thing dereefed we were floating
down nice and gently.
F.d s tarted taking t he
blood pressure, and it seemed like it took an
eternally long time .
By the time we got down
around 5300 feet or so, I said, "F.d , get the
blood pressure done because at 5000 feet we're
going to go to a two-point attitude." He
fooled around and fooled around and fooled
around.
Finally we got down to 5000 feet and
I said, "Ed, you' ve got about three or four more
seconds , and we ' re going to two- point attitude . "
It was a l ittle sl ow.
I don ' t know why.
White

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6. 10 Single-Point
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305
I didn't want to trust that altimeter .
Ed
kept fooling around with that blood pressure
without getting any air out of it, and finally
I said, "Okay, Ed, we're going to go to two­
point." I guess by then he had the blood
pressure completed,
I think we got a good blood pressure.
So , just like we ' d always practiced, I said,
"3, 2, 1 , MARK ",and punched the single-point release .
R~lease
We both had our heads braced up on our arms.
We had our arms up on the windshield and my head
wasn't exactly on my arm.
Was yours?
My head was on the arm and pressed over to the
side of the spacecraft.
I was well wedged in ,
I felt.
So was I. My head went forward a little bi t,
back a little bit, then back up forward again,
and it didn ' t hit anypl ace.
Did yours?
No.
I had my head pressed on my arm the whole
time.
I don't believe it left the arm very much ,
because I actually had it wedged from behind , too.
So, I thought going to two-point was a lot
less violent than the ~ide oniihe d:t'ogue.
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306
Whi te
I agree with you.
I think we 've got a good
operational procedure of bracing your head on
your arm up against the window--a satisfactory
procedure for this .
6.11 Postmain Checklist Items
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We took the blood pressure on the main chute , too.
I went through what I call the reinforcement
items on the checklist that I wanted to get off
right away , and t hen I sat back and pumped off
another blood pr essure .
About this time you were
making your calls to the recovery force.
Right .
I started calling the recovery forces
as F,d was taking his blood pressure.
We got
some response from Omnibus right away.·
Good old Omnibus .
Yes.
And we went right on down.
We stowed
the D-ring covers .
We stowed the D-ring
cover s between deploying the main chute and
going to two-point, just as we had planned.
We
didn ' t want the D-ring to flop around there, and
once you go to two- point it's too late to
eject anyway.
I call ed Jim to unstow his D-ring at 35 000 feet
and he took his out at that time.
I pulled his
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307
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right arm lift up and I saw him pull his left one
up.
No, I didn't get my left one up.
I made three
passes and I said to heck with it.
I thought you got it. I struggled with mine end
finally got it up.
I had both of mine up, and
you went on and completed the checklist .
I knew Ed wanted me to get my D-ring out because
I was the guy that was going to have to bail us
out.
Again I'd come down with this big bag of stuff
resting on my legs up against the bottom of
the seat, and as we approached 35 000 feet, I
pulled this up in my lap, and just held it. We
had agreed that Jim would do the ejection if we
had to, and I would just take the ride.
I
didn't W1stow my D-ring.
I just sat there.
That 's why I made pretty sure that Jim got his
out.
After we got on the main, we went through and
turned off all the switches, just as we were
planning on doing it. I turned off all the
switches on the middle circuit breaker panel
except the ones on the last couple of rows.
I

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€0141 IDEP:~TIAL
turned off the IMU, the rate gyros, the horizon
scanner, and those switches on the cent er pedas-·
tal.
I di dn't turn off any over on the left
hand side except the Landing Attitude Circuit
Breaker.
May I ask you a question? Did you think it was
a shorter time from 7500 feet down to the
ground than i t was in the simulat or?
Yes, as a matter of fact I did.
I thought it was a considerably shorter period
of time .
Yes , we went from 5000 feet to the ground in
nothing flat.
You're not kidding--nothing like we go down in
that simulator .
I would be curious if we
have any data that tells us what our descent
indicator was telling us on our descent?
It was jumping around . It was between 30 and
40 feet/second like it does in the simulator.
It seemed like we went down awfully fast .
I
would already finished turnfog off everything
in the simulator with quite a bit of margin,
but , of course , I did take the two blood
pressures in here.
I got all the essential

309
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--CO~~FiDE~4TIA-L
switches off and started turning off nonessential
ones when you called out a thousand feet.
At a thousand feet I said to get ready to pull
out the water seal.
That ' s right.
You got the water seal out at about 700 feet?
I pulled it about 500 feet .
We pulled it lower than we usually do because
usually we're sitting there waiting to go through
a thousand feet .
Right.
We got down to about 300 feet, and I said
let's prepare for landing.
Right.
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7,0 LANDING AND RECOVERY
We got down to about 300 feet, and I said, "I
guess we ought to get ready for landing." But as
John Young says , "How will you get ready for landing
this thing?" So as he did, we just sat there,
and we went through zero feet, I believe, on the
altimeter.
We hit very close to the water with zero on the
altimeter.
I think we hit at about minus 100 feet or so.
Any­
way, we really plunked down in the water.
We hit
ten times harder than I expected to hit .
The
altimeter was set at the lift-off setting.
I
didn ' t fool around with setting it.
That 's an interesting point .
They ought to give
you an altimeter setting for the landing area.
I don ' t think that would do any good.
I wouldn ' t
trust that altimeter within a thousand feet .
No, but I ' d rather have my reading on it that much
more accurate.
You've got a ship sitting out there
that could give you the exact altime+.er setting.
Here we had an altimeter that we hadn't set for
GO~~ FJOPiTI 7't

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311
, CONFID-E-WllAL
four days.
I hadn't thought about this .
The last time that altimeter does me any good is
when I go through 10 600.
Well , I guess I use it
down to about five or six thousand when I 'm t rying
to get the two-point suspension. It ' s useful there ,
too .
It was a good indication that we were coming up to
1000 feet and to get ready for landing, Jim.
Yes.
Like I said earlier, how do you get ready for
l anding? All we did was sit there.
We 've got to stop throwing switches.
Yes, I guess so.
I think it would be a good procedure to go ahead
and get an altimeter setting.
I suppose it would.
It only takes you a second to
crank the thing in.
Yes . It ' s there.
We ought to use it ,
Well, we hit the water with a real wallop.
Then I
sort of felt that we went into about a 150-degree
roll to the left and were dragged backward.
We
were almost upside-down going through the water
backwards ,
Now, the CAG here saw us hit.
He saw
us from about 100 feet on down,
He said it looked
like to him that we came down and hit the water
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and tilted the thing up over the top.
He said we
were going blunt-end- forward, but we were actually
tilted over the top.
We then did a p~tch_down
maneuver about 180 degrees in the water.
I was
surprised that we were being dragged backwards,
but I got the sensation that I was going backwards
and almost upside-down.
I had t he kind of feeling that we went in and touched
over a little bit, and that's about all the feeling
that I got.
I don't believe we got dragged very
much.
No, but I just felt that was the way that I was
going.
I was being pressed back in my seat like I
would be if I were being dragged, and I was thrown
over to the left like I would have if we had rolled
over this way.
I got the left roll and I also think that I had
less water in my window than you did.
I had a lot
of spray and stuff.
Did you have solid water in
your window?
I really didn't look that closely.
I didn't look
at the window to see what I saw there.
I saw
nothing but water sloshing all over the thing.
We
really seemed to hit hard, harder than I thought
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we would, but it really wasn't too hard.
To put everything in a comparison, the ride on the
retro was more than I expected , the drop to a two­
point suspension was less than I expected, and the
impact was not as much as I had experienced on the
drogue, but more than I had expected. In other
words, the biggest surprises I had in order of
~agnitude were the ride on the drogue, the impact,
and I didn't think that I had much surprise at all
in the two-point.
I was expecting a big jolt and
got not as much as I had expected.
We'd gone over the normal Water Egress Checklist
in flight before we came down.
We did this in
that three-hour period while we were preparing
for retrofire.
I read it over to E:l while he was
stowing things, and we went over it in detail
again as to what we would do.
Also we went over
the emergency egress in case we had to do that.
So we had it fresh in our minds.
We turned everything off that wasn 1 t needed after
landing.
Ed had the Post-Landing Checklist and he read it
out to me--the things that I had to do.
The only

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7.3 Communications
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thing that I didn ' t do was to take my helmet off
and stow it.
I did get my arm restraints down.
didn ' t put my drogue mortar pins in until I was
getting out , and I never did put my seat pin in.
It doesn ' t say on the checklist to put it in.
I put your seat pin in.
:lli put my seat pin in for me .
Now , we'd got all
the switches in the right positions, I think,
except one.
I forgot to put my FDI to the OFF
position.
I think all other switches were all right.
All
our pyrotechnics were safed.
I talked on UHF. I talked with Omnibus; and I
finally was talking to Inkspot 64, the helicopter.
I talked to him and I heard him, and we established
excellent UHF communications.
I heard Gus coming
through the auto cap two times, I think--very weak,
almost unintelligible.
I think he was asking how
we were, or if they had us yet .
I kept making
transmissions in the blind to him.
I don ' t think
he was ever getting any of them.
Ed operated the
HF , and what do you have to say about that?
Okay.
I put the antenna out and turned the HF on,
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I went through one call, a.nd then I went through a
short count on the HF.
I heard nothing and received
nothing from anybody else.
This was about 5
minutes or so after we had been on the water that
we actually made the HF check.
Maybe it wasn't
even that long.
As soon as I got all the switches
where I wanted them, I went ahead and-
I saw you put the antennas up, and you went ahead
and put in a transmission pretty quick.
Right,
I didn't make another check on the HF.
I hadn't been too impressed with the operation of
the HF up to this time, and things were getting
pretty busy.
Five or 10 minutes later we had the
recovery people on•
I guess we're going to get
to that.
I heard them say we had a helicopter
almost overhead,
They called just after we retrofired, I think, and
before we got to blackout--called and said that
they should have a helicopter over us in 5
minutes.
We didn't get any onboard data.
The
ground information that I got was, as I said, from
Gus.
Then right after we hit, Omnibus said, "I
got them in sight.
I'm 48 miles out on TACAN
radial..: ",something or otl-1.er. So, I figured we

316
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were 48 miles from the ship. Well, anyway, I was
pretty sure we were 48 miles from the ship.
Then
I heard them calling back and forth saying the
helicopters were only 15 or 20 miles away, and they
were there in just a.bout nothing flat .
We had a
good status report on where everybody was.
They
were on our frequency, and I could hear them
dumping their swimmers into the water and standing
by and t hrowing smoke bombs out and seeing the
dye markers ; and we ha.d more activity than the
fourth of July.
7.4 Systems Configuration
McDivitt
Okay, as we hit the water, Ed closed the inlet
snorket to make sure we didn ' t get any £umes in as
I punched the farachute .Jettison.
Shortly after
that when we decided for sure that we wouldn't see
any fumes-~ve sort of talked about it a little bit
and I peeked out and I guess you peeked out.
Didn't
see anything but steam coming out of the thrusters
and then saw the dye marker out there--
I reached
up and re-opened the inlet snorkel.
White
That's right.
McDivitt
I put the recirc valve at 45 degrees.
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Actually, shortly after we got on the water, I

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317
noticed the acrid smell that we were to have for
the rest of the time we were out in the water.
On the ECS system I could actually feel the relief
that the pumps and the snorke1-open position were
giving us . It did provide some flow.
I really
didn ' t think tmt the heat was oppressively hot,
to tell the truth.
No, neither did I.
It vJS.S uncomfortably warm--I'll put it that way-­
and very stuffy, but I wouldn't say it was over­
bearingly hot. It wasn't as hot as I thought it
was going to be in the spacecraft.
I thought the worst thing about the whole thing was
the smell. Whatever was burning later was the
heat shield, I guess, because I went out and
smelled the spacecraft later on when I was onboard·
the carrier, and it smelled the same way.
This
terribly nauseating acrid smell was still all over
the spacecraft, and it seemed to be worse at the
heat shield.
So I assume that's what we were
smelling inside,
How was the control, Jim?
Spacecraft control in the water is lousy!
I couldn't
take out the motions.
The rates were terribl e
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uncontrollable!
Why don ' t you discuss the electri­
cal . It was over on your side there, Fd.
Well , there wasn ' t really much to discuss about
it.
I turned off the No . 1 and 2 squib batteries
and left No . 3 on and the main batteries on, and
everything performed as designed,
We also had
carried along two adapters and about the time
Jim said, "Hey, where ' s my adapter?", I realized
where it was . It was stowed underneath a whole
pile of trash on the right-hand side.
So we went
to Plan Bravo , which was our original plan before
Chuck Berry sneaked on the extra adapter on the
last day before the flight, which is a rather
sneaky thing because we'd agreed at breakf~et trat
morning that if the adapter were on the spacecraft,
we wouldn ' t kick about it .
But Chuck conversely
agreed that if the adapter wasn ' t on, he wouldn't
kick about it either.
We later found OUL that
he ran to Chuck Matthews and-­
No , as a matter of fact , he didn ' t run to him,
Chuck
Matthews said tra.t he decided that on his own .
Chuck Berry never-
All right.
I 111 have to apologize to him because
I have been falsely accusing him ever since.
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Anyhow, we had an extra one on, and it was stowed
very neatly under a great deal of trash on the:
right-hand outside stowage box; and I felt that
we could more readily use the time of switching
back and forth.
So we switched the aeromedical
adapter back and forth, and with the microdot con­
nector it was a pretty easy operational procedure.
I don't think we missed any radio calls, and I
think we got probably more blood pressures there
than one every 15 minutes.
Yes, we would probably get one every 5
or 6
minutes.
We were back on the carrier in 45 minutes, and I'm
sure we had two or three blood pressures there on
the water.
You even got the lightweight head-set on.
That 's right.
I very dutifully put the lightweight
headset on with my helmet off.
I felt better with
my helmet off, and I think you felt better with
your helmet off.
I felt a lot better with my helmet on and my visor
closed, because I didn't like the smell of that
stench there.
I was so hot over there.
I felt better with it off.
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7,5 Spacecraft Status
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We did a lot of work when we first landed.
We
were fiddling all over and getting things out of
boxes and stuff like that. We probably did more
concentrated manual labor in those first
5
minutes after we got on the water than we had done
at any other time during the flight except trying
to get the hatch closed.
I think at this time I was completely drenched with
sweat .
I said it wasn't hot earlier, but with the
combination of the suits and the fairly warm
climate that we were in, I was sweating pretty
heavy.
I looked over at Jim, and he was pr~tty
sweaty · too , I think.
We didn't have any RCS fumes .
We didn't see any
RCS colored smoke , which is supposed to be red and
purple or yellow or something like that .
We didn't
see any fumes at all.
I saw a little steam.
I saw steam.
I saw a little steam coming out of the RCS thrusters ,
and I was sure that there wasn't any RCS propellant
in those manifolds, because at the rate we were
gyrating around with that tight deadband on Rate
Command, if we hadn't burned all that fuel up by
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321
<IFIOEmr~r
then, we never would have gotcen it out.
But we turned the RCS thrusters off at about three
or four thousand feet.
So they definitely weren't
on.
That ' s right.
And we turned all the circuit
breakers off on the RCS thrusters , so they shouldn' t
have been firing from shorts.
The prop valves had
been off at about 25 000 feet.
So we had everything
the way it was supposed to be, and we didn ' t see
anything leaking. I'll comment on this window.
I saw the main chute floating right to the left of
us.
I think my window might have been a little
clearer than yours.
I just was going to comment on the windows.
:rt,­
window was terrible!
I couldn' t see at all.
Remember the helicopter was hovering around in
front of us about 200 feet away and I never even
saw it. You said, "Look at the helicopter!"
He was a lot closer than 200 feet.
He was right
smack-dab in front of us.
I never saw the helicopter.
I couldn't see
through the window.
I'd estimate he was not farther out than 50 feet
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322
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I had a couple of little holes right down at the
bottom where I could see swimmers down there , and
I could see the nose , but I couldn' t see up at all .
We were talking about the main chute there.
I saw
the drogue chute floating down right next to it-­
drogue chute and the pilot chute with the R & R
can floating down right next to it.
They were
coming down through about- -1et 1s see.
We were on
our backs then , weren't we?
We still hadn't gone
to two-point?
I don't remember.
I don ' t remember either .
I was so busy taking blood pressures .
W~ had the drogue chute and the pilot chute floating
down with us for a long time just off to one side
going do'Wl'l about the same rate.
I thought that
they were supposed to go down slower, but I guess
it doesn ' t .
I guess what probably happened was
we saw them at single-point , but when we went to
two-point , we lost sight of them.
Okay.
We didn't
have any leaks that I could tell.
We had electrical
power.
I didn ' t check to see what the secondary
o2 pressure was .
Did you , F,d?
No.
I didn ' t .

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We turned off all our electrical equipment and
couldn' t read the gages .
We left the hatches
closed.
We were in moderate seas, but I wasn't
about to open those hatches up and take the
chance of any water getting in that spacecraft.
So we elected to stay in the spacecraft until they
got the collar on, and kept all the hatches battened
down ,
Okay, we both discussed this together and decided
that the way we 'd like to leave the spacecraft
was in our suits, and we felt that rescue was
coming pretty quick.
We decided to go ahead and
stay in our suits.
I think this was a reasonable
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324
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.•
We both t ook our gloves off to get the things
out of the spacecraft that we wanted.
I left
my helme t on and Ed left his helmet off.
When
we got ready to leave , we decided that we would
put our gloves back on, take our helmets off,
put our neck dams on, inflate our May Wests , and
t hen get out .
That ' s what we did .
The sea
condit ion was just like they sa id it was- - three
to four feet .
Three t o four feet in that thing
is like 2000 foot waves to an aircraf t car rier.
We were bobbi ng around but we had a lot of
experience bobbing around before, so it wasn ' t
that bad.
I might add that the egress training
in the Gulf of Mexico really made me feel real
confident when I was out there in that water
all by myself.
When we get to that training, I ' m really going
to give some gold stars out .
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Yes .
7.6 Post-Landing Act ivities
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7,7 Comfort
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As I mentioned, we stirred around the cockpit
and got out a bunch of l.i ttle bitty things that
we needed.
We did a lot of work but we were
doing all right.
We got awfully hot.
I guess
we really can't say much about the post-landing
activities . It went long as we expected it to ,
just the way we want it to.
Ed , do you have
anything?
I think we've covered it.
I was hot.
I think Ed was hot.
We were both
perspiring a lot.
I think we could have lived
in it for a lot longer than we did.
Don ' t you?
Yes.
Did we cover the point where they called
and asked what kind of rescue we wanted?
No, I didn't.
Why don't you?
I was just
plugging in the b,io-med connector and I heard
them call you.
We could either have a heliocopter pickup in
about 20 minutes or we could have a pickup by
the carrier in the spacecraft in about an hour
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326
~O1\1 FIDEl~TIM
and 40 minutes.
To me it was very clear.
McDivitt
It took Ed a long time to decide-- about two or
three milliseconds .
White
That' s right .
I felt that I knew my buddy well
enough and made the decision that we ' d take the
heliocopter pickup .
I saw that he was actually
on the radio at the time and he rogered the
decision.
So we waited for the heliocopter
pickup.
7,8 Recovery Force Personnel
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We had good communications with the recovery
forces .
They were on our frequency.
We heard
all the transmissions that were going back and
forth .
Shoot , we probabl y knew more about the
recovery than anybody else around.
They got the
flotation collar in the water in a hurry and
came over and put it right on.
I saw this thing
around the spacecraft and I saw it start
inflating.
I was really elated when I saw that
,­
thing pumping up.
I had the f i rst contact with the real live man.
That ' s right.
He looked in Ed ' s window to see
if we were alive , I guess .
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327
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Very good sight.
The best sight , boy, was
seeing that yellow thing around the spacecraft.
•
I guess I knew we were going to be able to file
out pretty quick.
7.9 Egress
McDivitt
As I menti oned ear lier, we had decided to go
out with our gloves back on and our neck dams on.
I stood up in rny seat , disconnected our survival
landing gear (rny other hoses were disconnected
so that I could stand up), inflated both of the
May Wests, snapped them together in the front ,
and I just jumped right over into the life raft.
I landed right on my can, just like I had planned
it. It was so good to get out of there .
F,d
got out.
He jumped in too.
White
When I got out I actually leaped in before I
inflated rny May West and I think either you or--
McDivitt
I told you.
As a matter of fact, when we
talked it over in the spacecraft about getting
out , F,d said, "Aren't you going to inflate your
May West?"
And I sa~d, "Okay', and then he got
out without inflating his.
White
I was so happy to see that raft I jumped right
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328
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7, 10 Survival Gear
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7,11 Crew Pickup
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over the side .
•
We didn' t use any of our survival gear.
We
di dn ' t pull it out .
We just left i t exactly
where it was.
I disconnected the l anyard so
we wouldn' t inadvertly pull it out .
As soon a s F.d got into the life raft a heliocopt er
come over toward us and I mot ioned for Ed to
get into t he sling and go on up .
He didn' t want
to.
He wanted to be the last man up and I
wasn' t going to leave my sinking ship .
He wasn ' t getting up with t he captain going
first so he went up last.
No .
Ed got int o the sling and got a nice pickup .
I got a Gulf of Mexico pickup .
He dragged me
out of t he water, bumped me up against t he
heat shield and t he spacecraft, but it was a
good pickup t hough.
Shoot , I was so happy to
be out there in that nice cold salt water
blowing in my face ,
I was dipping my hands in
it and slinging it over my head.
Di d you notice the stability of that heliocopter?
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329
I never knew they were so stable .
McDivitt
Yes .
He must have had a good stabilization
•
system.
They got us picked up safe and sound,

•
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