Spacelog Apollo 13

And, Jack, you still up?

Still here, Fred.

Okay, when I was upstairs, just a minute ago, I noticed what appeared to be some new venting from down the service module way. I noticed that out window 1, and also saw one chunk of metal—loose metal about 4 inches square that was tumbling around—silver in color, and it, looked like it had come from somewhere down in the service module.

Okay. You saw some venting out window 1 —

And I -

Go ahead.

Yes, that's where I happened to be looking. The lighting was such that it showed up out there. What reminded me of it was I'm looking out the LM window now and I sea a good part of the new star field it's created for us. There are about a thousand little sparklies out here.

Okay, so you're seeing some venting out window 1, and you saw a 4-inch-square piece of loose metal which was silver, and—Are you still seeing the venting or has it zeroed out now?

I don't know. I left upstairs, I'm down in the LM now, Jack. I guess when Jack goes up he can take a look and let me know. Okay, I'll think about switching aft here directly. I see the Moon, and the Moon looks pretty good, Jack, so I guess our PTC still doing pretty good.

Okay, and we won't have any COMM delay if the PTC stays good.

Yes, sure enough the Moon is getting smaller.

Good, and we want to ask you another question about the venting. Is this—would you suppose—some new venting or is this venting that you just hadn't—that's been going on all the time, but which you hadn't looked at recently?

I can't really say, Jack, we've been so tied up down in the LM, I guess we kind of forgot about the other half. But I've been upstairs several times and hadn't particularly noticed any flow by the windows before, so I—my first assumption was that it was some new venting. It really wasn't very heavy.

Okay. Copy. Thank you.

And Jack's going up to take a look now.

Okay. And for your information, all of our numbers are based on amperage usage of 14 amps. And we're using only 12.3, so we're a little fat on our analysis.

Very good. Way to be.

And we're in a —

I'll tell you, this Aquarius has really been a winner.

Well, that's one of several. And we want to tell you something that I told Jim earlier, and that concerns control. Right now you have control in hardover if you need it, but when we go to some normal control modes, since we have the quad heaters off. We want to have a 15-minute notice for attitude control request. Over.

Okay, Jack. Offhand, I can't imagine that since we got the platform powered down why we'd need to worry about the instantaneous control. But at any rate, we need 15-minutes warmup with the heaters before we can start using thrusters.

Right. And another thing we've done is to pull your ECS and EPC DISPLAY breakers and so—But we left your CAUTION and WARNING powered up. So if you get ECS-type or EPS CAUTION and WARNING you'll have to power up those meters with the DISPLAY breakers. And we are watching for you your PIPA temperatures, your ASA TEMP, your propellant temperatures except for the DPS propellant, and we're watching your quad temps for you.

Okay. That's very good, Jack. You're watching them. That's good enough.

And everybody's fine at home El Lago.

Great.

And, Fred, your CO₂ is building up. It's at 11 on our gage, and we've got a medical buildup to 15 millimeters, at which time we'll switch over to secondary. Looks like we've got plenty of lithium hydroxide, about 192 hours including the CSM cartridges. And as you know, we've got a way to use those. And as soon as we get them written in some good words, why, we'll pass; that along. You might be able to make one.

Okay. Yes, we'll sure give her a try. And I'm showing onboard about 12-1/2 millimeters of mercury.

Roger. And I have a flight plan update when you get a time to copy it sometime, I'll pass it along. There's no hurry on it.

Okay. Stand by 1. Jack's back now.

Okay. Jack just came hack and he said it's still coming out; it's only coming out on the commander's side. So he saw it out the same window I did, window 1. And it's between the minus Y and minus Z axis.

Okay. And of course —

Jack says it's definitely the service module which was—which was my impression, too.

Okay. So you're sure it's the service module, and, of course, the thing we're interested in knowing, is it something that is residual from before, or is it something new. And if you have any ideas about that, why we'd sure like to have them them.

Yes. Yes, Jack, I'll answer him your question in a minute, but make Jack's first impression here, is that it's not near the intensity that it was right after our mishap. And I'll have to agree with that. I'd say—he said it was a half and I said it was maybe down to a third. And Houston would like to know if you have any impressions as to whether it is still a residual from that or maybe something new.

I don't know why after I felt that. Yes, I felt it was some new something—new venting, too.

Okay. Switch to FORWARD OMNI.

Fred-o, if you think it's practical, we're ready to give you some—we're working on some camera settings for pictures of the venting. And, if you have a camera out and ready to go, let us know which one it is so we can get the settings for that camera. What do you think about that?

Okay. Jack's got the one with the 250-millimeter lens on it. That's the standard EL. And I have a surface camera out that I've been shooting hundreds of Earth/Moon pictures with, camera 1. And we also have the Reseau upstairs that's pretty handy. The command module DC camera. So you can about —

Okay. I copy that —

— take your choice, because —

I copy the 250 millimeter, the Reseau is available, but I didn't get what other one is.

Okay. I got my Hasselblad surface camera down in the LM here handy, too, camera 1.

And, Jack, if we're going to do any picture taking out the command module windows, I think we'd better do that pretty quick, or hold up until Jim and Jack get their rest done.

We concur with that.

Okay, Fred, we're not going to bother the skipper up there. We won't be taking any pictures out of the command module window until after rest period.

Shifting to FORWARD OMNI.

Okay. Fred, for your information, your CO₂ reading onboard is a little higher than what we're reading here on the ground, and so when it gets to 15 on your meter, switch to secondary. And we'd like to get a status about every 30 minutes—we'll give you a call on that. But just to let us know we're still thinking about you, we'd like you to go BIOMED RIGHT, please.

We're still here, Fred. How's it going?

Okay. My CO₂ reading is now just below 13.

Say again what it is.

It's just—just below 13.

Okay. Just below 13. And just for your information, we've got people working on several subjects. We're working on the midcourse coming up to determine our control system and how to do it with the control system we select, what we should do about the alinement. We've got the LMS and a couple of crews cranked up working on that. And we're also working on our entry, how and when we ought to activate the CSM. And we're working on the CSM systems status. Tomorrow sometime we're going to have a MAIN BUS B checkout, so we've got a lot of people swinging pretty hard here and I've got some f-stop settings for you for the lunar-surface camera. At 1/250th, we'd like you to take targets of opportunity. Each picture use three f-stops, because we don't know exactly which one is going to work the best, so use 4, 5.6, and 8 and 1/250th for the surface camera. Copy?

Okay. Use the surface camera at 1/250th, 4, 5.6, and 8. And I've been doing quite a bit of shooting at covering two of those numbers in the range 5.6, and 8. I've also been shooting some at 11, so I'll just drop it down a little more. The Moon is still so big and bright there that I got a feeling that the Moon is probably up around the f/8 to f/11 range.

Roger, I didn't catch that last part. Maybe when the COMM gets a little better you can say it again.

Okay. How do you read now, Jack?

That's a lot better, Fred.

Okay, I just said the Moon is still so bright, that I think probably the higher range of f-stops will be better; f/8, maybe even f/11.

Okay.

I can just barely, on the left corner of the Moon now, make out the foothills of Fra Mauro formation. We never did get to see it when we were in close, there.

Okay. I'm reading on my monitor here, Fred, that you're 16214 miles away from the Moon moving at about 4500 feet per second.

Okay.

From the sounds of all the work that is going on and is still going on, this flight is probably a lot bigger test for the system on the ground than up here.

Yes, you've been—you've been working it out a little bit.

Yes. I've really got a tough job right now switching OMNIs.

Well, everybody down here is 100-percent optimistic. Looks like we're on the up side of the whole thing now.

Yes, I guess we had better be in good shape, particularly ourselves, rested for that entry day. I think that is going to be a pretty busy one.

Right, and we're working on procedures for that. Ken's been doing quite a bit of work on getting ready for entry.

How's it going, Fred?

Okay. Just fine.

Okay. We're considering a midcourse correction at 104 hours—about 20 hours from now—18 hours from now, and it's only 7 feet per second. The other option is to keep PTC up, since we may not be able to get back into it again, and delay it. So, that's the type of thing we're thinking about, but—just wanted to let you know that you're pretty much right in the middle of the fairway there and our present tracking, with no midcourse, has you—with a Gamma of 7.11, as opposed to 6.51. So, you're already in the corridor. You're just a half a degree between the center and the outer limits and we're going to tweek that up.

Okay. That sounds good.

And—we don't—Well, we think there might have been a misunderstanding earlier on the potable water. Don't worry about drinking water. Drink all you want. There's plenty of it. There's 38 pounds, and the Surgeon recommends that you use some of the fruit juices as well. Over.

Okay. Yes, we went up and—and used the procedure to pressurize surge tank, and Jack and I made up a total of 22 drinks of—drinking water.

Okay.

And I assume that Jack is up there sleeping now too, right?

Yes. That's affirm. They're both up there.

I hate to say it, Jack, but I think our PTC is about to wobble off a little bit. I've noticed that the Earth is coming by somewhat lower in the window and the Moon is going by somewhat higher.

Okay. Understand. PTC, Earth is coming by lower and Moon is coming by higher.

Yes.

And, Fred, on this jerry-rigged command module lithium hydroxide canister, what we're going to do is we're going to have to make at least two up and use two at a time—one on each set of hoses. What we'll do is we'll connect one of these jerry-rigged boxes to the red fittings and air will be sucked through the lithium hydroxide and then blown out the blue fitting. And we're also going to, when we do this, remove the LM lithium hydroxide canister from the suit loop, either the primary or the secondary, and we're getting the words together to make it easy to build one of these things, and it looks like it will probably take two guys, so, I think we probably ought to plan to do that later. In addition, we have to go up and get a couple of canisters out of the command module, so it looks like maybe a smart idea would be to delay a little bit and have you build a couple of these later on. What do you think?

Yes. I agree, Jack. Jack Swigert and I went upstairs earlier and both got a canister, and we were scratching around for some material and thinking about using them, and that's actually why—when we made up all the water to drink because we needed the plastic container that they were housed in in the pantry, and we had that ready to use with some material plus some of the—the extra porous bags that were going to be used for the dump control that we may just cut up and use, too.

Did you come up with a design or —

Plus we got lots —

No. We just thought we'd see what we had in the way of material and stand by for your word. Of course, we also have lots of stiff-backed cardboard flight data.

Yes. We have decided to use a canister and, you know that the liquid-cooled garment has a bag around it that we think we can use, too, or that we know we can use. We've tried it. So what you have is the—a bag within a bag and inside that is the liquid-cooled garment. The bag that is closest to the liquid-cooled garment is the one we need, and we've got two of them. And then, of course, we've got to use some tape and, as you say, one of the backs to flight data file time line book or something like that, and, just using those materials, we can make this jerry-rigged canister. So, the bag that we're looking for is the one that is right next to the liquid-cooled garment, and, if we're very careful about where we cut it, we can make a pretty good rig.

Okay.

It looks like we'll have to use that bag over again, though, because we only got two of them, and I expect that we'll have to make more than two of these canisters up.

Roger.

Fred, in about 4 minutes, we're going to hand you over to a different communications site, and it's going to take us about a minute or so to reestablish uplink, so you can be prepared for that.

Fred-o, we've handed over now. How do you read?

Loud and clear, Jack.

Same here.

In fact, you're coming in a little louder.

Fred, you'll have to say again. Can't read you there. There's too much background noise. Maybe we need a new antenna.