OCHWEIC KART CONFIDENTIAL 410 PRELIMINARY 7-4 FLIGHT GREW DEERIEFING TRANSCRIPT PART I Prepared By Spacecraft Operations Branch Flight Crew Support Division June 16, 1965 This material contains information affecting the national defense of the United States within the meaning of the Espionage Laws, Title 18. U.S. ¢ Section 793 and 794, the transmission or revela- tion of which in any manner to an unauthorized person is prohibited by law. Group 4: Downgrade at 3 year intervals Declassified after 12 years CONFIDENTIALCONFIDENTIAL PREFACE ‘This preliminary transcript was made from voice tape recordings of the Gl-4 flight crew debriefing conducted aboard the recovery ship, ‘the USS Wasp, on June 9, 1965. Although all the material contained in thie transcript has been edited, the ungent need for the preliminary transcript by mission analysis personnel precluded @ thorough editorial review prior to its publication, Errore in this transcript will be corrected as soon as possible and an official transcript will be published at a later date. This document contains @ transcript of the first part of the debriefing, during which the orew described the mission generally from an operational viewpoint. A preliminary transcript of the re- mainder of the debriefing will be published by June 23, 1965. It will cover systems operations, operational checks, visual sightings, experiments, pre-mission planning, mission control, and training. CONFIDENTIAL2.0 3.0 4.0 CONFIDENTIAL TABLE OF CONTENTS COUNTDOWN 1,1 Crew Insertion... dg 1.2 CommunicationS....+ssseeeeeeeeeeee 1,3 Crew Participation and Countdo: 1.4 Comfort... ee 1.5 Environmental Control system 1.6 Sounds . eee 1.7 Vibrations . a 4.8 Visual... bo bocce 1.9 Crew Station Controls and Displays . POWERED FLIGHT 1 Lift-Off Cues ...... 2 Roll Program ..... 3 Pitch Program .. 4 kerodynamics .......+ 5 Environmental Control system ... 6 Maximum g 7 8 9 x 1 1 Windshear |. DS Update. Engine 1 Operation si...s 0 Engine 2 Status s.essseceeee 1 Acceleration g's. 2 BECO... . 2.13 Staging ........ 2.14 Engine 2 Ignition 2.15 RCS Initiate 2.16 GO/NO GO .... 2.17 Systems Status . 2.18 Acceleration 2.19 SECO... 2,20 Steering ... INSERTION 3.1 Post-SHOO ....seeeee 3.2 SHO + 20 Seconds .. 3.3 Insertion Activities ORBITAL FLIGHT 4.1 Station-Keeping . 4.2 Extravehicular Activities CONFIDENTIALCONFIDENTIAL Other Orbital Operations ..... Preretro Preparations . ROFIRE 1,36 Bvente . R22 Events . het 13 Events . 2 Bvents | a Bente . REtropack Jettison . Communications ... ENTRY Reentry Parameter Update . +282 4oo K . eee 5 +282 0.4 & seer wee 284 +290 +296 +296 Acceleration Profile Spacecraft Control .. 100 000 Feet .seseeee 50 000 Feet .... +299 Main Chute Deployment . +4302 Communications ... 122303, Single-Point Release .. ” +305, Postmain Checklist Items . Bpcoooteet Impact .. Checklists ... Communications . Systems Configuration . Spacecraft Status . Post-landing Activities . Comfort .eeeeeeeer eee Recovery Force Personnel . a3 Egress .- Gs0nos0q904 Survival Gear eee fee oe Crew Pickup ees +328 CONFIDENTIALMeDivitt White CONFIDENTIAL 1.0 COUNTDOWN ‘he only problem during insertion was that T fogged up again in my suit before we got the fans on, I think I'm just going to always fog up that suit of mine. We turned the fans on quick, pat with the visors closed it doesn't go out. We aid have a problem with crew insertion on the Wet Mock and I think we had that probably pretty well taken care of, ‘They put us on the suit loops and didn't tum the fans on. Normally you wait for a clearance from the Spacecraft Test Conductor before you throw any switches. Well, after we almost "died" of carbon dioxide poison- ing during this teat, we got this matter clarified. As soon as we got in the spacecraft and one of us was on-the suit loop, we would go ahead and cut the ewitches on to put us om two fans. We did this during insertion in the Wet Mock. It really went well. We really went for @ long time in Wet Mock. I was beginning to wonder if I was going to have to open my visor, I was really unconfortable. CONFIDENTIALMeDivitt White MeDivitt 1.2 Cor MeDivitt White MoDivitt CONFIDENTIAL But everything worked out ckay on this one. The timing was excellent, I thought. I didn't think we had any problem at all. No, TI don't believe they missed a stroke on the insertion. I think the commmications were pretty well worked out, Jin? Right. One thing, the last three minutes or four minutes, we got a little confused about who wae talking to who, I was getting the Spacecraft et Conductor, the Booster Test Conductor and the CAP COM at the same tine. We got a split count, too, on liftoff. The first three or four minutes I was hearing the Booster Tast Conductor, I heard what was going on on his loop, and I was listening to him get checks in from all of guys. I really wasn't getting a clue as to what was going on. I was supposed to be getting the booster clues from the test conductor. I was supposed to find out when ‘the engines were going to gimbal and when they CONFIDENTIALWrite MoDivitt CONFIDENTIAL were going to open the prevalves and stuff. T wasn't getting it from him. We were getting @ lot of other information that made a lot of sense to the Booster Test Conductor, but not an awful lot to us. There were call-outs like!Gequence 05003 complete.” Well, this just didn't mean any- thing to us. On top of this we had the Spacecraft eat Conductor calling out the times, and super- imposed on all of this was Al Shephard, the Cape AP COM, calling out events that he was reading off that went on at certain specified times. He called out}Stage 1 prevalvesiand we could hear the fuol gushing dometaire and the vnole booster rumbling. He called out!/Stage 2 prevalvestand you could hear the sane thing all over again. T thought that was a lot more meaningful than the test conductor comments. I think that was wrong, the way they were doing it. I think we weren't supposed to be on any loop except CAP COM at that time. Well, I think what happened was that we got this thing over-coordinated. Al was going to give us all this information, out then as a result of GT-3, (Gus and John said they didn't get enough CONFIDENTIALWhite MoDivitt CONFIDENTIAL information about the boosters) they put this in- We formation on the test conductor's loop too. had too many guys talking. I think if just cal COM talked from three minutes on down we would ve all right. This is the way I thought it was going to happen, and then from three minutes on down it really got ‘usy with the yak, yak, yak of everybody talkil Bt I don't kmow whether we got off the Booster Conductor's loop or not, but at final countdom, Al gave me 2 minutes, 1 1/2, 1, 30, 20, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5) 4, 3) 2, 1. I got a similar count from the Spacecraft Test, Conductor but it tumed out that they were a second out of sequence on the countdowm and Al wes giving me 10 and our Spacecraft Test Conductor was giving me 9. So it” went ten-nine, nine-eight, eight-seven. They were at the same time, All I knew was that we wore getting close to engine ignition ani then it started. So, we got @ little over-conmunicated there. I think they kept us adequately informed on the hold. Asa matter of fact, I'd say we got over-inforned there at the end. We had too many guys keeping us informed and I think the pendulun CONFIDENTIALWhite MeDivitt White MeDivitt CONFIDENTIAL 5 swung from the GT-3 flight where nobody got in- formed of anything over to our flight where we got informed by three different people about the same event. On our flight, too, we were really more avare of the problem than those people were. We could sit right here and see the gantry come down and stop, that was really the only problem they had in the whole count. I don't think radio discipline is a problem. Hach guy was disciplined on his own channel, They were conducting their tests on their own channel. But we were listening to three different comminica- tors at the same time, We should have had only one. I think probably what we will need to do is to get to about 1-3, and then just cut in the CAP COM. ‘That was the way it was planned to be, I thought. ‘That's the way Al planned it. ‘That's correct. I think, because there had been some lack of information on GT-3, that it some~ how had been written into the SEDR so that we were also on the Booster Test Conductor's MOPS, eo that we were aleo getting his countdom. 1 CONFIDENTIALWhite MeDivitt CONFIDENTIAL think CAP COM, alone, would have been sufficient. One further comment, I had to turn my IEF volune all the way up to hear anybody. I was at max. ‘There we wore sitting right on the pad, talking to a guy two miles away, and there I was with the volume full up, It didn't give me much confi- dence as to reception I was going to got when I was 200 miles away, or three or four or five hundred miles avay. I thought that the volume control on the radio was inadequate. We were wondering what we were going to have when we got up a hundred miles. That's right. At max volume we didn't have enough and at minimum volume it didn't shut it off. We will cover this later. 1.3 Grew Participation and Countdown MoDivitt White I think it wes just about right. I don't think we were over worked and I think we had enough to do to keep us busy. Actually, a1] we reelly made was a check of switches. There wasn't really too much else. Having the back-up crew run that midcount was the the right solution. I wouldn't have wanted to participate in anymore of the countdown than I CONFIDENTIALMeDivitt 1.4 Comfort White CONFIDENTIAL i aia. ‘That's an excellent point. The flight crew's participation should be the final count, not the midcount and precount, It doesn't tire the prime crew out doing e lot of chores that they don't really have todo, I think this is a good pro- cedure. Initially, the firet 20 or 30 minutes, T was equizming around and I felt a little uncomfor— table. But after I had been in for 30 or 40 minutes I didn't fecl there was a real restric- tion on staying for several more hours. I would have been very disappointed if they had eaid, "Well you have been in there long enough and we will work on this gantry and try it again tomor- row." I would have been happy to stay there several more hours while they fixed the gantry instead of pulling me out. After an hour and 40 minutes,which is the end of the normal countdown,I didn't feel uncomfortable. We sat in the simulator and were a lot more un- comfortable than this. TI didn't feel uncomfor- table. I had a chance to take a couple of little CONFIDENTIALMoDivitt White MoDivitt Waite CONFIDENTIAL naps. I noticed Jim was napping too. Yes. I concur with Bi, although I don't want to get carried overboard. We shouldn't scrub due to crew fatigue, I think it is up to the crew. If the crew is un- comfortable they should come down. But I don't ‘think he should say, "Okay, two hours and 30 minutes, You cut thie off.", because it is an operational procedure. When I first got assigned to the crew I always felt one of the toughest things to do would ve laying back for en hour and 40 minutes or so prior to launch, The time we spent in the sim- lator laying on our back, I thought to be a very uncomfortable position, As we went through all the training and testing at McDonald, and again at the Cape, amy back got more callouses on it. I got used to laying with my feet over my head. At launch time T wasn't a bit tired from laying on my back. Thie is brought out in one of our lest simulations, where we ran the whole four hour simulation and wo forgot to have them tilt us up to 30 degrees. We just got used to running that vay. CONFIDENTIALMeDivitt White CONFIDENTIAL 9 ‘That's right, I just don't think we should scrub the flight because of fatigue.I don't think we should do that, We weren't approaching this point. We had a long way to go. 1.5 Environmental Control System MeDivitt nite MoDivitt I think we ought to get this water management panel squared away and everybody figure out what we are supposed to do with those switches. 1 don't think we should be arguing about where the switches are supposed to be on the launch pad. If T hadn't asked somebody where the waste manage- nent switches should be we would have probably lamched with it in HVAPORATOR, I kmew that it wasn't supposed to be in the evaporator. At one of the ten thousand briefings we got on it, we were told it shouldn't be there. We ought to get * this kind of stuff squared away before launch day. Thirty minutes before lift-off we were arguing about where that switch vas supposed to be. I wasn't confident that they knew where they wanted that switch to be. Well, I didn't think we should have it in the eva- porator. So, I think that water panel could have cost as much as a weeks slip on our launch because CONFIDENTIALNoDivitt CONFIDENTIAL they didn't know where to put those valves and to be 's only got three valves on it. It o made much simplier than it is. I think they should get th ¢ squared away before the next flight. a and I knew where we wanted it, We wanted it off and the other two switches in NORMAL and leave it alone. That's what we flew with, That's the way it ought to be fixed. We can get canned, though, for not flying with it in the right position by the checklist. It didn't say that on the checklist Every check list we got was different. That's right! Bach one was different. Finally we decided we were going to do it ae we did and left it through out the whole flight. Hvery- thing worked fine, We had HOS briefings by a multitude of peoples from MAC including the gays who 4 Bveryone of them dis- agreed. Tt probably started out to be one of the simplest things in the whole spacecraft, By the tine they got through confusing us with it, T got the feeling nobody knew what vas supposed to happen to it, T consider this the most danger ous of all. CONFIDENTIAL1.6 White MoDivitt MeDivitt Sounds MoDivitt CONFIDENTIAL nu T was convinced of that, too, after the mix-up in putting all the water in the lithium hydroxide tanke. There would have been about a 30 minute four-day mission. ‘The people that built the thing don't know how it is supposed to go. They had better decide this and let us Imow. I felt that George Roe at the Cape knew what was going on except the Cape personnel got the valves in the wrong position and almost lost e lithium hydroxide canister full of water with no water in the tanks. I'm not pointing a finger at George Roe + I think he's pretty Imovledgeable about the system. Maybe somebody just wasn't following directions. But somebody ought to find out about the water management systen and make it clear to everybody how it is supposed to be operated. You can hear the prevalves both first and second stages. The prevalves and the fluid gushing are very loud noises comparable to the engine gim- baling. T vasn't really evere that they were going to be that loud. CONFIDENTIAL12 White MoDivitt White McDivitt CONFIDENTIAL I got thet feeling when I read Gue and John's debriefing. Did you? I didn't. I got the impression that it was going to be a much quieter noise. Well, the whole noise level of the engine gimbal- ing was louder than I thought it was going to ve. It surprised me. Yes. Engine gimbaling was mich louder than I heard before. We heard this during Wet Mock and during precount and at midcount. You can hear those engines gimbal around; they really shake the spacecraft. But, I really wasn't prepared for the big noise that the prevalves make, and such a long noise as that fuel gushed down to the bottom. I guess that was what it wae. I didn't like the sounde and vibrations we got when they raised and lowered the gantry. Tt shook the whole spacecraft. It shook the whole spacecraft--did you notice how it never came up straight? The spacecraft was supposed to line up kind of like this and then wham! I had visions of them mocking us off and laying us flat on the ground before we were launched. CONFIDENTIAL-7 Vibrations White MeDivitt White 1.8 Visual White MoDivitt White MeDivitt CONFIDENTIAL n the sounds. Those are closely associated wi Yes. I think that the agine gimbaling makes a ‘tremendous vibration in the spacecraft and pre~ valves on opening and make a tremendous vibration. The gantry going back and forth vibrated the spacecraft. I don't think there is anything else, do you? No. Well, you can sure see the gantry lower and the white room disappear. That is ebout ell you can see besides the sky. That's pretty impreseive, That's when I sort of got excited, when the gantry went down, That's a new realm. T thought they were going to launch me, You're sitting there by yourself then, instead of all those people milling around. I do want to make one other comment on this visual thing. We did Wet Mock about one or two o'clock in the afternoon. The oun ves shining right in the window, almost straight dow, such that the sun came across my visor from about just at the CONFIDENTIAL4 Waite MoDivit White MeDivit Waite MeDivitt Waite MeDivit CONFIDENTIAL bridge of my nose on down. I had a tremendous amount of reflection inside the helmet, and I had a great amount of difficulty seeing the instru- ment panel, As a matter of fact, I'm not sure I could have seen the instrument panel at all. ‘hose first few seconds there are extremely cri- tical on launch, You have to be able to see those tenk pressure gages. We ought to keep this in mind for those late afternoon launches. That is a problem, but the ¢ loads are so small at this time you could almost forget abrut look- ing up. Did I fly like this for awhile during launch? I don't think so but you could have, The g load is 80 small. I'm not sure whether I did or not. "his is what we had to do during Wet Mock. We had to put our hand up and cover the window to look down at our instruments to see them. I'm not sure I didn't launch that way. I wouldn't be surprised if you did. don't think I leunched thet way, but as we tilted over and we got in the sun, I think T put my hand up for awhile, CONFIDENTIALWhite COMFIDENTIAL » Well, if the g's are so low the When sun gets in your face you can't see the in- strument panels because they are just too dark. The sun gets in your eyes. The point that Jim was making is towards a lete-in-the-day launch, which we might have later in the program, there might be a bit of a problem of seeing the instru- ments during launch. Unlese they put something up, which T really don't think you vant to do You are just going to have to put your arms up and shield the sun out and concentrate on your in- struments or you won't see thes. They are just gone. There is probably a point even in an early morn- ing trajectory as you start to pitch over where the sun will come right in your window end you won't be able to see your instruments unless you shield your eyes, 1.9 Grew Station Controls and Display White MoDivitt I found the switches all where they were supposed to be and the cockpit all set up. So aia I, except the comment I made on the water nanagenent system, They didn't have the control where it was supposed to be, At least, they had CONFIDENTIALWhite CONFIDENTIAL it in the place where everybody wes arguing about whether or not it should be. I certainly appreciated the work the backup crew did getting the cockpit all set up for us. Bvery- thing was ready to go when we stepped in. That's the way it should be, CONFIDENTIALMeDivitt White MeDivitt White MeDivitt White White MeDivitt CONFIDENTIAL M 2.0 POWER FLIGHT CAP COM gave 1ift off, about as good @ cue as you can get. Wasn't any question either, Boy, you could feel the first little motions of the booster as it went up. Tt was really great! T think you could feel the acceleration at re- lease. ‘There wasn't a doubt in my mind thet we were loose. That's right. I don't mow if I could feel the volte or hear then. Ao a matter of fact, it seened to steady out a Little bit. ‘he vibrations seemed to decrease a little. Pretty impressive! Not much vibration at lift-off. Very low. Very low. T got vibrations later on, though, didn't you? Yes. Noise. ‘There wasn't much noise, was there? No. There was less than I had expected. Noise wasn't a cue to lift-off. Noise was there CONFIDENTIAL1s White MeDivitt White MeDivi tt White MoDivitt White MoDivitt White MoDivitt White MoDivitt CONFIDENTIAL if you were bolted down all day long. I don't think the noise changed a bit at lift-off. You could see the visual cues out the window. You were watching your gages, Jim. Wore there clouds out there? No, but I could see it in the clear blue sky. Could you? Yes. I could see the motion. Okay. Well, I couldn't. T was looking out. T saw a little cloud go by and then I didn't see any more clouds at all, It was beautiful! The event timer started just like it should. of course, that's the best display inside the space- craft for lift-off. The event timer starts, and it aia, We got voth clocks started with the time hack. bad a watch hack on liftoff and the ... handle going. I knew when the engine ignited, within half a second accuracy. Three seconds later I was waiting for the lift-off and it came right at three seconds, We could tel1 ignition, too. We could hear the CONFIDENTIAL2.2 23 White Roll Program MoDivitt Waite MoDivitt White MoDivitt White Pitch Program MeDivitt White CONFIDENTIAL 9 things go. T agree with you, I kmew we weren't going to hold it when that lift-off went. Roll program came in at ten seconds just like it was supposed to. It wes smooth, and it wae just the way it was planned, on at ten seconds and went out at twenty seconde. Could you see it roll out the window? You can see everything out the window, I think, ‘You can probably tell by the way the sun rays are moving, can't you? Yes, by change in lighting. The right seat has a better view. You have to watch the guages 60 closely. I didn't even look out the window. I kmow you didn't. Pitch program started just like it was supposed to, at twenty three seconds. Pitched over the proper amount, the toh needles looked like ‘they were hanging in there all the way. You could see the booster pitch definitely, and ‘hat was mainly due to a change in the lighting. CONFIDENTIAL2.4 Aerodynamics MeDivitt White MoDivitt White MoDivitt White MeDivitt White McDivitt White CONFIDENTIAL We were getting aerodynamic noise, which built up to max q. We got some pretty good vibrations at max qe ‘That's where I had the most vibrations. It was just shaking like this. Tt was vibrating and noisy. ‘That was the loudest noise we received the whole flight. Right after max q it got very quiet. This is where I had the most vibrations, ‘here were more than I expected. Yes, me too, You can't simulate this ine simla- tor, You get more vibrations than you do noise. The only thing they have in the simuletor is 1, they don't have vibrations. It wae pretty loud and the spacecraft was actually shaking around a lot. It was really vibrating. Yes, it was, More than I expected. The whole thing was really going at it, Almost like @ F-60 or a 1-33 at about 0.8 Mach. Yery good analogy. 2.5 Environmental Control System White ‘The cabin started venting shortly after lift-off CONFIDENTIALMoDin White MoDivitt White MoDivitt 2.6 Maximum g MeDivitt nite MoDivitt White 2.7 Windghoar MeDivitt CONFIDENTIAL a and continued go until about 40 seconds and sta~ bilized out at 5.5 and I made my call in, I think I might have called in on RECORD. You did. I switched and made the final cell at about 1:10. I realized T called on RECORD and switched over. How high did it go? Did it go to 5.5? 5.5 and it stayed right there. And then noticed later on it progressively leaked off until it got to 4,9 where it etayed. ‘The suit? There really isn't anything to say about the suit. Wo, I don't have anything to say about the suit. Tt operated like it was supposed to. The noise bi + up gradually until we got to max a, then it just dropped off. Tho deterioration of the noise was alnos+ instan- taneous. Vory quick. It wasn't instantaneous, bat it was very quick. In fact, it startled me when we separated. I didn't notice anything on the rate needles that had anything to do with the windshear I couldn't CONFIDENTIALWhite MeDivitt White MoDivitt 2.8 DOS Updates Mobivitt White CONFIDENTIAL Pick out windshear ’ on them, How about you, Bi? No. Did you see any attitudes? No. No big divergences from windshear. We got doth of our DCS updates right on time— 145 and 2:25, No comment, Ha is in charge of DCS updates. I'm the button pusher, I do everythi ig about pushing the buttons. I can do this with this little stick. You can do it unless I have my knee over it. 2.9 Enging 1 Operation MeDivitt ‘They operated the way they were supposed to as far as I could tell. ‘The tank pressures stayed up fing on both Engine 1 and Engine 2, There was never any doubt in my mind that they were going to stay up there. There weren't any of those things like we saw in those simulations where they came on down pretty low on the gages when they were supposed to be at 18 or 15, There wasn't anything like that. They Just stayed on up there. CONFIDENTIALCONFIDENTIAL % Waite Just where they were supposed to be. MeDivitt Yes. I followed them a couple of times and s: they were staying up fine. They were way up. ‘There wasn't any problem there. 2.10 Rngine 2 Status MoDivitt — Second stage pressure stayed right on up there very high. Just the way they were supposed to. There wasn't any problem there. They didn't decay all during the first stage. 2.11 Acceleration g's MoDivitt They weren't bad and I don't know where they went to on the g meter. White Just like riding in an old saddle. MoDivitt That's right. It's very comfortable. Steady on- set. White Not very long. Geo, we were below McDivitt Wait a second. ‘hie might be a good place to cover the pogo. I felt the pogo just prior to staging, from about 2:75 on to 2:30. T could feel pogo. White How much were you getting? Medivitt Very little. I could just feel it pull like this. Did you feel it at all? CONFIDENTIAL24 White MeDivitt White MeDivitt White MoDivitt 2.12 BBOO MoDivitt CONFIDENTIAL No. T could feel it, It wasn't uncomfortable enough where I had to lift my head or anything. I wasn't thinking about a pogo at all. It wasn't like I vas trying to sit there and think about it. But as we were going along I could feel this vi- bration, And then it just crossed my mind, well here is pogo, and then we vent on to staging. Sut it vaon't bad at all. ‘he amplitude must have been-- You were paying more attention to your clocks while I was watching the system gages and I wasn't really evare of the times that were going on, I had my eyes-~ Tt came around 2:15 or so and lasted to about 2: Maybé it was 2:10 or 2:05, but it wasn't bad. We had one area that I will get into leter that I haven't told you about and that I didn't like. Oh. So, I think we hit the pogo and the g's. Engine shut down properly. The lights came on. Engine: 2 light went out and the Ingine 1 lights went out. Just the way it was supposed to at BECO and staging. Two Stage 1 lights ON, Stage 2 CONFIDENTIALWhite MeDivitt 2.13 Staging MeDivitt CONFIDENTIAL light OPP, Stage 1 lights OFF. At that time I realized that we were going to feel the pyros and stuff--feel the separation. It was a very distinct feeling when we separated. Of course, we immediately dropped in the thrust. There wasn't any question,we had a good separation, in ay mind, This is just the way it was for all of our separations. Hverytime we separated, it was very clear that was what had happened. Oh, yes, there wasn't any doubt about it when that st stage shut off--Voom! Staging was just as it should have been. 2.14 Engine 2 Ignition MoDivitt White MoDivitt White Engine 2 started right on up. Like mentioned earlier ,the light went out and the tank pressure went dow just a tad, but it stayed way up there, about two or three times as high as was necessary for staging. It never really did decrease. It stayed up around 45 or 50 psi, and we need 20 for staging, 80-- I couldn't hear anything. n't you hear the engine? Wo, I was listening but it still was quiet. CONFIDENTIAL26 2.15 Res MeDivitt White MoDivitt White MeDivitt itiate MeDivitt CONFIDENTIAL I didn't really got much of @ cue out of it at all, except the lights went out and I could feel a little bit of acceleration. ‘The acceleration decreased. Another thing I didn't get--I got absolutely no pitch-up associ. ated with the--the way the centrifuge does you at the end of an acceleration. I think that is associated with the cab on- Yes, I think that's the way they rotate those gimbals when you come on down. If they rotate then a certain way you can get that pitching-up—— 4 very safe forwerd-type deceleration. I think that pitching up on the centrifuge is not a malfunction, It's just the programing that's hooked into the gimbals during the stop program. You've got to got them all going the sane way so that you keep the vectors through you. During launch the vector is right through you. It's not varying around, but in the shut-down on the cen- trifuge those darn gimbale aren't alvays syn- er. They get shifted back there hronized togeth and it gives you that peculiar sensation. Well, I was really watching closely but my rate CONFIDENTIALWhite MeDivitt White MoDivitt White MeDivitt White MeDivitt White Waite MeDivitt CONFIDENTIAL 2 needles just barely changed. We must not have had any errors at all. Yes, I got a full error, Did you have a full error? Yes, my pitch error went all the vay down, and then it just steered slowly right back up. Re- member you-— You did call and tell me you had a saturated—~ Did you call saturated, or did you say we had a big one? Tcalled it saturated, I believe. That's right, T called a saturated error and then I called you that it was steering back to zero. Yes. I remember that you did call that, That's the way they showed this on the plot, that it would saturate there, and very quickly it seemed to gradually steer right back up. The steering rates that went in were on the order of lese than half a degree/second. ‘hey were very low. Very, very low because I was on high scale. The needle just barely deviated et all at RGS CONFIDENTIAL2.16 2.17 White MeDivitt White MeDivitt White MoDivitt White go/1o Go MoDivitt Systems Status White CONFIDENTIAL initiate. It was beautiful steering. Nominal, nominal, nominal, except like that saturation on the error needle, but we have been briefed on that. That's right. That's something to be expectedi When did it saturate? Right at staging. No, right at guidance initiate. Oh, okay, Tt saturated right there. Right there at guidance initiate, vhich is what you'd except. ‘They eaid they were GO and I said we were GO. There waen't much problem, Hd and I had been checking back and forth on the systems. I knew ‘they were all right. The systems were all pretty good, There was only one I didn't like and that was the stack readings on the main ammeters, One was reading about 28 and the other was reading about 14. But I felt that this was associated with bringing the batter- jes on, I went through and checked everything. Everything was reading properly. The control bus CONFIDENTIALwhite McDivitt White MeDivitt White MeDivitt White CONFIDENTIAL 23 and main bus were all reading all right. I felt it was just a misbalance of loading. I talked to somebody previous to this time and it was expleined to me that this could happen this way. I felt perhaps it was in the adapter batteries-- would feed through on one of the stacks causing one of them to take more than the other. Yes. You could have gotten into the kmee of an adapter-- This ie what I had figured--that a couple of my adapter batteries were unbalanced, causing this to ocour, T also had seen this on the simulator quite a few times. When did the unbalance start? When we got in they were-- Ae goon as we were on internal power? Right. And I didn't feel this was the time to talk about it. It was still under 30 amps, whic! was my point, So I didn't bring it up. You didn't want to worry me? I didn't want to worry you and I didn't want any- ody on the ground to start hollering about it. You should have written me a note. T did feel that this was exactly what it wes-- CONFIDENTIAL30 MeDivitt White MoDivitt CONFIDENTIAL that it wae adepter batteries. ‘That was the only abnormal type of indication we had in the systems. ‘They were all real good. Well, we had good communications with the ground during powered flight. We hed pretty good communications. I called the "Roll Program", and nobody answered me. I said, "Well, to heck vith it, maybe they just aren't getting through." ‘Then I was just starting to call Roll Program complete when Gus called and saia,"Did you get the Roll Program?" Now that was the only transmission I made that wasn't acknow- ledged. Yes, I heard you calling, too. So, if they lost communications it must have been right at the 10-seconds time, and it should have been for less than 10 seconds, It couldn't have been for more than 20 seconds. I heard the count- down to lift-off and I heard Gus call and ask me af had the Roll Program started. This was a Little bit less than 20 seconds-- around 18 or 19 seconds. That is the only period of time T @ian't hear anybody T should have heard. So, if we lost communications, that was where it was. CONFIDENTIAL2.18 Acceleration MeDivitt Waite MeDivitt White 2.19 SECO MeDivitt White MeDivitt CONFIDENTIAL Well we got up to 71/2 g's. The acceleration wasn't bad at all. T guess when you are really interested in what you are doing like on the boost or reentry, those g's don't mean anything. I don't like to ride the centrifuge. 7 1/2 g's is 7 1/2 8's on the centrifuge, but on the booster-- Ny vision was crystal clear. Me, too. I wasn't even breathing hard, I wasn't huffing or puffing or anything. I was just laying dhere relaxed. Particularly on this one, The acceleration burn during powered flight and insertion was very light. SECO occurred ee it should have on my clock. 2d thought it yas about--vhat did you say it was? I thought it was @ second or so early and it concerned me because that meant we were going to have to burn. So I wae quite expecting to hear a big AV come up from the ground. There is no question on that SHOO either. Tt shuts off and you get that linear straight deceleration. The thing that surprised me was thet we weren't talking about it at all. We were just going as CONFIDENTIAL2.20 te Steering MoDivitt MoDivitt White CONFIDENTIAL straight as an arrow when that thing shut off. There weren't any oscillations or roll. I wee getting a sinusoidal oscillation on my rate needles, and I don't mow now whe pitch and yaw. I called it out at the you anyway, Bi. Right. And my attitude arrows were-— Your attitude arrows were right on? Okay. But T was getting an oscillation, very small, abo plus or minus a quarter degree in rates. M that the needle was a¢ ually moving back and forth ous that across the dots. It vas pretty obv was. Now, I sort of felt that I could feel novenent @ little bit, like this, but not amnoy- ingly and certainly the etabilization was holding it close enough, Sut it wasn't that the rate needles were just constantly oscillating back and forth, It seoms to me it wes in pitch but I'm not really sure. A booster pitch, The attitude error needles were the only deviation we had at any time, Yaw was just about nominal all the time. We had the pitch deviation at guidance initiate. It went to full scale and steered right CONFIDENTIALMoDivitt White MoDivitt White MoDivitt CONFIDENTIAL 3% back in, and also right at the end we hed, in pitch, @ little bit of a pitch-dowm needle indi- cation which increased to no more than about a degree at booster shutdown. You got about a degree, then,on shut down? Just about a degree. Yes. I kept glancing over to see how you were doing. They were always right near the center for Yeah. Right near the end they trailed down just a little bit, I'd be interested to see what the ground thought on this, Yes. You'll have to go over and look. I'm sure they have them, CONFIDENTIAL34 MeDivitt White CONFIDENTIAL 3.0 INSERTION Yes, There was 2 Post-SHO0. In the period be- tween SECO and SCO + 20 seconds, I unstowed the maneuver controller. I don't know where our attitudes were. They were the same as they were at SECO, and it was about 20 degrees pitch-down, wasn't it? ‘The rates during this period were on ‘the order of less than a half a degree/second. We really had a period of from SECO to SHCO + 30. So, during this time I actually fired the trans- lations thrusters at least two times in one axis to Kill off the rate in that axis, and T think it was probably the booster yaw or spacecraft pitch where I actually fired the thrusters once or twice to bring the rates back. It might have yeen the other way around. But, we didn't jetti- son the fairings then, I did unstow the maneuver controller and the attitude was the booster burn- out attitude and the rates were very low, less than a half a degree/second. I think we mentioned prior to this time the feeling that we came off a little half CONFIDENTIALCONFIDENTIAL 3 cocked off the second stage. 3.2 SBOO + 20 Seconds MeDivitt white MeDivitt White MeDivitt We were going to day on the booster until SOO + ad of SHCO + 20, At 20 seconds the IVI's 30 ins started displaying and I read them off as 20 for- ward, 11 right, and 5 down. Right. This was when we were still in the 90 degree bank position. Is that correct? Or was it after I had rolled right-side-up? Tt was after you had rolled right-side-w Okay. Well, then the IVI's displayed when we were still on our side. Tt seems to me they vere about 25 feet/second forward, and some other numbers, but anyway they were low enough where I felt we were certainly in orbit, At least the IGS was telling us we were in orbit, During this time, ae I said earlier, I tried to damp the spacecraft rates, the spacecraft booster rates which were quite low. I checked to see that the OAMS Power Switch was in ATTITUDE and MANEUVER, and to see that Mi had switched over to DIRECT. I told him I was going to do some thrusting but T wasn't going to separate yet, so that when he CONFIDENTIAL36 White Mebivitt White MeDivitt Waite MeDivitt White CONFIDENTIAL heard the thrusters go off he wouldn't push the SPACKORAFT SEP. Then we did separate the space- craft with the exact routine we practiced in the simulator. I said, “Thrusting, separate", and you punched the SEPARATE button and I guess you went to Rate Command, I thrusted straight ahead for about five seconds. This is where I think we came off crooked, This is the part Ed wes men tioning before, We didn't seen to come off straight ahead. We seemed to be getting some sort of an oscillation that got us going in e dif- ferent direction than what we had going on the booster. It seemed. like one side of the separation plane came off with more force than the other, Yes. That's what it seemed like to me. Tt separated at a bit of an angle. ‘That's right. We didn't separate fore and aft; we separated with a lot of rotation to this side, Yea. Air-ground communications were all right. We were talking to them and they were talking to us. T never had any problem there. Shortly thereafter they called up and told us we CONFIDENTIALMoDivitt White MeDivitt White CONFIDENTIAL 1 had a 153 by 57 orbit. So, they were talking to us. I don't think I ought to read off this stuff now, but they gave us the 2- date and all the nominal data we were supposed to get, It came out fine. Say again what the IVI's were while we rolled right-side-v: De Right. At the position we decided on taking our IVI readings, which was heads up in a zero-zero attitude, you read off the IVI's to me as 20 for- ward, 11 right, and 5 dom. Okay. Then I didn't bother nulling the pitch needle becauge we were really pressed for time to get around. No velocity correction was called up to us and since we had no velocity correction, and we were fairly busy at this time, I didn't even read out the 52 or 70, I wasn't particularly interested in then. It's a funny thing though--52 was ponched in and had been read out and it showed 30. It hed been punched in so it read out, you see, as soon as something came in the quantity. So, I aid have a readout. I read out 30, I remenber looking at that. CONFIDENTIALCONFIDENTIAL I thrusted and got off the booster, Then I went ahead for just short time, and then I started to turn around right away. During the tum-around, I jettisoned the firings. They went off with a bang. I could see the fairing over the horizon scanner go, but I never did see the fairing off the nose go. I juet assumed that it went. We were already in just a mass of debris up there, because when we separated from the booster there was stuff all over. All over, It really flew by to the side of the spacecraft. Yes. Tt was all over the place. As we. were turing around it looked like we were going through a snow storm. There was stuff all over. Finally we got tured around, in about a minute and a half, and ve could see the booster there. 38 3.3 Insertion Activities MeDivitt White MoDivitt White There's one thing I would certainly like to see somebody do--I'd have give my right arm to have had a camera when I turned around and saw the booster. I'd like to sce somebody carry a camera in a semi-stowed position so he could immediately get it out and come around and take pictures of CONFIDENTIALMoDivitt CONFIDENTIAL » 1 booster, Hither the camera, or better yet a 16 mm camera with a normal lens on it. Just tuck it to the side of your leg. If I had thought about it I think this is what I would have done: just connected the camera, tucked it by my leg, and taken pictures of the booster at this time. I think, Ha, this is probably one of those philo- sophical things. On the first orbit you've got to save to prepare to come back in case you have 6 bad spacecraft. You've got to be ready to reen— ter during the first orbit. Tuis is the kind of bind we found ourselves in up there. During the first orbit we really had @ lot to get ready for halfway through the second orbit, but on the other hand we had to be in good enough shape so we could reenter it at 2-1. Now, we didn't have anything to go wrong so there wasn't any problem, but I think when you first get into orbit you're in @ problem. This kind of a thing, I think, is a problem you may have later on. You've got to be ready to eject at lift-off plus one second, and you don't want to be sitting there holding a camera or something like that. Both your hands are ay But like you said we could stow it CONFIDENTIALWhite MeDivitt Waite MeDivitt White McDivitt White CONFIDENTIAL somewhere. I think you could. You could stow it beside you in the seat. I think we over-omphesize the neces- sity, particularly for ejection, of having to have everything stowed when you are only ejecting up to 12 000 feet and at very slow speeds. We certainly have @ heck of a lot more working against us our airplanes we're flying around. That's right, I agree with you. just saying this philosophy of being completely prepared to reenter during that first orbit is in conflict with doing this kind of stuff in the first orbit, too. We ought to get sone of this, though, I think we are missing things. I would have really-— Yes, I think so. We could have really haa some deautiful pictures of that booster when we were close to it. I also want to comment a little dit on the booster itself. I looked as closely as I could at the nozale skirt and the aft end of the booster, and I saw no damage whatsoever. No, neither did I from our vantage point. As far as I could see the nozzle skirt was com- CONFIDENTIALMobivitt White MeDivitt COMFIDENTIAL ao pletely intact, There was nothing wrong. oxay. Letts tzy to follow this insertion activi- ties list here, I jettisoned the fairings, as I said, as soon as I started turning around. Then Ed went through the checklist for us. After I fired the fairings I turned off the BIA Switch and the retro rockets when he called. 1 was probably doing this before Fa called, wasn't I? We aid things just like we had been doing them on the similator, We don't just take a checklist and rm down it item for item because there're things you have to be doing, and it just doesn't go in a sequence like that. I realized this was the way it was going to go, and I actually took a pencil and checked items off. If you did an item I checked it off, and if you didn't I left it un- checked and we got it later. You just can't ex- pect to run down the checklist item for item because you're not ready to unstow your life vest or to get up out of your eeat belt. You don't do that for some time. I think the logic on the check- list we have here is a very good sequence~ We reviewed that checklist 50 times. That's CONFIDENTIAL42 White MeDivitt White MeDivitt CONFIDENTIAL probably the fiftieth checklist we've got there, and I don't think it could have been arranged any vetter for the two of us. I knew Jim wasn't going to undo his seat belt har- ness and I kmew I was going to have to because I had to do certain things that he didn't have to. The point that I'm making is that the checklist doeen't have to be accomplished item for item, completely done in nunericel sequence. Okay. I think we'll revert back to the exact subject of 3.3 now. Safetying the switches. I saftied the ewitches--the BIA Squib Switch and the four Retro Rocket Squibs Switches. I tested the sequential lights, but at a later time because I was involved in turning the spacecraft around. But I did test them. As far as stowage, I stowed ny left arm restraint and my D-ring, but I did not put my safety pin in. I went through and put my arm rest down, put my safety pin in, That was one of the first things I aia. I might comment that I never did put my safety pin in, I never put the safety pin in the D. ring. I. felt the Dering cover was adequate, and it was. CONFIDENTIALWhite MeDivitt White CONFIDENTIAL wy I know, you never have been particularly too hot on that. No. ‘Then I went ahead and discomected myself. I had a lot of things I had to squirm around and do. I left my life vest on as we had planned to do, then take them off leisurely at a different time. I did not find any reason to put the drogue pins in. 1 don't think they are satisfactory in any way. I don't think the pin itself is satisfactory, and I don't think the location or type of holes are satisfactory. I will elaborate on them a little further. We have had aircraft around for a long ‘time and we have leamed a lot about safety pins. We have come up with some pretty good designs on safety pins. We have a design on our drogue pin right now which is no more than the very first type of safety pin that I saw on an aircraft. I think that we are past the point where we should ve starting right out at the beginning, We ought to put a properly designed safety pin in there that you can insert a little easier into the holes. I'm not going to try to design the pin but I think that it should have some type of shaft on it that CONFIDENTIAL44 MoDivitt CONFIDENTIAL you can use to stabilize the pin when you insert it. and when I say the holes through which you insert the pins are unsatisfactory, I'm referring to holes through a cylindrical shaft that is hollow inside so that you not only have to find the hole to put it in on one side, but you have to work it around and find the hole that it goes ‘through on the other side. I don't believe that's satisfactory. I don't think the opening into the hole is supposed to be beveled and they weren't beveled on my seat and they weren't beveled on Jim's seat, either. I think a beveled hole is a hole that is bigger on the outside than it is on the inside, I don't believe there is much dif- ference between the outside and the inside of the holes for the drogue pins. I had a difficult time putting my own in. I put Jim's pins in, I took me avhile, but I put them in, I never did get one of mine in satiefactorily at this time, 80 I think we should do something better with ‘the drogue pine. In addition I couldn't even see the hole. You had an easier time putting my pin in than you had putting your own pin in. CONFIDENTIALWhite McDivitt White MoDivitt Waite CONFIDENTIAL 45 That's correct. I could put yours in fairly easy. That's right. I think that when you tum towards the center of the spacecraft, you end up with moze room than if you tumed to the outside, You can't see a thing if you are tuming toward the outside. This is probably covered later, tut my hose lengths were not long enough to permit me to tum all the way around. I knew this when we went through Weight and Balance, I knew my hoses were not ng enough but it was too late, ac far as I was concerned, to change then at thet tine. But, I couldn't see the holes on my side to insert the drogue pin. I couldn't see the holes for your drogue pin either, but I could get a better view of them over there so I knew appro: mately where to put the pin. I think in all respects the drogue pins are not satisfactory. You just can't see ‘them; the pins are incorrect, the holes are in- correct, and I think we can certainly do better with them, I think what Ed is saying is that it's lousy. That's right. In two letter words, it stinks! This is the way the batteries were reading out when I checked them at insertion, And this is what CONFIDENTIALCONFIDENTIAL I had suspected they were doing when we launched why we had unbalanced stack readings. 1-A read 6 amps, 1-B read 10, 1-C read 11. Thie accomts for your high reading on Stack 1. 2-A was 6, 2-B was 6,, and 2-C was 6.. This was the way they were reading. I ren through a check on them when we were actually in the tooster phase. So that ie why I felt the reading wasn't bed. They were both reading about 23 1/2 or 24 volts. They locked pretty good. I got my 2-1 update. I got the AV of 167, ST of 3435, and GMT to retro command of 14 48 34. I have the other times too. The time to 400 000 was 2+18, as read up to me and the time to reverse tank angle was 8:47, This is what we wrote down. This is one time I remember now when I was a little invitated, because they gave times to us in a manner in which I hadn't wanted them to, They were supposed to give elapsed time but they gave it to us in GMP time for our retro, We had asked ‘them to give it to us in elapsed. They came right ack up and gave it to us both ways, I remember writing it dom twice, on the elapsed tine of 01 32 35. I can see why they did it because it CONFIDENTIALMoDivitt White CONFIDENTIAL a was two minutes past one hour 30 minutes, and I guess they weren't sure exactly what we wanted. So they gave it to us in GMP and elapsed tine also. But that ie the information we received, as far as our 2-1 area wes concerned. I think Ba had better cover unstowage. I didn't unstow anything. I vas just trying to stick with the booster at that time. The first thing I got into was my right-hand stowage compartment and I unstowed the blood pressure bulb, Thon I started into the center section to get at the camera. The first thing I wanted to get out was the Hasselblad and the 16 mm. I was dying to get a picture of that booster. So, I umstowed the Hasselblad and got @ good back on it and the 16 mm camera. I didn't unstow the urine nozzle a the flight plan had called. We Yoth had decided we were going to use our launch day urine bags as long as we could, and we had hoped to use them right through the EVA. As it turned out, we did. That was about all I umstowed at thie time. I wetowed the cameras, the blood pressure bulb and also got out the film cartridges and the tape cartridges. I put them on the side CONFIDENTIAL48 CONFIDENTIAL of the foot well, where I planned to keep them, so that we could keep a good tape cartridge available. CONFIDENTIALCONFIDENTIAL 49 4.0 ORBITAL FLIGHT McDivitt I think that the orbital flight should be broken down into some very distinct sequences. I think there are really three of these. The fires one ig about the first three or four orbits where we were trying to stay with the booster, where we did the EVA and where we finally got back in. The 0 that we finally got the spacecraft depressur- ized ends one phase of the mission. The next phase or sequence of the things that come along is really the second phase, This is the middle 50 orb! 2 or 80, where ve did the experiments and whoze ve 41a the flight plan in a highly modified manner, We did the flight plan ve started out to do, And the last phase or series of sequences : vas the vetro-preyaration, retzofive and the neontry. ‘The reto-preparation was actually another distinct phase of the mission. T think that we ought to divide it up into those three phases--the station-keeping and EVA as Stage 1, general orbit as Stage 2, and retro-preparation and reentry as Stage 3. So I think we should CONFIDENTIAL41 Station-Keeping MoDivitt CONFIDENTIAL start in the orbital flight with the station— keeping on the booster. I think that we should Just pluck that thing out and follow it through in its entirety, and then come back and pick up these things like the thrusters, Control “ode Checks, Com Checks, and those things. ‘The station-keeping with the booster--Well, as I said earlier on the insertion phase, I started turning around as soon as I completed the forward thrusting. I jettisoned the nose fairings after about 30 or 40 degrees of yaw. I rolled right- side-up and then I started yawing around to the left. We saw all kinds of debris floating around and we finally saw the booster back behind ug, It vas already in a peculiar attitude. As PA men- tioned, when we separated from the tooster, it didn't really feel like we came off straight ahead. It seemed like we got knocked off to the side of the thing. The spacecraft-booster combination sort of bent in helf at the separation plane, We yawed on around and saw the booster, and T thought it was around 400 feet back. Ha thought it was a little closer. CONFIDENTIALCONFIDENTIAL 5 T would estimate it at between 200 and 250 feet. Okay. We were in pretty good shape right then and I applied about five or six seconds of thrusting that should have come out around © 5 feet/second. I was in a hurry trying to get our scparation velocity stopped, s0 I vas thrusting. Thad it in Rate Command. I pointed the space- craft at the booster and started thrusting, and by the time I got the computer in the Catch-Up Node and the Start Comp button on, T had alzeady thrusted -2 or 3. feet/second out and I counted up another © 3 feet/aeoond on the IVI's. It looked like we were probably stopped, although T couldn't tell tint quickly. I mew T had as much AY in theve as I had at separation, and possibly @ Little more, because I tried to hold the separation AV down to no more than 5 feet/second. We watched it for just a short time and then it was obvious that we hadn't stopped our separation velocity--our zelative velocity--so we were still separating. So, I applied about ano~ ther “3 or 4 feet/eccond, which should have nore than overcome the “4 or 5 feet/second I put in initially. It looked like we had stopped CONFIDENTIAL52 White MeDivitt White MeDivitt COMFIDENTIAL then, Our relative velocity looked like it went to zero, Here, I thought, we were out around 500 or 600 feet. HA thought we were: probably in closer than that. Yes. I thought we were in a little closer. I put ina total of around -9 feet/second in the first minute and a half after we turned around. I think we commented together on the speed with which the booster was going away fom us. Right off the bat it looked like it was--it surprised me that it actually looked like it separated from us as fast as it reelly-— It looked like it had a lot more velocity than the 4 or 5 + feet/second I added at the separation, It looked to me, as an off-the-top-of- my-head-guess, that something in the spacecraft separation thing had really built up a lot of relative velocity between the booster and the spacecraft. I don't kmow why or how. Also, it looked like we weren't inplane anymore, Tt was actually out-of-plane so that we had an out-of- plane relative velocity that I took out. I pointed at the booster because, obviously, if CONFIDENTIALCONFIDENTIAL ae you're separating away from something, whichever way you're going, if you point at the thing and Lf you thrust in that direction you are to take out your relative velocity in all planes. So, it locked like the thing was off to the left or to the south of our orbital track by a couple hundred feet and it was going down rapidly. Losing altitude. After I thrusted this second tine, T Imew T had more than enough velocity, much more than I needed to kill off the 5 feet/second and it looked like we'd added. I watched wasn't going away from us anymore. It looked like our relative velocities had stopped, I wanted to get the platform alined somewhat in case we did have to come down in the 2-1, We really hadn't had nue! chance to check over the spacecraft yet. So I quickly went to as close to zero-zero-zero as T could get. I used the zero yaw and the zero roll off the ball and I went to e pitch attitude that looked like it was about zero and tried to get the ball to aline to zero-zero-zero, At that time the booster was mostly behind us--nostly back toward the Cape from us--back behind us with respect to our velocity back there, It:was in the CONFIDENTIALWhite MoDivitt CONFIDENTIAL window and I could see it. Well, I started g the platform and left it there for a in: couple of minutes. The booster started falling again, descending below us. It actually went out of my view in the window, At the time though our relative velocities were quite small, 80 I felt T could let it go for another 30 seconds or a minute and not have it get very far away from me. It looked like it was coming toward me egain but going below. So, I allowed myself about another minute and I pitched down and looked £ it. Tt appeared that during that minute it had gone a lot farther down than I had expected it to g. Yes, I was surprised. Remember that it looked like the orbit was sure something different than we predicted. Yes. It looked to me like the booster ani the spacecraft weren't in enything that even resen— bled the same orbit, at the rate it was descending. I don't lmow waat the range rate was at that time. It looked like it was a lot more than a foot/ second, though. I don't know what it was. I quickly pitched back up to zero-zero-zero and CONFIDENTIALWhite MoDivitt CONFIDENTIAL stayed there for about another ten or fifteen seconds and went to Orbit Rate, I knew I didn't have a good alinement on the platform but I knew T couldn't stay there any longer and have the ‘booster anywhere near us, So, I flipped around and pitched right straight down and here's where the problems started. To get down to the booster ine long rendezvous type maneuver, what T should have done was to just stay horizontal and fire retrograde and take some total velocity out of the spacecraft. But, when you do this the booster continues to pull away from you for a while, and ‘then eventually you are going to drop down below it, Then you are going to be in a lower-eltitude orbit and you are going to pick up and catchup with the booster. Well, with the station-keeping we had to do and the fact that the darkness vas only a matter of another few minute: Boy it was fast! It wasn't any time at all. I didn't have time to play a rendezvous game with it, I had to over come this relative velocity we had with sort of brute force, so I thrusted right at the booster again. I got going down and I used about 5 CONFIDENTIAL56 White MeDivitt White MeDivitt CONFIDENTIAL feet/second there, Here's where the numbers get a little vague. I thrusted dom at it and T watched it go for awhile. I thought aure we'd start closing on it again, We weren't cloeing, s0 I thrusted down on it again, I must have done this probably three or four times. I can't say exactly. I don't remember, precisely, how many times you thristed. I was keeping my eyes on the booster. and it was @ lot tougher to see when it was down with the ground as @ background, I thought, than with the sky a8 @ background, During this period of time its rotationel velocity picked up con- siderably, and during this time HA checked it and got eight seconds for a conplete revolution. A complete revolution. Yes. This was an estimate. This meant that in the first three minutes efter we were in orbit the thing had gone up to a rota- tional rate of 40 to 50 degrees/aecond. It seemed to stabilize at that rate. Tte rotational rates stabilized but I don't believe its rotational node ever stabilized. Tt didn't rotate in a plane as I thought a long body like that would rotate. It seemed to oscillate in just a random tumbling CONFIDENTIALWhite CONFIDENTIAL ” fashion, It was all over. It looked to me like i was rotating in three axes in a completely unpro- granmed manner, It might have been that the roll nozzle was flopping around and the fuel wes tum- ing it around in different directions. And as a matter of fact, at this time we should go back and draw a picture of what the fuel looked like and what was coming out of the nozzle. The booster was tumbling and you could see the fuel squirting out of the roll nozzle ina big fan like thie. 1 had the impression that tf the booster were per- fectly stationary, the fuel would have teen coming out of the nozzle in a great big cone the vay you would expect 4 to, but because the booster was tumbling so rapidly it was coming out in a long, twisted—-like a hom of plenty. It was very ob- vious; you could see it, and there wesn't any doubt about the fact that there wae a lot of fuel coming out. Whether this was contrituting some thrust to it or not I don't know. I want to comment on something thet wee quite an experience for me. When I called out to you, I was looking down at what I thought, since it wae pitch black, was the sky. I could see little CONFIDENTIAL58 White CONFIDENTIAL sparkles everywhere. And it looked ke almost a starlit sky, but it just didn't quite look right to me; it looked like an artificial star- sky. It looked like some of these star a plays they have created for us. And I looked over at Jim and asked him if he was seeing this and about the same time I noticed that he hed nothing but daylight out his window. This was the first time that I had the daylight-dark experience of one guy looking into pitch black night and the other guy looking into a complete daylight window over there. Jim remarked rather iegustedly to me, "We are pointed straight at ground!" About the same time I realized I was looking out at the fire flies everybody had seen, but probably in a mich more profuse quantity than had ever been seen before, because we were gett! ng all thie fuel that was vaporizing into many, many particles from the booster and a little bit of a contribution from the spacecraft also. And we were thrusting, too. I'm sure we had all that junk on it from our launch. ‘That's right. And the whole area out in fmt ny view was just entirely taken up with these CONFIDENTIALNeDivitt White MeDivitt CONFIDENTIAL a Little particles, and this was at sunset, As the flight progressed, each time we had a particle or a group of particles such as a urine dump right at sunset or sunrise, the sun would pick these particles up and thoy vould act just like little magnifying glasses and make very bright spots. This is exactly whet happened. Did you ever see that then? I think you were more in the daylight side. No. Twas on the daylight side. TI didn't see what you were talicing about. It was really something. ‘The whole sky within my view was covered with these little perticles-- thousands of them, ‘There was obviously a great deal of that stuff in the air all around. Ae soon as we got turned around I could see that the lights were flashing on the booster, and Ed saw + Tealled out then, too. Tt wae pretty apparen right away to the ground that the Lights were working. I don't know if they understood what I was talking about or not, T also called out shortly after we cane off the booster and ve saw it,that it didn't look like we were going to be able to touch it. because of the high rotational CONFIDENTIALWhite McDivitt CONFIDENTIAL rates that we already had. We were into darkness ty the time that we got turned around, and I had thrusted just two or three times at the booster, We were still quite far above it. would guess now on the onder of 2000 feet or more and it was still dropping away from us rapidly; I had already used about 25 or 30 feet/second to get toward the booster. I knew I had to catch it during the night time because when we came out of the da: ness on the next pass, we had to be next to it, because we were supposed to take some photos of it around that time. So I ted some more right at the booster trying to just overcome orbital mechanics with brute force. It was too late start playing fancy games with the orbital mechan. ics. Finally, T got us down to what I considered a good position, and thi was prior to Carnarvon, I believe. Remember when we finally got it on the horizon? Tt looked like it had finally stopped. The relative velocity had firally stopped. And let me now make a general comment about whet T thought of the lights on it. We had two lights on he booster that flashed and they were diametrically CONFIDENTIALWhite MeDivitt White MeDivitt White MoDivitt CONFIDENTIAL . opposed on the center of the booster. And when the booster was in such a manner that I could see both of the lights, I could tell relative rates and I had an idea of how fer avay I was. Did you find this to be true too, Hd, or not? Well, I can't honestly say I was looking at it with that feeling. Okay. Well, what I am saying is that it was difficult-- I want to hear what you are going to say. I'm not sure what you're saying yet. It was difficult to tell how far I was away from it, et best, but when I had the booster in such a position that I could see both lights at the same time, I could tell ty the distance between the lights whether I vas close or far. Okay. I agree with that. And when I could see these lights fleehing over a period of time, { could tell whether the distance between them was getting larger or smaller so that I knew if I was closing or not. Unfortunately, because the booster was tumbling in this screw manner, I couldn't maneuver around the booster because it was tumbling so fast; I was juet trying CONFIDENTIALWhite CONFIDENTIAL to get close to it and not even maneuver--not to pick specific positions. All I wanted to do vas just get close enough so I wouldn't lose it. When T could see these two lights, I had a pretty good impression of whether I was closing or openings for a long pert of the early part of the mission the night time it looked like we vere holding our own, and then we finally started closing with it. I finally worked it down where we were at the same level, All this time I had been above the booster, I worked down until I was at the same altitude with it; at least it was on the horizon, I felt that by then I had gotten the thing under control and we stood a pretty good chance of still coming out on the daylight side with the booster, I can't tell you what the range was. It looked to me like I had worked the range back down (1) had been opening up 28 we went into darkness)-~ to 2000 or 3000 feet again-~probably around 2000 feet. It might even have been as low as 1000 feet. It could have been lower than that. At one time I got the impression that we were quite close to it. Yes. You were wolldering whether you should retro- grade away from it. CONFIDENTIALMoDivitt White MeDivitt White MoDivitt CONFIDENTIAL 6% It looked to me like we could have gotten as close as 200 feet. It was extremely difficult to tell how close we were. What's your guees, EA? Just pick @ number. I wouldn't say that close. I'd say you're more in the ball park in the neighborhood of 700 to 1000 feet. Okay. You could be magnitudes off. Before we got to Carnarvon, I remember, we were in reasonably good shape, because I had finally gotten dom to the booster. I felt if I could Just keep it down near the booster we would be all right. Then it looked to me like we were closing rather rapidly. So I thought we were going to get next to it and then we were going to be all right. ‘The reason I felt thie was because T could see the two lights. It mist have been rotating in such a manner that I could see the two 1: + Almost every fifth or tenth time they blinked I could see them. I cot see two of then. So I knew by the distance that we were in quite close and everything looked pretty good then, And then for a long, long, long period of time after that I never CONFIDENTIAL64, White MoDivitt CONFIDENTIAL saw two lights again. I don't know if you did or not. I kept looking and there was a single light and a single light and a single light, and T @idn't know where T was with respect to the boos- ter. And then I started getting the impression without really seeing the double lights, I guess, thet it was going away very rapidly. Maybe I did see two lights and I just don't remember it now. My impression was that the light was getting fainter. I think that mist have been it. I think that must have been it. But all of a sudden I got the impression that it was leaving me at @ rapid rate. It wasn't that easy to ace. During the few times that the booster wes up against the sky back- ground it was easy to soe, but whon it was down against a ground background, it wes very difficult to see. I think it was just before we got to Car- narvon that I felt we were in good shape. And then as we passed Carnarvon, T remember calling I could see the lights of the city. Well, during this period of time all of @ sudden I thought it was starting to pull away again. So I started thrusting at it agein. And I never really got the CONFIDENTIALWhite MoBivitt White MoDivitt MoDivitt White MoDivitt white MeDivi tt CONFIDENTIAL 8 double blink of the lights for a long, long, long time. And finally I thought I could see them blinking again, and they were almost a single light this time since they were so far avay. And this occurred over a very short period of time. ‘Ten minutes? Five minutes? Yes. Is that right? Whatever you Yes. I fully agree witt you. So then I said to Hd,"I think we are losing it.” So I started thrusting at it again. All of a sudden it was apparent that the thing wasn't as close as it had been, So we started thrusting at it. In fact, that was one time you said we had lost it, didn't you? I said I think we have lost it. I had it in sight. I diaa't se, that I had lost sight of it. I thought you meant you had lost sight of it. No. I still had it all the time. But it wasn't getting any bigger. I didn't have any idea in the world where we were. 4nd I still couldn't really tell. Finally, we could see the sky starting to get a little gray CONFIDENTIAL& White MoDivitt White MeDivitt White CONFIDENTIAL and I thought at least we weze going to get to see where the thing was. And all of a sudden the vooster came out just like that, and you could gee it, ‘The lights disappeared and there was the booster. It was 2 or 3 miles away, I'll bet. You anked me there and I estimated 1 1/2 miles. So, it had gotten that far away in such a short time, and it was down. I think what really gave mo the clue that we were losing it again was that I had it on the horizon and it had started going dom below us. Right. It looked like it was about 30 degrees below -- It started going dom again. And I could see it was coming down below the horizon, so I knew that I wasn't right with it. But I wasn't really sure © how far away I was 6o I did thrust a couple of times--a foot/second or so--to make sure T always had @ closing velocity with it, And finally I got the thing dom, It was down so that when it came out it wasn't directly below me; it was out in front of me and down again. And like Bi said, I guess it was down about 30 degrees. That's what I'd estimate. CONFIDENTIALMoDivitt White MeDivitt CONFIDENTIAL a When it came out of the night and we saw it out there in the daylight-- Right. I'd estimate 30 degrees dom. It wes above the horizon, just barely. Or was it above the horizon? No, it was below the horizon. I'd say it wasn't more than ten or twelve degrees ow the earth horizon, but below our fecal ho! zon. Tt was in the neighborhood of 30 degrees. If you looked out level to what you would call level--but you know the horizon tilts away from you, so--. So here again we were faced with the same kind of problen--to catch up with the booster. What T should have done was to retrofire right then to drop down, get a lower orbit, and come back up. But we had to get to the booster right then or we weren't going to get to it, because we had the mission to take photographs of it across the States. So T thought if I could close with it et 10 or 15 feet/second we could at least overcome our problem. So I aimed behind it, so to speak, and down, and I thrusted that way trying to got enough closing velocity down and another one that CONFIDENTIAL6 White MoDivitt White MoDivitt CONFIDENTIAL would bring us up to it at the same times but most of the thrusting I did was dow. ‘Then we just didn't gain on it. I started thrusting retro- grade with my top thruster, but I was thrusting nore back and downward. I just absolutely could not get down to the booster. It kept pulling away and pulling away until by the time we got to Hawaii. You were putting a lot of AV in there and we just weren't doing anything. We just weren't making any headway. It continued to pull away from us and it was falling farther and farther below us until finally-— You put in about 40 feet/second to do sanething with it and it hadn't changed a speck. By the time we got to Hawaii I told then I thought we were having difficulty doing it. Anyway, I had decided by that time that if we were going to do the mission st all, the only thing we could do would be to leave the booster. The fuel was down to around 75 per cent on my ‘gage and the gage kept going up and down, so it wasn't a heck of a lot of help. I had burned around 85 or CONFIDENTIALWhite CONFIDENTIAL 6 90 feet/second. I had numbers in all three of the windows, and of course since I was changing atti- tudes and thrusting in different directions those numbers were going all over the place. So I made up my mind then that it looked like a hopeless task and that we had better stop this stuff or we were going to lose all the fuel for the whole mission, We probably wouldn't be able to catch it, ant we wouldn't be able to do what we were going to do. I think the only thing we could have done to save the whole thing would have been for us just to go forward on the local horizontal and retrograde @ large aout on the order of 20 to 30 feet/second, fall down below the thing and catch it.an orbit or so later and actually perform rendezvous with it. But because the flight plan was such that we had to get all the BVA done in the first three orbits, and because Chris and T had talked this over and decided the BVA was the more important of the two things, I felt that the best thing to do would be to abandon trying to catch up with the booster. Let me interject something else, too. See if you had the same feeling. I had the feeling that the CONFIDENTIAL70 MeDivitt nite MeDivitt CONFIDENTIAL booster orbit had changed so much with respect to our orbit that if we really went down after t, it might jeopardize our lifetime. Honestly, I was concerned about that too, because, renenber,I called and asked what the heck our orbit was right then. The booster looked like it was going dom at such a rapid rete. By the time we got to the States I would guess it was 5 miles below us at least. My impression was even more, I thought maybe it wasn't more at the time but it was going more. I felt that if we really got back with the booster we might have a pretty good orbit, but we would be down in the neighborhood of 150 and this wasn't the altitude we wanted to be, .f6r. the six-day Lifetine that we wanted. ‘The other thing that bothered me was that we were going toward perigee where we should have been coming back together. snd we weren't, We were pulling away so fact that it wasn't even fumy. Frankly, I just couldn't figure out what kind of orbit the booster was in. It locked to me like, if we were having trouble, the place where we should have been the farthest from it was at Car- CONFIDENTIALCONFIDENTIAL n narvon. Apogee should have been farthest apart. Our perigee should have been closest together. It was almost opposite, We were with it et Camervon, but we were way far away from it and getting farther eway from it as we crossed the United States, or Mexico, or wherever we came. I wasn't looking out at the scenery; I was looking at the booster. It was extremely difficult to track acrose the water and as we got to the land it was almost an impossibility to track it. the distance is extromely difficult to judge. It It could have been anywhere fron 5 to 15 miles directly below ue at this time. If I had a range rate I could have told where T was all the time I would have been able to and with range ra: rendezvous with it froma mile, I could have done the things I knew had to be done, rather than try to do it forcefully, T sort of feel the big problem was that we were eo optimistic for those first three orbite that it is elmost unbelievable. Is became apparent when we tried to do the EVA that we couldn't do it in the time allotted. But anyway sun came across the window and I lost it just like that. It might have been 5 miles out, I don't know, It might have been then. Tt might have been 50 miles out, but I had the im- pression in the 30 or 40 seconds I saw it that it was quite close because I could make out the shape of it. Shoot! The eun came across the window and ‘that was the last thing I saw out the window. 1 never saw another thing out the window until we were gone and until the sun finally came off the window, So, if you are doing an optical rendez- vous and you've got the sun on the window, I don't know what you'd do, dnd if you have as dirty windows as we had-- our windows had a white film of material on the CONFIDENTIAL16 MoDivitt CONFIDENTIAL outside , which made it very difficult to see out when the em's rays reflected on these particles that were on the outside of the windshield. To just summarize thie thing, I think that we came off the booster with a fully unlmown relative velocity which was much greater than what we anticipated, and it didn't seen to be an inplane relative velocity, It didn't seem to be an inplane local horizontal relative velocity. Tt was out-of- plane and it looked like the tooster headed dow, with respect to us because it started separating from us so rapidly. It also had less total velo- city I think that this ves the first sur- prise, It etarted tumbling end immediately the retes built up in just @ very few minutes to something very high--40 to 50 degrees/second~. but it never got any higher, at least the best we could tell. When we lest saw it over Mexico or over southem United States it ye still tumbling at about the same rate, I guess around 40 or 50 degrees/second. I felt that I got down to it all right and I vas in reasonably good shape prior to Carnarvon, and from that time on until we came out of the darkness I lost it. And I think I lost it CONFIDENTIALWhite MeDivitt CONFIDENTIAL 7 decause looking at a single light at night doesn't give you any depth perception at all. You just don't know where the booster is. I think that swmarizes it, Ha, you want to add anything? You weren't watching it as much as I was, but you saw enough of it to know exactly what was going on. Well, you see I wasn't able to put the pieces quite together because I was either locking out, and I couldn't see when you were thrusting,or I was locking in and watching you when you were thrusting and listening and not looking out. I tried to interject my thoughts as we went along and I agree with what you said. I don't believe I want to add anything else. Now that we've covered the tracking and the losing of the booster, I think we ought to go back to the very beginning at insertion and we will go through ‘the checks that we went through as we proceeded along and the things that Bi and I were doth doing aside from tracking the booster, the things that we were either doing to prepare to come back in at area 2-1 or to stay in orbit and proceed with the EVA as we had planned. In looking over the flight plen that we had and the briefing guide on CONFIDENTIAL78 White HeDivitt CONFIDENTIAL page six,I have already covered the things on platform alinement. I did not have time to aline the platform. T tried to get it to somewhere near the local horizontal so that in case we had to do a retrofire I'd be able to do the wtrofire. 1 brought the spacecraft up to a pitch attitude that T hoped was zero, but I never got the spacecraft alined to see that it was zero. So we really went into this thing without my ever having seen a zero pitch attitude on the spacecraft. Obviously I didn't get a chance to see the 30 degree pitch down on the retrofire attitude. I didn't really have time to look out the window and do a single thing that would have prepared us to reenter at 2-1 because we were so busy keeping track of-- You kmow another thing I'd say also is that we were eternally optimistic. We felt we were going to aline the platform and watch the booster at the same time. As a metter of fact, while I was trying to get the alinenent it became apparent to me that I could not aline it. I even thrusted vertically-- CONFIDENTIALMeDivitt White MeDivitt White CONFIDENTIAL 9 T was in a horizontal position and I thrusted down using my top thrusters, so that I would try to keep the booster in my view. Thrusting, chasing the booster, and alining the platform all at the same time--those are the kinds of things you have to do. So, I never did get the platform alined. I did not have time. I got it somewhere near local horizontal. If T was within plus or minus 5 degrees in the axis, I think I did a reasonably good job. The ‘Thruster Control Mode Checks that took place at 15 minutes I didn't do as such. I would just throw it into a different mode and thrust. I just did it with a catch-as-catch-can. I did check out the different modes. Everything seemed to be working. You weren't getting any thrusters that weren't firing, and your modes all seemed to me to be working properly. Tt looked pretty good. I had one comment on the Communications System Check. Remember we lost good comminications with No. 1 UHF and we switched to No. 2 and seemed to have good communications with it CONFIDENTIAL80 MoDivitt White MeDivitt White MeDivitt CONFIDENTIAL from thea on? Now this wasn't representative that we lost UHF No. 1 because w2 used both of the sets at different tines throughout the mission later on. But at this particula’ tine, UHF 1 didn't give us good reception and we switch: T thou, ¢ comm nizations thro the first day of the flight wore atrocious. They were terrible. Finally we switched to tho Jeary Stab Antenna and that seemed to fix the problem. Didn't you think so? Bat you kmow we went back toreentry antenna over Carnazvon one tite. Wi just as good esception off of it that ve time as we did any other tine. I remember when you were making your Conmmications Check. That was when T was asleep. You were checking the two and you ended up with the reentry entemna. Yes, later on in the flight, as I said, at the end of the first day or 39. We seemed + get better communications. Coumanications wars bettec. As a matter of fact, Iwas a little conceraed that the comminications were so lousy that we might have CONFIDENTIALWaite MoDivitt Waite MeDivitt White MeDivitt MoDivitt CONFIDENTIAL 81 to come back in, because we were really losing communications. We vere trying HF and all kinds of things. Information just wasn't getting up to us. ‘That was after BVA. Right. Communications just weren't getting up to us. I figured we didn't have any communications with the ground during BVA, No, we didn't, Our VOX blocked them out. I kmow it. But the Communications Systems Check that was supposed to be performed at 15 minutes—— we sort of already accomplished the thing, because we'd used UHF No. 1 and No, 2. I made the check with them. Did you make the check? -- that's right you made the check but we didn't use the HP because we weren't going to put the antenna out until efter EVA. We didn't do anything with the urine bags except keep them right where they were. At this time we didn't pressure check both suite, because we did this later. We didn't aline the platform, as I mentioned. CONFIDENTIALa2 White MeDivitt White MeDivitt MeDivitt CONFIDENTIAL The Control Mode Check was a catch~as-catch can. You did unstow, the equipment that we were supposed to unstow. The blood pressure bulb, the Hasselblad camera and its packs, and a 16 mm camera. During this time when I was chasing the booster, I did manage to get to reach back behind my seat and pull out the bracket for the 16 mm camera. You tracked the booster while I smoothed the thing out. That's right. We didn't get out the urine nozzle. How about the utility cord? Did you get out that fancy utility cord, the three-axis utility cord? Yes, I knew where it was. I didn't give it to you becaase you didn't need it. No, I didn't need it. That's right. As Bd said, we did not pressure check our suits at 30 minutes like we were supposed to, There's this little thing here that says measure all AV's, All I did was put the computer in Catch-Up, hit the Start Comp button, and just let the numbers fall where they would, At the time that we stopped chasing the booster around, Thad about 60 fect / second in one window, CONFIDENTIALMoDivitt White MoDivitt CONFIDENTIAL ws 30 in another, and 30 in another. I never really cane to a positioa to try to null all these things out to see what the total AV was. T was putting in the thrust with mostly the aft thruster and the down-firing top thruster. T don't think I used the le and right thruster, at all. I don't think I used the bottom thurster at all. There was no difficulty controlling any of them, I used the forward- firing thrusters once or twice to try to slow down, to take out total vel ty. Then there was the Accelerometer Bias Check which was another one of those things. I don't know how I let it get into the flight plan. We both joked about that one, huh, Mac? We were really going t get an Accelerometer Check when we were trying to track the booster. I was putting 'AV's on the IVI's at a rate of a foot per minute at least. We ended up with over a foot per minute, I think, over that period of time. We couldn't have checked anybody's accelerometer bias, so I just didn't even fool around with it. We were supposed to take a blood pressure. Did you take that blood CONFIDENTIAL84 White MeDivitt White McDivitt White MeDivitt White MeDivitt MoDivitt White MeDivitt CONFIDENTIAL pressure, Ba? Yes. You did take the blood pressure. I think I did, I had it out. I don't know whether they asked for it or not. Okay. I don't remember on that. Okay. We got the Quantity Read off. I guess we got a time hack somewhere in there. They called up I believe. I remember them calling the Quantity Read-Off, and I tured it OFF. ‘That's right. Then it says at one hour we were supposed to unstow and assemble the maneuvering unit in its 16 ma mount. I don't think we had thet stuff out by then, did we? No. You see, this whole flight plan was based on me being able to track the booster withoat using any thrust, aid essentially having the space- craft stationary near the booster, without any maneuvering at all, where the station- keeping was a matter of just looking out at the thing and controlling your attitude with pulse. CONFIDENTIALWhite MeDivit: white NeDivitt White CONFIDENTIAL 85 We thought that if the booster was stationary we could get in close to it. We could essentially fly a formation by it with more attitude control than translation control, which left me then free to help Ea assemble all this stuff for the BVA, Well, it turned out that I didn't dare take my eyes off the booster for half a second. So all the things that we were supposed to do together up until the time we finally said goodty to the booster, Hd had to asconplich himself. I was completely unable to help him, The only thing T managed to do was to unstow the 16 mm camera bracket and put the 16 mm camera on. T couldn't quite get at that one. No, T could aandiy get to it, So we were probably behind at the hour mark. Right? Yes. Not by an awful lot. I knew we had a problem with the booster, and I was more concerned with our problem with the booster than getting the gun and stuff oat then, I felt that they wore both tied together and once we lost the booster we didn't have a CONFIDENTIAL86 MeDivitt Waite MoDivitt Waite MeDivitt MeDivitt CONFIDENTIAL sweat time-wise on making our BVA. S0, Tw trying to be of what assistance I could to Jim on watching the booster during these first critical periods. Yes. It wasn't unappreciated because this booster was becoming a speck on the horizon, and 1 lose if you blinked your eyes you could very w. the darn thing. When we were out that second day, I think you said one time you did lose it for a minute. That's right. I was lucky enough to still be seeing it, until yoa started picking it up again. That's right. So, I'm saying it really took two pairs of eyes constantly looking at that booster to keep it in sight. It's just one of those things that just took so moh time thit we hain't plemed on. It was almost unbelievable. In oar flight plan from an hoar to an hour and ‘twenty minutes we don't really show anything. Although, here again, we were busy with the booster. So, when we got around to closing with ‘the booster, there wasn't any closing. We finally got clearance over the United States tostop CONFIDENTIALMedivii MeDivitt CONFIDENTIAL eS fooling with the booster. I think thie was w extremely wise decision. I got to Guaymas and I said the booster was pulling avay from us. We'd already used about 100 AV to hay with it, and T recommended that we just give up on it. We had to get a decision imandiately becanse I couldn't stay with it and not use fyel at the same time. They came back from Texas. I talked to Guaymas and got their confirmation from Texas, which was only a natter of a couple of minutes, saying leave the booster. That was about the only thing they could say. ivity And this was the time I went after the gun. Okay. At that time wo reverted frm station= keeping, which we were both attempting to do +o BVA preparation, which we both had to do. That's when Ed went after the gun, aad we started our peaparation. We wevea't really far behind at this time, All we had to do was get the gun out and get the maneuvering unit. The cameras wers already out. You had the Zeiss too, didn't you? CONFIDENTIALa8 Waite MoDivitt White MoDivitt White MeDivitt White MeDivitt White MeDivitt CONFIDENTIAL Yes. The Zeiss came out with the Hasselblad, from that same package as the movie camera. And the storagy certainly was 2 lot easier. Wnat do you think? Taat's right. Particularly gettirg it out that center thing. You can just zip them out of there with no problea at all. So, at about 1:30 we started to assumble the gan, If you look at the checklist, yox see that we probably got the gun assembled in nothing Cat. It's no problem to assemble the gun. We started our egress preparations essentially on time, As 4 matte of fact, I think we even got started a little earlier. Then, we weren't worrying aboat anything elec. Then, we weren't worrying about staying with the booster. We probably started it about 1:35 or 1:40, Over the States ve started our 4gress preparation, We went to our vther checklist. You were over Ascension, calling off the check~ list. I started reading the checklist off to Ha and CONFIDENTIALWaite MeDivitt Waite MoDivitt CONFIDENTIAL 89 we went through it, He unstowed everything, Why don't you tell them what you did there, Bd? I just read the checklist off to you, and you went ahead and did it. Okay. I had to get bark into the right-hand box, and I unstowed the items there. The first time I went back in there, I took the first items out, and I did rot wstow the full box. I remember I told you, "It's all coming out, Jim. I'm going to bring them all out on the lanyard." Remember? Right. We'd take them off piece by piece if we need it. At that time I pulled the whole Lanyard out and the cockpit was full of little bags.I was quite happy that they had prevailed upon me to put a lanyard on all this equipment. T had thought at one time that it would be aoce desirable not to pat a lanyard on. We'd been » ing @ lot in our similations without the lanyard and it seemed pretty easy. But looking at it now, T highly recomend that everybody keep that stuff on a lanyard. We would have really had a mess if we'd had all CONFIDENTIAL90 Waite MoDivitt White MeDivitt CONFIDENTIAL those things floating around. It was bad enough as it was. Yes, eight or ten of those little bags, and I was gled they were all tied on to one string. I could control them in that manner. They were quite simple to ansnap. I thought the snap attachment made it pretty easy to unstow, and selectively pick oat the items that I wanted. Tunstowed the pouches that I needed, and then we got ready to take the long umbilical out. I had a little difficulty. It took me about three trys to get it out. It's fairly big Package to come through a small hole. It was a good thing that we had taken the velcro off of the batch, because there was no tendency for anything to hang up as we removed it. On the third try I got it out. I thought you did an extremely good job getting the bag out. You got it out a lot quicker then I'd ever seen you do it 41 tae Conv Procedures Teainee in Houston or in the simaletor at the Cape. You didn't know it. It took ma three trys. Well, maybe it did, but it sure looked Like it CONFIDENTIALWaite MoDivitt Waite MeDivitt Waite CONFIDENTIAL ” came out a lot easier. I thought you got it out in a big hurry, 1 didn't notice that it took you three trys. I saw you start, and then just a short tine later, it was out. Well, it did come out pretty easy, and I think the storage was satisfactory, but I'd certainly recommend that nothing be on She outside to keep it fron coming oat. It's veal tonga-- Yes, we need the velcro off of there. We're pretty well sure of that. The rest of the squipmeat- the "Y" connectors, the bag that contained the "Y" connectors, and the attachments for the chest pack, I handed to you. I thizk you were keeping track of aost of those things until the time I needed them. Yes, I was. The storage of the ventilatioa module from the floor came off pretty easily. That's wien T started going shead and putting it all on. You read the checklist off to me. I had gone ahead and done a few things anyhow. As you real thea off T checked then off to be cure that I had done them all. I think we had CONFIDENTIAL92 MeDivitt White MeDivitt White MoDivitt CONFIDENTIAL everything out without mich problem at all. I think it took us longer actually to pat it all together, That's right. It did. We started going through the checklist here and putting the things on and we started getting more and moze rushed. We were supposed to start the Raress Preparation Checklist at about 1:44, We probably started it at about 1:35 or so. We started it about 10 minutes early, roughly, maybe five to 10 minites early. We were supposed to be realy to start the depressuraza- tion at 2:30 over Carnarvon. I think I could have gone through and nooked everything all up, but I felt that we should ge through fairly close to the procedure we hat set up on the checklist. ‘That's right. I think this slowed us dow. Well, we set the procedure up so that when we finished with it, it would be right. I think this helter-skelter thing that we were being forced into was for the birds. So as we git farther along, it became apparent to me that CONFIDENTIALWhite MeDivitt Waite MeDivitt CONFIDENTIAL % the thing to do would be to stop. Right. Go ahead with the assembly of the stuff. Why don't you comment on that? T've comnented in ay Self Debriefing about the equipment and the assembly of it, I thought there was no difficulty at all in connectiag the "Y" connectors, the hoses, and the chest pack. I thought the connection of the chest pack to my harness was a good one, With the velero I could move it in and out whenever T wanted to so that T could mak qy connections on the inlet side of the BOS hoses, It went along pretty smoothly, as a matter of fact. I think as we progressed along in it though, we felt that we had everything dona. T didn't really feol that we had everything done in a thorough manner. And I think you had that same feeling. That's right. Wnen we got to Kano or Tanaiarive -10 ak it was Tananavive--I called whoever Iwas talking to and anid that we were running late and I thought that we would probably not do the EVA on this particular cev. I kuew that CONFIDENTIAL4 MeDivitt White CONFIDENTIAL we had another cey on whinh we sould do tk. It Looked to me Like we ad all the stuff hooked up, bat we hadn't really had a chance to check it. T also noticed, Ba, that you were getting awfully hot. You were starting to peespine a lot, Iditn't Lie tre way you looked to start this whol thing off. So I told them over Tananavive--I believe it was Tananarive--that we would go ahead and continue on, and T would Let then ‘mow whether ve aot we were going to depreasurize at the next station. We went on ahead and it looked to me like you were all hooked up and about ready to go except for one thing. We Forgot the therwal gloves, I dii not nave ty theraal gloves on. You did not have the thermal gloves oa, which is sort of insignificant, but we hain't really had a chance to check ovee the equipment to make sure that it was in the right apot. Well, we talked and you said, "What do you think?" We talked it over and I had the same feeling.I though? it sure would oe smart if we had about 20 minutes to just sit here ceal atill CONFIDENTIALMeDivitt White MeDivitt Waite MeDivitt CONFIDENTIAL % before we gu out. I think we were in a situatioa where it would probably have gone all right. We had completed about 80 percent of what we Sy shout have hai done as far as the checkiig went, and I just didn't feel that we were in the right shape. Hd didn't think we were, and besides, I could see Bd. He couldn't see himself, Bd Looked avfully hot, and he Looked Like he was getting a little pooped out from playing around with that big suit. I thought that the best thing for bis sake, and I knew he wouldn't eAmit it, was to let him rest ap for another orbit. T agree that was the best judgnent. So, whea we got to Sarnarvon=-I giess it was Camarvon--I called them ard said we wore nob going to come out on that orbit. It waa Cariarvon, It was just before we depressurized, So, we postponed it until the next orbit. As a matter of fact, after that we just sat thers. We didn't do a thiag for about 10 minutes, T let Bi cool off a little bit. We were on two CONFIDENTIAL96 White MeDivitt Waite MeDivitt Waite CONFIDENTIAL fan operation at the time. We just sat there and we were cooled off, We went around for about, twenty minutes then. Okay. ‘Then as we went back around, I asked you to go through the checklist again, and we went through item by item this time. That's right. I might add that we weat right back to the begianiag checklist, the Egress Preparation Checklist. We started at the top one, and we did every step on it again. We verified every step to make sure we hadn't left anythirg out. We actually went in and checked this time, Another thing we hadn't really positively checked was the position of all the locks on all of the hose intets and outlets. This time we actually checked all those locked. All of them were locked in, but it was a good thing to do, I believe. You want to make sure, We did do our Suit Integrity Check before we started all this stuff. That's right. We started before we actually went to the unstowing of the stuff from the right- hand aft food box. We went to the Suit CONFIDENTIALMeDivitt MeDivitt White MoDivitt Waite MoDivitt White CONFIDENTIAL ” Insegvity Check. Well, I don't ‘mow where it is, but we did it when we were supposed to do it. We did the Suit Integrity heck before we started the Egress Preparation Checklist. That's when we did it, over the States. I think we did that jast about the time you decided to give up on the booster, We did the Suit Integrity Check. Both suits checked out all right, It went up to 8.5 and it leaked dowa to about 8.3 or something like that. Same thing with mine. Tt went up to 8.5 and leaked do m just a Little bit. Nob enough to be concerned about. No. Oh, one thing that we did do on that extra orbit that we wont around-- I disconnected the sepress system and we wont back on the-= Oh, yes. We never even gut on the xepress system, did we? Yes, I believe we wore, but thea we tumed it off, We were already to depressurize and then we went back on the spacecraft BOS aystem, full, and went through an@ reverified the whole checklist again. ‘The only thiags that I would CONFIDENTIAL98 MeDivitt White CONFIDENTIAL say we hadn't done to my satisfaction the First time vas ta check the inlet and outlet positions of the locks, and I didn't have my thermal gloves on. Tt turned out I didn't need them. Also, daring this period of time T alined the Platforn, which was completely misalined, It was probably alined within a couple degrecs, but as we went around in Orbit Rate it got farther and farther ont of tolerance, So, I managed to aliae the platfora. Here again, T might comient on the fact that our initial flight plan was so optimistic that it was almost unbelievable. The both of us worked full time on doing nothing except preparing for BVA, and we didn't quite get the job done. I can't believe that we could aave possibly flown formation with the booster and taken pictures of it and all the other thiags that we had scheduled, and still praparsd Sor this thing and even come close to completing it. Well, the way we would have had to do it, would have been without a checklist. I would have had to just go ahead and hook everything wp. 1 ‘think we could have done it satisfactorily i CONFIDENTIALMeDivitt White MoDivitt CONFIDENTIAL 9 this manner, but it wouldn't have been the way ve would have wanted it. Yes, that's right. I don't think that's the way it should be done. It was just too bad that we had a time limit on it, but when we did get rid of the booster, or the booster no longer became a part of the flight plan, then the time limit vanished. We found out that we really needed that extra orbit,or probably could have used another 20 minutes. Yes. We went back. And T remember as we came over Carnarvon, we had about a 15 minute chat back and forth—kind of a rest period. We were all hooked up at that time, and that's the time we went on the Zepress flow, ready for the depressurization, I think they gave us a GO then for our BVA. ‘That's right. We depressurized the cabin and got down to 2 psi to check our blood pressure. We tried to put our blood preseure plugs in the blood pressure plug port and found out that we didn't have any blood pressure plugs on either suits. This was quite a surprise. An unpleasant one, I might add. Well, we decided CONFIDENTIAL100 White MeDivitt White MoDivitt White MoDivitt CONFIDENTIAL that from our past experience and our knowledge of the suit that even if we did spring a leak in the blood pressure cuff the size hole that we had in the suit would not be catastrophic, and we decided to go ahead with the BVA. It was within the’ capability of the system we were using. At Carnarvon we not only got the go-ahead to start the depressurazation, we aleo got the go- ahead to open up the hatch, the go-shead that We weren't supposed to get until Hawaii. So, we went ahead and did that. Yes. I'm kind of curious of the whole time. We were out nearly an orbit, I think, We didn't get it closed back again till we got back around to Carnarvon. We were in a whole orbit depressurized. Yes, I don't think people quite realize that. We'll remind them. As we got to the hatch opening thing, we had our first difficulties with the hatch. ‘The gain gear, I guess you want to call it--actually I call it the ratchet_ didn't want to engage into the UNLOCK position. CONFIDENTIALWhite CONFIDENTIAL 101 We fooled with it a few times and it finally engaged in the UNLOCK position, and Bd was able to go ahead and start. The first indication of trouble was when I unstowed the handle to open the hatch. The handle freely moved up and down with no tension on it at all. I knew right away where the trouble was. It was up in that little spring on the gain pawl. So, I went up and manipulated it back and forth in hopes that I could break the lubrication loose in the spring to get it to work. We must have spent several minutes with the hateh, I thought perhaps it might have been stuck in the manner that the hatch got stuck in the WetMock, where it just was stuck. You could ratchet it open, but the hatch itself wouldn't open, It was pretty apparent the trouble was in the gain pawl. I jimmied it back and forth, and then I decided to go ahead and try the technique of actuating it in sequence with the hatch handle. If you actually replaced the operation of the spring with mechanically moving the gain pawl up and down, you can do the same work that the spring does. CONFIDENTIAL102 McDivitt White MoDivitt CONFIDENTIAL Your fingers sort of take the place of the spring and drive this little pawl home. This is the first time we actually tried this ina suit. It requires you to press up with your left arm to get at the gain pawl, and at the same time hold yourself down. and T think later on this was a source of some of our problens which I brought out now so that we can find out later on, I felt it start to engage, and start to ratchet the luge out. Jim also verified that they were coming open. I backed them off, and I remember Jim saying "Qoop! Not so fast!", and at that time it popped. The hatch actually popped open, jumped open about 3 or 4 inches. I was expecting the hatch to come open with a bang. Although we had the cabin to vent and it had bled on down to where there was nothing indicated on the Cabin Pressure Gage , we etill really had the repress valve on. He was bleeding right into the spacecraft. We never got down to @ vacuum and even though we had a cabin pressure of only a tenth of a psi, we spread it over the entire area of that hatch, CONFIDENTIALWhite MeDivitt White MoDivitt CONFIDENTIAL 105 and that pute a pretty good size force on it. Thad a real tight hold on the hatch closing device, and when it popped open I was able to snub it. It didn't really open with mich force, did it? Well, it did. Tt opened with a feir amount. It popped and I couldn't stop it the first inch or so, Then, of course, a8 soon as it opened that much pressure bled off. I just sort of snubbed the thing to keep it from flying all ‘the way open. Now if I hadn't been holding onto it, I don't think it would have gone open more then two or three feet. This is another point too. There's more force on the hatch actuator than I thought. I didn't just flip the door open with my hand. T had to actually forcibly push it open, similar to the force with which I opened the hatch laying on my back under one "g". That's about the force that I had to put on the hatch to open it. ‘This extra force that we are talking about is due to the O-rings they put in the pyzos that are used for jettisoning the hatch. This is something that they put in just before the CONFIDENTIAL104 White CONFIDENTIAL flight. Something that we'd gone out to the spacecraft to feel. We kmew just about what the force was, but it was pretty high. Okey. At this time I had certain things that T had to accomplish. I had to mount the camera on the back of the adapter, and mount the umbilical guard on the edge of the door. T elected, as T had planned, to go ahead and mount the camera first and then the umbilical guard. I mounted the camera and it went on without too much difficulty, The three little lugs on the bottom are a good mounting scheme, I think I would make a little easier engaging device for working out in a hard suit. I had familiarity with it, and it did lock up there all right. ‘The umbilical guard for the umbilical on the side of the door took me a little longer to mount, Back to opening the hatch--I had the thermal gloves on when ve were opening the hatch, and because of the fine work I had to do with the little gain and the drive lugs up there, I had to remove the thermal gloves so thet I could actually actuate those small levers. I couldn't do them with any precision CONFIDENTIALCONFIDENTIAL i with my gloved hand. So, I took the thermal gloves off at this time and I handed them to Jim, When I got back out I didn't notice any temperature extremes. I felt quite confident that there wouldn't be any heat since we just came out of the dark side, so I decided to do the actual work in putting this equipment on with my plain pressure suit gloves. T had much more feel with them. Let me get back now to the umbilical guard on the door. It went on pretty well, It took me a little longer and it took me four or five trys to get the little pin into the hole that actually snubbed the guard down on the door. I did something then that I ain't planned to do. The bag had floated up and out of the spacecraft and now it was above the point where the hose was going through the umbilical guard. I had planned to keep it down inside. I left it there for two reasons: (1) I figured it was there already and I would have had to take the umbilical cord off again and scooted it back down, and (2) I also felt that Jim might have had a better view if it wasn't sitting right in front of him on the hose coming CONFIDENTIAL106 MoDivitt CONFIDENTIAL up from the? 2press valve. I elected to go ahead and leave the bag there. I then reported to Jim that I had everything all mounted and was ready to go. I had planned to take a short series of pictures. Since we had gotten out early, I had a little extra time at this time, so I went ahead and turned the outside EVA camera on, I took a short sequence of pictures that actually gives the egress up out of the seat. I kind of went back down and came out again so they would get an actual picture of it, and then I turned the camera off again. I mounted the camera and I turned it on while it was on the mount. I took a short sequence when I asked Jim to hand me my left thermal glove, which he @id. T put the thermal glove on while the camera was running, I turned back around. I wanted to be sure the camera was off, so I took it off the mount and I turned the camera off and actually visually took a look to see if the switch vas off. Did you mock it off one time? I thought you said the camera fell off. CONFIDENTIALCONFIDENTIAL ror Waite By golly, I did. So I mst of mounted it four times. That's right, I mocked it off one time during this time when I was out there. T got the picture of the egress, and then I asked you to hand me the gun. At this time the camera wasn't running, I had the glove on my left hand, end T went ahead and took the gun and made sure that it was ready to go. I had the camera on at that time and the valve was on. I checked the valve to be sure it was on and I was essentially ready to go. I don't know how long this took, tut it took me longer than I thought. We had had early egress and it wasn't too mich before I got the GO that I was ready to leave the spacecraft. MeDivitt I'm not gure whether we got that GO from Hawaii or Guaymas., T sort of suspect that we got that GO from Hawaii, not Cuaymas as we had originally planned. White Well, it sure seemed short from the time I was mounting all that stuff out there to the time you told me go. MeDivitt That's right. I'm eure we were talking to Hawaii, and they said you're clear to proceed CONFIDENTIAL108 White MoDivitt White CONFIDENTIAL with EVA. And that's when I went. I bet we went out at Hawaii. I think we went out at Hawaii. I delayed from the time you gave just a minute, long enough to actuate the canera on the outside, This was kind of interesting. When I actuated that camera, I hed my gun tied to ay arm with the tether. It floated freely to ay right. I turned back around snd turned the switch ON on the camera, and listened and made sure the thing was running. I lmew it was running, and put it down. I think you'll see this on the film. I wanted to be sure it was running when I mounted it back there. I actually took it off end turned it on, and I remember it Sigeling up and down when I was trying to stick it on there. Tt ought to be a funny looking film. ind it might even show the gun floating beside me as I was mounting it. That's when you said, "Slow down. You're getting awfully hot.” I was working pretty hard to get that on, I mounted the camera again and this is where I tried to actually maneuver right out CONFIDENTIALMcDivitt White CONFIDENTIAL 109 of the spacecraft. I knew right away as soon as I got up-I felt even before -- that the technique of holding on to the bar in the spacecraft and sticking a finger in the RCS thruster wasn't going to work. I mentioned that to Jim before — that I didn't think I would be able to do it. I think thet you and I both knew how you were going to do, and everybody else was planning for us how we were going to do it, but without any veal experience in it People. who didn't know a lot about it were planning this sequence and it wasn't the way it should have been. I couldn't have done that. I didn't have three hands. I couldn't hold the gun and put a finger in the ROS nozzle, and hold the handle at the came time. I thought it would be more desirable anyhow to actually depart the space- craft with no velocity, other than that imparted by the gm. This is exactly what I did. I thought that I was free of the spacecraft, and I fired the gun. I realized that my legs were still dragging a little bit on the side of the seat, 90 I pulled myself out until T could see that my feet were actual!» out af the CONFIDENTIAL110 MeDivitt Waite MeDivitt White MeDivitt White CONFIDENTIAL spacecraft. I think you called me and said I vas out of the spasecraft. I called and told you that you were clear. That's right. And that's when T started firing the gua and actaally propelled myself under the influence of the gin. I don't believe I gave any input into the spacacraft when T left that tise, aia 1? Vo, you left as clean as a whistle. Later on, I gave you some pretty big ones. You were really bouncing around then. Vow at the time,T left entirely under the influence of the gun and it carried me right straight out, a little higher than T wanted to go. I wanted to maxcuver over to your side, but I maneuvered out of the spacecraft and forward and pothaps a little higher than I wanted to be. When I got out to waat T estimate ag probsbly one-half or two-thirds the way out on the tether, I was out past the nose of tne spaccoraft. T started a yaw to the left with the gun and that's when I reported that the gan really worked quite well. I believe that I CONFIDENTIALCONFIDENTIAL ni stopped that yaw, and I started translatine ack toward the spacecraft. It was either on this translation or the one following this that I got into a bit of a combination of a p: roll and the yaw together. I felt that I could have corrected it, but I knew that it would have tazea more fuel than I hed wanted to expend with the gin, so I gave a little tug on the tether and came back in, This is the first experience I had with tether dynamics and it brought me right back to where I did hot want to be. Tt ‘brought me right back on the top of the space- craft, by the adapter section. Jim was calling me and said that I was out of his sight. I told him that I was all right, that I was ap above the spasecraft, I looked down and I could see attitude thrusters firing, little white puffs out of each one. I wasn't very close. ‘They looked just like wnat Chamberlain's report told us. It looked just like about a foot and ahalf or maybe 2 feet of plume from the space craft and certainly dida't look ominous to ae at all. In fact it looked kind of like the spacecraft was really alive and working down CONFIDENTIALa CONFIDENTIAL there. I knew Jim was doing his job holding attitude for me. MeDivitt Let me comment on the attitude-holding right now, Initially we started out in blunt-end- forward, banked to the left about 30 degrees or 80. This happened to be the attitude we were in, We wanted to be blust-end-forward for the sun, and they told me it didn't make any difference what attitude that we were in when we opened up the hatch. We had originally planned on opening the hatch toward the ground. I was called by some station that said it didn't make any difference what attitude I was in when I opened the hatch. We opened the hatch. We opened it in that particular attitude, and I held the attitude for the first portion of the time that Bd was out, When you had the gun you managed to stay reasonably well out in front. I held the spacecraft essentially stationary with respect to the local horizontal. After yoa ran out of fuel in the gun you were on top of the spacecraft all of the tims, I felt that unless yoa really haa to have the thing stablized, to maintain your sense of balance or CONFIDENTIALWhite McDivitt CONFIDENTIAL a whatever you want to call it, I wouldn't fire the thrusters. You asked that already waen I was out. Yes. I asked you if you needed it and you said no. So, then I felt it would be better not to fire the thrusters, because you were drifting back up over the cockpit. I could see that you were going up over us. I couldn't see back behind me, but I could see by the motions that you had when you went by me that you were going to continue on, I felt tht it would be @ lot safer if we just let the spacecraft drift unless it got into very high rates. I fired the Jets a couple of times just to kiock off the rates. I let it start drifting when you got on the tether so that you wouldn't get back there on top of one of those thrusters when Z fired them, From about the time you ran out of fuel until you got back in I didn't do mach attitude controlling. I did some, Bverytime the rates got up pretty high, I'd Imock’ them off, You were able to maneuver around the spacecraft when the spacecraft itself had rates of say plus or ainus | 2 degrees/second in a CONFIDENTIAL14 White CONFIDENTIAL couple of the axes at the same time. Here again before the flight we discussed the axis system. Ed selected the spacecraft as hiS axis system, Tt didn't appear that he was having a bit of trouble with it, He was maneuvering with respect to it, reganiless of what the earth, sun, moon, and stars were doing. It was pretty obvious to me that was exactly wnat he was doing. Well, when I came back the first tims to she spacecraft with the gcr-I had used the tether to bring me back-=I did go back up on the adapter area. This is the first time it had happened. I said, "All right. I'm coming back out again.” This is one of the most impressive uses of the gun that I had. I started back out with that gun, and I decided that I would fire a pretty good curst too. I started back out with that gun, aud I literally flew with the gun right dow along the edge of the spacecraft, right out to the front of the noge, and out past the end of the nose. I then actually stopped myself with the gun. ‘That was easier than I thought. I must have been fairly CONFIDENTIALCONFIDENTIAL _ fortunate, because I must have fired it right through my CG. I stopped out there and, if my memory serves me right, this is where I tried a couple of yaw maneuvers. I tried a couple of yaw and a couple of pitch maneuvers, and then I started firing the gun to come back in, T think this was the time that the gun ran out. And T was actually able to stop myself with it out there that second “ime too. The longest firing time that I put on the gun was the one that T used to start over the doors ap by the adapter section, I started back out then. T probably fired it for a one second burst or sonething like that. I used small burst all the time. You could put a little burst in and the response was tremendous, You could start @ slow yaw or a slow pitch, It seemed to be a rather efficient way to operate. I would have Liked to have had a three foot bottle out there-- the bigger the better. It was quite easy to control. I feel that with the gun there would be no difficulty in maneuvering back to the aft end of the epassoratt, and thin vas exactly what I did later oa, just on the tether. I got CONFIDENTIAL16 MeDivitt CONFIDENTIAL all the way back. So, I ran ous of air with the gun and I reported this to Jim. I didn't attempt to take aay pictures while I was actually maneuvering with the gun. The technique that I used with the gun was the technique that we developed on the air-bearing platform. I kept my left hand out to the side, and the gun as close to my center of gravity as I could. I think that the training I had on the air-bearing tables was very representative, especially in yaw and pitch, I felt quite confident with the gun in yaw wa pitch, but I felt a little less confident in roll. I felt that I would have to use too auch of my fuel. I felt that it would be a little more difficult to control and I didn't want to use my fuel to take out my roll combination with the yaw. We divided our plan so that I would have a part of it on the maneuver and a part of it on the tether. I don't know how far elong we were when the gun ran out. Right on schedule when the gun ran out, We planned four minutes for the gun portion of it. We were just about on schedule. CONFIDENTIALWhite MeDivitt White CONFIDENTIAL _ I bet we used a little more than four, because I think we came out earlier than we thought. Yo, I started the event timer to time it. Well, thie is where my control difficulty began. As soon as my gun ran out T wasn't able to control myself the way I could with the gun. With that gun, I could decide to go to 2 part of @ spacecraft and very confidently go. I think right now that I wish that I had given Jim the gun and taken the camera off. How I was working on taking some pictares and working on the tether dynamics. I immediately realized what was wrong. I realized that our tether was mounted on a plane oblique to the angle in which T wanted to translate. I remeniver Peom our air-bearing work that every- time you got at an angle from the perpendicula: where yonr tether was counted, it gave you a nice arcing trajectory back in the opposite @irection. You're actually like a weight on the end of a string, If you push out in one ireetion, and you're at an angle from the perpendicular, when you reach the end of a back tether, it neatly sends you in a long a CONFIDENTIAL118 CONFIDENTIAL in the opposite direction. Hach time this arc carried me right back to the top of the the top of the spacecraft, in fact Ona time I was so close to the thrusters back there that I called Jim. I said, “Don't fire anymors.", becanse Iwas right on the thrusters. I was even closer than that foot and a half which I had noted to be tae length of the thruster plunes, ani I didn't want to sit on a firing thruster. CONFIDENTIALMeDivitt White MeDivit CONFIDENTIAL ug We were discussing the BVA and I was spying that I spent approximately 70 percent of my time, it seemed, trying to get out of the area back aliove the spacecraft in the adapter area. Yes, you intended to go toward the position that was directly over the cockpit. You always arced passed it decane you were coming from the fron! This was exactly righ! because that's exactly where ny tether vas connected. Chris had been very emphatic that he vented me to stay out of this area, and I had agreed to stay out of there. I tell you, I was doing my level best to keep out but the tether dynamics just put me back there all the time. let me interject something here. When we were talking about the control modes and how we were going to control the spacecraft, we decided on the Pulse Mode rather than the Horizon Scan Mode, or anything like thet. The Mode would leave me free to use both hands to take pictures of you and that way I wouldn't have had to control the spacecraft. But since it CONFIDENTIAL120 White MoDivitt White MeDivitt MoDivitt Waite McDivitt CONFIDENTIAL was an automatic mode and it fired whenever it felt like firing, It didn't give us any flexi ity, and this is why I felt that the best mode to be in was Pulse, in case you did get back there. That's exactly what happened. I didn't have to worry about the thruster going off in your face. I didn't want the thrusters to fire and they didn't fire because I didn't touch them. It was a wise choice. I think this was good. When you look at it from a picture-taking viewpoint, it gave a wider spectrum of pictures. You got different views of the earth and the horizon. I'm glad we weren't held to @ specific mode. I think that the picture we did take or the attitude that we started out, which is shown in the newspaper, is just about right. I guess we banked over to the right, I don't know. That mst have been just as I came out. I don't remember, but it had enough of the ground in the background so that it was certainly CONFIDENTIALCONFIDENTIAL 2 worthwhile. White On one of my passes back to the adapter area I got so far back that I was about 3 or 4 feet from the adepter separation plane, perpendicular it, Tt was rather jagged. There did appear to be cone sharp edges but it really didn't look very imposing to me. I took a picture of it. That's one picture that I believe was good and should come out. McDivitt The trouble is it was probably set on infinity and you were up about 5 feet. White No, I set the camera to about 15 feet or so. might be a little fuzzy because it was too close. White No, I didn't see the far side of the adapter. It didn't go all the way around. I think I could have pushed off and gotten back that far. MeDivitt No. Better to stay away from it. White Well, I felt that if I got going I could have ewag all the way around and had my umbilical right on the edge, without anything to hold on to nis didn't seen or any gun to control myself. like it was at all safe and I had told Chris that I wouldn't go behind the craft. So I didn't go ack there. CONFIDENTIALMoDivitt White CONFIDENTIAL That mst have been just about the tine I told you to come back in. No, I would estimate this was about two-thinds of the way and about this time I was after pictures. I knew this wee @ part of the flight plan that I had, in my mind, fulfilled satisfactorilly. So I tried to get some pictures and this is where 1 really imparted sone velocities, trying to get away from the spacecraft into a position so T could take a picture. I went out to the end of ny tether cord quite a few times doing this. I seemed like every time I would be completely 180 degrees to the spacecraft. I'd have beautiful views of the ground but T couldn't see the spacecraft. It was a definite mistake to mount the camera on the gun. That made it very difficult to use the camera. I had to point not only the camera but the gun with the long thrusters mounted out on the little arms. I'a want to take a picture of an object like the spacecraft, and there were too many loose to get tangled up in and block the camera. I know my tie-down strap was floating loose. had left that out intentionally so that T could CONFIDENTIALCONFIDENTIAL get it later on anytime I had to pull my helmet down. Occasionally when I got in close to the spacecraft, the bag and strings associated vith the bag were tangling up around the vicinity of ‘the gun and the camera. And it seemed like the umbilical was right in front of the camera all the time. So, I think the pictures will verify that I was flicking my right arm quite a bit in the latter part of the flight, trying to clear things out from in front of it to get @ picture. Whenever I was in # posit to get a picture it seemed like I was facing avay from the spacecraft. I took a couple of shots in desper- ation and I think I might have gotten a piece of the spacecraft. But I never got the picture that Iwas after. I wanted to get picture of Jim sitting in that spacecra: through the open hatch, with the whole spacecraft. I know that I didn't get that. In fact, as time went on I realized that I wasn't going to get much of a Picture. I was trying everything I knew to get out there and get stabilized so that I could turn around and get a good picture. I just couldn't do this. This was at the time when I was looking CONFIDENTIALrea CONFIDENTIAL a little into the tether dynamics, and I actually ked off from the spacecraft pretty hard. I remenber Jim saying, "Hey, you're imparting 2 degroes/second rotational velocity to the space- craft when you depart." I was pushing the space- craft quite vigorously. T wanted to push off at an angle of about 30 to 40 degrees to the surface of the spacecraft. And anytime I pushed off from the surface of the spacecraft, my main velocity was perpendicular to the surface. It shot me straight out perpendicular to where the tether was attached. Again, this wesn't in the position that Jim could take a picture of me, and it wasn't too good a position for myself. I usually ended up facing away from the spacecraft. MeDivitt Let me interject something here. In desperation I took the Hasselblad camera and stuck it over out through Kat's open hatch, and asked him if he could see the camera and if he could tell me which way to point it. He couldn't see the camera so he never really did tell me which way to point it. White No. This was the time that you said, "Wey, get in front of my windov." It just eo happened that CONFIDENTIALMeDivitt White MeDivitt White MeDivitt CONFIDENTIAL ae I wes right up close to the spacecraft end that's when I came over. Do you remenber me coming over and actually looking about a foot from your window, Jin? Yes. Looking right at you. Yes, I think that was the time the movie canere wasn't going end I was fooling around with it, tzying to make sure that it was running. Oh, that would have been a very interesting picture. I'm not sure it was going, Ed, vecause, as you know, we had eo mich trouble making the left hand one run. We had that trouble throughout ‘the remainder of the flight. You pushed a switch over and it seemed to run sonetimes, but sometimes it wouldn't. I kept worrying about whether or not it was running so, I would grab a hold of it to see if I could feel it clicking over. I switched the ON-OFF switch on a couple of times to make sure I could tell the change in the feel of it. I'm afraid this time is one of the times thet I didn't have the camera going, because I was trying to make sure that it was CONFIDENTIALWhite MeDivitt White MeDivitt White MoDivitt CONFIDENTIAL going. I'm not positive. I hope I got the picture but I'm not sure about it. That was the time that I came right in, and I couldn't have been more than a foot from your window, looking in. I could actually see you sitting there, That's probably when you put a mark on my window. I think the way I did that--I could actually see you in there and I pushed away with ay hands a little bit. I think this was the time that either my arm or my shoulder contacted the upper part of your window and you called me a "dirty dog" because I had messed your window up. You know, as you look back in retrospect, I wish you'd handed me a kleonex and I wish I'd cleaned up ‘the outside of those two windows. think we could have done it. Yes. We'd have never gotten to the kleenex at that time, but I think we might have done some~ thing about it. I think I might have but we might have smeared them so irrepairably that it might have--. That's right. When you looked at that window of mine from the inside while the sun was shining CONFIDENTIALWhite MoDivitt White MeDivitt White MeDivitt CONFIDENTIAL ur it looked like it was a black paint smear, such as if you'd take a piece of white linoleum and 2 black rubber soled shoe and made a mark on the linoleum. It had that kind of consistency. It was absolutely opaque. Just as black as it could be. Yes, I could tell. When i hit it I could seo from the outside that it turned white. It turned black from the inside. From the outside it was white. From the inside it was black. When I got the ‘thing turned around a different way with the sun on it, it was perfectly clear as if you had taken the coating off, and what I vas seeing was through a perfectly clear surface. So, I don't know really wheth the thing was black, that you placed sonething on the window that would make it black or whether you'd taken something off that was very white, very thin. I eneared the film that was on your window. I'm quite confident that is what happened. I looked at our epacecraft windows after they got it onboard, and I could still see that little hunk of window. Tt looks to me like what CONFIDENTIAL128 White MeDivitt White CONFIDENTIAL you did was renove a layer off the window, rather than put something on it. You took something off it. Except I can't possibly imagine why it was 80 black and opaque with the sun shining on it at certain angles. I'd like to conment on the ease of operation outside ona tether. If you've ever tried to hang on the outside of a water tower, or about an 6-foot diameter tree, you can visualize the Problem I had out there. The decision to leave the hatch open was probably one of the very bes \nat we made. T had nothing outeide the space- craft to stabilize myself on. There just isn't anything to hold onto, I think Jim will renember one time when I tried to hook ay fingers in the RCS thrusters. I think Jim could see because: I coukk see. I was right out in front of Jim's windoy. This gave ne really nothing particularly to hold o Tt didn't stabilize me at all. I had nothing really to hold onto, and eo if you have ever tried to grasp an 6-foot diameter tree and shinny up it, you know the kind of feeling that I had CONFIDENTIALMeDivitt White CONFIDENTIAL a outside there. There just vasn't anything for me to hola onto. One thing though that I'11 say very emphatically-- there wasn't any tendency to recontact the spacecraft in anything but very gentle contacts. I made some quite interesting contacts. I made one that I recall on the ottomside of the right door in which I héd kind of rolled around. I actually contacted the bottom of the epaceoraft with my back and the back of my heed. I waa faced away fron ‘he spacecraft and I just drifted right up against it and just very lightly contacted it. I rebounded off. As long as the pushoffs are slow there just isn't any tendency to get in an uncontrollable attitude. It seemed Bi did hit it pretty hard at one time. I think that was after he pushed off violently; he went out and it seemed he came back and bashed it pretty hard. I remember a pretty solid thump. It seemed it was over the right hand hatch or just right behind--. I know a couple of times I kicked off with ay feet, and I think I kiow the time you are talking about. I came in with my foot. Tt wasn't so much the contact with myself--. CONFIDENTIAL330 MeDivitt White MoDivitt white MeDivitt White CONFIDENTIAL What did you do? Contact and pushoff? I contacted and pushed with my foot. I heard a big thump and I think I called you at this time to take it easy. I believe that was on the front end of the R & R Section on my side where you couldn't see me. Tt was a position that I couldn't see. One of the pictures that I saw last night in the movies, I think, was made at that tine. I was coming in fairly rapidly and I wanted to get back oub, so I kicked off again with my foot fairly hard. It was a very good kick, I felt that ¢ certeinly could have controlled myself without the gun out there if I had just some type of very insignificant hand-holds or something that I could have held on to. I believe that I could have gone on back to the adapters with minimum of several hand-holds to go back there, going from one to the other. I was actua’ly locking for some type of hand-holds out there. I remember that the only one that I saw was the stub antenna on the nose of the spacecraft. I could see the ceramic covering over it, I believe it was ceramic, or some kind of covering over it. CONFIDENTIALMeDivitt White MoDivitt ite Mobivitt White MoDivitt White CONFIDENTIAL ul Yes, it's white. I felt that this vasn't quite the thing to grab onto, thie was at the time when T vanted to get out at about 10 or 12 feet dizectly in front of ‘the spacecraft, I certainly had the urge to hang onto the antenna end push myself out. But T @idn't and there really wasn't anything to hold onto. You really need something to stabilize yourself. I worked around the open hatc Let me ask you a question? How about patting the hand-hold inside of the nose con 2 A fairing is up there for launch, just the fairing.We could mount @ hand-hold right inside. I think we could have really made som> noney if we had had an attachment for the tether out there right on the nose of the spaceoraft. Steung the tether out there and then attached there? Right. Have a seoond attach point and put Lt right oat there. It would give you sonething to hold onto out there. Yes. There wasn't anything to hold onto on the R&R Section. CONFIDENTIAL2 MeDivitt White MoDivitt White MeDavitt Waite MeDivitt CONFIDENTIAL I know it. Tt hed smooth corners and the only thing I could have grabbed was the aitenaa, and I didn't want ‘to grasp that. We thought one tine of holding on out there and thrusting, but--. There isa't anything to hold onto. I think you probably could have gotten a hold on the antenna and held onto it without hurting it. I examined it pretty closely before the launch, and it look- ed pretty sturdy. I thought this was something we needed end I didn't want to fool with it. As it turned out we really needed that antenna because that was the antenna that we used the whole flight--that stub antenna in the nose. Yes. When we opened up the spacecraft the hatch came open with a bang. The air that we had inside was obviously of greater pressure than that out- side, and we had a great outflow of things inclu- ding a piece of foam that we had used to pack our maneuvering gun in it's box. It was the first thing that we put in orbit, But then throughout ‘the time tint Ha was out, he wanted the door wide CONFIDENTIALWhite Mobivitt White MeDivitt CONFIDENTIAL a open. It was pretty obvious that the flow was from the spacecraft to the outside because part- way through bis maneuvers his glove floated out and floated away from the spacecraft with a rea~ sonably good relative velocity. The entire time he was out, even after we had the hatch open for 20 to 25 minutes, we were still getting particles floating out through the hatch. It was the flow. The streamlines were very obvious. Tt was from inside the spacecraft to the outside. I guess the spacecraft was out-gassing at a sufficient rate to cause a reasonably large pressure differ ential from inside to outside, and it was cer tainly relieving itself. I noticed this even as we were trying to get the hatch slosed. There was still a flow from inside to outside. Okay. T think that pretty well covers moat of the things that we actually did while I was out there. Now, as for getting back in Yes, let's go all the way back through and come back in. The tine really did go fast! T had watchea with me, but I diaa't look at then. I was watching the time. I noticed my watch CONFIDENTIALeH CONFIDENTIAL around 4 minutes and 6 minutes snd 6 minutes. And U'2an you got involved in floating around ure. as we were trying to get that last p: white The time really flew! McDivitt You kept getting behind me all the time and I became distracted from che time we were on VOX, completely blocking out the grourd. Our VOX mst have been triggered constantly, because whenever we were on it they couldn't traasmit to ua. White That's where the time got away from me. McDivitt That'e right, and it wes 15 minutes and 40 sec— onds when I looked at my clock. So, I thought that I had better go to the ground. I said to the gcound, "Do you have any message for us?" ‘because T know it was time to get back in. And thay just said,"Yes. Get back in!" White Right. I remeuber hearing Gus say,"Yes, get him back ia!" MeDivitt This is what all the fuss was about. They might have been transmitting to us to get back in but we were on VOX and couldn't hear a thing. White I did a few things after this time that I wasn't doing to deliberately stay out. But I was deliberately trying to do one last thing. I was CONFIDENTIALMoDivitt White MoDivitt CONFIDENTIAL ad trying to get that last picture. And this was one of a couple of times that I kicked off the epaceeraft really hard, to get out to the end of the tether. And [ wasn't successful in getting the position so that I could get a picture. T felt this was the one part of the mission that T hada't completed. Hverything else was successful and I wanted very badly to get that picture from outside. I spent a moment or so doing this. This was also the period of tine in which I called dow to Jim and said, "I'm actually walk- ing on top of the spacecraft." I took the tether hela onto it, and used it as a device to pull ae down to the spacecraft. I walked from about where the angle starts to break bet ~ the nose section and the cabin section, I walked from there ‘probably about two-thirds of the way up the cabin, and it wae really quite strenuous. Could you see me walking along, Jim? No, I coulantt see but I could feel the thumping on the outside. That's when T got to laughing so hard. This was when Jim was saying to cone in Yes, I think this is when T got a little stern CONFIDENTIALwe CONFIDENTIAL and said, "Get in here! White Whan I was walking on the ‘op and was Lawhing, Jim peobably @ida't think I thought he was éerious. Bub it was a very funny sensation. Now as far as delayiag, there were certain things that I haa to do before T cam» in. And there wasn't anything in the world that was going to hurey me up in doing them, We had just agreed that we'd do things in a slow manner and this is the way we'd do it. MoDivitt Let mo talk about the time here. It is implied in the papers that Ha didn't really want to come back in, and didn't. I think one of the things is tha wo didn't hear, We didn't have any transmissions fron the ground after he stepped osteide until I went off VOX at 15:49. They said, "Cone back in., and T told him to cone back in. I think thet he probably delayed about a miqute or two minutes. Waite I think 80, trying to get the pictures. Nopivitt And at that time I got a little irritated aul hollered at Ba, too. Then he started back in. waite Bub when I came bask T had things to do. McDivitt Yes. I know it. That's what I'm trying to say CONFIDENTIALWhite McDivitt White Mobivitt White CONFIDENTIAL LI to get this thing in ite proper perspective. Yes. We were 3 minutes 49 seconds late getting started back In because we just lost track of the tine. I eoulda't see Ba any longer. I was trying to keep track of what he was doing without being able to see, and I lost track of time. Then T think he delayed probably a niaute or a minute and a half before he started back in. That's right. So, those are the two delays. We'd agreed on that he'd start back in after 12 minates. From then on ell the time was spent just trying to get back in. I had certein things to do. I had to disassemble the camera that was on the spacecraft. I did this very slowly. I had to disconsect the elect- vical connection to it and hand the canera back in to Jim. Then T had to g out and disconnect the umbilical, and this ceally went pretty well. he Little tether that I had them put on the ring, fa pull ring, to disconsect the pin worked pretty well. I discomected the uibilical and discarded the umbilical cord. CONFIDENTIAL38 MeDivitt White MeDivitt White MoDivitt White MeDivitt CONFIDENTIAL ‘That wae the last thing Hd put into orbit. Right. I put that in orbit. Rarlier, it was really guite a sensation to see the glove float— ing off. I asked Jim a few minates before about the glove, or Jim had asked me, fey, do you want this other glove?" About a minute later, I saw it go floating out of the hatch. Al1 I can say, Ba, was about a half hour later T was sure thankful that we had gotten rid of some thing. We had so much other junk that we didn't want. I saw the glove come floating out of the right hand hatch, and it was a perfectly clear picture of the glove as it floated out. It floated out over ay right shoulder and out--it looked like it was on a definite trajectory gving somewhere. I don't know where it was going. It floated very smartly out of the spaceceaft and out into apace. I think this had a lot to do with that wat-gas- sing. There was a definite strean--. Yes. It was following the streamline right ont of the spacecraft. Tt went out perpendicular to the spacecraft, CONFIDENTIALWhite Mobivitt White McDivitt White CONFIDENTIAL 09 whichever direction that is. Back to gettiag back in the spacecraft--I had the one thermal glove on the onecband, my left hand. I always wanted my right hand to be free to op~ erate that gun and the camera. ‘The way the cam- era was wounted on there, I had to use both hands -- one hand to actually stabilize it with the gun and the other hand to ceach over. Again, I think aynamics played a little bit of a role there. Everytime I brought my hand in from a position out on my left, it tended to a little bit, which is exactly what we found happened on the air-bearing tables. I think that the camera should Rave been velerocd to ny body somewhere and used independently of the gun. Yes. I got that sane impression. I got the : impression that what you really should have done was--. Dropped the gun. Unhooked the camera out there floating around and jast thrown the gun away. T don't think you ever should have tried to bring it back. Well, what I should have done was fold the gua and handed it to you. CONFIDENTIAL140 MoDivitt White white MeDivitt White CONFIDENTIAL ‘That would aave just taken longer. It would have taken precious seconds out of the very few that we had anyway. I think you should have jast unhooked it and throw the gan away. This was probably the thing that I was most irgitated with not completing. I didi't feel the pictures were satisfactory with the canera out- side. But I think the reason was that my cemere was not in a position eo I could use it adequat- ely. But coming back in was the last thing. As a matter-of-fact, before I dismounted the movie camera and dismounted the umbilical, T folded the gan. I took the lanyard off with the camera on it, and handed Jim the gun and the camera. And I stuck it down between my legs. That was the first thing that I handed in. Then I handed in the 16 mm camera, and then I threw away the umbilical. This was where the fun aiaptel, I fonnd it was a Lot more difficult coming back in than T had remembered in the zero~ g training, It seemed like I was contacting both sides of the hatch at the same time, much firmer than I had in the zero-g aicplane. CONFIDENTIALMoDivitt White MoDivitt Medi White MeDivitt White CONFIDENTIAL or You mean you were hitting the hatch on one side and the hatch opening on the other side. Coming back in, I was contacting the side of the spacecraft on both sides. Yes, that's right. You weren't really hitting the hatch on both sides, you were hitting the hatch opening on both sides. Yes. I was coming down through there. I felt « much firner attachment wedging in there than I'd remembered from the zero-g training. I think this might be associated with the extra 7/10 or 8/10 pound of pressurization on the auit. I just might have been a little fatter. I did notice that the suit was a little harder. I felt this type of suit before during my pre-work, 80° this wasn't a surprise to me at all. But I did feel like I was a little fatter getting in and wedged a little tighter. I really don't think Ba was any fatter. I think ‘that link in the suit holds the suit to whatever volume it's going to go to, And I don't think @ couple pai are going--. Well, I felt like I was hitting a little more as CONFIDENTIAL