Spacelog Apollo 13

Okay. Stand by 1.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5. How's that, Vance?

Okay. That's better.

Vance, how do you read the CMP on VOX?

Jack, read you loud and clear.

Okay. Fine.

We show minus 8-1/2 minutes.

Roger. Houston copies.

Close —

Is that too close, Vance, or can you make out the SPS engine panel now?

We can see your fuel and oxidizer gages and hydrogen/oxygen gages at the top of the picture and the PUGS, but it isn't coming in in focus too well. It's a little dim.

Yes. I think the problem is I'm about 2 feet and it doesn't go down but to 4.

Right. We understand that's the panel right in front of your face.

Okay. Vance, stand by for the main …

Okay. We're minus 7 minutes.

Roger.

Fred, the focus is good enough that we can see the position of your four ball valves at the top of the picture for the big SPS engine.

What would you like to watch, Vance?

Hopefully, you'll see the—or we'll see the two on the left here, set A, go on here directly —

Minus 6 minutes.

MAIN BUS TIES, two, ON, Fred. Okay. SPS HELIUM VALVE, two, AUTO and checked AUTO barber pole. TVC SERVO POWER is 1, AC1/MAIN A; 2, AC2/MAIN B.

AC1/MAIN A, AC2/MAIN B.

MAIN BUS TIES, ON.

Okay. ROTATIONAL POWER NORMAL no. 2, AC.

Number 2, AC.

DIRECT, two, OFF.

DIRECT, two, OFF.

BMAGs, three, ATT 1/RATE 2.

ATT 1/RATE 2.

SPACECRAFT CONTROL, SCS.

SCS.

And arm your hand controller.

RHC armed.

Okay. Let's do a primary TVC check.

Fred, are you ready to start primary?

Okay. Go ahead on primaries.

Okay. PITCH 1, START.

Good.

YAW 1, START.

That one's good.

Thumbwheel control. 0.96 plus 0.96 minus 0.23.

That's affirm. Check MTVC.

MTVC checked. Okay.

Okay.

THC —

… C —

— TRIM returns to NEUTRAL.

Clockwise on the translation controller.

Mine? No MTVC.

No MTVC. Okay.

Starting …

Okay.

Okay.

Go ahead.

PITCH 2, START.

Good.

YAW 2, START.

Okay. Both good.

Good. Good trim control. Minus 0.96, plus 0.96, minus 0.23.

Good.

MTVC. TRANSLATION CONTROL, NEUTRAL. MAX trim up to zero.

Good. No MTVC.

No MTVC.

Okay.

BMAGs MODE, RATE 2.

ROTATIONAL HAND CONTROL POWER, two, NORMAL, AC/DC.

AC/DC.

RATE 2, MAIN A/MAIN B.

B.

Okay. BMAGs, you got three, RATE 2? Okay, we'll proceed for final trim.

MAG's where we are.

Okay. BMAG MODEs, three, ATT 1/RATE 2.

ATT 1/RATE 2.

… ENTER. Okay. We'll do the GIMBAL TEST OPTION.

Okay. PROCEED.

Proceeding.

Plus 2, minus 2, 0, plus 2, 2, 0.

Yes. We can hear and feel the engine gimbal as we do the test.

Roger. Good —

FDAI SCALE —

— … relay cut in and TRIM is set.

FDAI SCALE, 5/5?

5/5.

RATE, HIGH and update the DET.

Time?

Let's check it.

Okay. We're coming up on 3 minutes. I'll give you a Mark.

Fair enough.

MARK.

Three minutes. DET is good.

Okay. We're set.

AS 58, we want DELTA-V THRUST A to NORMAL.

Jim, Houston. You're looking good down here. GO for the burn.

Right, Vance.

Okay. Two minutes. DELTA-V thrust —

DELTA-V THRUST A to NORMAL.

NORMAL.

TRANSLATION HAND CONTROLLER armed. Arm your ROTATIONAL HAND CONTROLLER. I've already got mine armed. Okay, Fred. TAPE RECORDER, HIGH BIT RATE, RECORD, FORWARD, COMMAND RESET. Standing by for 59.

It's running.

Minus 1 minute.

Okay …

AVERAGE G.

EMS mode to NORMAL.

MODE NORMAL.

Standing by for ENTER ENABLE.

ENTER ENABLE.

Two balls.

Okay. Shutdown.

…

Okay. Let's get the residuals. Okay, Houston, there are the residuals.

Okay; gimbal motors.

Okay. Copy residuals.

… secondaries.

Okay. Go.

Okay. YAW 2.

Good.

PITCH 2.

That's good.

Primary.

On LOW BIT RATE. Start. Go with the primaries.

Okay. YAW 1.

That's good.

PITCH 1.

Okay.

TVC SERVO POWER, OFF.

— is OFF. Okay. Record the DELTA-V_C. You got that?

Okay. You got the—You got the DELTA-V_C in minus 3.7.

Okay. FUNCTION, OFF. MODE STANDBY.

Proceeding now.

OFF. MODE, STANDBY —

TRANSLATION HAND CONTROL POWER, OFF.

Okay. POWER OFF.

ROT POWER DIRECT, two, OFF.

Two OFF.

RATE 2.

BMAGs, RATE 2.

I'm already in low bit rate.

Okay.

Yes, we were on those … so that we had less than 0.2.

Okay. Houston copied your residuals, very low.

Okay. Fuel is 1.0; oxidizer 0.25; the OX unbalance is reading on the decrease, which doesn't mean very much, and I guess that wasn't too much for a push there, Vance. I didn't see the accelerometer do a whole lot and it was a little surprising how slowly the injector valves opened, at least on the indicators.

Roger. That was a very short burn. Request you give us a sweep across the panel when you get a chance, Fred. Let us see Jack and Jim again. Over.

Okay.

Okay, Vance, I was going to show you on—wonder if the folks might—down there might be interested in how we find out how far we're away from the Moon. Going to do that right now in program 21 here.

Okay.

I'm asking the computer how far away we are. And the computer is telling me we're 121 490 miles out.

Okay. That agrees fairly closely with our map on the wall.

I'm glad. That means you're tracking us too.

And if you didn't see our residuals, it was 0.1 X, 0.2 on Y, and 0.1 Z, and DELTA-V_C was minus 3.8.

Jack, Houston. We show you down here 121 thousand miles 520 out. So I guess we all agree.

Okay. Real good, Vance. What I'm going to do is give you a shot of Fred.

If we can get all the wiring out of the way.

The big problem here is, when you move the TV around, this wire follows you like a snake here.

Yes, we have Fred now. Looks like he has a lariat there, getting ready to rope the checklist.

That's only half of it. We have most of it hidden away. It's been pretty interesting doing all the camera work here to get a little extra training running the TV here, hopefully for when we get on the ground at Fra Mauro. The monitor does make it pretty easy though.

Right. That's a real advantage in the cockpit. You're just a little bit dark. It looks like it might help to have the f-stop run down about one increment. See how it comes out —

Can't do it, we're wide open.

Are you?

I think we're wide open —

Yes. We're wide open, Vance.

Okay. Does that help any, Vance?

Okay. It's reasonably good. We can make out Fred fairly well. Looks like he's in a shadow. Hey, that helps. You just turned up the lights, huh?

Yes. We went fixed on the —

Okay. You're on candid camera.

We did notice one thing, Vance. You know that new fad with long hair? It won't work too well up here in space.

What was that one again?

I say, you know the new—the new fad with long hair?

Right.

It doesn't work too well up in space, you can't comb your hair up here.

Well, I guess you have to give up something.

Well, at least it—it helps to try. We can see you trying to comb your hair there, Jim. It looks like your—your beards haven't come along to the point where you've had to use the razor though.

Well, we've been debating that. We thought we'd take care of our beards tomorrow and make that one of our daily routines.

I take it that was a subtle hint, Vance.

No, no. We're not commenting on your appearance, Fred. I mean nothing derogatory, understand.

And, Vance, thought we'd get a picture of Jack just so that all the girls know that he's still here.

(Laughter)

…

Yes, we—we appreciate that. There he is. Big Jack.

Jack, you're in the shadow right now; we have a little bit of interference from your window, which is very bright, so we can't—I think you're smiling, but it's a little hard to tell.

…

Hey, there we go. Incidentally, we've been getting all kinds of bits of information to pass up to you. We've had baseball scores coming in, basketball. Somebody said there's 220 days, shopping days left until Christmas.

Yes. Who won the Masters, Vance?

It was a tie in the Masters and stand by. It was a tie between Littler and Casper after 72 holes, and there is going to be a playoff Monday, we understand.

Oh. Sounds good.

One thing the world might be interested in knowing is what you do after the burn in the way of configuring switches back. We—We heard you go through the checklist. But, I guess right now, basically, you probably have all the switches back in position and you're in the mode to continue on with—Okay. What does the flight plans say? You're going to be doing cislunar navigation. So, Jack you're going to be down in the LEB. Is that correct?

That's right, Vance. Be going down there shortly.

Okay. The TV now is all but black. Looks like it must be pointing into a shadow.

What he's doing, he's trying to give you one more shot of the Moon, and right now I'm setting to maneuver pad and the optics calibration attitude.

Roger.

And what I wanted to point out, I don't know if it's apparent, but … to show the advantage of doing all the dumps just before the burn, we're looking again at the same scene over quad 1 at the Moon. And now you don't see all the sparkly frozen particles outside there any more. We've sort of run off and left them.

Roger. We—We don't see anything out there anymore in the way of particles leaving the spacecraft. We'd suggest, maybe you zoom the Moon in a little bit again so we can see the shape of it better.

Okay. That brings the Moon in. We can see the terminator at the top of the melon-shaped disk.

Okay. Now you can see a few of the spark—sparkling particles going across the screen. Those are being emitted from the thrusters. Jack's maneuvering the spacecraft now.

Okay. We can see those very poorly. Well, actually, they are coming in better now. It looks like little specks going from the upper left part of the screen across to the right, and understand those are from the thrusters.

That's affirm.