Spacelog Apollo 13

Okay, sounds good. We'll get the TV started right away.

Roger.

13, Houston. We'd like to disable quads C and D; use Alfa and Bravo. Over.

Okay —

— Disable quads C and D. Roger.

Okay, 13. We've got Fred-o on TV.

Roger, Houston. What we plan to do for you today is start out in the space shipper [sic] Odyssey, and take you on through from Odyssey in through the tunnel into Aquarius. And show you a little bit of the landing vehicle, and your TV operator is now resting on the center couch, looking at Fred Haise, whose head is now just about at the beginning of the tunnel, and his back is against the lower-equipment-bay optical area. And Fred will now transport himself into the tunnel, and into the spaceship Aquarius.

You know one thing I noted, Jack, when I first came across here, that starting upright in the command module and heading down in Aquarius, there's a little bit of an orientation change that, even though I'd been through it once in the water tank, it still pretty unusual. I find myself, now, standing with my head on the floor when I get down inside the LM.

That's a great picture, Jim. You got the light just right.

The second backpack is mounted down on the LM floor, I hope, positioned right between the two of us. I have my hand on it at this time.

Roger, Fred. We see it. The picture's coming through real good, and your description is good. We see Jim's got the camera oriented the way we like to look at it. So, keep talking.

Okay. I guess everybody has pretty much envisioned the space program as being all a lot of exotic electronics, and, certainly, a lot of it is. But I thought I'd bring out a couple of items here in conjunction with the PLSS. After the first EVA, you get a very accurate measurement of the amount of water that's left in the PLSSs. We're going to make use of this bag I'm showing now to collect the remaining water out of the PLSS and see just how much we really did have left, and hopefully, on future missions, to be able to extend safely the allowable time on these units even a little further. And, my other hand, I have the mechanism by which we determine just how much water we really have in this bag. And I guess this—an apt description for this device would be a fish scale. And you can see I'm weighing myself right now, and it says I weigh actually less than zero right now. Guess its calibration isn't too good.

That'll be the day.

I think even you'd weigh zero here, Jack.

Touché.

Houston, this is Jim. Since Fred's been in the lunar module, and since he's the lunar module pilot, this is the first time that he's felt that he's been right-side up.

Roger, Jim.

I might tell you that we're looking at right now, that round bag that's just behind Fred holds our vacuum hose; and when we get back inside the LM we'll hook the vacuum off our suits, and it's resting or it's attached to the hatch which will—we will open to go on to the lunar surface, and, of course, to come back in. The hatch which we have come to now is a round hatch, which is our docking hatch between the—between Odyssey and Aquarius.

Roger, and we see Fred looking in the vacuum cleaner there now.

Okay, what I have out now, Jack, is LEVVA, which has also been shown before. It's a head garment for wearing out on the surface, and I—I'm bringing Jim's out here to show a couple of MODs. One problem before is that the cast of characters down on the surface haven't been able to be distinguished apart very well. So, not only Jim's suit has some red stripes on it, but as you can see his LEVVA also has a—a red stripe. And now you can see one other MOD here too, Jack, which I hadn't really seen myself before. I guess on 12, Pete and A1 had commented about the—commented about having trouble with sunlight in the eyes, so on our LEVVAs they put on a new center section which you can pull down and use sort of like a baseball cap.

Okay, Jack. Who fixed up our LEVVAs?

How's the detail on this one, Jack?

Say again, Fred.

Can you see any detail in this picture now, or am I blocking out too much of the sunlight?

Jack, you've been looking at the—at Fred's workshop now, and you can see the abort guidance computer. And over there on the—tucked away in his armrest, is our activation checklist, which we'll be using very shortly. Up on the top of the window, we have our camera already mounted ready for photographing the descent. And now Fred's engaged in his favorite pastime, I found out on this flight so far.

He's not in the food locker, is he?

That's his second favorite pastime. He's rigging his hammock for sleep on the lunar surface now to find out—to see what it's going to be like.

Roger. Sleeping and then eating.

It's kind of difficult here, Jack, getting into a hammock in zero g. I'm not sure if I keep floating away from it or it keeps moving away from me.

If you notice a few things floating around, we found just about one or two washers occasionally.

And for the benefit of those that may wonder where Jim sleeps. Be a little difficult to rig his hammock in here right now with the hatch open, but his runs laterally in this direction, fore aft. So he has the upper berth and I get the lower berth.

And now while Fred's taking his hammock down and restowing it, I might give you some idea of what sort of confusion of attitudes since there is no up or down, and I'm situated on top of the ascent engine just at the entrance to the tunnel. I'll reverse the camera 180 degrees and go from Fred, look through the tunnel again back at Odyssey, and we might pick up part of Jack.

There he is. We see him.

Okay, Houston. For the benefit of the television viewers, we've just about completed our little inspection of Aquarius, and now we're proceeding through the hatchy-gap into the tunnel and going back toward the Odyssey.

Okay, Jim. It's been a great show so far.

And finally, Jack's let me back into the Odyssey as we slide on through the tunnel here

Houston, 13. Are you still on TV?

Yes, we sure are. We've got a good picture of the skipper there.

Okay. What we can show you now, a little added benefit, we've got the drogue on Fred's couch in the command module right now. We stowed it temporarily while we're checking out the—out Aquarius and underneath his couch, we've got the probes stowed. Quite a big cumbersome device, and we'll get a shot of it for you.

You're looking now at our probe, the place on the nose of Odyssey. It's a very heavy thing but I suppose in zero gravity it weighs nothing, and it's much easier to move around. As a matter of fact, both Fred and Jack commented, as many people in the past have, of how much bigger the spacecraft appears in actual flight when you have such ease in moving compared to our simulator which make training rather difficult.

Okay. We're seeing a good picture of the probe there, Jim, and looks like the characters shaved before the show this time.

Well, Fred said he had to keep up his TV image.

Yes. That may be my first and last time though, Jack.

It took Fred 1 hour to shave.

We might give you a quick—a quick shot of our entertainment on board the spacecraft, which has been keeping us company for some time.

(Music—Willow Weep For Me)

This little tape recorder has been a big benefit—has been a big benefit to us in passing some of our time away on our transit to the Moon, and it's rather odd to see it floating like this in Odyssey while it's playing the theme from “2001.” And, of course, the tapes wouldn't be complete without “Aquarius.”

Okay, Jim. We're seeing the tape recorder now, and just—by the way, how long do you expect to keep the TV on this evening?

Well, when we—Stand by 1.

Yes, I got them with the cabin repress valve again there, Jack.

Every time he does that our hearts—our hearts jump in our mouth. And, Jack, any time you want to terminate TV, we're all set to go.

Okay, Jim. It's been a real good TV show. We think we ought to conclude it from here now. What do you think?

Roger. Sounds good. And this is the crew of Apollo 13 wishing everybody there a nice evening, and we're just about ready to close out our inspection of Aquarius and get back for a pleasant evening in Odyssey. Good night.

Apollo 13, Houston. The next thing we'd like you to do is to -

Go ahead.

— we'd like you to roll right to 060 and null your rates for photography of the Comet Bennett. To do that, we would like you to enable quads C and D. For the maneuver, use all your quads. And in precisely 1 minute, we'd like you to terminate the battery charge on battery B. One other request, we'd like to have you verify —

Okay. Will do.

One other request, we'd like you to verify your high gain configuration. We'd like to know what track mode, what SERVO, and what beam width.

Okay, Jack, during the TV, we were AUTO TRACK, NARROW BEAM WIDTH, and the PRIMARY ELECTRONICS. And we had a good lockup. Just after we started the maneuver, I was able to lock you up and get real good signal strength, and it just seemed that right there at about 239 degrees in yaw, that the signal strength would just drop off and yaw would go to zero and pitch would go to 90.

Roger. We copy, and the TV show was great.

Okay, real fine. Okay, I'm going to maneuver to 060, 090, and 0.

And, 13, we'd like you to check C-4 thruster.

Okay, Jack. The battery charge has been terminated on the battery B.

Roger. We see it, Jack. And we got a reading of minus 2 degrees on the docking index. We'd like to know it that's 2.0 precise or if it's 2.1 or 1.9.

No. It's a minus 2.0 precisely.

Thank you.

13, we've got one more item for you, when you get a chance. We'd like you to stir up your cryo tanks. In addition, I have shaft and trunnion —

— for looking at the Comet Bennett, if you need it.