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GEMINI V TECHNICAL DEBRIEFING (U) Part 1 NOTICE: This document may be exempt from public disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act (5 U.S.C. 552). Requests for its release to persons outside the U. S. Government should be handled under the provisions of NASA Policy Direc…

CONFIDENTIAL PRELIMINARY GT-5 FLIGHT CREW DEBRIEFING TRANSCRIPT PART I Prepared By Spacecraft Operations Branch Flight Crew Support Division September 1, 1965 This material contains information affecting the national defense of the United States within the meaning of the…

PREFACE This preliminary transcript was made from voice tape recordings of the GT-5 flight crew debriefing conducted August 30, 1965 thru September 1, 1965 at the Crew Quarters, Cape Kennedy, Florida. Although all the material contained in this transcript has been edited, the u…

TABLE OF CONTENTS Paragraph Page Number 1.0 COUNTDOWN 1.1 Crew Insertion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 1.2 Communications. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 1.3 Crew Participation and Countdown…

Page Number 5.0 RETROFIRE 5.1 Th-36 Events. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .168 5.2 Th- 256 Events. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .172 5.3 Th-1 Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .173 5.4 Th-O Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .174 5.5 Retropack Jettison. .…

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1.0 COUNTDOWN 1.1 Crew Insertion Cooper The crew insertion, I thought, went very well. Conrad Yes, we had the suiting thing down on my cuffs and everything so that we got right out there and, boy, the Gunter was ready for us and in we went. Cooper They were all set.…

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right away. I thought we felt plenty cool the whole time. 1.5 ECS Cooper ECS was good. Never any problem with it. 1.6 Sounds Cooper Sounds, I thought the only sounds that we had that were abnormal we'd been warned about. When the prevalves opened, they were fairly loud…

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1.8 Visual Cooper Visual. Nothing.... Conrad Oh, yes, wait a minute, I started getting this window fogging. Cooper Well, let's cover that under the right area. Conrad Well, it was actually in the countdown when the erector went down before liftoff. Cooper Well, okay, allrigh…

erector and then the guys heated it with hot air to make it go away and that just made things worse when they lowered the erector. Cooper It didn't make it go away all the way. Conrad That's right it made it worse actually. Cooper Now on my side in my window in between the ins…

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FCSD REP Okay, how about the time you spent in there on prelaunch. Do you think that this is about right? Cooper Yes, yes, I think that this is just about right. I think that if you cut it down too much more than that you are going to be....you could cut it down some more…

6 2.0 POWERED FLIGHT 2.1 Lift Off Cues Cooper Okay, lift-off cues, CAP COM. CAP COM didn't come into the act until later. Stoney counted us down thru ignition and lift-off and then CAP COM picked us up at lift-off. Motion is an excellent clue. There's doubt in your mind when y…

our sight as we were lifting off, and I couldn't tell any visual cues to lift-off, could you? Conrad You had the feeling that you were moving visually. After you get your roll program you see it visually and you can see the pitch program starting visually, but just at first lift…

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progressing down to 90 degrees line, & la the simulator, although the booster sets on 85 degrees and when you turn to 72 degrees launch azimuth you are rolling clockwise so far as the crew is concerned. Conrad You roll to zero. Cooper But you are rolling to is really to 0 on th…

2.5 ECS Conrad Right on the button. Cooper ECS was right on the money, no problem at all. Max Q we've already stated. Conrad The cabin sealed a little bit high like they said it would. I forget the number. It was about 5.8. Cooper About 5.8 or 9 and just gradually dwindled b…

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It was beautiful. Just now in between engine 1 operation and engine 2 here we have two items we will insert in here. 2.10 POGO Cooper One was POGO. At 2 minutes and 5 seconds we started picking up POGO and I got a fairly good amount of POGO on through, stopping just at about 5…

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edge of reading of any large gage and any fine reading that you had to read, you would never be able to read any numbers. It was exactly like the POGO we did all along on the program up at Ames and as the exact amplitude, I don't know, but it was, ..... I think we don't want that…

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on the order of maybe three quarters of a g. Well, I don't know whether it was that high or not. Conrad I thought it was at least a half, if not better. Apparently it wasn't that high. I was really surprised. Like I say, we were really getting the ramrod out of it. Cooper It wa…

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Cooper BECO was right on the money. 2.14 Staging Conrad Boy, that staging was smooth too. Cooper They told us that BECO was going to occur early, but it was .... Conrad We did loft a little bit apparently like they said we would because, right after staging .... 2.15 Engine…

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starts burning. And then they coming down fairly rapidly at first, I mean you get a very definite motion on them right at first there and they kind of settled out. Engine 2 ignition we've already covered. 2.16 RGS Initiate Cooper RGS initiate right on the money. Conrad I was g…

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back and thing was right on the money at about 80 degrees. It was a very smooth transition and then do you remember they were telling us to look for this one cps oscillation? Well, I didn't have rate needles like Gordo did, but I wasn't aware of any oscillations at any time. That…

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over. Conrad Yes, and I don't think it went right. I don't believe it went right, because the R and R can was ripped up in the front, and I can show you on my side the nose went like that and there was some tape or fiber glass that goes around the .... It was fiberglass cloth…

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moved it up there anyhow, because they weren't .... Cooper No, the reason they moved it up there was because they didn't have strong enough propulsion on those squibs and spring combinations or whatever they use. We never did get a reading on that, but whatever the total propuls…

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they were not there before they were there and I saw them when they hit. They hit during all this debris flying around period. Conrad I think that you can still find them on the windshields. They didn't burn off during reentry. Cooper But they're not bad and there are just a fe…

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Cooper There's a whole fly. Oh, you mean the debris. It was gone. Conrad It was gone like that, but it just looked like the whole darn thing exploded. Cooper It looked like it just flew into a jillion pieces. It was all around you for maybe a period of a second or two. Conrad…

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2.18 GO/NO GO Cooper GO/NO GO: We never got a GO/NO GO because we lost our number 1 radio in about 4 minutes sometime just prior ... let see we got a .8 .... We got a V over VR of .8. We got a GO/NO GO of ... FCSD REP You did get a .8? Cooper We got a .8. Conrad Yes, that…

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2.19 Systems Status Cooper System Status everything .... Conrad We did have ... let me describe the delta P lights. Shortly after liftoff I got the number 1 fuel cell delta P light and I reported it and just about the time I reported it, then the number 2 fuel cell delta P ligh…

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Conrad I think we burned out at, Gordo, 7 and 1/4 g's. Cooper Right. SECO was exactly on time, just exactly on time and IVI's read 002 AFT. Almost perfect. 2.21 Steering Cooper Steering was ... there was no steering accelerations or velocities that we could tell. Steering was…

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002. Conrad - I have all the computer readouts. Cooper - 008 right and how many up? Conrad - 3 up. 3.1 Post SECO Cooper - MANEUVER CONTROLLER worked fine. We went right through .... Conrad - Well, let's go through that. The way we had practice SECO, Gordo, got SECO and Gord…

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the inertial velocity readout on the gage and that was beautiful 25,808 and nominal was supposed to be 25,807. You can't ask for a better calculation from a computer than that, and a lot of people don't have much faith in that thing but, I think that I'll bet that the computed MO…

minute of what the actual nominal value should have been, so I think thats pretty darn good for that ascent routine in that computer, and I think that now that we have Math flow 6 in there this is why I think the guy shouldn't get so darn worried in MCC about underspeeds and givi…

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Cooper We separated as smooth as silk just right straight ahead .... Conrad Well, we counted down and Gordo said he was ready and I SEP spacecraft and he thrusted and I went back to RATE COMMAND for them and we came straight off. I didn't even feel it. The first thing we felt wa…

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Cooper You can feel them almost move than you can hear them. You can feel them vibrate really, more than you can hear them. I mean, you can hear them too, but the vibration you can hear them too, but the vibration you can feel the thrust. Conrad Have you ever heard a high speed…

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Conrad Hey, that's another interesting point. Cooper They're not very close on pulse. Conrad Pulse is a ... Cooper Pulse is more of a thump. Conrad That's the one sound that does sound like you'd expect a rocket engine to sound. Cooper Here's a sound just about like this: (k…

wrong. Conrad We really had good comm the whole flight. Cooper There was never a time -- the only time -- the only fault we find was one or two times through the remote site when the MCC was trying to remote to these sites they would get some fading. I must say the HF worked ex…

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Conrad I've got down here the GMT of liftoff. I wrote down 13 plus 59 plus 59 which they later change to 14 plus 00 plus 00. I have the one A time they got it up to us okey, which was 10 plus 11. Then I have the 2 dash 1 they gave us was 01 plus 27 plus 16 which they later revise…

trouble getting my D-ring in, did you? Conrad I waited on mine, remember. Cooper Yes, you waited .... Conrad I stowed my D-ring thing .... Cooper So we closed the cover immediately and I decided I would go ahead and see if I could get mine, and I got to it right away and it w…

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that was pretty close to being able to reenter Cooper My arm restraints were never up. I already decided that I was not going to launch with them. They are just useless as far as I am concerned, and I was delighted I did not have them; and I didn't miss them and I don't think, I…

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Cooper Okay, belts. I couldn't find anything wrong with the belts. The harness - While we're on the harness, I don't like that harness worth anything. I personally think what we need is a simple type adjustable type harness with clips on the legs that you can undo the legs to get…

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took my harness off in flight twice. I took 'em off once-- Cooper Yeah, but you wouldn't even have to step through these leg loops if you had - just like on an airplane harness. You could undo that and you wouldn't even have to worry about the leg loops. Then all you'd have to d…

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Conrad Twice. The big problem was having you unhitch the straps on my suit. Cooper That's right. With the cables to go over the harness. Conrad The harness--the easiest thing was getting in the legs. That was no problem at all. Cooper Yeah. Conrad Where I needed help was gett…

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ment and on that same fitting you have the little snap where you can unsnap in the places you want to. Conrad Oh yes, you dan do it either way. Sure. Cooper You could either loosen them or--I just think we've gone to such complex tailoring devices in order to provide some compa…

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think they're really bad where they are. Conrad After the big sweat was over and we got a GO and we were relatively sure we were going to stay there for awhile unless we, you know, had some other emergency come up, I would have preferred to take off the harness and the life jack…

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could do it and he could. That worked real well. Cooper Okay. Fuel Cell O₂ and Fuel Cell Hydrogen Quantity Read. Yes, we read them at least a million times. Fuel Cell Power Readings. Yes, everything checked out fine on those. Bermuda 2-1 update: fine. Orbital Flight. FOSD Rep Y…

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something was wired up wrong or something in it because it was not working right. Conrad We didn't really get a chance to evaluate it too well because we had trouble with it so we stopped using it and by the time we'd been able to do anything with it we had other problems, fuel…

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FOSD Rep Okay, on this platform alinement thing. You went to SEF and caged and SEF and Platform Control Mode. Cooper We pitched down to visual when we went to CAGE and then went to SEF and we went to Platform mode and after fiddling around with it awhile we decided the Platfor…

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Cooper Or more. Conrad In other words, it continued to try to aline the platform at about fifteen degrees. It tried to put the nose on the horizon is what it did. FCSD Rep It tried to aline the platform up at fifteen degrees nose down? Cooper Or more. I figured it was about so…

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Conrad Now wait til we get the onboard tapes because the tape recorder was working and this all is on the onboard tape; the conversation that Gordo and I had about that. So we weren't really sure it was working right but it wasn't that far off that we were going in the dark-- C…

Conrad Now, you see. Here's something that I've never heard from the other guys. Cooper Now there's another thing. See, we never had a simulator to show us. Never once did we have any darn thing to show us what out the window should look like. Conrad And when the Platform is al…

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drew up on a piece of paper what the window, what the horizon should look like through the window which I'd requested several times and never got -- to show the guy what these various things should look like out the window. We spent the whole darn eight days trying to figure out…

Really, we sat there and had hours worth of discussions in drifting flight when we'd be drifting through, you know, and we'd say, "Hey, doesn't that look like they're about 30 degrees nose up and roll right 60 degrees?" and then we'd try to find those lines and match them and see…

Conrad It seems to me we've got some data for them on Primary scanner over the states so they could have it on telemetry. They should be able to find out what happened on that. Cooper Yes, something was really fouled up, I think. Check List-- Conrad We went through it by th…

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Cooper Com Systems Check. We were right on the money, on time, on that. FCSD Rep Everything checked out okay on that? Cooper Yeah. FCSD Rep Com System? Conrad D-4, D-7, I did by checkoff list and checked out okay over Carnarvon. Cooper 6-4 GO/NO GO, well, that was quite late…

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EOSD Rep This Perigee adjust. Did you do that in Rate-is that the one you did in Rate Command? Or is that the one you tried in PLATFORM? Cooper Did that in PLATFORM and it worked fine on that one. Did that one in PLATFORM and it worked great, but then on some of these othe…

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FCSD Rep We were at the power down on the D-4 and D-7. Conrad Oh Yeah. Well, about that time I think we were getting back on the Flight Plan. We got the 16mm out. We got the 35mm out. Cooper D-6 equipment was - - - Conrad Well, it's really D-2, it's what it w…

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50 Bet we broke the O-ring. Cooper That's right. That's right. That's the first one. We broke the O-ring and couldn't give them that blood pressure. Conrad I think that was the one. Cooper That's right. We finally gave that one up. The O-ring was broken on that one. FOSD Rep…

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Cooper Yeah. I got a lot of comments later on that on. That thing is so noisy. Conrad Oh, you know, I found out what happened, you know. They went back and recomputed and they found out they had four days worth of air in the bottle--Ha Ha! FCSD Rep Four days? Conrad Yeah. It r…

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light blinks Green/OFF, Green/OFF. Cooper Look on light will blink on and it will come out R and R dot will go from peg to peg. And they'll settle out when it really is warmed up good and you've gotten past the transient periods and they'll all come back to zero. Conrad I think…

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IR on and the power on the exmitter on and the recorder off and I went through these by the numbers. Computer, we went to Catch-Up. We had the hundred feet in the window. We were really getting ready to put the REP out and right then and there was when we came over the hill and w…

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Conrad It's really a grey area. FOSD REP Right at dusk. Conrad Yeah. Cooper Right at dusk or right at sunrise. Conrad Yeah. Now the first time we went through there we didn't even see it. We were working. That was right after insertion. So, mind you, this is the second time w…

Conrad Yeah. Cooper But you add one little failure in there and you've had it. Conrad. Yeah. That's where I made my first mistake. We got purged in an hour and 50 minutes and I was going by the check off list and right there we got in this discussion about what was happening to…

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decided that something wasn't reading right and I realized that I hadn't blown the doors on the cold IR and I blew them and at that time the REP was at 2500 feet from us, which is the end of the experiment, but I think it was still reading-- Cooper But it was still reading on th…

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thought everything was going perfect. The REP was moving just exactly out of plane away from us and it was moving at about the right velocity and then the mystery came. It just kept on going. Cooper Yeah. Conrad It kept right on going straight out, and-- Cooper It wasn't slowi…

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See, the REP went straight out and kept on going. Cooper The REP goes straight out and then it just kept on going. It was slowing down very little and just kept on going and going and going and going. Conrad And it never really stopped. What it did was it sorta, it sorta starti…

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Cooper We never got the point where it crossed behind us because somewhere when it was about the 210 point was when we were out of fuel, of fuel cell O₂. Conrad Yeah, well, you see, we went by Carnarvon-- Cooper And this was coming down just BALOOM BALOOM BALOOM BALOOM BALOOM.…

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Cooper But you did go back to the AUTO. Conrad Yeah. I put it back in AUTO, you know, and then I called them, I think it was on the tape and I think I told them, I said, the switch is on AUTO. We're okay. Don't worry about it and then right after that we got up to this 240 or…

Cooper So we said okay and we're stopping it right here and of course about this time we were in the boondocks area away from everybody as always occurs. Conrad We were between Carnarvon and Hawaii. Cooper And--so we just started powering down everything and holding on. Conrad…

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Cooper That's impossible. That thing wasn't that far away. It hung right in there. Cooper I think that's the whole things. Cooper But I'll tell you there were two different night sides we went into. Several-- Conrad Two different night sides--well, I really--it wouldn't have s…

Cooper It was close enough so that almost any attitude you were in you could see it shining on the spacecraft. Even if it was clear back out here you could see the nose just lighting up from it. Conrad So I know it couldn't have been too darn far away. I mean maybe up to five mi…

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in more time on other things. That something was going to go wrong-- Conrad I felt every problem that we had I felt real good about the fact that we had either the smarts to know that it was straight forward-- It didn't take too long to figure out that that heater was on one li…

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Cooper I do, too. I'll tell you--the launch--we were perfectly normal and right on the money-- Conrad Yes, we were sitting there waiting to find out what they wanted us to do. I mean we knew we could go on the batteries long enough to get to a fairly decent re-entry place and we…

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Steiner saying don't worry about that liquid going through that heat exchanger. He said it will go through just fine. The one thing that I thought was that we might have dinged the tank with the REP but as long as the quantity stayed up there we were in pretty good shape, but I w…

could have hung on long enough to find out where it crossed us behind there. FCSD Rep Let's back up just a minute on your lock on. Cooper Okay. Boy, it just clung right on to it and zap. We got the lock on and the darn range and range rate came right on there. It was moving rig…

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little calculations right here--finally we were off our graph up there, weren't we? Conrad Yes. Well, you've got to realize that the graph's based on out of plane and this was the hypotenuse to the thing, but even so-- Cooper But still you've got to-- Conrad It still went away…

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it went out in good fashion. I think we still would have been all right if we had gone ahead and done the rendezvous with no problem even if we had gotten a little out of plane with it we could have handled this later on. But, there again it made it difficult for Pete because it…

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be gotten. Cooper Why don't you bring the flight plan over here and let's start down it. We might as well skip what he has in the flight plan here because it varies so from there on. Conrad From here on you can forget this flight plan. Cooper That's right. Conrad Right here.…

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Cooper From lift-off until 2400 hours the day of launch was elapsed time and starting at that time we started calling it day one and then GMT. Conrad Okay. So, we went through a little deal here where we started to power up and they let us turn--we'd been drifting hadn't we? Co…

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below us. That kind of startles you when you realize they are entering below you. It means they've gone through you. Conrad: This is when the experimenters went out of their minds. They handed us this flight plan you wouldn't believe where they had 1, 2, 3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11, 12,…

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Conrad You don't want to get into which experiments we got done and which ones we didn't or do you? Do you want to go through it that detailed? FCSD Rep Cooper Well, there's an experiment section in there. Well, let's cover all the experiments in the experiment section. We mig…

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well. Conrad Okay, now we also wrote in these little screwy ditties. This is where we kept the things if they wanted us to power-up something or pull one of their nutty tests that they dreamed up in the middle of the night. We'd write them down just in order in which they came.…

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with terrible pulse rates when we'd hear somebody calling from down in that deep barrel, Gemini 5, Gemini 5, Gemini 5. Ha,ha. Lights on all over the place trying to find the radio switch. Ha-ha. Out of a deep sleep. Cooper Okay. I think maybe if we'd just go down through here a…

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Cooper I don't know but what we might be better on this just to go through our individual specialty logs and log where occured at what time, because that's the more accurate one of all--because this was kind of our running logs of what was going on--to warn us when things were c…

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we did we can tell you at any point in time whether we got a certain experiment done or not. If they want to know if we got something done or not and if there's a reason why we didn't do it why we usually had that recorded somewhere. Either in here or in the flight plan. Why don…

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FCSD Rep One day? Cooper We've all ready mentioned that one. We did get that one. We have that one written up here actually it occurred around down here. Flight plan up-date. Yes, we had lots of those. Conrad Now, here was the D-4, D-7.421. Cooper D-4, D-7 421 o…

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the light 2 or 3 times and he turned the heater off then it came on again. You know, for an hour's period of time and he never had the lights again. Now, this is another reason why I suspect this OAMS system--one of the biggest mistakes ever made--whoever recommended it on the gr…

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55 degrees. Conrad Yes. Cooper They ran when the heater was on--it kept them between 60 and 80. One time ring B got up to 80 degrees. But it ran between 60 and 80 degrees, that those heaters kept the RCS, A and B. But, any time if you turned that heater off it wasn't any time a…

it completely off and later they told us that we could go ahead and shut it completely off. And we were sitting in there just shivering and shaking and I was a lot colder than Pete. He was cold and I was really cold. I was really thinking seriously about--if we couldn't get that…

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the whole thing started to warm up. You could see the frost melt outside. Everything seemed to go up. The fuel temperatures would go up, and the whole ECS system would warm up, the cabin would warm up and everything. We were sitting there-- Conrad A slow drift or stabilized f…

the same thing. You put something out in front of you and it would just disappear. Whew! It wouldn't sit in front of you. It would move from one side to the other of the spacecraft due to the rates you would build up. Conrad Yes, here's where we got into this business of the OAM…

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Cooper Yes, we had a great day. That third day was a goody. Man we had everything right on the button. We got good shots of it and everything just worked out right on the money. Okay, let's see. This is 15 hours 40 minutes, that's still with everything powered up. Conrad Then…

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Conrad No, it worked very well. Cooper Let's see we had an observation of the storm and some pictures there at 17 hours and 12 minutes still on day 1. Oh, we brought the radar to stand-by to warm things up there at 17 hours-- 16 hours -- Conrad Radar temperature went down to 19…

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FCSD Rep S-3, D-13. One day and 18 hours. Cooper I saw it. That's right. We couldn't see it at all until we were almost over it and then I found the target. Conrad We could see the smoke and we were looking at the smoke and looking at the smoke-- Cooper The sun angle was very…

Cooper Okay, we moved to Med Data to Hawaii at 19 hours and 55 minutes which we did. I got there at 7 in the Caribbean at 20 hours and did the MSC-1 at 21 hours 52 minutes to 22 hours and 44 minutes. Conrad Then we stayed on the flight plan there and at Hawaii had a critical tap…

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Place again, so that made me think, well, you know they aren't going to strike the same place twice so maybe it wasn't a micrometeorite after all. I really don't know what it was, but I think it's worth a look at the hatch. It could have just been that metal was cooling down or e…

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every time he was supposed to be asleep when the fuel cells were purged. Well, I could get to them, but I had to crawl right over in his lap to do it, so he was awake then. After that I learned to wake him up early and let him get awake before he purged them. Conrad Scared the h…

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were -- Cooper I wonder what the reason was for that. There was some interference with something. I couldn't get to that one. Oh, what the heck was it? There was something else going on they had us doing right then. Oh, somebody was asking me something. They were having a big di…

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Conrad 02:09, huh? Cooper Yes. Conrad Gosh, that doesn't even show here. So, I guess they never did even call it up from the ground. You just saw it in the Flight Plan. Cooper It was in the Flight Plan -- Conrad But they never called it out. Cooper Th…

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Conrad -- an S-6 at 15:45 -- Cooper You're ahead of where I was. Conrad Oh, I'm sorry. Okay, we'll back up. D-6 at 13:41-46. We got Tampico instead of Monterey because it was clouded in. Then we did the UHF No. 1, and we got this S-5/S-6 during our African pass-didn't we? And w…

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Conrad 21.1 feet per second Delta P. Cooper Oh, that was our pre-burn stuff. At 2 days 17 hours 34 minutes and 31 seconds we had a maneuver load. Conrad Well, I have the whole thing here. We powered up the platform on day 2 at 15:50 with the platform caged BEF, and at…

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Conrad I don't believe that Platform Mode was holding the tolerances it was supposed to. It was drifting a full degree, and it was supposed to hold better than that. Cooper It is supposed to hold plus or minus half a degree. Conrad By drifting off in yaw a degree, it burned…

clip so hard that when I pulled it out, I pulled it completely apart. I shattered it. I broke out my lens. Glass floating around and everything. Where did we stow that? I forgot. I gave it to you and you stowed it -- Cooper I put it in the garbage bag. Conrad That's right; it's…

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Conrad Yes, we did that in Rate Command right on the money. Then we had an S-8/D-13 and we documented those things; Gordo saw part of it and I didn't. We never did really get a good score. Then at 18:50 again we alined the platform SEF and set the computer up to 25 00164 and bur…

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got the S-7 again, or you got it, at 3 days 06 hours and 32 minutes. We deleted an S-7 at 3 days 05 hours for some reason. I just have "delete" in here. Cooper What was that? An S-7? Conrad Yes. Cooper Yes. I don't know; they just told us to delete that one at 3 days 05 hours.…

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I'm not sure. So, from that point in time on we never used the hook-up that you can hook it up on the -- Cooper We also found that little-hook up was feeling gray paint off of those bars and it was floating all over the cabin. Conrad That's right. It kept knocking the gray pain…

Conrad Then I have Platform to ORB Rate, Prelaunch, and horizon scan for some reason. Questar 01, 90 degrees left. Cooper We alined SEF at 13:10. Conrad Oh, that was these platform tests 1 and 2 that they wanted us to do. Cooper That's right. We were getting ready for another…

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I will make the comment that I don't think the window changed, just from my looking at it. Cooper No, I don't think it did, either, I think it was just as bad at first, as it was at last. Conrad That's right. Cooper And it was pretty bad. Conrad So, I don't think they lost an…

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Cooper Let's see. Day 3, 14 hours and 18 minutes, we did that Zodiacal Light. Conrad That's right. Gordo really had it on there. I think he got some good dope out of that Zodiacal Light. The pictures should be good. Gordo held it right on the money. Cooper Let's see; a…

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Cooper We had a full day this day. Let's see--at 3 hours--day 3, 15 hours, 13 minutes we had D-6 134. Conrad When was this? Cooper 3:05:13:51 Conrad Yes. That was a 134--that was the ship and we didn't see it. Cooper Yes--that was the weather. Conrad Yes--I have "no jo…

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FCSD Rep Yes. Conrad Well, do you feel better? Cooper No-- Cooper At 16 hours and 24 minutes we had a medical pass. At 16 hours and 15 minutes we alined SEF, powered up the radar, rate gyros, etc. At 16 hours and 37 minutes we had a D-4 pass 423a. Conrad That was the fir…

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and 45 minutes and radar was on and radar off, on--we had that radar test right in there that they wanted to do. Conrad Did we get those pictures of Venus and Fomalhaut. This platform 1 and 2 business? Cooper I thought we did. Conrad I didn't have a done log on that and I don'…

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we didn't get Venus. We never found it. That's right. Cooper That's right. We never even found Venus on that night side. Platform test 2-- Conrad And I got a remark here to find out that on day 6 at 01 hours, 02 minutes and 15 seconds where in the heck were we because there wer…

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Conrad Yeah. Cooper Just kept getting worse, worse, worse-- and so--Pete has a note here--tell Houston about primary scanner--which we did shortly thereafter at 3 hours, 18 minutes, 3 days, 18 hours and 16 minutes we did an S-7, and then at 3 days, 18 hours and 25…

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cyclone off Japan which has been added into there. And then you start on that HF test number 1 starting at 22 hours, 55 minutes. Conrad Oh, yeah, 425a was Hawaii, Maui. Cooper Oh, yeah, you got that one. Conrad Maunakea was the volcano--it's not active--but anyhow-- Cooper Wa…

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25 minutes, cabin lighting. 19 minutes was the medical data, at 40 let's see-- 40 minutes there was the D-2 series 1, 4, 5--sequence 1, 4, 5. Cooper Mode 414 I have here--What was that? Conrad 145 was a military, U. S. Cooper Yeah. What's this Mode 414-- Conrad That was if we…

20 minutes and 25 seconds, we got an S-7, sequence 01 and let's see--and thru this period was where we both completely ran out of steam--here on--we were trying to get you to sleep so I deleted all of these tests right in thru here to let Pete sleep. On day 4, starting at 3 hours…

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FCSD rep. Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper FCSD rep. Conrad Cooper Conrad Cooper Then the platform wasn't on? Was not on. That's right--see you got to be able to have an accurate means of pointing of having yaw and-- They said pitch up 83 degrees, yaw 45 degrees left--out…

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Conrad Yeah. Cooper That was the straw that broke the camel's back--we didn't do. Cooper Did MSC-1, day 4, 5 hours and something to 6 hours and something. Let's see-- then on down to day 4, 11 hours and 5 minutes Conrad Powered up. Cooper Then it's powered up platform, had a…

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that was the sequence 091 or whatever it was. Cooper Right. Conrad The platform aligned SEF, for the command pilot we got-- Cooper Purged the fuel cells at day 4, 12 hours and 50 minutes. Conrad Yeah, SA D-13 on Laredo at 13:42:39-- what happened? Cooper Neither one of us sa…

Cooper Yeah, I remember we had the picture of it you know and it was out there on that little point--or was that the one by Kano that we couldn't find because of the weather. Conrad There's one in there where we did 089--let's see what it looked like. Cooper Look up 089--that's…

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Let's see at 14:15, day 4, D-4, D-7, 410c. Conrad D-4, D-7, 410c was--that's one of the ones where we were supposed to track a star or something--yeah, we were supposed to track Nunki and we never could find it because it was-- Cooper It was up in first, early-- Conrad It was…

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in the spacecraft. Gosh, we're messing around with the star charts--still don't tell you how much to pitch up or yaw around to find the darn thing. Cooper They tell you where it would be on yaw path. Conrad You just sort of got to figure it out-it's over to the left or the righ…

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Conrad Which we did photograph the Lake Champlain. FCSD rep. Did you see this thing--how did you pick this thing up--did you use a tele- scope or- Cooper We saw him visually - found him visually and then FCSD rep. From the wake-- Cooper Put the pipper on him and…

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Cooper All right - 15 hours 40 minutes- Conrad Then D-4, D-7 was the second Minuteman which we saw but we didn't track. Cooper 16 hours 28 minutes, 423b - we did the HF tests 4 at 17 hours. Conrad Wait a minute- I got a - we had an S-7 at 16:37 and it was the thunderstorms…

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big enough in their overall look at things to give you a clue as to what - I'll show you this - This is the kind of thing that you just can't have-that was 065-now what you need to help you find an island is some clue as to where it is located in the world- well, that's what we h…

getting the picture but we really didn't think it quite looked like the right island but because we didn't see an air field on it - well here came the island with the air field - it was a good 200 miles down the pike but you need a little more - Cooper A little more help as to w…

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remote from there and it would be Dave Scott and Elliot and they would start giving us a little poop about what was going to go on that day see--and heck they'd tell us a little bit about the latest hydrogen calculations or something (laughter) and that was - we'd sort of get an…

we owned out and we'd be going through books and writing and flight plan and then we'd leave the states and it says pilot's nap period and Gordo was supposed to do something else and that was impossible - it would take two more revs to clean up the spacecraft before we ever got t…

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Conrad And we would be in the process of cleaning up when we'd come by and we'd have that Guaymas pass where we'd come by and have California acq. and Guaymas acq. and we'd go right down the side of Mexico, the west side, and then cross the isthmus and go down Brazil and then fr…

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there - laughter. Cooper Yeah, ok, everything's fine (snoring) (laughter). Conrad Talk about lonely--that's when it really got bad. You really knew you were out in the no place. Cooper We just discussed one thing while you were out, was this window situation. You couldn't even…

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Over the period of time, they both got a certain amount of little frosty scum on the outside of them and when we fired the scanner covers there were about four or five little gray flecks of stuff and debris just flew everywhere right in that period of time and four or five little…

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Cooper HF test 4 then at 417. 4:17:40 med data was done. HF test 4 ended on - down there - OK, day 4, 19 hours 44 minutes was S-7 which was completed. Conrad Yeah, both the S-7's were completed. Cooper Then there's an S-7b, 21 hours, 9 minutes and 50 seconds storm Doreen - w…

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Conrad But this is a good little map too. It really has the right things on it. There wasn't anytime we didn't look down and know exactly where we were. This thing is really great. Probably the cheapest thing in the spacecraft. Cooper That's one Jerry Jones made up. We tried out…

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Conrad Apollo landmark 207- that was at 07:14:25 must be day 5. Cooper No, not that far along - We did UHF 6 we did at 2 hours, day 5, 2 hours and something. Conrad You said you had an S-7 that was again during my sleep cycle and you said missed while discussing Cr…

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at 5 day, 10 hours and 20 minutes we had Apollo No. 208, which we got. We had S-502 which we got. We had D-4, D-7, sequence 414 which we got and we had the platform tests which we did. Conrad Yeah then we got the radar test run - Cooper And Pete has a note here "Get serious," i…

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little things. Again, we were always man, they had stuff thrown at us as fast as you could say Jack Robinson. Cooper Let's see--S-8, D-13 at Laredo--do you have one of those right in that period- day 5, 13 hours - Conrad Day 5, 13 hours - no. Cooper I don't have it either. Co…

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to flight voice tape out - number 7 yaw left thruster out and OAMS heater light turned back on again. Conrad And so we were supposed to ask 7 Keywest and D-8 S-13, SAD-13 about 6:22:50 - Cooper OK - From there on for a while things just got scrubbed in the flight plan on that d…

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was when the PC02 started to read for some reason. Cooper PC02 came off the scale and was reading way up there for a while. We broke out one of the CO₂ tapes, and it showed that we were still all right. We figured the gage was its usual reliability. Conrad Okay, now, I think th…

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Conrad On S-8, D-13 we completed all tests although we didn't see the targets several times. On S-1 we completed it. S-5 and S-6 we'd taken three magazines for a total of 210+ pictures. S-7 we had 23 pictures or 8 groups that they had wanted plus we had taken cal card picture. T…

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direction. Like I got a--in drifting flight I got 417 and 418 at 6 days 8 hours 41 minutes. I don't remember what that is. Cooper From here on, we just--we drifted through this period of time and the only time we ever powered anything up was when the drift rates got up pretty hi…

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was really good reception. And then they were playing 'Never on Sunday' and that faded out at 15 hours 08 minutes. Cooper That was the best HF test we had. Conrad Yes, and we started receiving the music again coming around the other side of the world at 15 hours 49 minutes. Thi…

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Cooper And I read analog. My analog read beautiful, but he couldn't read out digital and that's impossible because the analog data comes from the digital data. I could even tell where it was. It was sitting out on Meritt Island, wasn't it? I'll bet--it was accurate enough--I'll b…

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area there, and we were just on the south edge of China. Conrad Have you ever taxied close by radar? You can hear it on radio, it goes "beep, beep, beep, beep," and you can even clock the antenna sweep, and you can get about three pulses...."Beep,beep,beep," and then, "beep, bee…

they wanted. I had to point--I may have all spacecraft in the picture. I don't know-we were just drifting by this one. And then at 11 hours 30 minutes on the sixth day, we went through this crank up this number 2 fuel cell again after it had been shut down for 20 hours. They want…

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and we got them back again and lost it 3 minutes later at 07 days 16 hours and 30 minutes. Then we did a MSC-1. Cooper I have a note here 7 days and 20 minutes was that large storm where we located the depression on it. Take a look at it, and see just where it was, and weather b…

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stars going by, and we were just going through the world every which way, and we were supposed to hold it that way for ten minutes and we were--okay, we were well aware.... Cooper Where were you? This day 7? Conrad Yes, and I just got to this big set of procedures on that test…

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Other thing is is when you hit the thrusters you can very definitely tell from the sound that some were putting out more than others. Cooper I think that's what was giving us the yaw roll off was that in pairs of thruster of one would be strong maybe and one weak and would give…

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And the computer was in reentry and I said, "Golly," and I switched that thing to prelaunch and he said the loads in and validated, and I didn't get a DCS light. And I'd gotten a DCS light everytime. Cooper We never failed to get a DCS light. Conrad And I was never really convi…

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this guy just says, "I'm sending a DCS update," and WHAM! here it comes. No warning. No nothing. Before you could even tell him to wait, the darn things in reentry. Conrad He didn't check his ground information, because if he'd looked at his board, he would have seen that the co…

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turn that darn thing off and leave the DCS circuit breaker off. Conrad Okay, the next thing before retrofire. Cooper I had one note here, just a second, at 7--Day 7, 22 hours, and 30 minutes. We were on that real black night side way down there somewhere on the South Amer…

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Boy, I've never seen such fantastic big areas covered by thunderstorms. Just, tremenious! And they were big, each individual CB looked like it was maybe 50 to 100 miles across and just whole columns of them stacked around. They must have really been.... Conrad Okay, about the on…

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Conrad Well, why don't we get ourselves down on the water? Stowage wise when we left the United States on the last California-Guaymas pass which occurred at-- it occurred around 7:18:40, something like that. We started our reentry stowage right then and there. Very early in the g…

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We never--we always ran late on that. I'd get the nap, but I'd get it much later and that would cut a little bit into Gordo's sleep period and that would wind up overlapping into my sleep period and then we would both catch a nap...Gordo's naptime which was just before Carnarvon.…

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possible back in the right hand box. We completely emptied the right hand box at the beginning of the flight and stowed the articles around the cockpit in those red bags that we had built for the back of the seat and they really worked well. On the top of the seat. I kept two mea…

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bag would hold it in. Keep it from floating and then fasten the velcro upon the back of the maneuver controller. Conrad Now there was one thing that one green bag that I had originally had the REP plan stow in it. The REP plan was never taken out and I never took the bag off the…

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Cooper And I had a whole pocketful of rubber bands. Conrad And Gordo had a whole pocketful of rubber bands. We found that was the only way to handle the food. After we ate a rehydratable package or even a few solid packages that we opened. We always resealed them again with tape…

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that went in behind my ejection seat. I managed to work around the side and get clear down around to the back and manage to shove it down in behind the seat. Conrad Then I had a little bit of miscellaneous trash like that in the right lower wrap around red pouch that was over th…

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on them. They had originally had the--in my side the blood pressure reprogrammer, the hose interconnect adapters and the pilot's personal preference kit. Gordo's side it had just the personal preference kit and the hose interconnect, right? There wasn't anything else in there, wa…

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camera and we did stow the 17 mm lens and the 18 mm lens and the 75 mm Hasselblad. We did not stow the urine receiver there. We stowed that up where it had started out in the left side food box. We did stow the mirror sight there and we did stow the ring sight and we did stow the…

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flight and everything that we just didn't ever shoot up the 16 mm film. There just wasn't that much to shoot it up on. FOSD Rep How long for reentry? Starting stowage for reentry? Would you estimate? Conrad We did it in three steps. 20 hours before reentry we started really rea…

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could have laid our hands on it. We didn't actually stow the Hasselblad till the very end. Cooper We stowed it about 4 hours. Conrad And so we were prepared by working constantly through the night but not steadily. We worked on and off. We took little rests. Then we went back a…

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Realize that if we had to reenter shortly or even if we pack it tightly, but I think the bottom of the box I think I wasted a--I'll say I could have put another silver bag or two worth of trash in there by stuffing the lower part if I had known about it in the beginning. But it d…

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FGSD REP How about the power up? Cooper I think that the power up went just right straight forward. Conrad Yessir, I've the checklist right here. Just like the insertion checklist we went by the numbers and I actually marked it off as we did it and you can see it right…

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attitude light. It took 3 minutes after the fast heat drop out. And then I noticed after that was the first time after we did that--powered it up two or three times why the platform came in at 25 minutes of a fast heat drop out. And then right after that it would start to cage up…

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Cooper So they wanted to keep the platform warmed up also. So we went for some approximately 20 hours with the platform warm-running-up. Conrad In drifting flight. Cooper In drifting flight. So what we did-we caged the platform, brought it up to cage and then we just went to…

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our old platform position which was BEF and started right from there in lining in a fine line by BEF position going out just--lining from there and we found that we had quite a yaw error in it. We noted that- Conrad That showed up in roll real fast. Cooper So we noted then that…

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Conrad One and a half orbits. We really alined in about one and a half orbits. Cooper We powered up two and one half and then actually, we were actually alining for about an orbit and a half before retrofire. And we were on all the alinement and everything was done on the RCS…

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Conrad I can't say too much for that star chart either. Boy, it was real comforting to have those yaw stars, and it turned out that Scorpio went right down the middle of the tube for us and we always knew that we had the platform in good alinement before retrofire. We knew we we…

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let you wander off anywhere in pitch and roll. You had to watch the yaw very carefully, of course, but you could concentrate on doing other things for just a few seconds time and you didn't get your errors built up into it. You still have the pulse correction within the wider ban…

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we went to drogue chute out, I still couldn't see any decrease in Ring A. Conrad Well, I'm not sure that Ring A wasn't out of fuel, somewhere around between 100 000 on down. But the other ring wasn't. I know darn well it wasn't. Cooper What do you mean it was? It wasn't out bef…

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oscillations or anything. The rings were firing all the time. Cooper It never was out of fuel before we put the other one on, I'll guarantee. I know because I was sitting there controlling with it and I know that we had control. Conrad I know that both thrusters were physically…

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FCSD Rep Why don't we pick up on page 26? Cooper Okay. [ILLEGIBLE] [ILLEGIBLE] [ILLEGIBLE] [ILLEGIBLE] [ILLEGIBLE] [ILLEGIBLE] [ILLEGIBLE] [ILLEGIBLE] [ILLEGIBLE] [ILLEGIBLE] [ILLEGIBLE] [ILLEGIBLE] [ILLEGIBLE] [ILLEGIBLE] [ILLEGIBLE] [ILLEGIBLE] [ILLEGI…

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5.0 RETROFIRE 5.1 T_R-36 Events Cooper T_R-36 -- Conrad T_R-36 is not right. There's no aft-firing thrusters verification. That's for OAMS. And there was no T_R-22 either because that was for OAMS, nor was there a T_R-13 or 12. What we had was a T_R-27 clock set over Carnarvon…

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Cooper And we told McDivitt -- Conrad We didn't get a DCS light. Cooper We told McDivitt when we left Houston that everything was all square and that we're going to Reentry Mode on the computer then. We did, and then at Carnarvon the CAP COM, before he even gave us a warning or…

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out yesterday and that the load in it was valid. It's just that they computed the wrong place to land, in Houston, and sent the wrong load, period. Boy, that was a heck of a thing to do, and I really -- that darn DCS! I'm going to do just what I said I was going to do. If I ever…

Cooper Yes. It's major enought that, by golly, my recommendations exactly like Pete's. From now on my recomendation is -- Conrad That did it. Cooper -- that the DCS circuit breaker is left in the OFF position. Conrad Yes. The next time I ever go for the reentry and we put…

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Cooper And then saying this is your final load. Verify -- Conrad Bad news. I'm really mad about that! Cooper Then unscheduled and everything else -- Conrad I don't blame that guy at Carnarvon because he wasn't expecting to send us a load either. I blame Houston. Houston sent i…

REENTRY again, of course, and squib batteries. We were already on the RCS system, so we didn't have to bring them on, but I did bring on the other ring at that point. At the 256, we wanted to go platform to ORB RATE as late as possible, so we did that after we got T_R-256 functio…

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T_R-1. Let's see, retro rockets squib -- all four armed at T_R-30, arm auto-retros at about T_R-5 seconds -- Conrad Yes. T_R-5. And I absolutely positively go on record that the manual retro-fire button was pushed, because I pushed it four times at one second and the COMP lig…

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Cooper Number 1 was firing and it was just tailing off when number 2 took in. It had the proper sequence on it. Number 2 had completely stopped and there was an interval there of, it seemed like, several seconds. It wasn't, but it seemed like there was a definite distinct -- Con…

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look like you were sitting in the middle of a fire barrel. Boy! When those retros go off, the whole spacecraft's enveloped in flames -- jus: looks like the whole place is burning all over back there. This flame comes all the way back over the spacecraft and all the way up -- Con…

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didn't have a horizon for 5 minutes after retro-fire. We were in the middle of the United States before we saw the ground. Cooper The first place we saw was White Sands. Conrad White Sands -- Cooper Just past the terminator -- Conrad -- was the first place I saw w…

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Cooper Yes. Conrad There was no horizon. The black part of the ball was gone. It was gone for the rest of reentry. We lost it awful early. FCSD Rep Do you remember a point, say 400 000 feet, at what pitch angle you were on the ball? Conrad 400 000 feet -- the trim hadn't begun…

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Conrad Yes, those lines were useless as far as the horizon on it, because there wasn't any horizon out there. GCSD Pep You had to use the 8-ball entirely? Cooper Yes. Conrad That was a pure instrument retro. Cooper You're darn right, boy. I'll guarantee you anytime you fire r…

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see the pitch rate needle start to move just a little tiny bit. That was showing you that you weren't quite on trim. Then I'd tweek it and it would sit right there, and it would just start trimming itself out on the ball. FCSD Rep When it trimmed out you damped the rates. You we…

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Cooper We had the drogue out before we went on dual-rings. FCSD Rep Was there any problem? Conrad The thing was steady as a rock all the way. Cooper Yes, it was beautiful. Conrad I've been hearing 40-degree oscillations on the drogue and all that sort of stuff. The only oscal…

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Conrad At 30 000 we shut off the propellant valves to the RCS. It was still working away merrily there trying to steady it down on the drogue. As far as I know, there was propellant in both Ring A and Ring B when we shut them down. 5.5, Retropack Jettison Cooper We jettisoned t…

5.6 Communications Cooper Communications were good throughout the whole re-entry. We went into blackout right on time. Conrad Right on time. Cooper Yes, just right on the second when they said we'd go into blackout. We came out just exactly when they said we would. The only th…

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Cooper Well, this is the bank angle we flew until we got cross, and down-range at 280K. Conrad We went from full lift at 400K to 53 degrees, which was the given bank angle by the ground which we agreed to use. We went to 53 degrees until guidance came in, and it came in at 280K.…

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Cooper ...to get on down to it because it told me-- Conrad We were just sitting there waiting for the needle to come up like we had seen it do a million times in the same situation. It never came off the peg. Then, we got in a little discussion, you know. I felt that we ought to…

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Conrad Now, what really hurt there though was that he sat there at the nominal bank angle of 53 degrees until we got to, say, 2 1/2 g's, which is a fair long time through the guidance.... When he elected to roll to the 90 degree bank angle, that's when we were getting the most li…

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it moved much. Conrad I think we were hoping to see it move, you know, but it was just one of those--that's a fast time situation there, and it was just one of those things where we made the right decision in the end to go back to the nominal bank angle. Everything in the comput…

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Cooper Because that's exactly the way things are all set up in the math flow. You'll get that and then very shortly thereafter if you hold the nominal bank angle it will take a little bit of time and it will start easing on up. Conrad And you'll get an idea by the rate of easing…

Cooper We'd probably wound up 45 miles from the carrier-- Conrad That going to the 90 degrees for the time period that we did cost us 80 something miles. Otherwise, we flew the nominal-- Cooper The whole thing is if we hadn't tried following the computer we would never have kno…

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words, you're flying opposite. You're flying your needle to. In other words, you're flying back course ILS on lateral and you're flying a standard ILS on the glide slope--front course ILS. The cross-range needle was showing off to the right, which indicated that we needed to bank…

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day the cross-range needle was indicating properly. FCSD Rep The down-range needle, when it came on, stayed in the same place all the time--all the way through? Cooper Yes. FCSD Rep Full-scale. Cooper Full-scale. Right. Just about full-scale on the low range. FCS…

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but everything else worked like the simulator timewise, but that time period seemed extremely short to me in comparison to simulator reentry. Cooper Yes, it sure did to me. Conrad Yes. Now we can go back and look at the times and see what the actual times were to these-…

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100 000. Then, I said, "Stand by for 70 000." I was going to tell him to go attitude control RCS A and B to ACME, and he punched out the drogue. So, we qualified the drogue at 70 000, and then I got the rate command, both rings on, and we were somewhere below 70 000 when we put…

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194 CONFIDENTIAL 6.0 REENTRY 6.1 400K Cooper By the time we hit 400K I was at full lift position from Retro Jett until there. Roll command gave a roll right and a roll command the bug just as it always does. Time correlation was right on the money. 400K occurred right to the…

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which gave me one little old tweak of suspicion there that something was wrong right there on the roll bug. At that point then, I rolled 90 to see if I could get on that too, the down range needle. The cross range needle moved in some from the right. It had been out....not comple…

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held that on in. It probably would have corrected us out a little better cross-range-wise, but the period of time that we were at 90 degrees trying to get the glide slope, to get onto the glide slope there, is what cost us that 86 miles. Had we held the nominal bank angle all the…

hardly believe it. So, I didn't have any trouble controlling or,...I just didn't think about having it on there. Pete noticed the g's more than I did because he wasn't as busy, I guess, as I was. 6.3 Spacecraft Control Cooper Spacecraft control was beautiful. There was no prob…

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the point where he put the Mercury drogue out. It squidded a couple of times very nicely and stabilized out and was just beautiful....We never had any oscillations on it or anything. It was just as nice as it could be. 6.5 50K Feet Cooper By 50K we had both RCS rings-ON, just l…

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and stuff like -- Nothing like that. Cooper I bet you couldn't make it any more than 2 or 3 or 4 degrees. Conrad Yes, I would say 5 at the most. Now I don't have any horizon or anything to reference this to. All I'm doing is watching the drogue. But I didn't have any physical s…

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PCSD Rep You don't use the reentry command? Conrad Heck no! Cooper No, no that's useless. Conrad We had fuel up the kazoo. Cooper We had all kinds of fuel. We figured to just go into RATE COMMAND. That's exactly what -- Conrad ... to see how smooth a reentry you could make.…

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vent open and I opened the vent and opened the inlet snorkel and set the recirc at 45 degrees in pretty fast order. But, all the fancy calculations by the ECS people are dead wrong, because there isn't enough in that repress or the O₂ HIGH RATE to keep up with that differential d…

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Conrad Then we sat there in the water, very leisurely. It was still building up. I went and cycled the O₂ HIGH RATE handle OFF. 6.6 35K Checklist Items Conrad Before you leave that let's just say that at 35 000 feet for the check off list we uncovered our D-rings. At 30 000 fee…

drogue just as the barostat came on. It came on right at 10.6, right on the money. I punched the main, deployed the main just as the barostat came on. As we have already said, the main deployed..... Conrad There seemed like an awful long time to me though from the time you punch…

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204 Cooper It was a real pretty main, and we were very stable on the main. We weren't oscillating at all, I mean obviously. It looked like we were just coming straight down. Conrad Yes, the whole thing damped out. That is another reason the water landing was so smooth. Cooper…

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ON until we were on the water and I gave them three blood pressures and I don't think any of them worked. I don't think the bowl bled down. 6.12 Post-Main Checklist Items FCSD REP Okay, we got the rescue beacon without lights and the suit fans and ACME BIAS power OFF. This i…

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7.0 LANDING AND RECOVERY 7.1 Impact Cooper Impact, was very very soft. We just hit. We hit very easy. We didn't go under water at all. We didn't change attitude one bit from the time we hit the water. We went bloop. Conrad We just pitched down a little bit -- Cooper The nose…

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over there to the 2000 K and I was .... Cooper One thing that took a little bit of our time there though, Pete, was the fact that the AIR BOSS called us twice there and we were actually busy answering that. Conrad We were talking on the radio and a little talking to Houston on…

208

208 CONFIDENTIAL we landed. FOSD REP Never got over a pound? Conrad Never got over a pound I don't believe. Cooper Then we came OFF on the repress and we opened our face plates. Conrad Then we opened our face plates and tkck a sniff in there. It didn't smell to bad. I had a…

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Conrad No, the cabin was about 53 degrees. Somewhere in there. It was a little over 50, and the suit was running .... Cooper The suit was running about 50 on reentry so the whole thing was pretty cool. Conrad It was never hot at any time. Cooper When we opened our face plates…

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spacecraft 2, 3 hours. As a matter of fact the longer we stayed the cooler we were getting because we were just sitting back letting -- Cooper We really debated seriously about waiting if the carrier had been an hour or so nearer we would have waited for a carrier pick up rather…

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here that we might ... we would suggest maybe reshuffling a little there. 7.3 Communications Cooper The communications were excellent all the way, all the way down until impact and from there on we were hearing everybody in the whole darn world but nobody apparently was hearing…

212

212 do with it here? FCSD REP Biomed records and all that stuff. Cooper The gear worked. The one thing was, the blood pressure bulb wouldn't bleed down and Pete never could get a proper blood pressure there when on the water. Conrad I took the bulb up to the heli…

well and I guess the guy outside probably couldn't see in as well as we could see out. They were fogged a little. There were no leaks that we could tell. Electrical Power, everything was nominal. O₂ was fine. Conrad Electrical power, we,we, we, did not power down the squib batte…

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wanted to wait on the carrier or if we wanted a chopper pick up. I asked him how far the carrier was away and he went ahead and told us about 75 miles at that time. We told him we telieved we wanted to take the choppers. 7.7 Comfort Cooper Comfort was fine in the spacecraft. F…

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side hatch. We did have our ...we saw that they had the floatation collar around there and the sea was calm and there was no problem getting any water in the spacecraft and we decided we weren't going to go in the water ourselves. We did have our neck dams on but we did not have…

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Conrad Oh, you mean jettison? Gordo jettisoned about 1 second after we touched down. Cooper About 1 second after we landed I hit it and away it went. Conrad It sat right there beside us and floated around for quite a while. Cooper It sat there about 30 yards off to the front a…