NASA Gemini Program Files

PRELIMINARY GT-4 FLIGHT CREW DEBRIEFING TRANSCRIPT PART II Prepared By Spacecraft Operations Branch Flight Crew Support Division June 18, 1965 This material contains information affecting the national defense of the United States within the meaning of the Espionage Laws, T…

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, and concluded at the Manned Spacecraft Center on June 12, 1965. Although all the material contained in t…

TABLE OF CONTENTS Paragraph Page number 8.0 SYSTEMS OPERATION 8.1 Platform .................................................1 8.2 OAMS ...................................................5 8.3 RCS ...................................................17 8.4 Environmental Control Sy…

12.0 PRE-MISSION PLANNING 12.1 Mission Plan (Trajectory) ............................234 12.2 Flight Plan .........................................234 12.3 Spacecraft Changes ...................................239 12.4 Mission Rules ........................................240 12.…

8.0 SYSTEMS OPERATION 8.1 Platform McDivitt Actually, the first portion of any alinement is to cage the thing. The CASE of caging the thing is much more important than the alinement itself. In the daytime I felt that I could cage the platform to a reference with an error plus or…

2 White I'm not sure. McDivitt The caging of the thing with small-end-forward in the daytime was relatively easy. At night I don't think it would be quite that simple. I think what you would have to do at night time is to point the spacecraft down at the ground pretty much so y…

3 use to us. We knew the stars along our track but you couldn't see enough of them. The quickest way to get the yaw reference was to look down at the ground. Once we got the platform caged, alinement was quite simple. All you had to do was just hold the needles at zero and the p…

4 going to Orbit Rate at T-5 and firing the retros at TR. We wanted to have exactly the right rate in there so when we did our closed-loop reentry we wouldn't have an error. As I said, I had the most accurate platform in the world with nothing to do with it. I think the displays…

5 three days I really didn't have anything with which to establish any confidence. It was just an unknown. White Jim did the majority of the work in this area and I think his comments reflect my opinion also. 8.2 OAMS McDivitt On the pad we did the thruster check that we wante…

6 there as I chased it around, and those were the only modes I intended to use right then. Later on, I checked out the Reentry Rate Command and I checked the Rate Command before we thrusted. It did seem to be operating fine. Why don't you go through the next part, Ed? White All…

7 it was reading 56. Another hour or two after that it had climbed slowly back up to 60 again. I had a long time to look at it in the same position. When we ended the chasing-around at the end of the first hour, we were down to 70 percent indicated and we never got below 50 perc…

8 percent for so long. McDivitt We were pretty miserly with that OAMS fuel. We set out to save the fuel and we sure did it. White I think that in future missions, if they permit the crew to use the Pulse Mode in a saving-manner they could do a lot more with the mission--if you…

9 McDivitt So did I. The way I felt was that I knew that we had to be as miserly with the fuel as we possibly could, so we got as much out of as little fuel as possible. There wasn't going to be anything to change that velocity. We just went along and I really didn't care how th…

10 Pulse. It seemed to work all right in Pulse. I don't really have any comments to make on the attitude controller. White As a matter of fact, I didn't use any Rate Command. McDivitt Didn't you really? White We didn't use the Rate Command. I got to use Direct a couple of tim…

11 we were supposed to be at a certain attitude we weren't approaching it, I'd start pulsing a little harder. White You'd hear a series of about five quick pulses. McDivitt It was a very economical control mode. The maneuver controller worked the way it was supposed to. White…

12 White I couldn't get the yaw. We had a circuit breaker off. McDivitt Finally, after you did that a couple of times I looked up and saw we had knocked a circuit breaker off. That was one thing that we didn't cover in EVA that I should have mentioned. Ed was a real hazard to t…

13 pretty straightforward. I think Pulse was the best mode on the spacecraft for the orbit phase. We were able to save all kinds of fuel, it worked fine, and it was just about what the doctor ordered. We didn't use the Horizon Scan Mode during about the first three days of fligh…

14 pointed toward the horizon scanner although we never got an unlock light. We wouldn't get an unlock light, but we'd get a bunch of maybe four or five thruster blips right there. White Particularly at sunrise. McDivitt It would hold. I thought the Horizon Scan-- White It wa…

15 White I didn't think you noticed it earlier when we were working. McDivitt Well, I did notice it a little bit in that first orbit, but it wasn't distracting at all. It would just drift off a little bit and I'd whop it and it would be back. At SECO + 30, I used the translatio…

16 just smooth--we didn't come off with a rotational rate. White I think one of the things you might comment on, Jim, is that you fired most of those thrusters during that initial time. McDivitt I'm sure I fired the upward-firing thrusters a number of times. That isn't any mor…

17 was 127 feet/second which, incidently, happened to come out exactly 2 minutes and 40 seconds. I suspect that we selected OAMS retrofire on the basis of time, rather than on the basis of AV. White Very convenient, wasn't it? McDivitt Very convenient. It was obvious there is…

18 a lot of firing, too. I started out checking the Rate Command, so I thought I might possibly have one bad pitch thruster that was causing a rolling moment that was being counteracted by the yaw-roll jets. When I did it in Direct, however, it wasn't doing that. It wasn't rolli…

19 time. It started right after a night cycle. It seemed rather natural to me that there wasn't really something wrong, but that we actually had a cold RCS thing out there and it did need some heat. After heat was applied it did appear to go away. I decided to go ahead and set u…

20 McDivitt Let me ask you a question? White Yes. McDivitt When you turned on the RCS heaters, did you turn on the heaters on both rings, or did you turn on the RCS Heater Switch and then turn off the circuit breaker on the other ring? White I turned the heaters on and then I…

21 operated as I thought they should. I've already mentioned I thought Rate Command was a little sloppier in RCS than it was in OAMS. It certainly did a fine job of holding the retro attitude during retrofire. Retrofire attitude control was excellent. We didn't deviate more than…

22 mittently. McDivitt During descent, we turned the power off to see if the drogue chute was unstable. It wasn't. We turned the power back on and the propellant valves off and burned up all of the fuel in the manifolds. We had no fumes after impact. 8.4 Environmental Control…

23 White That's r ght. It got up to about 90. McDivitt 100, it was. We turned the cabin heat exchanger on for just a short time and it went right back on down to 80 degrees. White It stayed in the area of 82 to 83 degrees the whole flight. McDivitt The humidity in the suit mu…

24 them for a flashlight. I had my gloves off and I reached over and got my gloves and turned the fingertip lights on and shined the gloves on something. I didn't use them a lot. I do want to comment on one thing, though, since we're talking about the suits here. I launched with…

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put it. The micro-meteroid blanket that I had strapped under my right leg wasn't a detriment. As a matter of fact since we had no place to stow it, I just left it strapped to my leg until reentry. Then, I felt that if we had to get out in the water I didn't want to have any strap…

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easier than I had thought I'd ever be able to. It turned out that I was able to get into that box easier while in orbit, by far, than-- McDivitt It's a rubber covered box. White It's a rubber covered box on the right hand side. I think that box does have the capability of stowi…

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There was one thing though with the suit that I wasn't too happy with. I was hot all the time in the suit. It got so that after a while I got used to the normal temperature as being warm. I could increase the temperature, which seemed rather strange to both Jim and me, by putting…

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and I was trying to be very careful and keep them from cracking and getting anymore uncomfortable than they were. Jim mentioned the CO2 sensors stayed on zero, which I was happy to see. I think one thing that I was fairly happy about was that the suit, as bulky as it was, wasn't…

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them on and off in flight if you wanted to. McDivitt I don't know. I'd hesitate to recommend putting them on in flight. It might get pretty tricky. I think if you put them on in flight, you'd want to put them over all the harness, rather than under the harness. White That's exa…

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McDivitt I suspect I probably could have gotten down there as easy or easier than you if I had really gotten around to trying. White I don't remember, but, anyhow, I was surprised with the ease which I had in getting down. McDivitt We were trying to dump the pressure in the bel…

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the first and second joints, because the lights were resting right on top of my first joint. I think if I had worn my gloves anymore, I would have gotten a very sore first knuckle. If you are going to move them back, I think they should definitely be moved back behind the first k…

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of them out on my right hand. I wasn't too happy about it. White I was a little disappointed. I think the only discrepancy I found in my suit was that I had no blood pressure plug either. A point that I was pretty happy with was that I had no pressure points from my suit at all…

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bad as I had expected it was going to be. I have one more comment. I'd like to comment on the inner liner. We decided to go with the inner liner in and I felt this was a good decision. The inside of the suit was comfortable, and I didn't get any pressure points. I think one reas…

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McDivitt Actually Ed had just finished talking about his inner liner. I'd like to comment about the inner liner too. I thought about it when he was talking about his. I think that was one of the really wise decisions -- to go with that inner liner. I felt that it offered a lot mo…

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link net in itself just isn't long enough. McDivitt You wouldn't say you had a pressure point though? White No, it was just a constant pull on there all the time. McDivitt Did it bother you very much during the flight? White Yes, it bothered me a little bit. McDivitt So you…

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in the beginning when I was unstowing equipment. I continued to scratch it throughout the mission. When I finished, the visor was considerably scratched up as you would probably notice if you looked at my suit. I don't know what there is to do about this other than to accept a sc…

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amount of marks on it. I'll say another thing. I'm sure glad we didn't go in for those Lexan visors that they wanted us to fly with, cause the distortion would have driven me batty in about the first six hours. White I think you must insist on perfectly optically clear visors.…

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comfortable with my helmet on for two days. White Do you want to know something that's kind of strange? I was more comfortable with my helmet on than off. In fact, I kind of got used to those pressure points on the top of my head with the helmet on. When I took the helmet off an…

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White I've seen the ones they've got in the MCC and they're good plain old headsets. I don't see any reason why we can't get one that stays on your head and stays in your ear. You put this thing on and it pops off about two minutes later. It's not built to stay on my size head an…

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White Yes, mine was right on it though. McDivitt I know. You checked your suit gage against the cabin pressure and yours read just about on it, didn't it? Was it a tenth of a pound higher or was it right on it? White Right on. McDivitt Okay. So mine was reading a little higher…

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down so the pressure would remain down below 960. They initially told us to vent it to keep it at 930 to 960. Then they told us to vent it on down to about 890. From then on, we vented it down in the neighborhood of between 890 and 93, depending upon who was asleep and who wasn't…

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very black star for that one. McDivitt They need their heads examined! White I guess we beat that one around pretty well, didn't we? McDivitt Yes. The way that we were venting the cabin was by going to O2 High Rate and venting the oxygen out through the cabin vent or going to…

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think, the rest of the flight. No, here it is down as low as 72. So it got down to around 72 late in the flight, and here we are with a whole bunch of 70's to 73's and a couple of 76's. So I guess that 75 was the average temperature throughout the whole flight. White I think our…

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little bit cool, especially if I had urinated all over myself. White I don't remember one time during the flight during which I was cool in the suit. I think I was hot most of the time in the suit. I got used to it after a while. The only time that it was not satisfactory, as fa…

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on a great deal of time also. I think you had your faceplate CLOSED a little more than I did. There at the end we were both going to an open-faceplate and open-gloves all the way. McDivitt Yes, we were especially going open-faceplate at the end just to see if we could jack up th…

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White Yes, I don't think there was any discomfort associated with the day-night cycle. We didn't use the cabin fan as we planned during the flight. We did neglect to turn it on initially during the preparation for retro. We noticed that we weren't cooling off in the cabin as much…

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McDivitt Here we had an environmental control system that was supposed to protect us. We found out that the darn thing was overpressurizing. The first couple of times, to keep the ECS O2 bottle from venting, we vented the cabin itself. I found myself sitting in there venting this…

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that reason I think that we ought to make an effort to get the ECS O2 tank vent and the ECS O2 tank pressure gage compatible and at a lot higher pressure than they are. This suiting up and unsuiting every four hours is for the birds. White I thoroughly agree with you, Jim. There…

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I didn't have any comment on that. McDivitt Neither did I. It seemed to be doing a good job. White I felt the cabin vent valve was set lower than I had thought it was going to be. I thought it was supposed to be set up around 5.7. I'd like to know if it was changed intentionall…

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and you are not suited, I don't think you're going to have time to get suited. It takes me too long to put those gloves on. White Okay, the cabin air inlet valve worked fine. We vented the cabin with it when we went EVA. It apparently worked all right when we used it down on the…

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McDivitt That's right. The way that the thing was set up, we could sure monitor it because we knew it was going to vent without being on the gage. I think they compromised the whole system so we could monitor it. White As a matter of fact, we monitored it very thoroughly and spe…

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that repress valve into my suit was satisfactory to keep me in a pressurized state and keep me ventilated enough under normal operations. Under tough operations though, the flow rate's too low and you really heat up. McDivitt Yes, I think since it was an open loop system, you ha…

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White We were able to turn the automatic part of it off quite early in the flight, particularly since this was the problem we were having. We were getting-- McDivitt That was something I wondered about. You know, the thing is marked, and we were always instructed that when the t…

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because it's a cryogenic system and it could have stabilized out around 10-00 or 1050. McDivitt But on the other hand it could have continued to build right on up. White Sure it could. McDivitt But I sort of suspect that the--well, I don't know. It's different from this other…

55 mine got was about 5250 maybe. McDivitt Did you notice by chance what they were at landing? White No, I didn't check them. McDivitt Neither did I. White That was the last thing I had on my mind, to tell the truth. I thought the quantity measuring was fine. It was a li…

56 White I think we jumped into something else. We were in secondary O2 system and we weren't on flow rate. The only time we had the flow rate on that was during reentry. The flow rate there was satisfactory. The pressure obviously was satisfactory, but we didn't check it at th…

57 never had to come off it again. We didn't get any abnormal operation of the radiator at any time. One time they called up to me and mentioned something about the radiator and the coolant loop and I didn't get any clarification. I lost contact at that time, and I thought just…

58 the water management system. I think you have a few thousand words you'd like to say about launch. I think you actually already hit on most of them, anyhow. McDivitt Man, I sure do. The Normal mode, Drink Mode, and Flush Mode. We got the water management thing kind of goofe…

59 McDivitt Oh, so I handed it over to him and then he took a drink out of it and didn't have any problem at all. What happened was the hose was wound in the helix. It came out to the gun in a straight line. When I drank out of it on my side this thing always crimped like it wa…

60 get it back in. I finally ended up actually using two hands to operate the water gun so that I could get the button back out. White The button definitely did get more friction in it as the flight progressed. McDivitt It seemed like it was all scored up and it kept getting…

61 certainly not the time to be deciding what the heck the position these switches were going to be in. We were always briefed that this thing would be in OFF. We were going through the switch positions and they'd ask me to check in the count at about T-45 minutes or so. White…

62 White I remember they argued. I thought they had it on EVAPORATOR first. McDivitt It went from EVAPORATOR-- White That seems like the least likely of any position to put it in. McDivitt That's right. We went from EVAPORATOR over to OVERBOARD. So I think a comment that…

63 that the four of us got it pretty well squared away. Then just before launch we found out down at the Cape that because they had gotten those switches in the wrong position we pumped 32 pounds of water out of the adapter, used up all the pressurant for the water system, and p…

64 McDivitt --and the Water Valve should be put in NORMAL NORMAL and left there. That was exactly what we did and we knew how to work the waste management valve. We didn't screw it up, but I'm not sure that if with a little trying, we couldn't have. We never had to use the Evap…

65 About halfway through the dump, it started slowing down. Then it just went in very slowly the last two or three inches. Then I urinated in the thing and had a bellows full of a mixture of air and urine. It started dumping. It looked like it went down about halfway and then it…

66 you take over. I extended my wrath. White I just had a feeling you wanted to say something about that, Jim. Ha, ha! McDivitt After having messed around with that thing for 96 hours trying to make it work. White I think you expressed my feeling too. McDivitt Did I leav…

67 relatively low, and that the water problem is not quite the problem we had it cracked up to be. I'll make a comment on the sponge material on the side of the spacecraft at this point, since we're talking about humidity. I didn't think the sponge material was a very good idea…

68 thing and it was dry as could be. White There was no moisture that I could notice. The sponge stuff on the side wasn't objectionable to me but the odor that obviously came from it was very, very objectionable. The readings we obtained I thought, were easy to take. The stowa…

69 and I flew with it almost the whole flight. White I don't think it was all the way up. The one thing though--I think the interphone operation and quality were quite good. McDivitt Yes, I thought so too. White We were ready to communicate back and forth. It was just the…

70 than I was. You were communicating during the EVA work and also after I went to sleep. I heard you working on the Communications Check and that's when you went to the reentry antenna. McDivitt That's right, when we ran through these checks, it finally became apparent to eve…

71 concerned about having to come down because we didn't have any radios. White One thing that I'd like to say is, I would give a good gold star to the controllers down there. I thought their voice procedures were excellent and their methods for giving us information were all…

72 McDivitt We've already lost some very valuable data from this flight. We could have taped the entire EVA and brought those communications back down. As it was, we couldn't tape them because we had to put the thing in UHF so that we could transmit to the ground. We lost all o…

73 should be set up so that it can record conversations on normal UHF, HF, and INTERCOM type operations. As Jim pointed out, in our flight alone I think we lost sets of valuable information. During launch we weren't able to tape anything onboard. We weren't able to tape the work…

74 time that we have now. I'd like to see us recording a great deal of the flight. It'd be nice to have a switch to turn it off from time to time if you did want to discuss something that you didn't want to go on tape. McDivitt I don't think we ought to put the whole flight on…

75 Experiment. You could have the tape stop in the middle of the experiment and be lying on your back looking out with the sextant. You haven't got any idea in the world the tape's run out on you. McDivitt Right. White I think that it's a very, very unsatisfactory system. It…

76 that they updated our time reference system and had it inaccurately updated by a second. McDivitt Yes, I think there is a big flap about that. White I'd like to find out about that, too. The real time-transmitter, delayed-time transmitter, standby transmitter--they seemed…

77 all that tape. If you don't have the real-time-delayed-time transmitters on, you're just dumping it into nothing. You're erasing. So we got some pretty inadequate communications there. They should have said, "We don't have any command capability. Will you please place your ta…

78 McDivitt Yes, I thought that they were to be commended. As a matter of fact, when we have our world-wide network debriefing or whatever the heck we're going to have I really intend to applaud them loud and long. White I thought the teamwork between the spacecraft and the c…

79 contraption that McDonnell had designed to keep the moisture out of that thing, we would have had one more hunk of junk in the spacecraft with us. It would have been a completely useless thing because of the number of times that we switched switches on that VCC. Heck, we swit…

80 to it. McDivitt If you really listened, you could hear. White That's right. If you were very close to going to sleep and something went on that was interesting, you could hear just enough to wake you up and pull your interest to it. It made sleeping rather difficult. We d…

81 talk to him. I don't know where on the VCC you'd mount it. White I think they can solve that problem pretty well. It might not be in that manner but I think they can solve it so you've got it definitely on or off. McDivitt That's right. They need a simple way of disconnec…

82 White That's right. Okay, the electrical system-- 8.6 Electrical System White Okay, the systems monitoring. I thought it was satisfactory. We went through and monitored the systems every time for the GO/NO GO Checks, and quite a few times along the line in addition to thi…

83 for one time when they called us up and told us we were 190 amp-hours, I think it was 190 amp-hours, over-- McDivitt That was after we turned the computer off. I wanted to find out why we turned the computer off and if we were really short on electrical power. Then they tol…

84 reading the way I wanted it. Ha, ha! The squib batteries--our electrical briefing I thought, was very good. Everything behaved just the way they told me. The squib batteries started out pretty high, around 27 or 28 volts, and they progressively decreased in voltage as we went…

85 When we powered down, we turned off the a. c. power, the OAMS power, the ACME bias power, the rate gyros, the horizon scanner, the IMU, the computer, both FDI's, and the attitude indicator lights. We operated with as little in the way of cockpit lighting as we possibly could.…

86 and near the end of the mission, we were down to 12 or 13 amp-hours on unpowered down configuration. That was as low as I saw it go, down around 12. McDivitt Another thing that we did was that when we weren't actually planning on transmitting on one of the radios, we were al…

87 go to two suit fans. White Right. When it got so uncomfortable that I couldn't sleep, we would go over. We really didn't do that too much. McDivitt No, we didn't. We made a real effort to keep the electrical load down. I think that it sort of showed up there towards the end…

88 fairly routine, and it appeared routine to me too as it began to steer into zero and steered right on into zero. As we approached SECO the error started to increase a little bit and increased out to a little less than a degree in pitch-down on the error needle. Aside from tha…

89 White Yes, I picked that up later on because I wasn't even concerned with it since we had a good orbit. McDivitt Once we had a good orbit that kind of information wasn't that important. White Do you want the IVI readings at this time? McDivitt Yes, you might just as well r…

90 properly. We got the computer on and got it loaded. The DCS updates were going in and they were getting verification on the ground. One time I remember we didn't get the DCS light. As a matter of fact, they sent the load up again and we still didn't get the DCS light. They ve…

91 computer off. I turned the switches off and nothing happened. The comp light stayed on and I don't even think the malfunction light came on, did it? No, it didn't. So I said, "Well, that's interesting that the darn thing doesn't go off." So we flicked the IGS power off and ba…

92 switch to the ON position but to turn the a.c. power to ACME, which was going to power down the computer whether we wanted it to or not. It was a voice relay station but we weren't getting the voice relayed. We were just getting a message sent up from somebody on the ground.…

93 8.8 Crew Station McDivitt Controls and displays-okay, I'll talk about that. The sequential Telelights all operated properly--came on in the proper colors, and punched off and everything. The event timer operated properly. The IVI operated properly. The flight director indica…

94 long, but it would have taken a few dollars. Instead we decided it would be simpler and cheaper and a lot quicker to go ahead and paste some paper decals over the top of the glass. The parallax with these things is horrendous. The decals were pasted on over the top of the gla…

95 The rate of descent seemed to be all right. The accelerometer was okay. The switches and circuit breaker panels--I had no comment. We knocked a couple of switches and circuit breakers off during the course of the flight. We always caught them and got them back on quickly, or…

96 that. I almost had a heart attack when I saw that thing go down because it would have messed up the whole time reference system. I thought the switches and circuit breaker panels were very good. I have no complaint about it. I think that's a well designed cockpit. The mirrors…

97 White Okay, I think that the lighting to me was surprisingly good. I think that at one time there was a press to put two white lights on either side on the instrument panel. I think the lights on the instrument panel should remain just as they are. I think we used the red lig…

98 could make the readings. I think you could put spot lights in there and not get by that problem. McDivitt That's exactly what I was going to say. Lights aren't going to solve that problem. White No, it's just plain bright outside. When you look back in, even though you have…

99 a little auxiliary light like that, it ought to be a light-- McDivitt It ought to be a big auxiliary light! Ha, ha! White -- a directed beam. This goes right back to something that we forgot to point out in water management. I think we ought to point it out right now loud a…

100 the propellants. We've got the ECS oxygen. We've got quantity gages for that. We've got electrical power and we've got ways of measuring that from the ammeter. We've got food and we can always count that. But when we get down to water, which is just as critical as all these…

101 McDivitt You know even if we can't get something that they can pipe into the spacecraft, at the very least we ought to TM the pressurant pressure down to the ground and back up again, or something, and get some sort of calibration curve-- White So that we'd know what we hav…

102 switches and know where they're supposed to be, you can make sure they're located properly and on the proper indication, but I can't read anything down in that area at night. The lighting is very poor in that area. McDivitt One thing that I'd like to comment on here a littl…

103 a little marginal in some cases. I had no difficulty in reading the designations on the switch-breaker panels. I think they were lighted adequately also. I'm not going to say they're lighted well, because I don't think the lighting is real good in the spacecraft. The water m…

104 It wouldn't be something you'd use very often. McDivitt I'll tell you what it all is, though. When you want it, you want something that you can see. You just can't see with those things at all. White I don't particularly understand what the interior and exterior lights mea…

105 position was 88. Ha, ha! White And neither time did I catch up really where we were. I turned and turned and turned and then got distracted into something else. McDivitt Quite frankly, the only things I ever saw in that flight plan roller were the 23-hour and the 88-hour t…

106 Now. You ought to take it out, throw it away, and leave a hole in the instrument panel. But honestly, what I do think ought to go up there, is a good digital clock readout. McDivitt I don't think an analog clock in that position would do you any good though. White They bot…

107 that's keeping your hack-it's easy to mistake for your minute hand. The way the face is marked it's difficult to read the minutes out. The hours interfere with each other. The whole readability of the clock is unsatisfactory and the readability of the hands is unsatisfactory…

108 readability. It didn't have any chronometer function to it at all. It had strictly a second, minute, and hour hand on it. It told you GMT and it didn't tell you anything else. It told you GMT in a way you could read it. You could read out the minutes, you could read out the…

109 McDivitt I guess what you end up with is two clocks that aren't any good. Either one of them aren't any good. You'd rather end up with one clock that was good. White Yes, the way it's combined together right now, it's really not too good. I hacked your OAMS burn on my watch…

110 know what we're going to do about wrist watches. Maybe they'll design us a ten-hour wrist watch that we can wear. I don't see any reason why they can't. They can design twelve-hour ones just as easily. We're going to go to this in Apollo. We should face up to it and go ahead…

111 had something like 83 hours and 15 minutes, I had to figure out that that was six times around the clock and another 11 hours and another 15 minutes. Obviously, not the best way in the world to do it, but the only way that was practical from the standpoint of the flight plan…

112 White Well, you really need- -elapsed time. If we had elapsed time-- McDivitt If we had a good elapsed timer onboard the spacecraft, I would say that there's no doubt about it. Elapsed time. White I think we ought to start working on it right now. McDivitt Elapsed time is…

113 had the launch, insertion, Mode II and Mode III aborts, EVA, the suit check and all the things that we were going to use in the first five orbits of the flight on one set of cards. We had another set of cards from Pre-Retro Checklist down to the post landing and emergency eg…

114 McDivitt We got every checklist that was required to make the spacecraft run on these two sets of cards, which together were about 3/4 of an inch thick. White I feel that we had a real workable solution to the problem. These things were the same size as those carried on GT-…

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go through them it took too long to get the thing back to us. Dick Benson came down to the Cape and did an absolute marvelous job, I think, in getting these things turned out. White I think he did, too. I think we all owe him a real vote of confidence. McDivitt That's right. He…

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there is always room for improvement. White Yes, I think we could organize them a little better for utility and use. We had so many changes in so many things that got put in at the end. It got so that they were put in in a bit of a helter-skelter manner, but certainly they were…

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White About the way they had it initially was pretty good. Maybe that's a little more than we need, but-- McDivitt No, I don't think it is, Ed. I think that is the way it should be. White This is a whole hour on one page. McDivitt Really? White Yes. So later on, you see, they…

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that rings should be replaced with something that doesn't come undone. My rings came undone sev- eral times during the flight and luckily only one at a time came undone. It would have been a real mess if any of these books would have come apart because it would have destroyed num…

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us we had all the data books right on the flight suit, which was just right where we wanted them. White Another thing we did-we hand carried this equip- ment down to the spacecraft to be sure it was there on launch. McDivitt The maps, overlays, and star charts we should lump al…

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edges. I would have rather seen the stars ex- panded more so that we could tell it. We used two polar plots of stars that were put out for the Apollo thing that we picked up on our training. We actually flew with one of the training things. I took one out of my brief CASE. White…

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overlay of the orbits, I thought was a real good tool. White Very easy, yes. McDivitt Very easy to use and I am sure glad we came up with that. White I think also carrying pre-plotted orbits on the maps was also useful and stayed pretty-- McDivitt That's right. Right at the l…

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White You can keep track of how far you're off. McDivitt You knew about where you're going to be. As Ed says, as the time went on you could tell about where you're going to be just by knowing the cor- rection. It didn't change much. So, we found these to be pretty useful. We did…

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couple of drawings. McDivitt I had what happened when I put all those valves in a lot different positions. You know when you compare something like that digital computer with the water management panel you certainly think the computer would be more difficult to operate. But afte…

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pretty easy to use as a trash can. The stowage of the items of equipment in the footwell, to me, was not objectionable at all during launch and reentry. The ventilation module which was stowed on the left side of the right footwell was well out of my way during these times and of…

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there. We never did get them back there. White There was no possibility to put them back there once we filled it up. McDivitt Yes, but even if we wanted to, I don't think there was any big desire to put them back there. White It would have been nice to stretch but that's just…

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McDivitt Well, I got things out of it. I got a defecation bag out one time and I got another little bag out. I don't know what else I had back there. White The right hand box with the clamp lock was easy to get in and out of. I stored things from time to time in there. White Ye…

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things taped together. I left the door open the whole flight after we once unstowed it. I would leave a meal floating out so that when I wanted to get a meal I would reach up and grab the meal that was floating loose. I would pull the tape out until I got a hold of the tape so I…

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thing that we had put on that spacecraft were those little pouches. White Yes, I think the pouch could even be made a little bit bigger. McDivitt I think it could, too. White Then it could receive a little bigger item and perhaps have a little more volume that it could expand…

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White We both have an interesting item on this. Well, I emptied mine out all the way, but I think you entered with it full of trash. McDivitt I reentered with that bag full of trash and it didn't tear off. White It was in pretty good shape. McDivitt It was light-weight trash.…

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CLOSED. 8.8 Belts White The belts worked satisfactorily. McDivitt Yes, mine worked very good. 8.8 Harness McDivitt Harness. Okay. White The harness was satisfactory. 8.8 Life Vests McDivitt Life vests. Very good. White Very good. McDivivitt I might comment on those life…

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bag when you use it. I think you should be familiar with how to close the bag. I only used one bag and I think you were a two-bag man. McDivitt I was a two-bag man. White The stuff didn't float out of the bag or anything. I would permit the thing to remain open while I used the…

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about sealed up when I noticed this thing float- ing around in the spacecraft. I had to push it back down in there. White When I cut it, I got the stuff on me and a little bit around. The two that I broke, that were contained inside the plastic bag, seemed to work all right. On…

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I found that the tissues that we carried in the little containers were very satisfactory for the purpose. I think they can leave the paper out of those bags and provide us with adequate tissues. While we're talking about these tissues, let's go into the container. McDivitt That'…

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sal cleaned my visor with them. I got my visor so full of salt spray. Remember when I got that salt spray all over them during the EVA and my visor was dirty?. I cleaned everything all up. I substituted it for the toilet paper in the defecation bags. I think this is another thing…

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doctors quickly. I think it made them happy. It wasn't a big drag on us. Medical Data Pass Type 2 was only about half of the Type 1. It wasn't bad and the doctors got some use out of that. The food evaluation was discussed with the medics so we can just summarize. White I think…

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crunchies just about. It had one drink in it. Every bag that I had, except one, that had any form of an orange drink in it, leaked. White Mine started leaking, too, as soon as you mentioned it. McDivitt I only had one other bag that leaked or maybe two other bags that leaked. I…

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White I could have had that everyday. McDivitt Ed doesn't even like bacon. White I could have had that kind of bacon. That was kind of a smoked bacon. McDivitt It really was, good. White When I ate it, I got to thinking that I don't understand why we don't have more meats in…

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McDivitt The only thing I didn't eat was the bacon and egg bites, either. White I think if I had my druthers, I'd take bacon. McDivitt One of the biggest problems on the whole flight was the lack of sleep. I don't really feel that I got more than six hours of good sleep or even…

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of the flight, we had the darned OAMS thrusters going so much--BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG! White I was just too hot some of the time. McDivitt Yes. White Early in the flight the ammonia fumes kept me awake. The first time I tried to go to sleep they kept me awake. McDivitt…

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wanted two people to be up at the same time you could really have three periods during the day. You could take two of these six-hour sleep periods and really make them sacred so that nothing could touch them. Then you could just take those other two six hour sleep periods, and ma…

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with another rest period scheduled in there some- time of several hours. This would be satisfactory. I felt we were really productive when we were both up. I would like to see periods of time in the day where each of the guys are up at the same time, and doing actual experiments…

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White Go ahead and eat when you just get up and the other guy is asleep. Eat just before you go to sleep, and don't eat simultaneously. Eat while the other guy is sleeping. I think you should spend all the time, while you are up together, working on productive experimentation. M…

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85 hours or so that really seemed to pick you up. White It helped me a lot. When I came out of it, I really felt groggy until I had had a few minutes to wake up. I think this picked me up consider- ably and probably this gave me a little gain on you as far as the rest of the fli…

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9.0 OPERATIONAL CHECKS 9.1 Apollo Landmark Identification (D-6) McDivitt The equipment we carried onboard the space- craft really didn't apply exactly to D-6. We didn't have a Questar lens. The 200 mm lens that we carried did not have the periscope mounting for it. It did not h…

CONFIDENTIAL 145 White This was identification and acquiring it and seeing how well the charts that you had equipped you to identify specifically the landmark in consideration. The first one I had was the junction of the Blue Nile and the White Nile, and more specifically it w…

146 CONFIDENTIAL of my track 92 miles, so it was really quite far away even when I was at the 90 degree point. I reported that I thought this was a very good landmark. It was very easy to see, and I felt if I had a higher power telescope I could have tracked it quite adequately…

CONFIDENTIAL 147 White I'm not sure exactly the sequence in there. McDivitt Okay. White I think before that, though, I did run a series on D-6 Targets 11, 12, 13, and 18. McDivitt Okay. Why don't you go ahead -- White Shall I discuss those? McDivitt Yes. White Okay…

148 CONFIDENTIAL pictures with the 200 mm Contarex. Since I was actually taking the pictures, I had to divert my attention a little bit to the camera, so I didn't actually look down, and, I didn't actually see the airport. But I had seen it prior to that time, and I did see it…

CONFIDENTIAL 149 But later on we found that these same two types of information--the world map and the SMALL WAC Chart--were adequate for other types of targets. The WAC Chart showed of course the range of mountains just west of El Paso and the White Sands and the Rio Grande Ri…

150 CONFIDENTIAL for this kind of task. You need a contrast in color as you get from the White Sands to the surrounding desert. The best of all is a water-land interface or border. As we came across the United States, I think we picked up El Paso just as we were over it, but we…

CONFIDENTIAL 149 But later on we found that these same two types of information--the world map and the SMALL WAC Chart--were adequate for other types of targets. The WAC Chart showed of course the range of mountains just west of El Paso and the White Sands and the Rio Grande Ri…

150 CONFIDENTIAL for this kind of task. You need a contrast in color as you get from the White Sands to the surrounding desert. The best of all is a water-land interface or border. As we came across the United States, I think we picked up El Paso just as we were over it, but we…

CONFIDENTIAL 151 can increase the intensity of the gunsight by quite a bit. During the night time you can turn it down and the brightness is just about what you need. We made this run on this pair of sand spits, and the tracking task was quite easy. Now, I just happened to pick…

152 CONFIDENTIAL from it. I don't believe I have any other comment on that pass. Do you? White No. I was quite surprised when we missed El Paso. Remember we thought, "Boy, this is one we're going to nail." McDivitt And the funny part of all this is that we had both flown in…

CONFIDENTIAL 153 pass. I had a nice body of water. The Dead Sea was a good location, and actually the city itself was located at the end of the Mediterranean, so I felt that landmark-wise I had a pretty good target to track. I came in and the first target I picked up was Jaffa,…

154 CONFIDENTIAL But I did get a good indication of the capability to track a target and to pick a target up, and I think that I was quite surprised at the ease at which you could track. I also concurred with Jim's conclusion that a good prominent landmark primer, preferably a…

CONFIDENTIAL 155 with the limited knowledge that we had of the targets I felt that acquisition and tracking of the targets was a lot easier than I had thought it was going to be. I guess that's all. McDivitt The next target that we had was Yuma International Airport. Here aga…

156 CONFIDENTIAL River, which should be a few miles to the east of the Salton Sea. There was a nice big bend in the Colorado River. Unfortunately, the Colorado, although it is a reasonably good sized body of water--it just plain doesn't show up that well. It was a little diffic…

CONFIDENTIAL 157 out, it was south of the main built-up area that actually had another large group of buildings south of it. I did pick up the airport itself at just about 5 degrees before the nadir, and I tracked over to the target, probably just at the nadir and just shortly…

158 CONFIDENTIAL McDivitt It was a reasonable distance, probably something on the order of 150 miles or maybe only 100 miles, but the problem was that between Yuma and El Centro there weren't any identifing masses that led you toward Yuma. And I had not up till this time looke…

CONFIDENTIAL 159 this, and I had looked down to find Cairo. I think we had had an Apollo Landmark or D-6 type of thing, where we were supposed to look down and just acquire the target, but not actually track it or take any pictures. When we did come by, we could actually look d…

160 CONFIDENTIAL attitude reference, found the Mediterranean on my left, pointed the spacecraft on ahead, determined the direction I was going, picked up the Red Sea, picked up the Suez Canal between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, and followed the river in. I started this q…

CONFIDENTIAL 161 body of water, a river leading up to a lake, and then the airfield sticking out in a very prominent way. Now I'd never seen the Basra Airfield before I tried to take this picture. But the landmarks near it were sufficient so that finding the location of it was…

162 CONFIDENTIAL White Or some real technique or type of familiarity with the target. I think if you were really familiar with the area you might pick up things that we don't pick up now, but we could with a little more map study and study over above. McDivitt That's right.…

CONFIDENTIAL 163 the ground or a previous pass across the target so that when you go across it, you not only know the general area that you're supposed to point into, but the exact spot where that target is and some identifying features that will lead you to this target. So wit…

164 CONFIDENTIAL ground. They sort of tend to be a constraint on what you can do, but that's not the CASE in this kind of a task. White The thing that really amazed me, Jim, is the first time I saw an airfield from up there. First time I saw one, I saw it directly from overhe…

CONFIDENTIAL 165 from a tourist standpoint is the one I took of the Cape, which everybody seems so excited about right now. That's one that was taken with the sun on the window and at roughly a 90-degree angle down from the horizontal, which indicates you're shooting through a…

166 CONFIDENTIAL pictures and use really good, big, higher-powered telescopes for observations. If we do mount them out there, of course, we should mount them somewhere so that if we had a failure of some kind and had to come right in, or weren't able to open up the hatch again…

CONFIDENTIAL 167 that the information that we got from the ground of what time we would be over the target and what time it would be 30 degrees below the horizontal were excellent pieces of information. It certainly contributed a lot to finding the target. I think there's an aw…

168 CONFIDENTIAL 9.2 Apollo Yaw Orientation White Okay, I'll probably go into this a little bit, and then we can go over the data on it. This was a fairly simple test. All we did was start at a zero-zero reference and establish rates of 3 degrees/second simultaneously in all…

CONFIDENTIAL 169 start from. This was quite easy. I just had to wait for the spacecraft to move so that I could see the horizon in any position, and then I went for it. The yaw reference, though, wasn't present when I got to the horizon, so I ended up level on the horizon upsid…

170 CONFIDENTIAL position, rolled around so that I could just pitch straight up, and end up at the horizon blunt-end-forward, heads up, and wings level. I think I could've gotten it down to about a minute and 20 seconds. I felt that I wasted a minute doing this. White You wer…

CONFIDENTIAL 171 got to a position where we were outside the attitude constraint of the scanners. White There were a couple of things. As far as the initial rates were concerned, they were 3 1/2 degrees/second roll-right, 3 degreed pitch-down/second, and 2 degrees yaw-right/s…

172 CONFIDENTIAL rates. We used the Direct Control Mode. It's just pretty straightforward. It's identical to the simulator. We didn't learn anything new from this check except that the simulator was indeed correct. Do you have anything to add? White No. That it was pretty str…

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and down. We did the pitch with rolling, and here I pitched up and rolled left and right, but we did not do the pitch-down, rolling left and right because of a fuel limitation and a time limitation. We had another experiment that had to be done. We had to get the platform off and…

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hit the scanner head. McDivitt It went right out again. It went out in 7 seconds like it was supposed to? White Right. It was just a momentary light and 7 seconds later it was off again. Going back around to the 180-degree position, we didn't get the scanner light again. Again…

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scanner ignore lights. The next step is the Moon Scanner Check. We did this with the moonset and, Ed, you might add the time that we did the Sun Scanner Check. White The Sun Scanner Check was at Greenwich Mean Time of 11:50. We'll have to correlate that later. McDivitt I think…

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slightly, and we went ahead and fired the forward-firing thrusters for 1 second. We didn't get any change in our scanner ignore light configuration. It was out and it stayed out during the entire thruster check. So I guess that it operated all right. We'll summarize all of our sc…

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to the pitch up rate and increased my rates to something considerably above that, but then as we came up into the Horizon Scanner Mode deadband, it started pulsing rapidly and killed off this rather large pitch rate and held the spacecraft right in this attitude. So, we had a ver…

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the sun. The scanner broke lock. We started pulsing down for two or three pulses, then stopped, but the scanner ignore light stayed on longer than 7 seconds and then it went out. We pulsed up one or two times to start recovering from these initial two or three pulses that started…

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thrusters continued to fire throughout the maneuver at intervals like there was indeed a signal coming from the Horizon Scan Mode. As the spacecraft started back down toward the horizon, I thought sure that the horizon scanner would catch the horizon, because at this time the sun…

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Sunrise seemed to be the time at which the scanner had the largest tendency to break lock, and if it didn't break lock, it would at least put in spurious inputs which were obviously not required other than due to the confusion factor that the sunrise was causing on the scanner. A…

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White No. They sure didn't McDivitt And even though the light wasn't on, it seemed like we would get an extraneous pulse every once in awhile at sunrise or sunset. But I thought that the Horizon Scan Mode worked very well. It certainly proved to me that it was an excellent attit…

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concerned, we got a little bit during the night and just about nothing during the day. We ran also a sunrise and sunset check and we made the long counts as indicated, and listened for any return on all our HF tests from Thule and Elmendorf. We could hear Elmendorf calling us, bu…

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Orbit Navigation Checks was a very good scheme. The control mode we used was Pulse, and the timing was just the GMT timing we had in the spacecraft. I'd like to have Ed discuss a little of the technique now. White Actually we had a form in our book that we had made up to make th…

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three times the detail of the section cut out of a Mercator Chart, which I found very useful. By prop- erly folding a map, I think I would prefer to have a map of even higher detail with me. It didn't seem to me to be a drawback to have a large map in the cockpit, as long as you…

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or without the platform. It wasn't hard to orient. McDivitt I think that's probably true. I do think that this is a good scheme. I'd like to see us continue it on future spacecraft. White Yes. I'd take it again if I had my druthers. What do you feel about a bigger map? McDivit…

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measure the cabin wall temperature with a thermistor that was on the end of our relative humidity gage, I found that this was pretty difficult to do since they'd covered the entire inside of the spacecraft with the sponge rubber. We couldn't find a good place where there was just…

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ference on some zodiacal light photography that was planned on later flights. The first test was to pitch straight down toward the earth, open the shutter on the Contarex camera and actuate the pitch-up with the shutter open. Then we'd take another picture and actually open the s…

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10.0 VISUAL SIGHTINGS 10.1 Countdown McDivitt During the countdown the visual sighting I had was a multitude of wasps sitting on the R and R section and crawling all over the windows. Aside from that, the sky was clear and I didn't see anything else except the gantry going up a…

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definitely see the rotation of the booster and spacecraft combination. As we continued on up, I was watching within the spacecraft and outside, also. I could see the pitch program initiated. I could hear Jim call it out, and I could actually see it on my instruments and also see…

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the time. White I had to say something. It is quite an impressive view when you're up there--the very the first time you look out and you see it. I looked out and all I could see was the horizon and the blue down below us. You probably couldn't, because as I think of it now, we…

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spacecraft separation I think Jim and I both noticed a lot of stuff coming by the spacecraft. McDivitt Right. White Just plain debris was all it was. Just pieces of white junk came by. McDivitt Probably little bitty pieces of the adapter there. White In fact, when I got out a…

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McDivitt Yes. Geographical. We could see wakes of ships. We could see roads. We could see towns. Although I never saw any individual houses, I could see an industrial area with what looked like oil tanks and a few other things. We could see canals very well. We could see the Suez…

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see things. They were SMALL; there's no question that things don't get any bigger when you're looking down at them, but in my opinion things were much clearer. I could see with a higher detail than I could when I fly over in a normal airplane, as far as the object itself being cl…

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area where the houses are brown and the surrounding terrain is brown, everything's kind of SMALL and it all blends together. Unless there was some type of contrast between them, it's pretty darned hard to pick up a city right out in the middle of the desert. We had trouble when w…

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and closer and closer, these things really start standing out, but when you're looking from up around 125 or 150 miles, and you're out 60 degrees, you're a long way from your target. It's just that you can't see that far through all that atmosphere, I guess. White I think one mo…

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while you're up there you've got this thing with the long eyepiece. I think we can do this with EVA. Stow the thing back in the adapter, go back and get it mounted up, get back in, and you've got yourself just about as long a telescope as you'd want to put up there. Same way with…

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an optical barrier, practically, between you and the stars. The difference between the day sky up in orbit and the day sky here is, as far as we were concerned, was practically nil, because those just weren't any stars visible. It didn't have anything to do with the atmosphere; i…

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daylight. How about you, Ed? Were you able to see any stars? White Yes. I called them out a few times. You did have to maneuver just as carefully-- McDivitt That's right. You had to be just exactly in the right spot. White Let's go into the magnitude of the stars. We had set o…

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White No. On the night when we were flying with that eclipse of the moon, I saw more stars than I've ever seen in the sky. McDivitt Yes, and as a matter of fact, I wouldn't doubt that we could go out here and fly tonight and see seventh order stars. White I bet we could see low…

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McDivitt No. I don't think so either. You know, the thing that did look brighter to me was that planet right over by the sun. When the sun set, that planet would really stand out. White I noticed another thing on the planets, I didn't notice--which one is in Leo now? McDivitt I…

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McDivitt Why don't I discuss that thing that I saw those two times at night. White Yes, I saw it too, so you weren't seeing things. McDivitt This phenomenon occurred in the dark and I think it was near Australia, each time, but I'm not really sure. We've got it recorded on the…

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was right over land and was considerably closer to us than the horizon was. It was, maybe, half-way between us and the horizon. I got the impression that it was a lot closer to us and it was definitely not in the airglow layer. Both times I had this impression. It looked like it…

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like it was below and in the air glow. McDivitt It looked like it was in the air glow to you? When I saw it, it definitely wasn't in the air glow. It was a lot closer to me. White Of course, it started on your side and you talked about it for 3 or 4 minutes or so. Then as we dr…

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sun shining on them. White They picked the sun up. McDivitt They picked the sun up and reflected the rays. They reflected them just as bright as stars, I thought. White Didn't they! Well, you know the thing that was most interesting to me was the time I called you and said the…

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and I think we might have taken some stills, but I'm not sure. White I hope it came out. McDivitt Yes, it was really spectacular! So we could just about make our own stars when we wanted to. Is that all on celestial? White That's all I can think of, Jim. McDivitt I couldn't s…

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different occasions. It was during your last sleep. I was taking a few final movies and I was watching for this very phenomenan. It was the first time I saw it. It would be a little shaft of white illumination and it was a long time before the sun came up. I don't know whether th…

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White I think we took some good pictures of the clouds. McDivitt Yes. Well, throughout the four days we had cloud coverage over things we wanted to take pictures of. Other times we didn't have any at all. It was a variable thing, and we just got a lot of good cloud pictures, I h…

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down. it's much, much higher than the air glow that you see at night. McDivitt If you're looking over at the daylight side, it looks like the light blue, goes up probably three times as high as the air glow does. What do you think about that? White Let me go into my impressions…

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McDivitt I agree. Okay. Do you have anything else? White That horizon isn't very good on the daylight side, either. McDivitt No, the horizon isn't very good on the daylight side. White The horizon's not very good anywhere, really. We'll go more into that on D-9. McDivitt You…

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McDivitt No, not at all. White There were a few pieces that came around from it, but not as much as there was at spacecraft separation after insertion. Did you see anything? McDivitt No. I didn't see anything off the adapter. White All right. McDivitt The equipment adapter. I…

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off to the side, and then it went out of my view. McDivitt Okay. On retrofire there weren't any sightings to observe. Did you see anything outside, Ed? Did you see any flames or anything like that? White No, I didn't. McDivitt I don't think there was much there. The retro pack…

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very interesting things all the way down, including ourselves. McDivitt We didn't observe anything in particular that happened at 400 000 feet. The ionization was where we really started picking up the fire. White I think we kind of timed that with what you were talking about t…

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long shot. White It was almost like a veil of silk. There was no flame. 10.4 Reentry McDivitt Well, in reentry we rolled. We didn't have any trouble in seeing the horizon as we went around, but we were rolling all the way down. We did see ourselves crossing the ground, since w…

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I could. At this time I didn't know where the sun was. We oscillated back and forth on the drogue probably as much as plus or minus 40 degrees. I never did see the drogue dereef. I couldn't see up to the top to see if it was reefed or not. McDivitt I don't think there's much els…

215

finally just dereefed and we had an excellent chute. It popped out and came back in. About a quarter of it along the edge folded back in and then popped back out again and we had a beautiful chute. Do you have anything else on the main chute? White No. I couldn't see it until it…

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at the bottom of the window that I could see through. Ed wasn't having too much trouble seeing through his. It was real nice to see the helicopter and the swimmer. White Both the windows were pretty foggy, though.

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11.0 EXPERIMENTS 11.1 Two-Color Earth-Limb Photography (MSC-10) White This is one in which we had our first example of poor flight planning. They scheduled our MSC-10 experiment so that it actually conflicted with some Horizon Scan Tests that we had to make. And since our Horiz…

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required. We should have it all. On the first three runs the event indicator wasn't used, because I was having trouble with the Hasselblad shutter working properly in conjunction with the event indicator. About 11:19, I got the event indicator working all right, and the rest of t…

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McDivitt No, I don't have any comments. I think we logged the time and the weather along the route, such as it was, and we got all that into the book. 11.2 Synoptic Terrain and Weather Photography (S-5 and S-6) McDivitt I think we had a lot of unusual and significant subject ma…

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White Well, in the Air Force portion of it, we can start right off by saying that the stars they wanted us to run the operation on--I think, Series No. 4-- McDivitt No, that was the last one. They gave us Series 1 to start with. White --which was the daylight. The daylight oper…

221

McDivitt Did it ever light? White First time I turned it on it lit and it went "flit", and then the light just went bzzz-bzzz. McDivitt I didn't know it ever lit. White It lit and then the light went out. McDivitt Okay. So we lost the lightbulb in the angle readout, which mad…

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notes. Ed tended to use different types of horizons, dependent upon the type of filter he had on. Why don't you discuss that a little bit? White I tended to feel that the bottom of the bright air glow layer gave me a little finer defined horizon for a no-filter operation. When I…

223

close to measure. You know it would be just pure luck if you kept measuring properly to it. McDivitt Yes, the thing of it all is that even if Ed got himself calibrated so that he would always measure the same angle between the star and the horizor--it wouldn't be consistent betw…

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perhaps they are so closely matched that it really didn't make too much difference. McDivitt Yes, I did most of mine with the clear one. White For the runs in the Air Force portion, I found out that the stars had too big of an angle between the star and the horizon. To actually…

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limitations on hitting the side of the spacecraft and trying to make a sighting and losing the object out of the upper window as you cranked the periscope down to bring the star down to the horizon. McDivitt In trying to accomplish the Air Force portion of the experiment, we fou…

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sextant in there. We found out that to do the star to horizon measurement, you had to be right-side-up. If you tried to do it upside down, the filter blanked out the star and not the horizon. I think that there are a great number of measurements in here, but I do feel that the Ai…

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Scorpi and the third star up in Scorpio in the fi first series. McDivitt Again, we found that the angle that we had selected to operate between was too large, and we ran our first group of stars in about 12 1/2 degrees, and for the second pair we tried to pick stars that were fa…

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this particular light to come back on. White Did you ever figure out why we needed to hand-record all these things-why we had to record them on the recorder--the times and all that jazz? McDivitt No, we had to record the angles some place and we had to correlate it to a time.…

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11.4 Electrostatic Charge (MSC-1) McDivitt I think what we could say here is that we turned MSC-1 on and off when it said in the flight plan and when directed by the people on the ground. 11.5 Proton-Electron Spectrometer and Tri-Axis Flus-Gate Magnetometer (MSC-2 and MSC-3) M…

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McDivitt Okay. We didn't have any operational problems with it. Did we use the voice recorder with it? White Yes, I guess we did. It should all be recorded on the voice recorder. If not, we've got backup times in the book. Our voice recorder was our prime means, and our book was…

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White I had the feeling that my capacity and my desire to do strenuous physical exercise decreased during the flight. Actually, it kind of decreased to a point and stayed at that point for the whole flight. Shortly after I got up there, I really didn't have any big desire to do a…

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front end of the spacecraft; I tried to tense my legs and tense my stomach and arms, and I tried to exercise in this condition. I probably did that a lot more than I did anything with the exerciser. 11.8 Inflight Phonocardiogram (M-4) McDivitt To the best of my knowledge we did…

CONFIDENTIA 233 servations, times, and other information concern- ing the experiments. I think the one we have onboard with the light located down underneath the pilot's right elbow is entirely unsatisfactory. I feel that we lost some information on our flight due to the light co…

234 CONFIDENTIAL 12.0 PRE-MISSION PLANNING 12.1 Mission Plan (Trajectory) McDivitt It is pretty difficult to debrief this pre-mission planning because we had so many pre-mission plans that we couldn't keep track of them all. I think that we started too late on the mission plannin…

CONFIDENTIAL 235 the flight plan nailed down. I think our flight, though, was somewhat different than other flights in that we did have some real major changes about two and a half months prior to the flight. Con- sequently, we had to expect these things. So, I think I'd be the f…

236 CONFIDENTIAL I really hate to see us go right on down until the last minute before we get this information prepared. I think it's too bad, but I think on our flight a lot of this just couldn't be helped because of the drastic changes in the flight plan in the last two and a h…

CONFIDENTIAL 237 to look at until 8:00 o'clock the night before the flight. Consequently, we didn't have a lot of time to go through them the way we should have. We should have had these books and charts in our hands no later than two weeks before the flight. Here again there wer…

238 CONFIDENTIAL surprise, and there were a few surprises in ours. I wouldn't say there was much we didn't know about, because we had gone over it pretty thoroughly. But all our experimental procedures and our books--we're partially to blame in some reepects also, because we were…

-CONFIDENTIAL 239 McDivitt I concur wholeheartedly. White They may not like everything about them, but I think that they proved their value with us in our flight. I sure would rather use something, and use it well, than use something that may be a little bit better and use it poo…

240 CONFIDENTIAL were going to get these final changes in that were required for our flight. They sure waited a long time to put them in. McDivitt Yes, two or three days before the flight we still had a lot of things missing. In fact, when I got into the spacecraft, about the fir…

CONFIDENTIALA 241 McDivitt So do I. I don't really have any comment. I think we had a very good set of mission rules, and I don't have much else to say about it. White I concur. I think we set a record on running through the mission rules review, and I have one recommendation to…

242 CONFIDENTIAL 30 degrees south, and that sure isn't what we needed. McDivitt I think that there wan't any imagination used here. I just feel that the people who were responsible for performing this duty fell down on the job completely, and did nothing whatsoever but talk about…

CONFIDENTIAL 243 White We had one area where we were a bit too ambitious, and this was in the stars for the Air Force D-9. We reviewed this, also, so there was no lack of planning. It just turned out that using these stars in the sequence that we had for them, with the type of fu…

244 CONFIDENTIAL who were responsible for it had some of the most detailed and thorough briefing guides and forms for us on the equipment, and we were more briefed on the equipment. It was just the procedures that were lacking. White Yes, I felt that I knew the equipment and its…

CONFIDENTIAL 245 12.6 Training Activities McDivitt Well, I wouldn't do anything differently. White Jim, I wouldn't either. That's one of the highlights, I think, of our mission that we were well trained for it; and I felt in all respects we were well trained. I don't be- lieve I'…

246 CONFIDENTIAL White I did four for the whole time. McDivitt Is that right? White My total reentries were four. I remember I got three that day before the launch. I have one thing, though, Jim, that I think that I would do differently. McDivitt Okay, what's that? White Now that…

CONFIDENTIAL 247 McDivitt That's right. The things like how to do the experiments shouldn't change. They should stay exactly the same. The operational checks should remain the same, and maybe the flight plan will change a little, but you really could have most of those books done…

248 CONFIDENTIAL White Yes. McDivitt We had that list of things that we'd made up. White Decided we were going to take. If I had it to do over again, I think I'd have this all in mind earlier. McDivitt Yes. White You and I, two weeks before the flight, I don't think, fully knew e…

CONFIDENTIAL 249 13.0 MISSION CONTROL 13.1 GO/NO GO's McDivitt Okay. Mission Control. Mission Control is the next major topic. It says describe and discuss updating on the status of the spacecraft on the mission. GO and NO/GO's, I thought, went pretty well. You have any comment o…

250 CONFIDENTIAL us that we were 130 or 150-- McDivitt 160, Ed. White --amp-hours over, and I would've liked to know this at discrete times throughout the flight. McDivitt I think, really, this was our fault. I think we should've called down and asked them. When they did give it…

CONFIDENTIAL 251 says that there was a misunderstanding between us. They sent up to do the MSC-10, and then they said not to do the MSC-10. Do it later. We didn't get the message. White I didn't hear that. McDivitt Yes. I thought all the flight planning was good except in this on…

252 CONFIDENTIAL the flight, and I think about it right now. And I thought about it during the flight. I think it's time to start a crusade. I think it's time to start a crusade on the elapsed time. Get us a clock. It's going to cost money, but I think we ought to get ourselves a…

CONFIDENTIAL 253 when it gets into long time, you know, fourteen day flights, you can still put in 430 and 20 seconds as well as you can the regular Greenwich Mean Time. McDivitt Yes. White I think that it wouldn't cost us any more to have Omega make us a ten-hour watch and fix t…

254 CONFIDENTIAL 13.5 Systems McDivitt Okay. Mission Control System. I think the Mission Control on this flight was nothing short of excellent. We got all the information from the ground that we needed. We didn't get bothered by them unnecessarily, I don't believe. White They wer…

CONFIDENTIAL 255 14.0 TRAINING 14.1 Gemini Mission Simulator McDivitt Okay. Over on Training now. The first topic is Gemini Mission Simulator and I think we touched lightly on this subject already. I think that it's an excellent trainer for pro- cedures, system knowledge, launch,…

256 CONFIDENTIAL until shortly before the actual flight, at which time I think I had four total reentries about a week before the flight. Ed said he only flew four reentries on the simulator at the Cape in total. I probably flew fifteen, I would guess. That's total, so I think th…

CONFIDENTIAL 257 When it arrived down at the Cape, it was com- pletely inadequate for the job, and I can't understand why that program wasn't checked out in better shape when it went down there.. White I think, also, they're caught as second-rate ci- tizens as far as keeping thei…

258 CONFIDENTIAL fast. As long as they weren't there, they couldn't update that simulator. Another thing that I'll, for the life of me, never understand is where in the world the food boxes were for that simulator down there. I think somebody should explain just why it took about…

CONFIDENTIAE 259 of goes along with putting the following missions in front of the mission that's about ready to go. One last comment that I would like to make on the simulator is that we made a mistake in building it so that it would only tilt up 30 degrees. This lying on your b…

260 CONFIDENTIAL flight. McDivitt I agree. 14.2 LTV Simulation McDivitt LTV Simulation. I think that on the two trips that we made to LTV to do the abort simulations we got as much for an hour of time spent as we did in any other part of our training. We were able to do a great n…

CONFIDENTIAL 261 and I together, in one day, had about 160 runs. White Yes. Pretty close to that. 14.3 Centrifuge McDivitt Centrifuge. I think that the centrifuge contributed very little to our mission. I sort of feel that once you've been on the centrifuge and you've learned wha…

262 CONFIDENTIAL know pretty well what it feels like. I think that it's good in moderation, but I certainly don't think that you should over-train on it. It's not something that you need to train on every time for every flight. 14.4 Translation and Docking Trainer McDivitt Transl…

263 thruster that failed. I used it quite a bit shortly before the flight to practice the docking and the station-keeping that we never really got a chance to perform in flight. I felt that it was quite valuable for this. White Yes. I think that it's a very good simulation, too…

264 information that you want to get. I have one other comment, though, as far as the stars are concerned. I think that probably we got as good training with our stars during our night flights as we got during the planetarium work. McDivitt I feel that's true too. You've got to…

265 the constellation and be able to find the name of the star after we got back here to the ground. But I do think that the star training we had was worth every minute of it. White Yes, I'd go back some more, too. I'd go back to the planetarium some more. McDivitt That's righ…

266 actually got up close to the window, when we were up flying, I could see more stars, as I thought I could. I thought that the training we received was good. McDivitt Yes. No doubt about it, that was all time well spent. 14.6 Systems Briefings McDivitt Systems Briefings. W…

267 that had been made since the previous briefing and brought us up to date on some of the things that had occurred during this spacecraft systems testing. I thought every one of these systems briefings was worthwhile, and I think without each and every one of them we would hav…

268 and we did indeed go make a couple of dry runs and a couple of wet runs on the x-ray table to make sure that we could get it done quickly. I think this paid off. We never had any delay due to these x-rays. We certainly all knew how to use the exerciser. And the phonocardiogr…

269 cursory procedures. There was no star field or anything to utilize, which I think would be useful. If we had a decent star field, we could use it out of the GMS. Also, on D-6 the GMS did not provide us anything we could use. There were procedures, right. And like you said, t…

270 ting it. I thought this was very good. We had another briefing on experiments in the flight plan review about six weeks before the flight, and we had another experiments review about ten days to two weeks before the flight. Again, I felt that each and every one of these was…

271 any things that might not be understood too well in the procedures. So this is where, I think, that the people giving this information in D-6 never were with it--as far as getting the information ready for us for it. McDivitt Very good. I concur completely. White In the fu…

272 guess, were we able to ever break this stuff loose. Training equipment is just what it says--it should be used for training and it shouldn't be kept under lock and key away from the crews. White I had that same feeling down there, Jim. I think we both kind of got on this on…

273 ried, and became very very familiar with them in the months before the flight. I recommend very highly that crews that follow in the future get the equipment and utilize it so that it becomes second nature to them prior to the flight. McDivitt Okay. I don't think we need an…

274 the testing. White You know, it doesn't seem to fit in here anywhere else, but I think maybe at this point we ought to indicate we attended every one of the management meetings up there at McDonnell while our spacecraft was up there progressing along through the assembly li…

275 us right then, I felt fully confident about being able to take care of myself out there in that water. White We were well prepared in this area. 14.10 Parachute Training McDivitt Parachute training. I thought that the parachute training that we had was good. I thought tha…

276 to do it every time, see to it that we get it. 14.11 Launch Simulation McDivitt Okay. Launch Simulation. I think that the launch simulations were excellent. I think that was the first place that we really had a chance to work with the people who were going to be controllin…

277 launch simulations. McDivitt I think so too. I think those reentry simulations we did that day were certainly worthwhile. We only had to do a few of them to learn the procedures for getting the information back and forth. We tried one one day, and it was so horrible that I'…

278 think that during the flight it certainly proved that it was worthwhile, because that was the way we got it, and we were able to get this information in a usable manner in a short time. We didn't have to go over and over and over. I don't have any other comment on that. Ed?…

279 craft zero-g, that you get up there and work the procedures out thoroughly between not only the guy getting in and out but between the two guys that are sitting in the seats. This is the way we flew it. We didn't go up there and fly just one guy jumping in and out the hatch.…

280 have a good launch and first few orbits, a good retro-preparation, and a good retro and reentry, with the center of the mission being taken care of by doing the experiment or doing the operational check by itself without regard to what went before or what went after. I think…